Additional search techniques

by bigmouthmedia

Getting it right from the start: tagging

A fundamental step to success on any search campaign is often getting the tagging done right. The ‘tags’ are actually small tracking scripts, often a combination of JavaScript and pixels, which track how successful the search campaign is being.

Simply adding tags can be a challenge to some complex or old content management systems, hugely time consuming on sites with no CMS and sometimes a security challenge to some financial sites.

Another common problem with tags is that a different set of tags is used for each different digital activity. PPC might use one set of tags, SEO another, affiliates may use two or more and display run yet another set. As a result each sale, booking or application at a web site might be claimed as a success by one or more tag (the customer may have visited through more than one digital channel) and total sales, bookings and applications may exceed %100 at the end of the month.

An effective solution is the use of a single universal tag – one tag that deploys any other tags needed to track and event and which reduces or eliminates duplication. Universal tag solutions include Google’s DoubleClick Floodlight tags or independent TagMan tags.

If it is not possible to deploy any form of universal tags then ensuring a tag and tag cooperation strategy is in place is essential.

Paid links

Google continues to crack down on links bought for SEO purposes. Increasingly, companies are investing resources in researching their competitor’s link activities and using Google’s official reporting forms to highlight if and when any competitor still seems to be engaged in link buying.

These links are outside the search engine’s guidelines and can result in penalties being placed on a domain’s natural search presence.

Combining affiliate marketing and SEM

Affiliates can hugely affect the PPC landscape. Some super affiliates have very large budgets and can run significant campaigns.

Should you let affiliates drive traffic to your site through PPC campaigns? Should you let them bid on your brand? Should affiliates be allowed - or encouraged - to set up sub-domains which echo your domain?

All these questions should be asked and answered as part of your SEM campaign. The right answer for one site may be the wrong answer for another. The way to resolve these issues for your campaign is to test safely where you can.

In every case it is best practise not to battle with your affiliates. Work with your affiliates to explore opportunities and keep them in the loop.

The use of an universal tag can help prevent duplication across search and affiliate channels.

Multivariate Testing

Multivariate Testing is an analytical method which fine tunes your landing pages to be as effective as possible. Whereas A/B testing allows you to compare the performance of two landing pages (page A versus page B) multivariate testing allows you to compare the performance of hundreds of variables.

For example, you could try your landing page with four different images, three different headlines, eight different “buy now” button colours and five different “buy now” button positions. The software is able to test all these variations at once and determine which variation is the most successful at generating leads (or other KPIs). The more variations you try at once the more traffic you need in order to complete the test.

There are a number of multivariate testing providers: Omniture (who now own Offermatica and Touch Clarity), Maxymiser and Google’s free Website Optimiser product, for example. These systems tend to work with JavaScript and tracking tags. These tracking tags are often in addition to your current web analytics or SEM tracking tags. A key point to note is that when JavaScript is used to produce content it can significantly harm SEO rankings. Ideally, multivariate testing is done in coordination with SEM, SEO and affiliate marketing campaigns.

Quality score improvements

Search engines reward advertisers who have quality and relevant adverts. An improved Quality Score can lead to a decrease in the minimum CPC and improvement in the ad position.

A number of factors affect Quality Score; click through rate, relevance of ad text to keyword bids and the quality of the landing page.

One technique to improve the Quality Score of a landing page is to make sure the search engines can plainly see what the page is about (a core part of SEO) and ensuring the ad text reflects that. Landing pages which let users buy the product advertised in the creative are good as well as landing pages with unique content. Sites with privacy policies or which do not require registration often enjoy better Quality Scores than those with content behind preview-less subscription barriers.