When researching companies online, I’ve been noticing several recurring consumer complaint sites coming up on the first page of Google’s search results for branded terms and company names.

Just today, I was searching for “Boston Medical Group” in Google. (Just for the record I am not a prospective patient.) (Not that there is anything wrong with being a patient of the Boston Medical Group.)

Mixed in with Boston Medical Group’s own website, the results are scattered with patient question on medical forums, local directory listings and some glaring consumer complaint sites.

I think that it is perfectly ethical for the owners of these consumer complaint sites to give people a voice against bad consumer experiences. I don’t even mind that they are actively optimizing their sites for the brand names in order to look more relevant to the search engines. What bothers me is the way these sites all seem to cater to both sides. Every consumer complaint site that I ran across while searching for Boston Medical Group had mostly negative, apparently user generated content. (anonymously posted, of course) At the same time, the sites offer “Reputation Management” services for companies to purchase, which, from what I can gather from their vague description, will remove your listing from the site - and hence Google’s search results page. It seems to me that the people running these sites are simply online extortionists. (and there is something wrong with that.)

In my opinion, Google and the other major search engines should be investigating consumer complaint sites that are getting massive exposure through their results for branded terms like Boston Medical Group, then asking for money to have the negative publicity removed. I need to look into this more…

In my experience, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has the highest ROI of all traffic channels. This is because, by design, search engine users are seeking and finding what they want, when they want it. From an advertisers perspective, being in a position to know who your prospective customers are and give them exactly what they want, when they want it is a gold mine; although this is where many inexperienced advertisers lose focus and cannibalize their own ROI.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about the basics of utilizing both Paid and Organic Search in tandem to increase the overall return that advertisers get from this invaluable marketing channel. I hope that this overview will help those asking the question “what is search engine marketing?”, while providing some valuable insight for experienced marketers.

What is Search Engine Marketing?

From my perspective, SEM is basically two sub-channels focused on driving traffic from search engine results.

Organic (or “Natural”) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) focuses on gaining higher rankings for relevant terms utilizing the search engine’s proprietary algorithms. Last I read, about 70% of all clicks on a search engine results page are on the organic results. Having a clear SEO strategy and understanding of how each search engine’s algorithms weighs different factors to determine relevancy are essential when engaging in organic search engine optimization.

Paid Search focuses on paying for clicks resulting from self-written text ads which are displayed based on self-selected terms. Having control over the messaging in the text ads, the words that trigger ads and even the specific destination that visitors are sent when clicking on the ad make this channel extremely efficient for a saavy search marketer. (I’ll get into more detail on this in future posts)

Paid Search is often referred to as “SEM”, but given the figure below, I don’t buy into this misused acronym. There are also sub-channels within paid search when you go beyond the traditional search engine. Services like Yahoo’s Product Submit allow advertisers to display their product results in shopping engines on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis. For the sake of simplicity and applicability to the widest audience, I will not focus on these additional paid channels which have a very specific function.

I hope that helps answer the basic question “what is search marketing?”. I’ll try to make future posts more in-depth to add value for those already familiar with SEM.

Next Search Engine Marketing Topic:
Determining Your SEM Strategy

I recently had a strategy session with a client and tracking offline channels came up. I thought that it would be good to share some of the basic URL strategies for tracking offline channels and the advantages/disadvantages of each.

Just to set the stage, I’ll outline things in terms of a single website or landing page with the address (URL) www.domain.com. Advantages will be “+” and disadvantages will be “-”.

UNIQUE DOMAIN

+ Allows for tracking effectiveness by channel
- Does not track down to creative or market level
- Campaign can seem disjointed with multiple domains in market

domain.com - used for all TV ads
url.com - used for all print ads

I’ve recently seen quite a few variations of the unique domain where the root term is placed after a unique number. (www.15domain.com, www.16domain.com) I would assume that this helps make some connection in the users mind when exposed to multiple spots, but I still think that using a unique domain can hurt a campaign that relies on a level of branding. On the positive side, by putting the unique identifier first, I would also assume that fewer users would fall through the cracks by not including it, since it is seemingly required.

UNIQUE DIRECTORY

+ Maintains domain/brand/campaign cohesiveness
+ Unlimited number of unique tracking addresses available (can get as granular as you need to)
- Percentage of users will not type the directory, therefore be unaccounted for

domain.com/ABC- used for TV spot 1
domain.com/QRS - used for TV spot 2
domain.com/XYZ - used for print ad 1

I feel that although not all users will include the directory (characters after the “/”), in most cases, this is the best approach and will give you a relative measure of effectiveness across all of your offline media channels. Since some of the direct URL type-in traffic will be accounted for by these offline channels, you can make some assumptions by setting a baseline before the campaign begins, then use the amount of lift after campaign launch to calculate an estimate of the effect from this campaign. To get a bit more granular, the ratio of the channels that were tracked through the unique directories can be put against the amount of lift to get a breakdown estimate.

Keeping the directory name both related to the campaign as well as easy to remember are things to consider when utilizing this approach. For example: domain.com/free would most likely garner more visits than www.domain.com/tv123

UNIQUE DOMAIN + UNIQUE DIRECTORY

+ Allows for channel and creative metrics
+ Ensures channel is tracked at minimum
- Campaign can seem disjointed

domain.com/ABC - used for TV spot 1
domain.com/123 - used for TV spot 2
url.com/ABC - used for print ad 1

This combination of both tactics can be used in some situations, such as where multiple campaigns are live at the same time or where constraints do not allow for spill-over from other channels.

Based on the feedback that I get on this initial outline, I will most likely follow up on this topic.