Each year, Marketing Sherpa compiles an exhaustive look at the state of search marketing. Each year, these reports grow more comprehensive, reflecting the continuous change and evolution of our industry as it grows up. This year’s report is no exception.

The Marketing Sherpa 2009-10 Search Marketing Benchmark Report is 213 pages, and is divided into five major sections, including:

The business of search. There’s been a lot of talk about how search marketing budgets have been affected by the tumultuous economy, and this section of the report offers some interesting data on what’s really going on out there. Contrary to other areas of advertising and marketing that have seen budgets slashed, search marketing continues to grow, albeit at a slower pace. This section has great stats about how budgets have changed, how resources are being allocated, and for the first time, salary stats for various job categories in the industry compared with other traditional marketing positions.

Search benchmark data. This section offers invaluable competitive intelligence data, collected by surveying search marketers, agencies and advertisers. The stats here cover a wide range of cost-per-click data, clickthrough rates, an abundance of info on the types, quantities and prices of keywords used by both B2B and B2C marketers, volume and conversion rates, and a new section on searcher behavior.

Measurement and testing. Over the past few years, analytics has grown from something a few geeky search marketers played around with to a core pillar of most search marketing campaigns. This section looks at both the key metrics used by most marketers, as well as the most underused metrics that could, but largely aren’t, being exploited. Testing, ROI tracking and attribution modeling also get good coverage.

Tactical issues in search. This section offers a potpourri of data culled from search marketers, offering insights into everything from targeting tactics, key SEO factors, clickfraud rates and insights into dozens of other issues that search marketers grapple with on a daily basis.

Search engine usage. This section offers good stats covering market share, searcher preference and other data covering the top general and vertical search players. There’s also good info on secondary players as well as the international search engines, with an emphasis on the rapidly maturing Asian market.

Throughout, the emphasis is on data collected both by Marketing Sherpa and about a dozen or so partners who analyze the search marketing industry. For each topic, there’s both a chart or graph and written interpretation of the data. Most of the time this interpretation is helpful, but I found myself wishing for more detailed analysis for some topics. A few times, an analysis seemed superficial, as if the writers were rushing through a topic or didn’t understand it well enough to offer meaningful insight.

Most of the information in the report is useful and compelling, though occasionally the data gets too granular and seems more like fluff thrown in apparently to fill out the page count (e.g. detailed distributions of salary ranges for all job titles). Another drawback is that the graphics are occasionally difficult to interpret, with busy or confusing charts. I found myself wishing that Marketing Sherpa’s graphic designer would follow the guidelines laid out in Edward Tufte’s classic The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.

However, given the sheer scope and quality of the information presented in the report, these are comparatively minor quibbles.

While the insights in the report are valuable for anyone seeking a competitive edge in search marketing, the Marketing Sherpa 2009-10 Search Marketing Benchmark Report is probably most useful for anyone needing objective data to make a case for budgets or tactics in an SEM campaign. Many of the difficult questions asked by clients or internal executives have answers in the pages of the report, and even better, are backed by solid data.

Marketing Sherpa 2009-10 Search Marketing Benchmark Report
Sixth edition ISBN: 978-1-932353-96-9
Marketing Sherpa LLC, $447 (PDF Only: $397)

Most books on search marketing focus on either the technical aspects of SEO or paid search, or on how to adapt traditional marketing strategies to the web. Web Design For ROI, by Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus, is unique in its sharp focus on making your web site accomplish what should be its primary goal: conversion.

Conversion can mean many things, depending on the purpose of your web site. Conversion can mean getting people to buy, getting leads to provide contact information, recruiting subscribers for an email list—even getting site visitors to spend more time on your site and view or click on more ads. Ultimately, all commercial web sites should be about getting your visitors to convert—otherwise, what’s the point?

Unfortunately, many web sites fail to maximize their conversion potential. This failure is typically caused by many factors: search-hostile design, poor user interface, conflicting needs of key stakeholders within an organization—the list is virtually endless. But other failures are mistakes of omission rather than commission—the site simply lacks key elements that could ease and facilitate the path to ultimate conversion.

Web Design For ROI uses conversion as its focal point, while looking at both the big picture as well as the details of compelling web design. Big picture chapters include “Web design for ROI: A novel concept,” “Business case,” and “Managing for ROI.” Each of these chapters is loaded with useful information that can help marketers lobby for budget and resources, speaking the language of managers and bean-counters who may not care about the nitty-gritty details of search marketing.

The remaining chapters take a close look on key aspects of web design, again, each focused on how to improve that all-important metric, conversion rate. You’ll find great tips on creating compelling landing page, home pages, category and detail pages, forms and checkout processes. Most of these aren’t directly related to pure search marketing tasks, but all play a critical role in making sure that your search marketing efforts ultimately pay off.

It’s a gorgeous book, replete with full-color screenshots with callouts that illustrate key points. And the writing is pithy and crisp, authoritative but friendly in tone. It reminds me a lot of Strunk’s classic The Elements of Style, a book I turned to constantly when I was learning (really learning) to write.

Web Design For ROI should be essential reading for anyone just starting out at search marketing. But it’s also a book that’s valuable even to experienced web developers and search marketers, as it consistently highlights both best practices and mistakes made by even well-intentioned sites. If you’re looking for ways to improve your web site, this is a book, like The Elements of Style, that you should be referring to again and again.

Web Design For ROI
by Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus
ISBN-10: 0321489829
$39.99

Why is it that some web sites are golden, compelling visitors to buy while similar web sites, perhaps even offering the same products at similar prices, fail to make the grade? It may be dumb luck on the owner’s part, but a more likely explanation is that the golden site is the result of careful design, testing, tweaking and testing yet again. Testing has grown into a core search marketing activity, but strangely, it’s also an activity that many search marketers either choose to avoid or don’t even consider at all.

And that’s a mistake. Good testing can not only help you get rid of stinker ads and landing pages, it can also help you optimize winning campaigns, improving their conversion rates and making them even more profitable. And testing needn’t be difficult or time-consuming, especially if you have the right tools. One of the best tools for helping you test and refine your search marketing campaigns is Google’s Website Optimizer. Even better, Website Optimizer is a free service.

Google deliberately designed Website Optimizer to be easy to use, even though the tool allows you to run complex, multivariate tests. At its most basic level, the tool lets you test different pages or combinations of elements on a single page to see how well they perform against a “conversion outcome” that you define. Google even claims that “you can launch a simple test in five minutes” in the video tour of Website Optimizer.

The problem is that to be effective, tests should be carefully planned to measure your desired outcomes. Another problem is that the results of your testing need to be interpreted properly so that you can be sure that any implementation based on the results will perform as expected. Testing is as much art as science, and it shouldn’t be done in an offhand or cavalier fashion.

Not sure where or how to start? Try Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer, by Bryan Eisenberg & John Quarto-vonTivadar with Lisa T. Davis. It’s a comprehensive guide to Google’s free testing tool, written for search marketers who are more interested in enhancing the performance of their search marketing campaign than in the analytic joys of multivariate testing. The authors don’t shy away from technical explanations when necessary, but the focus is always on the “whys” of testing even when looking closely at the “hows.”

The book is divided into three parts. The first part is a general overview of website testing and tuning using Google’s Website Optimizer. The first few chapters focus on the tool itself, but after that the focus changes to case studies drawn from the authors’ own search marketing campaigns. These are valuable not only as examples of how to test, but because the authors also share the processes and best practices they have developed to maximize the impact of the testing process.

Part two “What You Should Test” looks at more than 30 key factors that can impact conversion rates. These factors differ based on how conversion is defined, which also differs for publishers, retailers and lead generation web sites. Most of the chapters in this part follow a similar format, with sections on “questions to ask,” an exercise, “what to test” and “apply this to your site” tips. This is one of the best—and most thorough—guides to the overall website testing and optimization process I’ve read.

Part three, “Diving Deep For the Technically Challenged” goes into even more detail about the testing process, how things work, behind the scenes details of how Website Optimizer works and more. Meaty stuff for the more advanced search marketer who wants to know everything to gain a competitive edge.

The nice thing about Google’s Website Optimizer, apart from being free, is that it can be used to test campaigns running on Google or any other search engine. And the general practices discussed in the book can be applied to any testing tool, not just Website Optimizer.

Always Be Testing is an excellent book that tackles one of the most important aspects of successful search marketing. If you aren’t currently testing and want to know how to start, buy the book. Even if you are already testing and tuning your sites as part of your search marketing efforts, the case studies and best practices discussed in this book make it worth far more than the cover price when you apply the principles to your own campaigns.

Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer
by Bryan Eisenberg & John Quarto-vonTivadar with Lisa T. Davis
ISBN-13: 978-0470290637
Sybex, $29.99

It’s an understatement to say that we live in uncertain times, and that any data that can help us strategize, plan or even to some extent predict what’s ahead is worth its weight in… well, let’s just say this kind of information is invaluable. That makes the Marketing Sherpa 2009 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide very timely for just about everyone involved in our industry. The Guide is packed with data, analysis, charts, graphs and all manner of other useful info.

This is the fifth annual Search Marketing Benchmark Guide that Marketing Sherpa has produced, but its unlike any of the others I’ve seen. It’s far more comprehensive and detailed, pulling together stats compiled by Marketing Sherpa as well as “best of” research from more than 50 respected research partners. The result is nearly 300 pages of no-fluff data, with 215 charts, tables and eyetracking heatmaps covering just about all aspects of search marketing.

The Guide has five major coverage areas:

Budgeting and search. Want to know which industries are the biggest spenders on search, or how marketers plan to allocate budgets for search vs. other types of marketing next year? Or how budgets will be allocated across different categories, such as B2B, local or mobile search? How about salary information, or percent of spend on SEO vs. PPC? It’s all here. If you face challenges justifying budgets to management or fees to your clients, the information in this section provides reliable benchmarks that you can use to bolster your case.

Tactics of search. Search marketing is becoming increasingly sophisticated and complex, with new tactics emerging all the time as marketers compete for searcher attention. This section offers a good overview of current cutting-edge tactics, including targeting by demographics or geography, the effectiveness of local and mobile search and others. There’s also a detailed look at the branding effects of search advertising that offers some of the best evidence I’ve seen yet that search ads can offer a brand lift—at least for certain types of businesses or products, and when it’s done properly.

Search providers explored. Stats, stats and more stats—not just about Google’s dominance, but how the other smaller players compare, and why it’s a good idea to consider targeting traffic via those other sources. This section also has useful stats on shopping comparison engines, and international search engines for search marketers looking to broaden their campaigns on a global basis.

Measuring and testing. I’m constantly surprised by the number of search marketers that don’t fully take advantage of the wealth of information that can be gleaned from their campaigns. Sure, most people look at rudimentary metrics and may tweak their campaigns slightly based on a quick scan of the data, but the most successful search marketers thoroughly analyze, test and test again, across a broad spectrum of metrics. This section looks at how analytics can be effectively applied to different aspects of a campaign, from keyword research all the way through measuring conversion rates over time.

Search benchmarks. As the Guide describes it: “All of the fundamental metrics of search marketing, fully updated and in one place, including costs per click, keyword prices, volume and conversion rates.” Enough said.

With a price of $397, the Marketing Sherpa 2009 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide isn’t something you will pick up and take to the beach for some light reading. But if you’re wanting a comprehensive, authoritative overview of just about all aspects of the search marketing industry, you won’t find a better all-in-one source than this Guide.

Marketing Sherpa 2009 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide
Fifth edition ISBN: 9781932353839
Marketing Sherpa LLC, $397

It’s common for comprehensive books written by respected authorities to be tagged as the “bible” of a particular topic or industry. My vote for that distinctive title in our industry goes to Search Engine Marketing, Inc. by Mike Moran and Bill Hunt. Both Mike and Bill are longtime search marketing veterans who were responsible for the search marketing strategy and implementation for IBM.com’s massive global network of web sites. They’re both currently active marketers who work with a wide variety of well-known organizations and brands, primarily now at the strategic level.

The hefty 626 page book is a comprehensive guide to all aspects of search marketing, from basics like search engine friendly site design and keyword research to more sophisticated topics such as optimizing paid search campaigns and creating viral social media campaigns. Given the authors’ experience, this is all solid stuff, representing best practices that can benefit just about any search marketer, from beginner to expert.

Even better, though, Moran and Hunt illuminate their concrete tactical information with nuggets of insight and wisdom gained from years of working with large, complex campaigns where playing politics and getting groups of stakeholders with sometimes conflicting needs are just as important as getting the technical details right. Want to know how to get top management to buy in to your campaign goals? Want to know how to get teams with seemingly conflicting goals to play nice together? These and many other “soft skill” challenges are thoroughly addressed in the book.

One problem with any printed book that focuses on such a rapidly changing topic as search marketing is that content can become obsolete, or even recommend strategies and tactics that may have worked some time ago, but that are currently frowned upon. Search Engine Marketing, Inc. largely sidesteps these problems by focusing on foundational information rather than tactics du jour. If you purchase the book, you also get access to a free online version from Safari books.

Another bonus: A two hour DVD where Hunt and Moran explain and demonstrate many of the concepts in the book, and also show online resources that are valuable to any search marketer.

Search Engine Marketing, Inc. is probably the closest thing to a definitive textbook for anyone wanting to learn search marketing. But it’s also so full of practical tips learned from years of experience that it’s a great read for experienced search marketers, as well.

Search Engine Marketing, Inc.
Second Edition: ISBN-13: 978-0-13-606868-6
IBM Press, $49.99

Our newest Search Engine Land column, Bookshelf, launches today. Bookshelf features reviews of books, white papers and other publications that help search marketers do their jobs or gain a better understanding of general digital marketing issues. The Bookshelf column appears periodically at Search Engine Land.

In today’s debut post, I review the newly updated second edition of a book that can justifiably claim the title of the “bible” of search marketing: Search Engine Marketing, Inc. by Mike Moran and Bill Hunt. Read on in The “Bible” Of Search Engine Marketing.