Blue Fountain Media’s Director of Marketing, Alhan Keser, was just featured in the Wall Street Journal and Smart Money’s SMSmallBiz.com in a story covering Pay-Per-Click advertisements. In an extended interview, Keser helped explain why paid advertisements resulted in higher conversion rates–the ratio of users who actually make a purchase–when compared to the organic, unpaid search results.

Here’s a quick excerpt:

The reason for the differential: Conversion rates tend to improve as shoppers progress through the buying cycle, says Alhan Keser, an SEM specialist at Blue Fountain Media, a boutique web site development and online marketing firm in New York. Although search engine users typically troll organic results to conduct online research, they start favoring sponsored links when they’re ready to buy, he says. “Most people who click on ads are ready to be sold to; they are at the buying stage,” Keser says.

Keser is a certified SEO and SEM expert, meaning he is well versed in all aspects of marketing through search engines–both improving organic results and paid results. Keser has previosuly been featured on Entrepreneur.com, in the Google section of About.com and is a guest expert for Ultra Light Startups–a forum for technology entrepreneurs.

• Keywords: do keyword research, and use keyword groups to segment your audiences. Also use different match types to make sure you’re targeting the right users at the right times in their buying cycle, but not overpaying for lower-performance phrases.
• Ad copy: Use keywords in your ad copy, and prioritize the relevance of what you’re advertising (in relation to the search terms) over branding or your company name.
• Landing page: Make sure your landing page is relevant to your keywords, and ads.
• Performance Tracking: Know what metrics are important to your business; monitor and improve your campaigns over time through controlled testing.

But what if you’re already doing all that? Here are the next 8 steps:

1. Use negatives on your broad match keywords.

   If you don’t want to limit your options to specific phrases by using only exact match, because some of your keywords might be combined with an unpredictably long list of other keywords, most of which are relevant combinations, but a handful of which are irrelevant, set the main keyword to broad match, and enter the handful of irrelevant modifiers as negative matches, at the keyword level.

2. Use dynamic keyword insertion.

   If you’re targeting a lot of similar products, or one product that comes in a lot of different colors (e.g. blue plaid shorts, red plaid shorts, etc.), you can improve the relevance of your ad copy quickly by using DKI to insert the user’s search terms into your copy (space permitting).

3. Brand vs. Non-brand keywords and ads

   If you get traffic from people searching your brand name and also bid on brand-name keywords for SERP domination purposes (assuming you rank organically for your brand name), this is when you should test the inclusion of the brand in your ad copy. Similarly, if you sell another company’s brands on your website and it’s popular enough to get branded search traffic, monitor the performance of branded vs. non-branded keywords, as well as brand names in ad copy. (Note: Google has relaxed its restrictions on using brand names in ad copy in the US at least; if you are advertising in another country, please learn about local copyright law and Google’s country-specific policies.)

4. Discounts and other selling points

   If you offer free shipping, online discount codes, guarantees or other differentiating points, test them against eachother in each keyword group. They might perform differently at different stages of the buying process. However, monitor the performance of discount codes carefully: they will most likely increase sales or orders, but they also erode margins, so make sure that you’re not increasing volume at the expense of profits. In other words, make sure your discount volume isn’t cannibalizing visitors who would be willing to pay full price anyway.

5. Link AdWords with Analytics

   Even if you’re using the same Google Account login for both AdWords and Analytics, they might not be linked by default: check in the “Reports” tab or AdWords. Linking these two services allows Analytics to incorporate cost-per-click data, and allows AdWords to incorporate Analytics Goal data into keyword and ad performance reports. (Note: if you’ve just linked the two services, it might take a week or two for the latter option to become available.)

6. Bid based on time of day

   Most search advertising programs now offer the option to schedule your ads for certain times of the day, and even increase or decrease bids. Monitor performance by time of day, and increase your budget at peak-converting times, not necessarily peak traffic times.

7. Create separate campaigns for the content network

   There is too much variance in costs-per-click, ad performance, and keyword relevance between the Search network and the Content network to use the same campaigns across the two. If you’re currently advertising everywhere, stop. Disable content partners in your current campaigns. If you have gotten ROI out of the content network, duplicate these campaigns, and have these new copies target only the content network, and optimize your two sets of campaigns separately.

8. Prioritize & Find New Opportunities

   There is a wealth of data about searcher behavior available, much of it for free if you know where to look. Two good places to start are Google Trends, and eBay Pulse. Google Trends provides great historical data on popular keywords, so you can identify seasonal keywords, outdated terms that aren’t worth pursuing anymore, or up-and-coming buzz words that should be on your radar. eBay Pulse is great for growing your keyword list, as it can help you identify the language that shopping searchers specifically are using.

The 3-day conference revolves around the latest techniques and news in search engine marketing. It is one of many world-class conferences that our team members attend to be on the cutting edge of the online marketing industry.

We will be publishing short posts from the conference with tips that can be implemented immediately for your online business.

1. Unclear call to action.

Focus your visitors on one thing. What it is that you want people to do on each of your pages? 1-800 Flowers is one of the big companies that was messing this up (on their product detail page).

Use Attention Wizard heatmap to find where people are looking on your page.

2. Too many options – steps.

Reduce the friction between the user and the product they are seeking. Show main categories that are most popular on your page – not every subcategory and product on each page.

3. Asking for too much information.

Require less information in your forms to increase conversions. Do not ask questions that are not absolutely unnecessary, or inappropriate. Read Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing.

4. Too much text.

Do not make your visitors to suffer. Do not write in paragraph form. Instead use headlines and bullet points.

5. Not keeping your promises.

Intent is the number one factor in conversion. If a user clicks on a pay-per-click ad that says “Best Digital Camera” then they expect to come across the best digital camera. If they land on a page that does not match that query and the promise of seeing reviews of the best digital cameras, then they will promptly leave.

6. Too many visual distractions.

Use visual hierarchy to organize information, just like in an outline. Only important things should be bright and bold. Use other colors/sizes to organize information. Do not make everything equally important or unimportant.

7. Lack of trust.

Provide trust symbols in visible places (top 2/3 of the area visible through a monitor). This can be a “McCaffee Secure” symbol, brands that you work with, mentions in the press – whatever will increase trust by association.

For real-time news from Affiliate Summit East 2009, follow me on Twitter!

In this example, Google includes a plus-box below a Newegg.com ad, with product images and information pulled from microformatted tables on their product pages:


Much like the Google Checkout badge and the maps plus box, this isn’t something you can just turn on via AdWords; it’s a result of having your ad campaigns set up correctly, and Google crawling your website and determining that they’ll be providing users with a better experience by displaying additional content from your website (either letting users know that you support Google Checkout, or giving a preview of products related to your search).

This is yet another example of the importance of a wholistic approach to online marketing; advertising should integrate not only searchability and online reputation, but site architecture as well. (For a more in-depth explanation of how Google uses information like microformats in the SERPS, check out their recent entry on the Google Webmaster Central Blog.)

Last week we attended Search Engine Strategies New York, the online marketing conference and expo, and one theme that kept coming up in various contexts was the concept of real value. Different industries talk about it different way: in economics it’s “utility”, in customer relations it’s “satisfaction”, but the idea is the same: businesses and consumers alike are paying more attention to each dollar that they spend and how it benefits them.

Among consumers, that means brand loyalty is waning as people search for better deals, perhaps reevaluating and switching brands, or even going with generics. Among businesses, it means focusing more on ROI, and making sure your service providers are getting the right kind of results and giving you the metrics to back them up.

It’s a familiar concept at Blue Fountain Media; we’ve always held ourselves accountable for the success of our clients, focusing on your goals, and only recommending solutions that will yield a return on investment. We enjoy working with clients who feel the same way about their own customers. It was nice to have our strategy validated by others, like keynote speaker John Gerzema, who spoke about the erosion of trust, about the lack of permanence of institutions that used to appear untouchable, but ultimately about the opportunity that the crisis has created for smart companies. It’s a win for the consumer, and a win for businesses willing to take a step back, and make sure that they’re adding value that’s worth paying for.

Alhan and I just got back to the office after three days at the Search Engine Strategies New York Conference and Expo. We’ll be writing more about the takeaways from that experience a little later. But first I wanted to point out something I noticed this morning:

One technique to avoid unwanted clicks and the charges associated with them is to write ad copy which will “filter” unqualified users by discouraging them from clicking. Above, on our own AdWords creative, we use the filter “$5K+”, which gives users a clue about the level of our services.

Another New York firm, Avatar, has been doing the same thing (“$20,000 and up”), but now they’ve added a second filter on the same ad: “Currently NOT Hiring”.

When used properly, filters can be effective at reducing your overall pay-per-click cost. However, they can’t be your only strategy for targeting. First of all, they rely on users reading beyond the ad headline, which is sometimes a tall order. Secondly, they can lower your click-through rate, which lowers your AdWords Quality Score, which drives up your minimum cost-per-click. (Basically, if your ad shows a lot but doesn’t get clicked on, Google will see it as a low-quality ad; since they want to provide a quality experience for users, they discourage low-quality ads by making them more expensive.)

One way to reduce the number of unqualified impressions before you start filtering clicks is through negative keywords. If we’re bidding on the keyword phrase “new york web design”, but don’t want users to click our ad searching for “new york web design jobs”, we could just add “jobs” as a negative keyword.

Fortunately, we don’t have that problem; we are hiring.

This is a quick post to exemplify why most methods of marketing, especially online, simply do not match the effectiveness and longevity of search engine optimization (SEO). The important factor to remember is that it is measurable, like pay-per-click advertising and banner ads, but unlike these, the effects of SEO last far beyond the length of the campaign and cost-per-conversion plummets with SEO as time goes by.

Exhibit A:

One of our clients, PriorTax.com, was spending $1.40 per visitor through Google AdWords to bring 13,024 visitors to their website in a period of 30 days.

During the same 30 day period, Blue Fountain Media brought the website 15,382 visitors for $0.43 per visitor through search engine optimization.

These numbers do not speak for themselves; we must consider whether or not these were qualified visitors or not. It is not enough to say that we brought X amount of traffic to a website, if they got zero sales out of it.  PriorTax.com not only had more visitors through SEO than from Google AdWords, but their conversion rate was also higher. Their AdWords conversion rate was 3.38% while their organic results gave them a slight edge at 3.64%.

Conclusion: Not only did SEO bring more visitors at a lower price, but also had a higher conversion rate.

Exhibit B:

R.A.G. New York was able to take advantage of the SEO campaign that Blue Fountain Media performed long after the end of our work. Here are two screenshots from R.A.G. New York’s Analytics showing 1.) overall visitors and 2.) total conversions. Blue Fountain Media provided SEO services between April and September. Since then there has been no work done to promote the website.

It is clearly visible that the fruits of our labor truly paid off after our work was done. R.A.G. was able to take full advantage of the holiday season search frenzy and many of those same visitors came back to the website early this year. Personalized search results had a big role to play here.

Blue Fountain Media's Web 2.0 Marketing Seminar at the Center for Architecture.

BFM Creative Director, Gabriel Shaoolian, gave a presentation in front of 30+ attendees to the Luxury Brand Web 2.0 Marketing Seminar, which attracted former clients and other parties interested in learning more about the following:

> How to effectively drive traffic to a website through various means of online marketing, the most cost-effective being search engine optimization.

> How to convert visitors into customers through landing page optimization and continual testing and analysis.

> How to build brand loyalty online and insure repeat traffic.

Want to attend our next seminar? Contact us and we will send you an invitation.

Here is the presentation, which can easily be shared:

Additional photos from the event:

Fred McCoy, Zack Sinkler, & Megan Hilts of Blue Fountain Media.

Gabriel Shaoolian giving an attendee more information.

Gabriel Shaoolian, Megan Hilts, & Aspen Powers.

It’s amazing how many poorly researched, poorly written, and poorly targeted paid search campaigns I’ve come across on the major search engines without even really looking for them. It’s obvious why Google runs those $25 free AdWords credit promotions for new users; if you don’t know what you’re doing, that money goes pretty quickly.

Whether they’re using Google AdWords, Yahoo! SEM, or Microsoft adCenter, here are some of the dangerous thoughts that seem to go through the minds of PPC users:

1. I know the keywords that best describe my products/services; those are the ones I’ll target.

Standardizing the terms you use to refer to your products and services is part of effective branding. Search, however, is not done on your terms. It’s by definition on the terms of the user. Starbucks doesn’t refuse service to people who come in and order a “large”. Nor should you ignore users just because they don’t use specialized terminology in their search query.

2. I don’t want to leave any users out; I’ll use broad match keywords.

This is the flip-side of the above: While doing broad match for competitive keywords increases your brand’s exposure in theory, it will probably cost you more than it’s worth.
Use common sense. Targeting a broader range of phrase and exact match keywords that are more specific to what you provide will appeal to more qualified users who know they want, and are therefore more likely to convert.

3. My company name is the most important thing; I’ll make that my ad headline.

Search isn’t about you. It’s about whoever entered the search query, and most often, relevancy is what is most important. Anyway, your company name will hopefully show up in the display URL, if you chose your domain name wisely.

4. One of my ads is not performing well; I’ll try out a new one with a different headline, description, display URL, landing page.

No two PPC campagins are the same, so testing out lots of options is fundamental. However if you change everything about every test subject, how are you going to know what’s making a difference?
Instead, test combinations of different elements; that way, the elements that are common across multiple ads serves as a “control” for the experiment.

5. The user knows what they just searched for; why should I repeat it in my ad copy?

Not only does using keywords in the ad copy help reassure users that you’re speaking the same language, this practice also improves quality score in AdWords, which means higher placements and lower cost-per-click.

6. My homepage is the best source of information about my products/services; I want all my traffic going there.

Your home page might be a great resource for learning about your company and the different services you provide, but unless the keyword was your company name, or unless you only do one thing, the user is probably looking for something more specific. Why not give it to them?
Traffic to specialized landing pages is much more likely to convert (obviously other factors, like design, matter here too), and keyword relevancy on the landing page increases quality score, which again means – you guessed it – higher placements with lower cost-per-click.

7. I just need to increase my maximum cost-per-click.

PPC managers and the programs themselves will often recommend that you just need to put more money into your campaigns and it will pay off. This is the simplest way to get more clicks, but it’s also the most expensive and unless you improve other aspects of your campaigns, it will lower your ROI.

8. Once I have my campaigns optimized, I can leave them alone.

Ignoring zeitgeist can be a costly mistake for online businesses. Even the same customers might be using different language to search for the same things two months from now. Any number of political, social, or economic factors, while not affecting your business directly, can have an effect on mindset.
It’s not so important to know the “why” behind searcher behavior, as long as you monitor it and adjust your behavior accordingly.

9. I’m getting “hits”. AdWords is working.

For Google, anyway; they get paid every time you get a click.
The only way to know for sure if your AdWords account is working to its potential if by measuring the rate at which visitors to your site turn into customers or clients. This is your conversion rate, and most major PPC programs give you tools for measuring it. Use them.

10. I only need one campaign, one ad group, one ad.

Amazingly, I still see PPC accounts set up this way. The mindset behind this seems to be that your website and your company are what matters, so you come up with the best possible description of your website that will appeal to the broadest audience possible, and then put it in front of as many people as possible, as often as possible.

In paid search, the most important thing is to match up, in the user’s mind, the user’s lack with a product or service you provide. You have four lines of text to demonstrate this link.