Search Engine Marketing Case Study: Analytical Investing - Methodology
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At Apogee, our search engine marketing strategy varies by site, industry and budget. Our general approach, however, involves launching a PPC ad campaign on Google early in a search engine effort. Google ads go live within a few minutes after creating them and the minimum CPC is only 5 cents. Having an active Google ad campaign early in the process allows us to determine which keywords are generating traffic and which ones are converting well to sales. This knowledge can then be applied to other search engine campaigns as well as to SEO (search engine optimization) work.
After collecting a few weeks' worth of keyword data from a Google ad campaign, we develop and launch an Overture campaign. Overture, now a Yahoo! company, has a similar reach to Google. The minimum CPC is higher at 10 cents versus Google’s 5 cents. Also, keyword ads go through an editorial process which can take a few days or even a week. On the positive side, Overture allows more text in a search engine keyword ad which makes the ads look more like the natural, algorithmic search results. The CTR (click through rate) of an Overture ad is often higher than a similar Google ad, largely due to this factor.
Once a site is receiving high quality paid traffic from Google and Overture, we consider the next step. If the traffic is converting well to sales and at a reasonable ROI (return on investment), we move on to search engine optimization. Optimizing a Website to increase the likelihood of ranking well in free search engine results is an arduous task which can take months to see results. Knowing which keywords generate traffic and, of those, which convert to sales can save months of iteration during a search engine optimization project. Our strategy, then, is to undertake an SEO effort as the last phase in an overall SEM (search engine marketing) plan.
Often, after Google and Overture ad campaigns are stable, we either launch PPC ad campaigns on second tier search engines or else we broaden the scope of our keyword research and find secondary keyword phrases that will drive quality traffic to our clients’ sites. Our favorite second tier search engines are FindWhat and Searchfeed. Both offer a reasonable amount of traffic at lower cost than Google and Overture. They also both have adequate search engine ad campaign administrative tools and reporting features. Over the past couple of years we have implemented and tested ad campaigns on about a dozen search engines. We have whittled our list of effective PPC search engine advertising platforms down to four: Google, Overture, FindWhat, Searchfeed.
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