Coverage of SES New York Day 3

Keynote day 3 – The evolution of search: End Users Signal The Way

Yusuf Mehdi of Bing presented a whole bunch of new Bing products today. Among them; Forsquare in Bing Maps.

Since we are kind of disappointed these won`t come to Norway anytime soon (and that Bing are still on MSN/Live level in Norway), we won´t comment too much on this. But SearchEngineLand did a great piece on it, to read here.

Eye tracking research update

Shari Thurow, Founder & SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive

When people search, they want different things. By concentrating your search efforts on different things (like elements in Universal search), you are validating actual searcher behavior.

People search in 3 ways:
Navigational: Where can I go?
Informational: What can I learn?
Transactional: Where can I buy?

35% of searches in Bing are navigational.

Q: When should the information be textual to get most visits (and not ex. graphical)?
A: When people are looking for quick facts they look for text like site links. Sitelinks are therefore navigational keywords.

Pictures in SERPS most often show up when you use transactional keywords in your search. Maybe you should therefore concentrate on transactional terms when you optimise for Universal Search?

Other facts

- People choose what to give attention to
- People ignore big pictures that look like ads, or they look at it without looking
- People more often look at text below flash images and ignore the flash

What draws attention in SERPS?

- Ads
- Colors
- People (pictures)

To get success, match user intent with searcher intent. Provide the info to get people to finish their desired task.

Remember: Just because people are looking at something, they are not interested. Like looking for your keys and not seeing them, even though they are right in front of you. People can ignore what they are looking directly at when they are confused or when they “don’t give a f…”.

In SERPS:
For informational tasks, people are looking at lower level results. Therefore, pay attention to your snippets, not only getting the top ranking!

The F pattern is the natural reading pattern (in the western world). Therefore, in all text based SERPS, our eyes follow this pattern:

When people are using navigational terms (like your brand), people rarely look below top 3.

Your focus must therefore be on both the snippets and on other things that can appear in the SERPS, like pictures and videos.

When we are presented with blended SERPS (like in universal search), our eyes are drawn to something different, something that stands out from the rest.

Top positions therefore don`t equal clicks. Pay attention to your title, description and other info!

To summarize:
Its important to understand your users intention. Make sure information scent matches goals and behaviors.

Jeremi Karnell, Co-Founder & President, One to One Interactive

You will react to symbols that mean something or another to you.

In a study that was done to determine user behavior in universal search (with and without ads) vs plain text SERPS vs ads and text SERPS, they found out the following:

First place people looked:
- 17% fixated on the videos before the natural and paid links
- 39% focused on the top paid links
- 22% focused on the very top of the page

Image links gave more clicks than other.

In text only SERPS, the eye vision followed an F pattern. When presented with Universal search, the users focused on a golden triangle at the top of the page, and they rarely looked below the fold.

Video and images showed more user engagement (through measuring heart rate, cognitive self reportin etc).

60% of the fixation of all the test objects were on the images and the videos, both when presented with universal search with and without ads.

Summary:
Create a holistic search strategy which consider all search interactions. This will drive more visitors!

Susan Weinschenk, Human Factors International

Put eye tracking in perspective – search engines

40 mill sensory objects are getting into your brain every second, but you can only get 40 of them. Unconcious processing is therefore more important than ever.

We have 3 brains:

- New brain
- Old brain
- Mid brain

The new brain are conscious.

The old brain can only answer 3 questions, and are unconscious: Can I eat it, Can I have sex with it, Can it kill me?

The mid brain is also unconscious.

To be successful you need to target all 3.

Advanced KW research

Marcus Tandler, CEO, Creativity in Action

How to find better keywords?

Know your industry! What`s your target audience searching for?

Sistrix program: Shows you what terms your competitors rank for.

Can also sort what keywords you aren`t ranking for in top 100 or top 10 for where your competitors are ranking.

Universal search: It is not about ranking no. 1 anymore! It`s about ruling the SERPS!

Cluster your KW in 3 groups:

- Navigational
- Transactional
- Informational

Another tip: Use Wikipedia traffic info / kw info. This is often very accurate, as Wikipedia are visible for a LOT of keywords.

Also: Listen to your user! Your own logs from your internal page search can give you a lot of great ideas!

Always test your keywords through AdWords

Yigal Elnekave, Microsoft AdCenter

Elnekave used all his time presenting the Microsoft Ad Intelligence keyword tool that have a LOT of great features, and that we want (!). But like mentioned before on this page, Bing doesn`t acknowledge any other European country than France and UK, and therefore this is not available or interesting for our Norwegian readers…

For the ones that are still interested, this is the link to the tool:

http://keywords.com

Churchill, Key Relevance

Measure site search in (Google) Analytics. What are people searching for? What products are they searching for that you might include in your store? This is a great keyword research tool.

Tools that measure trending topics:

- Google trends (with hot topics from real time search)

- Google hot trends à keywords that were popular on a particular date

- Insights for search à insights in the progression of keywords. Ex map feature: Where are people buying / not buying your products?

- Twitter search à trending topics

- Twitscoop à trending topics

- Search options in Google: Wonder wheel à relationships between keywords

Top tip: Use a variety of the tools to find your keywords!

Weintraub, Aimclear

Google wants us to be stupid, and therefore doesn`t present us with too many sorting options in their KW reports. Create spreadsheet columns yourself, or develop pivot tables.

Also, think about the following when finding your keywords:

- Behavioral triggers and funnels

- Geographic data

- Page strengh

If you start with one tool, use the AdWords KW tool.

Bryan Eisenberg, 21 secrets of top converting websites

The session was about the same as the one on SEM Konferansen in Oslo last September, although with some examples that were more American.

To see the whole presentation: http://tr.im/mmsc3

PPC vs SEO Search Battle

Moderator: Andy Atkins-Krüger, Managing Director, WebCertain

The panel consists of some PPC’ers and some SEO’ers, even if they are supposed to fight for their subject the whole panel seem to be pro a combination of both SEO and PPC.

Panel:

Rhian Ryan PPC rocks, you have more control and it is more measurable. But would you cut of your right arm because your left arm functions better?

Tom Friesen: SEO, also believe both should work together

Brad Geddes, takes both sides.

Rand Fishkin SEO, intorduces himself saying he is an orphan PPC killed his parents, he will definately fight for SEO.

Rae Hoffman SEO.

Rand Fishkin on PPC vs SEO - Why its not even close:

Argument 1: PPC converts higher than SEO

PPC has 1.2x SEO conversion rate, so it’s slightly higher

- But who gets more traffic? PPC 12% SEO 88%.

Argument 2: PPC is easier to customize

But aAds have restrictions, meta data doesn’t, title tags are always approved

Argument 3: PPC is faster

You can be visible fast through QDF results, real time results, blogs and news results

Argument 4: PPC is easier

This is why it is not a competitive advantage

Argument 5: PPC is great for testing

–Agreed

Fishkin’s presentation is followed by discussion and Questions & Answers, following are some views from the panel and the audience

Hoffman: PPC has the advantage that it can change point at any time

It’s easier to buy your way to certain keywords vs ranking organic.

Question from the audience: If you had $ 100 000 where would you put it – SEO or PPC?

And what if it’s a brand new website? You would have no revenues for 6mnths. So how should you split the budget?

- One option could be to use the positive ROI from PPC to fund your SEO.

- Test, some money in PPC and some in SEO

- Hoffman and Fishkin thinks SEO is the one and only option

Comment from the audience: they should consider each client which one suits best.

Local campaigns: From PPC perspective is fantastic, small budgets may be a hugh challenge, bud you can use address extensions, product extensions, geo-targeting etc.

Long tail: It depends on the content on the page how much value you can get out of it when it comes to SEO vs PPC. SEO will give you more value for pages with lots of content.

The control and flexibility you have with PPC trumps SEO when it comes to sales promotion.

Seasonality: It’s easier to change your message in PPC.

SEO is cheap (the SEO’er actually use the word free)

No one really wins the discussion but I’m noticing that the SEO’ers have many good PPC arguments.

Advanced paid search tactics

Sage Lewis

Online spending will overtake print in 2010

Companies spend more on email than on PPC, but they don’t know why…

Facebook increases local ad targeting abilities.

B2B marketing will spend double in the next 5 years.

Google display ad sales top 1 billion dollars

There are many specialized search engines, Google is not everything , so you should pay attention to them as well.

Google says average AdWords CTR is 2%

Find Google advertising professionals.

Thomas Bindl: Refined Labs

Optimize for your KPIs (every business has other goals), Measure all possible data

Keywords, ad text, placements, Content network, landing pages, keyword performance, Revenue per Impression/click

Use filter functionalities on a regular basis.

Measuring ecact(ly) there is more information than you expect

• Stricter match type means easier tracking
• Stricter match type means less traffic
• Broader match type brings more traffic
• Broader match type is more headache
• Track what people search for

The extra mile for the extra sales – do the stuff your competitor is too lazy to do

• Participate in beta –tests by the search engines
• Look at data the other way round (landing page performance)
• Use Google ad parameters
• Have a separate PPC landing page
• Analyze same image ads across ad groups
• Track more and earlier (in the sales cycle)

Benu Aggarwal

International campaigns:

Make sure when you target international market, not just optimize keywords and ad-copy, but also landing page.

- Get to know your customers before deciding which countries to target

- Optimize for both language and culture

- Do your market research

- Find good translators

Mobile campaigns:

Set up separate campaigns for smart phones and wap phones

User interfaces and search behavior: Immediate need to get something done, focused intent. The searcher is typically towards the end of purchase tunnel.

Setup:

• Broad and phrase match, bid on misspellings
• Message strategies – reinforce mobile friendliness. Use text speak, ex “call 2day”. Mobile ads are shorter than standard ads 18 char.
• Synchronize ad groups, keywords, ad copy and landing pages.

Rob Wilk, National Director of Search Optimization & Strategy, Yahoo!

Ad testing strategies

-always be ad-testing min 2 ads, max 5 ads.

- use ad optimization or similar product by other engines

Keyword expansion tactics

- Lots of 3rd party tools, try a few to see what works for you

- Advanced (broad) match breeds lazy keyword expansion

Should be used as a temporary coverage strategy

Spotlight on Fashion – Blogging for style

Dina Pradel, Director, Marketing, StyleFeeder, Inc.

The personal shopping engine StyleFeeder - A specialized search site.

Provides a customized experience that help shoppers find what they’re looking for faster.

Learns a shoppers unique tastes

Returns searches results based on individual preferences and collective behavior

Provides product recommendations based on personal style

Works well for active registered users. How to serve shoppers coming in cold?

- Geolocation: Louboutins in NYC and Tevas in Melbourne. It look at other shoppers in the area.

Content is king (at least to google)

- Use your users

- Partner with your affiliates

- Supplement product information

- Zero cost

Sarah Ivey Rock, Search Marketing Manager, AOL Living

Aol StyleList

Why fashion? – Everyone wears clothes

StyleList is the #1 online fashion and beauty resource

What they do?

- Create content,

- optimize to be found,

- share connect and

- Listening and respond to feedback..

If you like it then you should have put a link on it :) SEO Beyoncé- style!

Thats all folks! Hope you have enjoyed our notes from SES New York!