This is how we’ll get down in all future client training meetings.

This Paid Search 101 Rap Video was found via Laura Lippay from Facebook. So kudos to her for the find!

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Below is a mini PowerPoint on integrating PPC & SEO, drawing from several of my posts. I’ll update this PowerPoint this weekend. I’m pushing this out today as part of a Citizen Agency event, otherwise I would of hold it over until tomorrow.

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Why Companies Are Going UGC: Community, Conversion & SEO

Lee Odden has laid out the reasons for UGC, citing some of the many studies that point to both

• Increasing consumer expectations to create online content
• Improved conversions for online retailers that provided user-based product reviews

Here is Lee’s list of “common benefits of user generated content for web site optimization and better search engine rankings”:

• Leveraging a like-minded, enthusiastic community for the creation and sharing of topically focused content in multiple media formats: text, audio, images and video
• Additional web site content attracts traffic through long tail phrase queries
• UGC increases the breadth of overall content available to consumers, increasing the chance they’ll find what they’re searching for
• The opportunity to contribute content in a meaningful way fosters community and can result in an effective feedback loop – motivating the creation of more content and participation. ”

Image Modified and Borrowed from Avinash. :)

UGC and SEO for Long Tail or the Head?

When doing an integrated SEM Campaign, which at e-Storm we define as doing Organic (SEO) and Paid (PPC), who gets what keywords from the client’s “Keyword Portfolio”? Here’s one scenario:

• PPC gets the Tail: Because it is easy to ensure that you get the tail and the tail is cheap
• SEO gets the Head: Because the keywords are too expensive to buy on the PPC side, and also limited content forces the client to focus on a smaller set of keywords

UGC can help solve this problem of choosing between the “Head” and “Tail” keywords for SEO. But, of course, this is based on getting it right on four assumptions:

• Quality of the Content:
  What kind of quality are you looking for? How will you solicit them?
• Amount of Content:
  Is your audience massive enough to leave substantial feedback? Do you have incentives or a timeline? Building UGC content can be a long term project.
• Internal Linking – Integration:
  Will the UGC content be well integrated to your website or pushed off as a quasi-orphan.
• External Linking – Will People Link to Your UGC Content?
  Will people want to link directly to the UGC content? Great content with no “linklove” may not rank well.

How will you deploy UGC to help take advantage of long tail content? How will be integrated with your current site (link structure) and will people want to link to it?

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Summary: Up Your Analytics, Strengthen Your Content, Smarten Your SEM

A recent study by the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association has found that traditional offline media – such as Magazines, TV and Newspapers – were a high factor (>~42%) in leading to consumers conducting online research on the product/service advertised.

This completes the conversion loop when comparing to the Google’s number showing that of the “25% purchased an item relating to their query, and of that number, the majority – 63% — completed that purchase offline.”

What does this mean:

• Analytics Integration: Reinforces the Need for Marketing and Sales Analytics that can take offline and online consumer activities and behavior, since consumers freely move from offline and online worlds.
• Multi-Stage SEM Strategy: The SEM Strategy (SEO and PPC) must properly target both research phrase consumers, as well as, purchasing phase consumers.
• Content Funneling: Good Content is key to help funneling consumers in “research mode” to become consumers in “purchase mode”.

Offline Awareness, Online Research, Offline Conversion

MediaPost has recently reported on a “Retail Advertising and Marketing Association” done by “BIGresearch’s Simultaneous Media Survey”, which found the following numbers that consumers were most likely to search online after viewing:

• Advertisements in magazines (47.2%)
• Newspapers (42.3%)
• Ads on TV (42.8%)
• From reading articles (43.7%)

Combine this with Google’s 2006 ComScore data which pointed to:

“Of 83 million Americans tracked by comScore who searched at one of the 24 top search engines in November and December, 25% purchased an item relating to their query, and of that number, the majority – 63% — completed that purchase offline.”

Tracking Offline and Online Marketing/Sales Analytics

At the moment, many companies house their online marketing/sales data completely segregated away from their offline marketing/sales data. Indeed, most website analytics tools are packaged this way, with the exception of the enterprise models that integrate with the company’s CRM datawarehouse. But that’s a major effort and still mostly focuses one way traffic flow: Online Visitor > Offline Purchaser.

Off the top of my head, hear are some straightforward suggestions I’ve offered.

• Getting the ZIP code (from the online registration) and geographic area (of those that visit online) and mapping that to where your stores are (or should be)
• Website-Only Coupons
• Ask your customers! Do a survey as part of loyalty program

e-Storm International, my employer, does have an interesting partner that has a powerful tool that can actually estimate how offline media can shift people’s behavior online and vice-versa. Time for Emergence-Media to conduct interviews?

Multi-Stage SEM Strategy and Content Funneling

Keeping in mind that the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association data shows that online search is a major research tool for consumers, this reinforces the need for 1) “content funneling” (see below); and 2) also translates to need a smart SEM strategy to push that content to consumers who are researching those that are looking to by.

Note this applies to both consumers who convert offline and online; what ties these two together is both use the web as a research tool.

Content Funneling

Content Funneling is an issue that Emergence-Media has dicussed before in “Building Content for Branded and Non-Branded Search“:

“Content is King” is the old Maxim. And for “SEOing” e-commerce websites, it is about ensuring that the e-commerce website has the type of content the user is looking for for each step of the buying process: 1) General Research (”Why are HD DVD Players different?” Page); 2) Targeted Research (”HD DVD Player Review & Guide” Page); and 3) Purchasers (Product Page for the Specific Item).

It comes down to this: around 40% of consumers will be motivated to do an online search after seeing your ad on TV, Print etc, so when they do their research online will they find buying/product guides (for those not ready to buy) or maybe your product page (if they are ready to buy online)?

Multi-Stage SEM Strategy

Avinash Kaushik has just done an incredible insightful posting on this in “How Thick is Your Head and How Long is Your Tail?“, so I’ll show a teaser here, but I highly recommended reading the whole thing.

Take From Avinash Kaushik

Avinash’s “Killer Search Marketing strategy recommendation”:

1. Focus your SEM budgets deliberately to leverage the Long Tail (/Category key terms).
2. Focus all your SEO efforts on SEO’ing the heck out of your website / web pages for your Brand key terms (those that are in your Head).

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