Conferences like Search Marketing Expo (SMX) provide a host of benefits that more than justify the cost; the challenge is in convincing the budget gatekeepers to agree.

Show The ROI

Unlike more static professional disciplines, search engine marketing, both paid and natural, is in a constant state of evolution. In-house search engine marketing is a young profession; even the oldest pros can have only about ten to twelve years on-the-job-experience (ever increasing, but not as much as say, a career lawyer or accountant).

A key part of the discipline is staying on top of the evolving platforms, best practices and even just basically understanding how things work as algorithms change.

Arguing that results in paid and natural search marketing will undeniably suffer if skills and professional knowledge are not maintained by in-house search engine marketing staff is logical.

Every SEO or PPC opportunity missed due to lack of awareness is money lost to an organization, and these only add up over time. Spending ~$2,000, even less if you register early for many conferences, is a small investment to make.

Free Advice!

Conferences that offer sessions to dispense free, personalized advice to attendees can have an immediate return for in-house marketers. SMX conferences in particular have useful panels (dubbed “Mechanics”) for free SEO and PPC advice dispensed by seasoned professionals.

Panelists will log into a PPC account, do a quick review and offer several personalized suggestions for improving performance. Likewise on SEO panels, a site review with targeted suggestions is completed.

Rare is the opportunity to get free, personalized advice from experienced search marketing professionals. Taking full advantage of these sessions is an easy way to justify return on the costs of attendance.

The HR Angle

Conference attendance isn’t normally thought of as part of an overall compensation package, but there’s no reason why, when taking a new in-house search engine marketing job, a marketer could not add an annual conference as part of the hiring agreement.

It’s almost a no-brainer for a new employer to agree to keep investing in developing an employee’s skills. Certainly no potential new employer would fault one for trying to have this addition to their compensation package; it demonstrates an incredible amount of enthusiasm and dedication to developing marketing expertise.

Networking Value

At some point, an organization may need or want to hire a consultant or agency for additional search engine marketing help, or a temporary project.

Meeting these consultant and agency resources in person and networking to know them and their strengths and weaknesses can be incredibly useful. Knowing who to contact for RFP requests, an idea on rates, and what services consultants or agencies can provide is useful for in-house search engine marketers to have on file should a need arise.

Hopefully these suggestions give in-house search engine marketers ideas and ammunition to justify attendance at future search marketing conferences and to continue to develop their skills!

What were the most interesting and impactful search marketing innovations for in-house marketers in 2011?

1. Google’s Panda Update

2011 kicked off with a series of Google natural search algorithm updates that the blogosphere still buzzes about, Panda. There have been eleven updates in all as of today, and with every one in-house search engine marketers responsible for SEO have been on the edge of their seats.

It’s fair to say no past series of Google updates has been as widely written about, speculated on, or contentiously argued about (why me!?). A search on Google for Google Panda garners 134,000,000 results, which is impressive for only being around 11 months!

2. Facebook Sponsored Stories

In January, Facebook launched a new type of ad, Sponsored Stories. I’d mark this as the first truly social media paid advertising. Everything before was just targeted display ads with like buttons, sure a little more social, but not much of an innovation.

Sponsored Stories leverage the social network to create essentially word of mouth advertisements from your friends. Sponsored Stories already generate much higher response rates (CTRs, likes) than the more traditional ads on Facebook.

We’ll see more innovation here; social media advertising is just getting started. Facebook will continue to find new ways to insert friends into ad placements, there’s no one you trust or like more than them.

3. MSN AdCenter Negative Exact

After more than a year of sitting as the #1 advertiser request, MSN AdCenter added negative exact keyword capabilities. We probably shouldn’t be celebrating the addition of basic functionality to a widely used platform, but hey, they finally did it, and it does have a big, positive impact for in-house marketers trying to manage all the crazy broad match queries.

4. Tablet Targeting in AdWords

Without a lot of fanfare Google added tablet targeting options to AdWords in July. I’d argue this might be the most underused or talked about significant feature released this year. Many advertisers are differentiating mobile vs. desktop campaigns and optimizing accordingly, but I don’t know anyone (including myself) who has yet to raise their in-house search engine marketing game to mobile vs. tablet vs. desktop.

There’s no denying the rise of tablet popularity and use, it’s only a matter of time before marketers start targeting and optimizing for it specifically. I have my first test down to kick off January 2012, testing mobile site vs. regular site landing pages for tablet targeted AdWords campaigns.

5. The Launch Of Google+

Arguably there’s minimal impact from Google+ to in-house search engine marketers this year and only time will tell if Google+ is a serious social media contender or not. But, there’s no arguing the buzz and that there could be significant potential for marketers.

With +1 buttons on AdWords ads and organic search results, verified +1 pages for brands, and social extensions, there’s lots of ways Google is weaving Google+ into search results. In-house marketers would do well to stay on top of these trends and opportunities, someday the audience might be there.

As I see more and more Google+ ads appearing on TV, I can’t help but be reminded of all the Bing ads I saw when it launched as the also ran to Google as the dominant player. Mostly we all still use Google for search, I’m not sure the millions MSN spent bought them much in terms of long term share. I wonder the same for Google+…so far we’re all still using Facebook.

If you’ve got other contenders for a top spot, I’d love to hear them, leave a comment! And to everyone, a safe and Happy New Year!

Brand pages, social extensions and a trusted verification process are all features in-house marketers should immediately engage with to increase their Google+ counts and brand profiles.

A Definition Of Social Extensions

Similar to other AdWords extensions, like Product or Sitelink extensions, Social Extensions are appended to the Campaign level and associate an AdWords campaign with a Google+ page. While there isn’t any indication that the outward display of the ad will change much, the +1 tally for the ad will update to reflect the Google+ page counts and vice versa.

The main advantage for in-house marketers implementing the new Social Extension is to boost their +1 counts all around, AdWords ads and Google+ pages will receive boosts from each other’s increasing +1’s. All AdWords ads display +1 buttons, a Social Extension does not impact that feature, it merely aggregates the +1 counts.

How Social Extensions Impact AdWords Ads

Whether a higher +1 count has a positive impact on AdWords ad click-through rates is yet to be determined, but certainly having a higher +1 number enabled by the Social Extension link to a Google+ page could not hurt.

Unlike other extensions, Social Extensions have no additional links or ad display features, the impact is only on the count near the +1 button that already displays on all AdWords ads. One could imagine a link to the Google+ page could appear in the future.

Verification

Most brands will want to undergo the Google+ verification process. A checkmark next to the Google+ page name indicates that Google has verified the authenticity of ownership of the page. Kudos go to Google for immediately getting on the authentication process and making it relatively painless for brands to undertake.

Hopefully, many squatting or misrepresentation issues will be avoided.

Google is proactively reaching out to brands to verify via email, and also provides a process for brands to report offending pages via the “Impersonation” option in the “Report this profile” function on every Google+ page.

An example of the Google+ verification checkmark

As checkmarks will likely serve as a signal of authenticity to consumers, in-house marketers should work with Google to get their checkmarks established as soon as possible. Contacting your AdWords account manager is an easy way to get started.

Direct Connect

The benefit to brands of Google’s new Direct Connect search shortcut feature is debatable. Direct Connect is a Google search shortcut to immediately navigate to a Google+ page. For example, by searching “+youtube”, a searcher is immediately taken to the Google+ YouTube page.

There is no doubt a nice advantage to quicker navigation to a brand’s Google+ page when someone is searching for it. However, with search suggestions (which already display Direct Connect suggestions), and Google’s desire to increase visibility of Google+ pages, brand name searches could easily be hijacked to Google+ pages versus the brand’s actual website.

Navigational brand searches are a huge volume of queries, and an easy way for Google+ to boost its traffic.

Perhaps a bigger question is that if Google thinks there is consumer value in a search shortcut for brands, how much value is really being added for consumers by directing to a Google+ page versus a brand’s website directly?

Ultimately, I would guess most consumers are looking to end up on a brand’s site versus a Google+ page.

At this time, there isn’t much a brand or marketer can do to influence a + search shortcut, Google will algorithmically determine them. There’s currently no information available about opting out of the direct connect shortcut. In-house marketers should monitor if their brand page receives a Direct Connect and what impact it has on brand related searches and site traffic. Potentially Google+ could become a larger referrer and brand search results less so.

No Time Like The Present

The floodgates are open for in-house marketers to engage with Google+, and there’s no time like the present to take advantage of these new social features. Whether Google+ ultimately succeeds or fails time will tell.

However, nothing but a little time is lost by setting things up early, and a possible significant +1 count advantage is gained by building as soon as possible. In-house marketers, set up your brand’s Google+ page here today!

Stressful deadlines, aggressive goals, but also great ideas and opportunities all roll into a couple of intense weeks (and I feel for those retailers with a big holiday shopping season, you have that to contend with too). The key for success is not only to survive budgeting, but make the most of the opportunities for an in-house search engine marketer it presents.

Get Organized

The first step is to get organized, an ounce of prevention here leads to a pound of cure later as you scramble to run reports or find data when there’s an urgent need to refer to it. Being organized upfront increases efficiency, and makes budgeting easier, but nearly as important, it makes you look confident, thorough and prepared (because you are).

Convincing others is a big part of the budgeting process; an in-house marketer scrambling to find a report, not submitting budgets on time and just generally not looking like their act is together is not going to sell their plan very effectively. Pretend everything is due one day earlier than it is and start yesterday.

In practical terms, this means get your Excel templates set up, organize or run reports on annual performance to easily show year over year comparisons and really take a look at the data to make sure you thoroughly understand this year’s trends, successes and failures.

Also find out the development schedule for the coming year. Are there any projects that will impact search marketing by improving conversion, natural search traffic or providing new campaign channels, like video or mobile?

A timeline of development and degree of confidence on dates will aid in budgeting the timing of potential impacts, both from a cost and performance improvement perspective.

Take An Aerial View

Now is the on time of year to get out of the weeds and take a broader view of the organization’s search marketing program. Pretend to look down on yourself from on high, or as though you were a consultant brought in to improve performance.

• What are major problems?
• What are major opportunities?
• Is resourcing adequate?
• Is there any benefit from investment in tools or automation?
• What are some great projects you’d like to work on next year?

Ask lots of these type of questions and try to give yourself unbiased and honest answers. Don’t thwart the process by guessing that others will just shoot these ideas down. Get everything out there.

Now prioritize and organize these ideas. What has the biggest positive financial impact on the business? What is achievable with current resources? What will strategically pay the best dividends in the long run? What just absolutely has to happen to keep things operating smoothly?

Craft Plans

At this point, there should be lots of ideas and options, not all of which are going to be feasible in the coming year. Now is the time to pick the cream of the crop. Anything that can currently be accomplished, or is absolutely required, should become part of the baseline budget.

Anything that is a large revenue opportunity or strategically vital is worth creating in another, optional budget that can be layered onto the main one.

The Trifecta of Budgeting: Caffeine, Wine and Excel

Crack open the Excel and get some caffeine, it’s time to budget! Create a working budget in Excel and provide another document with commentary that explains in succinct points the budgeting assumptions and decisions.

This document should contain bullet points on estimated growth percentages, timing and impact of development projects, and any unbudgeted potential upside or possible serious issues. This commentary document will really help others, but it also serves a handy reference as you explain and justify the budget.

Sell It

The main budget serves as a great baseline. As part of the budgeting and review process meet with decision makers on all the fantastic, new ideas you could layer on top of it that you have outlined in the optional budget. Sell your vision for where search marketing, or online marketing generally, could go for the organization in the coming year.

At worst, others can see you are taking time to think strategically about search engine marketing and what is best for the business, and will be impressed at the thoughtfulness of what you present. At best, you get more resources, spend or a great new project to work on for next year!

Don’t be disheartened if not much of the optional budget looks like it will see fruition. These ideas often crop up again as reforecasts occur during the year, or priorities change. The job now is just to sow the seeds.

Take A Vacation

I say this not because I work in travel, and therefore, think everyone should travel (though they should!), but because burnout is no joke. Once budgets are done and the holiday shopping high season is over, take some time off. Lie on a beach, visit friends or family, but most importantly, just don’t work (not even to peek at AdWords reports!). If no one can cover for you, now is a great time for someone to learn a little. After all what would the business do if you quit?

Return in the New Year energized with all the great plans formulated during budgeting, and the rejuvenated spirit to get cracking on them!

Create A Brand Channel

Establishing a YouTube presence is the critical first step. Setting up a brand channel and getting it whitelisted will open up a host of customization possibilities, from custom background designs to the ability to add gadgets, like a booking widget.

Brand channels also open up a host of metrics via YouTube Insight, so you can measure engagement and success as well as conduct deeper analysis.

Then, of course, it’s time to add some videos, and preferably well-organized ones. Grouping videos into thematic playlists helps with video discovery for viewers and opens up the possibility of appearing as a playlist in YouTube search results.

I won’t go in depth on the myriad best practices for optimizing video descriptions and titles, but you can read more about all these SEO tactics and more on Search Engine Land’s Video Search area. In short, set up the best YouTube channel possible, with compelling and search engine optimized content.

Now that you have a fantastic library of video content sitting around, start promoting it to your website visitors, email subscribers, Facebook fans, Twitter followers and anyone else possible. Start growing viewers and subscribers for your YouTube channel; they will come in handy later.

Promoted Videos

Similar to AdWords’ paid search targeting, in-house marketers can set up campaigns for search-keyword-triggered promoted video placements on YouTube to appear in YouTube search results.

In addition, TrueView is YouTube’s rebranded instream video ad product. The basic model is to target a promotional instream video to appear on other relevant videos. Viewers can skip the video, but advertisers pay only when a minimum viewing threshold is met. A companion banner accompanies the instream ad as a call-to-action point.

Paying for promoted video has some ROI challenges since the video itself is not really a direct revenue driver, but it’s no more challenging than scenarios like paying for Facebook ads to grow fans, or promoted accounts and Tweets to grow Twitter followers. YouTube subscribers and viewers will have value; the key is testing and discovering what that value is for your organization.

Remarketing

Earlier in the article, I wrote that your YouTube channel viewers and subscribers will come in handy later, and that time is now. Start remarketing to them. Via the AdWords Audiences tab, in-house search engine marketers can set up a remarketing campaign for users who visited their YouTube brand channel.

Visitors to a YouTube channel are highly qualified customers, and many, having stumbled across videos while browsing or searching YouTube, will have never visited a channel’s associated website. Encourage them to stop by with remarketing ads. Check out more information on YouTube remarketing on YouTube’s blog.

Beyond YouTube: Video Ads & TV

There are a host of possibilities for in-house marketers to promote great video ad assets. Besides YouTube, there are Google video ads, Hulu and other online video streaming sponsorships, and most banner ad platforms support video assets. Leverage great performing video across channels!

With the rising popularity of online accessible entertainment, it seems like no one is watching television anymore. But still, it’s important to remember how many people still have cable in the USA — 104 million subscribers, according to the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, or about one third of the total U.S. population.

TV is still one of the biggest audiences out there for video, so taking some great video and making a low-budget TV ad to run via targeted Google television campaigns might be a great test for in-house marketers, and a great résumé addition.

While these ideas only encourage in-house marketers to look at establishing a basic YouTube video presence and paid promotional options, there’s even more in-house teams can consider with promoting video via social media channels, viral campaigns, integrating into websites and the overall SEO benefits of video for natural search!

Often, one person may handle SEO as well as paid search and hey, for fun, they do the social media too. A feeling of being overwhelmed will certainly befall any search marketer at some point in their career, so here are some tips to accept the things you can’t change and focus on what’s important for search marketing success.

First Things First: Make Money

Spending your time focused on tasks that will directly drive revenue for the organization is job one. That’s why search engine marketing exists and you were hired to do it.

Routine search marketing efforts like adding new keywords or AdGroups and raising bids are core search marketing that drives revenue growth. Improving click-through rates and quality scores also drive better results and more revenue.

On the organic side, link building, improving page content and other core tasks to increase traffic would be a priority. Bringing on new marketing partners that have strong potential is another important area.

Focusing on making money is totally defensible, there are revenue goals to meet, and you are doing your best to meet them!

When in doubt about priorities, ask yourself, what will drive the most revenue? And if the search marketing you manage isn’t about driving revenue, there’s some other metric that takes its place like traffic, subscriptions, leads, or something similar.

Depending on your organization’s state of well-being, you might need to swap this with the next item on the list, cutting costs and improving efficiency. Often bringing this choice to the table of upper management is a good idea; do they want you spending more time focusing on growth or cost savings?

Next, Focus On Efficiency

After driving growth, trimming inefficient spend is next on the priority list. Analyzing query reports and adding negative keywords as well as pausing or adjusting bids down for less successful keywords are top tasks in this area. Basically, if something isn’t making you money (or enough money), can you make it cost less?

For more mature search marketing programs, there may be more opportunities to trim inefficiency than focus on growth, so priorities may shift in this direction. Often, very seasonal businesses shift focus between efficiency during their off season and growth in peak season.

Communication Is Always A Priority

The poet John Donne wrote, “no man is an island” and certainly the same is true of search engine marketers. Communicating your search marketing priorities and reporting on results internally is critical to in-house search marketing success.

Share liberally what the top priorities are for search marketing, and where resource time is being spent. And share results in regular reports on key metrics and goals. Increase education on search engine marketing within your organization.

Essentially, demonstrate that you have search marketing well under control and are fully using the resources you’ve got to produce the best results possible. I’ve never heard complaints of search marketing over communication, be sure to make time for it!

Experimentation & Testing

In an ideal world, time for running experiments and testing would never get short shrift. In reality, many in-house search engine marketers are keeping their heads above water on day-to-day management and not much more.

It almost goes without saying to try to work in regular experimentation and testing as much as possible. Beyond that, really jump on important new opportunities to experiment with beta tests or new campaign features.

These tests are often going to directly lead to better search marketing program results (like adding Ad Extensions or +1 buttons) and getting in early can help accelerate that with a first mover advantage versus the competition.

Recognize If You Need Help

Admitting you have a problem and need help is the first step towards recovery. At some point, a one person or small team will hopefully have grown a search marketing program that requires more hands on deck to drive better results.

There’s a healthy level of resource constraint, and then there’s the level of ‘we could have a whole other full time person and they’d be super busy’. Knowing where your search marketing is on this spectrum is important to regularly gauge.

Clear and regular reporting and communication sets you up to make a case for more help and determining the business results that more resources could accomplish.

Offering up multiple scenarios for growth, like a part time consultant or a full time person, helps resource gate keepers assess opportunities and gives them options to help you.

Find Your Rhythm

When things get overwhelming, find a search marketing rhythm that works for you. Some in-house marketers like to split managing certain programs on a given day of the week (Wednesday is SEO day!) or certain tasks on a day that is most productive for them (I have new AdGroup Fridays).

Giving yourself a chunk of time to focus on one thing can be helpful. As can just getting done what you can do in fifteen minute projects in between meetings if that’s the schedule you end up on. Recognize where you are and what you can or can’t do schedule wise to make it more manageable.

The +1 Potential

The most obvious speculation regarding the influence of +1 on paid search is that +1 counts will directly impact quality score. And similarly for organic search, that +1 counts will become a ranking factor.

Google has always been keenly interested in the wisdom of the crowd, and definitely click-through rate is a huge factor in determining quality score, a click is viewed as a positive action in favor of the ad. It’s not a huge leap to speculate that ads with more +1ing (a positive action) will in turn be valued more highly by Google than ads without.

Even if there is not a direct correlation between +1 counts and quality score, there may be an indirect impact. Searchers may well be inclined to click more on ads that have +1 counts than those that do not (or even other unpaid search results that do not).

Via increased click-through rates, quality scores may well rise. Greg Sterling’s article on Google +1 back in March notes this is anecdotally the case.

Important to note is that the +1 is more about the ultimate content, not the ad itself necessarily. +1ing on a page, a paid search result or an organic search result can be cumulative. So the +1 counts for an ad might reflect +1ing on the organic search result or on the website itself as well as the ad.

What’s An In-House Search Marketer To Do?

All AdWords accounts are opted in to have +1 displayed, though there is an option to opt out of displaying the +1 button for AdWords ads. At this point, marketers should probably not be opting out, not only would the possible +1 benefit be missed, but now is a great time to learn about how +1 will impact paid search advertising.

Opting out essentially makes a marketer blind to the possible benefits and negative impacts of +1, a smarter move is to participate initially and understand the impact on paid search campaigns before opting out.

No fees are charged for +1ing, it doesn’t count as a click. Google has said that search marketers will have access to information on +1 counts in reporting, but to date those reports are not yet available. As more campaign data is available for +1, in-house search marketers should monitor this with a similar zeal they apply to quality score.

Possibly the most critical action an in-house search marketer can take is to get +1 buttons added to their organization’s website. Because all the +1 information, paid or unpaid, on a website or in search results, is shared.

Theoretically, +1′ing a website’s page should increase the counts for the ad(s) that link to that page in addition to any possible SEO benefits. If there’s no +1 button the page, essentially one avenue for growing +1 counts is unavailable.

Within a paid search ad itself, it will probably not ultimately serve a campaign well to focus on +1ing as a call to action, but it would be interesting to test it as a part of a message if space allowed.

Additionally, I wouldn’t encourage +1 spam, but, particularly at this early stage, there may be no harm in reminding friends to +1 great paid search ads as they see them, particularly since there is no cost associated.

Keep Your Tracking On

Google is taking action to harmonize paid search URLs that often have tracking codes in them with the basic page URLs of the website to get a more accurate +1 count. This is great news for in-house marketers who rely on URL tracking parameters for search reports.

At this point, any tracking codes after a “?” in a URL string will not be used in determining unique URLs, so tracking parameters added via this common nomenclature should not be confounding +1 counts.

Hopefully More Answers Come

With any radical change to AdWords comes a myriad of questions. Kudos to Google for actually answering many of them upfront for the +1 release and encouraging a relative degree of transparency.

There are still some lingering +1 questions. Will the +1ing on the ad itself have a relative weight in terms of the paid ad versus the +1ing on a website page or an organic result? Also, will reports on the +1ing be available in AdWords or will it only be accessible in Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics?

Hopefully, more answers to come in the future as Google +1 picks up popularity and importance to in-house search marketers.

Manage Negatives More Efficiently

In prior versions of AdWords Editor, negative keywords and placements were managed on separate tabs. Largely in a move to save space within the editor, the negatives are now moved to the same window as the newly dubbed “positive” keywords, placements and audiences.

Besides saving space, this move also allows marketers to easily toggle between positives and negatives by clicking on the positives or negatives buttons. Confusion is avoided by some artful red shading on the negatives viewing pane.

Editor - Positives and Negatives

The Extension Of Extensions

With the new space freed up by tidying up negatives off a separate tab in AdWords Editor, there’s now an expanded tab for Ad Extensions. Currently, editor supports two extension types, Sitelinks and Business Locations. Product Extensions are not configurable by marketers (can only switch on/off), so it makes sense that no management area in the editor is required. Sitelink text, URLs and display order are all available for editing in the improved interface.

Though some aggregate data does appear in AdWords online for ads which displayed Sitelinks, no statistics display for the Sitelinks within AdWords Editor.

Sitelink Extensions in AdWords Editor

Manage Multiple AdWords Accounts

Managing multiple accounts is now easily accessed via a drop down menu of accounts under the Get Recent Changes button. Though mainly for agencies and other power MCC users, in-house marketers with multiple accounts will still appreciate this feature which does load account data much more quickly to literally toggle between accounts.

More Mobile Targeting Options

Within the Campaigns tab targeting, new support for mobile targeting has been added. By clicking on “edit” next to “All mobile devices”, marketers can select specific platforms (Android/Palm/iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad) and carriers (delineated by country, then carrier) to target.

Slim Down With Downloading Preferences

Particularly handy for marketers on the go who might not have the time or a fast, reliable internet connection, downloading preferences helps manage downloading key account elements and skipping the fatter, slower graphic ads. Access downloading preferences from the Tools > Settings menu.

Really, I Have To Approve That?

Largely, the AdWords Editor changes have done a lovely job of squeezing more functionality into a small display to keep the tool handy and fast. But one change seems to be the antithesis of handy and fast, the need to now approve multiple additions.

When downloading changes to Editor or importing new information, an additional step to approve or cancel the changes is required. And in these instances, that makes sense, the need to review changes you or another marketer made online or in a file and are now adding to the editor seems sensible.

Review was not required when making multiple changes to keywords. A common scenario I encounter as an in-house marketer is adding a handful of keywords to an AdGroup.

Rather than enter them one by one, it’s much more efficient to Add/Update Multiple Keywords and essentially paste them into a window to add all at once.

Since I have just added them into the account, I am probably well aware of what I just did. Also, the keywords added are highlighted in bold as unposted changes, so easily spotted to review. Previously, it was a couple of clicks to add a bunch of keywords and a quick scan of the bolded ones to make sure they look correct.

Now when entering multiple keywords, there’s an additional “Process” step, and a “Finish and review changes step”, and finally a call to keep or reject changes. Once you’ve kept changes, unposted keywords are still displayed in bold. These additional steps seem like overkill for what is essentially a very simple action. For the sake of efficiency, I hope this change is reverted soon!

There’s several more changes outlined in the AdWords Editor Version 9 release notes for those with an interest in further reading.

Usually over lunch a business owner turns to me and says something like, I came here to learn more about all this search engine stuff and what I learned is that I need to hire somebody to do this, but how do I do that? Or, how did you get your job?

This has happened enough times that I thought it would serve well for me and those looking to hire SEM staff to put my advice in writing!

The Timeless In-House Or Agency Debate

Whether to outsource search marketing to an agency or hire to manage in-house is a debate as old as search engine marketing itself. Opinions on this vary, and I invite you to share yours in the comments, but here is mine.

If your company has a small staff and isn’t looking to increase that and manage a marketing person, then hiring a consultant or an agency may be the way to go. If you are looking to grow the business in terms of staff, or open to it, then consider hiring in-house, as often as search marketing programs mature and become more a core part of a business, there’s increased desire to mitigate risk and costs and move operations in-house.

For many businesses I talk to there’s the issue of not knowing what you don’t know. People know search engine marketing is important, but they aren’t sure what to do in terms of actions to improve it for their business, they don’t even know where to start.

An in-house hire in this case would need to be a fairly knowledgeable and self-motivated person, and one that a company can fully trust with this important area. Expense wise, this starts to cost as much as perhaps a small agency engagement, which might be a better option for businesses that need to increase their internal knowledge of search engine marketing before feeling comfortable about hiring an in-house position.

Have an honest debate with yourself about comfort level – ask yourself these questions:

• How well do you trust yourself to manage an in-house hire and know what they need to do?
• Could you learn more by starting off with an agency and pushing them to increase your education level?
• Do you feel like you eventually will want this role in-house and are willing to put in the time to educate and train in-house?

Where To Look

Unfortunately, geography can still be a factor. If a business is in a big search state like California, Washington, New York or Florida, there are lots of professional search engine marketers around. In states with less search companies, or in smaller cities, businesses will have a tougher time finding in-house talent and may need to go with an agency out of necessity.

If Craigslist is widely used in your locale, that’s a great place to start recruiting. LinkedIn is another popular place for job postings, and often the quality of candidates are high. For specifically search engine marketing, SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, is another great resource for job listings.

SEM Skills

There are plenty of articles on Search Engine Land that focus on hiring the right agency, so for the purposes of this article, I’ll focus on hiring someone in-house. What skills should you look for in an ideal in-house search engine marketing manager?

Strong Excel or Google spreadsheet skills are a must. I don’t know any search engine marketer who doesn’t use a whole lot of Excel when managing search engine marketing. Reports, bulk upload sheets for changes, bid management and more are all Excel driven. Additionally, the reports are only as useful as the person looking at them, so analytical skills are critical. Several successful search engine marketers have backgrounds in economics, physics or other highly data driven, analytical fields.

Many of the other relevant skills for a good search engine marketer apply to all marketing jobs. Being organized, able to juggle multiple projects or tasks, the ability to prioritize well and being a good writer are all important factors. Particularly for working with other teams on SEO projects, like engineering, working well on cross-functional projects and being a clear communicator and educator are important skills.

Experience

In an ideal world, the experience of a new in-house hire would map exactly to what the business needs. If the company is in e-commerce and sells lots of physical products, then a search engine marketer with experience doing that in-house would be ideal, as opposed to say a marketer with agency experience working with companies with online subscription services.

It’s not that any search marketing experience isn’t valuable or transferrable, but that more germane levels of experience can apply depending on the type of business and its ultimate search engine marketing goals. Finding a search engine marketer who has had success managing paid search or carrying out SEO for the same goals and general type of business will be the best bet.

In the end, like in hiring for so many roles, getting a really smart person who is motivated to learn and develop their skills is better than getting someone with more experience but less natural ability. Search engine marketing isn’t magical, and there are plenty of articles, training resources, conferences and advice out there for less experienced search engine marketers to leverage. Smarts and drive you can’t teach.

Stock image from Shutterstock, used under license.

The Results

Nothing screams marketing success like direct paid search revenue, and many search marketers aren’t seeing the same kind of revenue generation with Microsoft that was experienced with Yahoo. There are many confounding factors as to why any individual paid search account might be doing better or worse post-transition.

Some search marketers are seeing less total revenue for Microsoft-Yahoo than for Microsoft and Yahoo as separate accounts. As Danny Sullivan explains in his article The Yahoo Search Revenue Disaster, search revenue on Yahoo is down quite a bit, possibly due to explicit searches declining in favor of less quality searches (which are less likely to result in a paid ad click).

Further, according to the article above, Microsoft’s search volume hasn’t risen all that much (and frankly, could also be suffering from similar quality issues). Google has risen quite a bit, and likely from more direct searches. Net to a search marketer, the combined Yahoo-Microsoft may not be driving the same kind of traffic volumes as the separate accounts did pre-transition, and certainly any growth isn’t looking as good as Google’s.

On the flip side, in-house search marketers who largely ignored or under-managed their Yahoo accounts pre-transition, had a chance to spruce things up and optimize the account (or directly copy better managed Google AdWords campaigns) for their new AdCenter account.

The account that may have gotten short shrift due to in-house resources constraints suddenly had to be managed and transitioned, and good search marketers took advantage of that time to clean up house, if not redecorate it entirely. Marketers in this situation might be seeing some nice lift year over year in performance.

There is also the distinct possibility of lower bidding on Microsoft due to less restrictive broad matching. Negative exact keywords are not available as a Microsoft account feature, and they were not on Yahoo either. However, Yahoo’s broad matching appeared to be more restrictive and generally relevant when compared to Microsoft’s broad matching.

Search marketers may now be seeing many more general and irrelevant queries matching than previously (especially single term queries), and have limited negative keyword tools to control this matching. The only recourse then left to a search marketer is to lower the bid, and hopefully pay less for the queries that negative matching cannot prevent.

This may impact good traffic as well, and overall, could negatively impact account traffic, revenue and ROI. Some marketers actively bid for the poor matches with a very low bid to at least isolate the issue, which again, hurts overall ROI.

The Account Management Tools

One advantage of the Yahoo-Microsoft transition is the AdCenter Desktop tool, which is a superior offline manager to the Yahoo tool. A bit dated, but still relevant, is this In-House column article comparing desktop editors.

All in all, search marketers are better off with Microsoft AdCenter Desktop. An unfortunate side effect of the transition is that Yahoo ceased supporting, or even providing a download link for their desktop tool (the links redirect to the AdCenter Desktop), so non-US account advertisers can no longer access the tool to manage their account that have not yet migrated. Not ideal transition management for the many search marketers (like me!) with non-US accounts.

Some Microsoft platform differences have proved more cumbersome to manage than in-house search marketers would like. Confusing negative keyword management and slow/cryptic/inconsistent editorial approvals are issues about which I have heard repeated search marketer feedback. On a positive note, AdCenter reporting tools are more detailed, faster and automated than their Yahoo report counterparts.

Duh, Winning!

The Yahoo-Microsoft deal isn’t all bad for marketers. First off, no in-house marketer can claim that the time managing just one Microsoft account versus both a Yahoo and Microsoft account isn’t a significant time savings. One less paid search account to manage is a definite upside of the deal. For a true cost-benefit analysis, the time spent migrating campaigns and transitioning from Yahoo should offset these time savings gains, but still, it’s likely in-house marketers come out ahead in account management time.

One other positive side effect is that several reluctant Microsoft advertisers are now advertising via AdCenter. Many search engine marketers expressed skepticism and excuses to avoid taking on Microsoft search engine marketing. Search marketers expressed opinions on the quality of Microsoft’s paid search offering, in terms of management tools and traffic, but also simply not having enough time or bandwidth to manage another account.

The Yahoo-Microsoft deal essentially compelled Yahoo advertisers to give Microsoft a go, at the very least to manage Yahoo traffic, and if a marketer is doing that, well, it’s pretty easy to flip the switch to at least test the traffic from Microsoft properties as well.

Tallying up the points in the plus and minus columns of the Yahoo-Microsoft advertising deal, it’s not easy to see if in-house marketers come out ahead or as a losing party.

If a marketer wasn’t previously advertising with Microsoft, they are probably seeing a nice gain in their campaign results from the additional Microsoft exposure, which likely masks Yahoo traffic and revenue losses. Winning!

For search marketers with already mature Microsoft accounts, the time suck of migration, coupled with Yahoo losses and less than ideal Microsoft matching controls, isn’t likely making anyone feel like they are coming out ahead in the deal. Losing!

In the end, the campaign results speak for themselves. The best thing Microsoft can do to convince search marketers they are all winners is to increase quality traffic and provide better account management controls.