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2008 MarketingSherpa Search Marketing Benchmark Guide

Last month, MarketingSherpa released their annual Benchmark Guide. This 300+ page report is chock full of charts, graphs, heatmaps, and other industry findings from the world of search. To develop this guide, MarketingSherpa surveys about 2,500 marketers from companies of various sizes. The report is on sale for about $300.00, and is worth the investment. Though this is a large book, it is a must read for any client serious about search. The report is also great for e-marketing managers who are looking to explain to management how successful search can be.

Each week we will provide some highlights of the appropriate chapters.

Chapter 1 – The Business of Search
This chapter details the budgeting, challenges, and outsourcing of search. While Paid Search has grown substantially over the last few years, the data suggests that its growth will begin to slow. The indication is that Paid Search will drop to a more sustainable year to year increase rate of 8 – 11%. In 2007, the industry grew nearly 40% globally and 30% in the US. Search continues to dominate online spending, controlling nearly 40% of the $16 billion being spent.

More than two-thirds of the people spending on Google expect to increase their spending by at least 10% in 2008. What is interesting is that some of this increase is due to rising keyword costs, which begs the question: “Are budgets going up due to success, or is it simply getting more expensive to maintain current campaigns?”

Paid Search managers foresee increasing their spending in 2008 on other tier one engines (Yahoo!, Live, Ask, and AOL), but not to the same degree as their increase on Google.

SEO continues to be viewed as having tremendous “upside” while being cheaper then Paid Search. However, the spending does not illustrate this. As a gross measure, marketers are spending about one-fifth as much on SEO as they do when compared to Paid Search. 43% of marketers are planning on spending over $25,000 per month on SEO, an increase of at least 11% from their 2007 spending.

Search “challenges” from the panel ran the gamut; marketers cited increased competition (49%) and tracking offline conversions (49%) as their biggest concerns, with click fraud concerns going down to just 13%. There was also continued debate on managing search in-house or outsourcing to an agency. 76% of clients that brought Search in house cited cost savings and a belief that they could do just as well. However, in several post-survey interviews, the performance reviews were mixed. Additional challenges with bringing search in- house are around the limited amount of experienced search people and the salaries they are commanding.

While some marketers have brought search in-house, organizations outsourcing search actually rose over the past 12 months.

The chapter closes with agency pros speaking out on Issues in SEM, opinions, opportunities, and trends.

Next week, Chapter 2 – Topics in Search

Article by Joshua Palau
 

Google Opens Up Geographic Localization

In the past, if you wanted your site to appear in a foreign country version of a Search Engine, a marketer had many things to worry about.  What country was the site hosted in?  How was the domain set up?  These were all questions that a marketer needed to be concerned with.  This past week Google has worked towards solving these issues, as Adam Whippy detailed in a feature about Google opening up geographic localization.
 

SEO Best Practices

We are often tasked with handling SEO as part of site development, even when we are not the design agency. One of the comments that I hear the most from clients and agencies is,“We’re covered because we’re doing best practices.” Of course you are. Best practices are really about not shooting yourself in the foot. Best Practices means that you balance readable text with images, you externalize JavaScript, use CSS and HTML.

Best practices are great. Best practices mean that a Search Engine Spider should be able to crawl your site. However, SEO is part of your Search Marketing plan – which means you need to know the differences between best practices and SEO marketing.
- Analytics should be reviewed to determine where organic traffic is coming from and find potential areas of traffic loss
- Are the right pages showing up? Does a branded search for a product return that product page or your homepage?
- Is keyword research used when developing content and Meta Tags?
- How does your CMS render URL’s and the directory structure?
- If you’ve changed URL’s or moved pages, how do you notify the engines?
- How do redirects work?
- How do you optimize Video, PR, Blogs, and Images?

The items described above are crucial to having SEO success, but none of them are covered in a standard best practice. The next time you hear best practices, ask what that actually means.

Article by Joshua Palau

 

SMTrends Briefs

The folks at TechCrunch had comScore run some numbers on the world of social sites.  While there are not too many surprises, it underscores using social sites as part of your search marketing.

Verizon announced today that they are allowing some wider uses for cellphone users.  Details are still coming out, but this is a hue change of direction and may allow the US to finally take full advantage of mobile.

Content providers struggle with opening up content vs. a gated site.  Without debating the pros and cons there are not only significant organic search benefits, but also newer proof that your site’s revenue won’t suffer.
 

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The editor of SMTrends is Joshua Palau.  Please send any questions, comments or topic suggestions to smtrends@avenuea-razorfish.com or mail to: SMTrends, 417 N. 8th Street, 2nd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19123. For more information, you can call us toll free at 866-858-1993 or email us at info@avenuea-razorfish.com  2007 Avenue A | Razorfish (TM).
 
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