Everywhere you look today you can find books, television programs, and websites specializing in do-it-yourself. While this may be a great thing for folks who want to refurbish their homes with stylish but affordable interiors, it is not always the best choice for all things. Just because you can re-wire your home doesn’t mean you should! Professional electricians exist for a reason and we should avail ourselves of their expertise. But what, you may ask, does this have to do with online advertising? I’ll tell you. Just because you can go online and create your own ad campaigns with a tool like Google AdWords, for example, doesn’t mean that you should!

Owners of small businesses usually need to devote all their time to their customers. They would be best served by letting experts in Internet advertising create and manage their online ad campaigns. This allows the local plumber to plumb and those in online advertising to advertise, drawing on their expertise to produce the most effective and cost-efficient ad campaigns for a local business.

Why do Joe Plumber and Andy Accountant think they are perfectly capable of running online ad campaigns? I believe that the accessibility of online ad tools like Google’s AdWords contributes to the idea that creating and managing online ads is easy. After all, anyone can go online and create an account, set up ad copy and keywords, determine targeting, and decide how much money to spend on a campaign. If everyone has access to these tools, how hard can it be to use them?

A Madison Avenue ad agency draws on previous campaign results and years of experience to determine what works best for a print or television ad campaign. It is doubtful that our local business owner would stroll in to a big agency and tell the ad exec how to do his or her job. People who work in online advertising do much the same thing, spending hours each day examining ad copy and keywords, targeting options, quality scores, page rankings, bid pricing, content development and a myriad of other elements that go into a successful online ad campaign. Familiarity with these elements allows those with this knowledge to craft campaigns, tweaking them as performance data is gathered in order to produce the best return on investment (ROI) for their client. There is a great deal of information to be sifted in order to create the cost effective—best performing—campaign. Simply having access to an online advertising service—Google AdWords or Microsoft AdCenter—should not lead business owners to believe they can do this work just as well as a paid professional. Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should!

Here’s an example for you. Andy Accountant is one of my clients. He had been managing his own Google AdWords campaign for a year or so but after much effort on my part agreed to give us his online advertising business. While Andy’s efforts were not bad, I was sure that if allowed to manage the campaign I could achieve better results and save Andy the time and effort of managing his campaign online.

Among the first things I did was to remove the one-term keywords like accountant and accounting since I was confident that longer terms like income tax returns, tax accountant, income tax filing, business accountant, certified public accountant and other terms that were more specific would produce more effective results. Additionally, I set these for exact match rather than broad match, thus improving the likelihood of traffic producing real leads instead of just clicks to the website. While Andy was generating ample click traffic to his site the conversion to leads was minimal. After my revisions Andy realized fewer clicks but actually had more connections generated after potential customers clicked to his website and then followed that with a phone call or submitted an interest form.

Additionally, we were able to assign a call tracking number to Andy’s campaign, thus channeling calls through a trackable number that clearly matched calls to the campaign we were delivering. Over a period of six months, the campaign CTR improved from 0.07% (accounting) with Andy’s terms to 2.04% (income tax filing) to 4.82% (income tax returns) and an overall connection rate of over 30% (connections being all forms of contact with client). Thus, just because you can manage your online ad campaign yourself, doesn’t mean you should!

The ability to associate online ads with traffic to a website and to track clicks from a particular ad appearing on a specific search engine means that there is unprecedented accountability for performance in online advertising. In no other format does such a clear connection between an ad and a customer/sale exist. As such, online SEM experts are constantly required to demonstrate the efficacy of their work. They monitor performance and make adjustments in real time that no print ad exec has the option to do. The data gathered requires a time commitment to a level of scrutiny that no small business owner can afford. Thus, said business owner is best served by using an SEM professional and not setting up his or her own ad campaign.

Ultimately, there is no difference between the expertise of print advertising professionals and online advertising professionals, apart, of course, from their understanding of the unique elements of print and online ad campaigns. It’s just a matter of perception. Andy Accountant and Joe Plumber should not presume to know Samantha SEM-Expert’s business anymore than he should presume to know how to manage a print ad campaign better than an ad agency. Just because Andy and Joe have access to online advertising systems doesn’t mean they should use them.

Rely on experts! That is what they’re there for!

SEMPO yesterday released a “POV” white paper that seeks to orient search marketers to the growing mobile market, mobile SEO and mobile paid search in particular. It cites the dramatic growth of mobile web usage and anticipated future growth in arguing that search marketers now need to take mobile seriously. Developed by SEMPO’s Emerging Technologies Committee, the report asks (and seeks to answer) several key questions:

• What mobile channels are available to search marketers and which show the most promise?
• What are the prospects for search, particularly local search, on mobile devices, and how is the landscape changing?
• What steps can marketers take to effectively target and reach consumers using mobile?

The report generally advises:

• Create usable content designed around the specific wants, needs, and usage patterns of mobile consumers.
• Redirect users to that content via SEO and paid search efforts calibrated to the smaller screen real estate available on mobile devices.
• Location, location, location: remember that mobile is about location, specifically where the mobile user is at any given moment.  Take into account  the specific behaviors and needs that accompany on-the-go Internet access when crafting advertising messages.
• Brands that value their site stickiness and hard-earned search equity should create versions of their desktop Web content synthesized specifically for the wants and needs of the mobile user.
• Marketers need to segment the market by demographics and mobile device traffic.  Mobile is not a one-size-fits-all proposition.

Overall it’s a very helpful primer on mobile marketing and search marketing to mobile device users, for those just starting to think about it. The report provides concrete best practices advice, identifies challenges and differences between mobile and PC SEO and paid search. It also segments the audience by device and demographics.

Earlier this year, SEMPO released its annual findings on the State of Search Marketing, based on data collected in December, 2008. It found that just under half of survey respondents were interested in mobile search marketing. There was also a mixed picture in terms of location targeting on mobile devices. I suspect these numbers would be much higher just nine months later.

At SMX East there will be several panels directly or indirectly addressing mobile, with one directly about mobile search marketing.

The ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program hoopla and Congress’ push to infuse it with more ‘cash’ was a fantastic opportunity for big auto manufacturers advertising like mad on TV to reach local buyers online with local dealership offers. Not surprisingly, after a few quick geo-searches on Google Maps and Yahoo Local among others, the search results for local car dealerships or their parent manufacturers participating in the program were lackluster at best. Here’s an example:

As local search is continuing to grow and advertisers, search engines and local businesses alike are grabbing a piece of the pie, does it make sense for big brand manufacturers to join the party? Today, “ROBO” (research online buy offline) search queries are changing the face of local search. According to a study by Yahoo, consumers exposed to online retail marketing campaigns were more engaged and spent more dollars in physical stores than otherwise. Now, ready-to-buy consumers are conducting more precise targeted local searches through a series of keywords, which often include brand focused-searches. But again, auto manufacturers don’t seem to be taking advantage of the phenomenon:

While big ticket brands spend money on paid search campaigns with specialized offers and promote these incentives through targeted TV and radio ads, often online organic search is left out of the mix altogether. It’s a great time for brands to start ramping up organic SEO campaigns as local organic searchers often generate higher conversation rates than paid search campaigns, and most users tend to trust organic results over sponsored links.

What we’re seeing is similar to the days of yellow pages co-op advertising—still a tried and true approach for manufacturers for boosting sales and visibility for specific products through their local distributors. Local search offers further revenue-generating opportunities for manufacturers and their distributors to join forces and reach the growing local online consumer base. Avenues for these brand powerhouses are numerous.

Brands should focus on extending promotional/brand advertising to the near point-of-sale by partnering with local search engines and content management providers to push out display advertising when relevant keyword searches are performed, for local queries that include their brand names (e.g. Frigidaire) as well as for local queries that include products they sell (side-by-side refrigerators).

Big brands or manufacturers can also offer co-op opportunities with distributors to place logos/offers at the individual listing level to draw the consumer to the brand they are looking for or to influence their selection if they have not specifically selected a brand.

There are also opportunities to create directional advertising by developing branded local search micro-sites targeted at local searches that include their brands, products or services that contain “where to buy” links to distributors offering their products.

It’s all about brand awareness and market share, right? Well, today local is where it’s at. If you’re missing out on this opportunity, you should make sure you are throwing the party instead of being left off the guest list.

Twenty-seven local search marketers from the U.S., Canada, and Europe have shared their opinions and insights in the second edition of the Local Search Ranking Factors. Organized by David Mihm, it’s a project that aims to help local businesses understand how Google and Yahoo rank local businesses.

David sent out a questionnaire listing 49 possible factors that affect local search rankings, and invited the participants (disclaimer: I’m one of them) to rank each factor on a scale ranging from “very important for ranking well” to “can hurt your ranking/lead to penalty.” According to the panel, the five factors with the most significant positive effect on local rankings are:

1. Having your Google/Yahoo local business listing with the address in the city being searched
2. Having citations from major data providers, such as infoUSA, Localeze, and Internet yellow pages providers
3. Associating your local business listing in the proper categories
4. Having a claimed, verified local business listing with Google/Yahoo
5. Having your product/service keywords (i.e., “hair salon,” “attorney”) in the title of your local business listing

Since the survey is in its second year, there are interesting comparisons you can make between what mattered last year and what matters now. David makes some of those comparisons on his blog.

If local search is important to you, the Local Search Ranking Factors is a must read.

Analytics firm AdQuants has compiled some very interesting data on the local search market. It’s based on the company’s crawling of the major search engines in “250 US metros with approximately 300 local keywords spanning the spectrum of local service providers and retailers.” AdQuants found that national paid search market share trends were magnified at the local level: “Of the 86,000 Local Online Advertisers identified, 83% advertised on Google, 33% advertised on Yahoo and only 8% advertised on Microsoft, significantly below Microsoft’s 12% share at the national level.”

There’s no breakdown offered regarding the small business vs. franchise or national-local advertiser percentages in the data. However, among the top 20 local online advertisers identified in the AdQuants Q1 paid keywords crawl, most are all directories or search engines of one sort or another that resell search traffic to small business customers:

As the top local search advertiser, Local.com was advertising against 21,000 local keywords according to AdQuants. AdQuants also reported that among local/geo-targeted advertisers on Google it found that approximately 30 percent of those SEM campaigns were being managed by third parties. Here’s the breakdown:

The AdQuants data doesn’t capture 100 percent of what’s going on in the local marketplace; however, it’s a highly representative snapshot. What we see here is the ecosystem laid bare: directories with local “feet on the street” and local search engines buying search traffic and local keywords from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft and then reselling that traffic to small businesses, which are otherwise mostly unable to manage those campaigns themselves.

After several years of experiments Google essentially recognized the need to develop sales channel and reseller partnerships with companies that had more direct reach into the small business market. (Yahoo and Microsoft also have these partnerships to a lesser degree.) The ecosystem reflected above was not engineered by Google; it emerged largely “organically” in response to the needs of publishers and small businesses, which didn’t have the time or inclination to master AdWords themselves.

SEMPO announced an educational partnership this morning with yellow pages publisher Yellow Book, a division of the UK based Yell.  According to the press release put out, the SEMPO Institute “will be providing distance learning education for Yellowbook’s media consultant sales team.”

I believe this is the first such relationship between SEMPO and an individual yellow pages publisher, although the Yellow Pages Association is a long-time member of SEMPO.

The deal appears to be about helping the Yellowbook sales force improve its ability to educate and sell SEM related products to local yellow pages advertisers/small businesses (SMBs). All the major US yellow pages publishers, including Yellowbook, have been selling simplified SEM offerings for several years and most of them are Google resllers. Indeed, some of the yellow pages publishes even bought SEM firms (e.g., Idearc-Inceptor) to bring SEM expertise in house. A number of years ago, Yellowbook purchased an SEM firm called ClickForward.

Yellow pages publishers and increasingly newspapers, as well as a number of independent sales channels such as Yodle and ReachLocal, sell search marketing to small businesses. But the products they’re selling are greatly simplified and managed by them or third parties, as opposed to the local advertisers. This has been a key to more deeply penetrating the small business world with search marketing.

So, you’ve junked your day job and made the commitment to your shiny new startup business. You’ve created your website, and what’s the first thing you do now?  Like just about every other startup business person you do the search on Google for your business name.

At this point, two things might happen:

1. You discover you “own” the first page of Google results and you feel satisfied that you’re now on the map, or
2. Your business is nowhere to be seen, and you lapse into a state of abject depression

OK, so it’s not quite as binary as that, but you get my point.  What we’re all hoping for is to see our business name up there in lights, right?

Let’s assume for a minute that you did find your business on that sometimes-elusive first page of Google search results. Before you break open the celebratory drink, let’s just think about this a little more.  What you’ve demonstrated is that people who already know your business name can find you.  But what about all those prospective customers out there who don’t yet know your business?

At this point you have to, as my mother would say, “use yer loaf;” it’s time to start to think about what keywords and key phrases those unknowing customers are likely to use to find your business. So, start now, make a list.  There are some key things you should consider when doing this. Here are my few golden rules for building out your keyword list:

Don’t use jargon unless its understood by consumers too.  Every industry has its own technical jargon that’s used internally by practitioners within the industry, but before slipping into those familiar words, consider first if they have crossed over into general consumer use.

Think local. Depending upon who you listen to, somewhere between 20% and 40% of all searches have a local component—a place name, or some other inferred geographic qualifier.  So, what’s your catchment area, what are the towns, villages, locations, urban areas, landmarks, counties, states, and even countries that you’re looking to serve?  Add those to your list too.

Products and brands. Clearly if you stock particular products and brands, or a particularly specialized type of product then these should be strong contenders for keywords and phrases.  One experience we had with Brownbook.net, which is my business, was a double glazing and patio supplier that won an order for over £7,500 when a customer found them through Google using the phrase “bifold doors” (this is a particularly specialized type of patio door that folds right back to expose your back yard).  Clearly, had they not included that key phrase, and instead stuck with generics like “patio doors” they would not have won the business (somewhat ironically, it transpired that that extra tag was added to their Brownbook listing by a regular employee—not a marketeer—that came across their listing).

Consider using modifiers. This is something new we’ve been experimenting with at Brownbook.net—advising our business customers to try adding modifiers, and early results look promising. The idea is to include keywords that tap into users’ behavior when searching—for example “cheap xyz”.  The word “cheap” is what I’ll call the modifier; it modifies your actual keyword (in this case the keyword being “xyz”).  Think about it, if you sell lifejackets, do you think people search for “high quality lifejackets”?  Of course they don’t, they search for “cheap lifejackets”, “lifejackets sale”, “best price on lifejackets” etc.  You get my point.  When I talk to brand owners they often have a problem with this until they realize the potential SEO benefits. Most brand owners don’t want to say their stuff is “cheap.” Rather, they prefer “good value”, but who the hell searches for “good value” anything?  So, brand owners might need to put the ego and “brand thinking” aside for this one.

Jump on a news bandwagon. Can you tie your product or service to a current news story or trend?  The most obvious example for me of recent years was the buzz that surrounded the iPhone.  All of a sudden a whole host of companies were proclaiming support for the iPhone, and justifiably associating their products or services with that hot brand.  The intention, of course, to attract people sensitized to that new trend. 

Exploit the long-tail. The most obvious keywords and phrases are often those that are most fiercely competitive, and though search volume for those terms is high (which seems like a good thing) there’s so much content that gets returned in a search that your brand gets lost (which is bad).  So, consider long-tail keywords and phrases that have less traffic but are also less competitive.  The question to ask is this: So what if the search term is only getting 1,000 searches a month, if you can be prominent in all those 1,000 is that enough?  You may find you need only to capture a small percentage of that lot to be successful.  Think ‘big fish in small pond’.

Use common misspellings. Perhaps an obvious one; and one that’s already had a lot written about it.  Need I explian (sic) more?

Keep your keyword list current. With all the above, regular attention is important, but especially with product and brand names, and bandwagon strategies. You just got a new product range in? Update your keywords. You spot a new trend that you can associate with?  Update your keywords.  This isn’t always as easy as it sounds, and though its easy to be blogging with current keywords, entries you may have created in local directories may be harder to change quickly, if at all. 

This is by no means an exhaustive list, and I’d certainly encourage all you smart people out there to add your own suggestions via the comments.  Now, lets assume now you’ve compiled your master list.  So how can you use it?

A few breadcrumbs go a long way

I’m going to focus on one concept called breadcrumbing (no, nothing to do with the idea of a breadcrumb trail) on your webpages.  In this case what I’m referring to is dropping little ‘crumbs’ about your business all over the web, to allow prospective customers to find their way back to your web presence, and thence to actually contact you. 

Many years ago, when websites among small businesses were still uncommon, a lot of attention was spent by businesses on their websites; their showcase or home on the web.  These days, with so many websites out there the focus has shifted, to encompass not just your website, but all the places in which you can create high value links back to your website, drawing in attention from many places.

This technique does two things for you in relation to search engines:

First, getting plenty of high value links to your web site has always been desirable for getting your website up the rankings.

Second, and of increasing importance for young and agile small businesses, the object is to dominate the search results by populating them with other sites as well as your own that are all referring people back to your own.

Using local and business directories for breadcrumbing

A large chunk of my career was spent in big directory companies, but recent years have lead me towards the more distributed publishing model of social media and user generated content.   I speak with many small and large business owners all over the world, and one common thread emerges: those that are web-savvy are using these sites to list their businesses to execute a breadcrumbing strategy.

Of course they want their own website to appear in the search results, but those whose strategy has matured sufficiently also realize the value of getting several bites at the cherry by having third party sites where they’re listed too.  Its actually not about getting found in these sites themselves, but about piggy-backing on their good SEO to get found in the primary search engines.  So this becomes a slightly more indirect but additional route to customer acquisition:

User behavior on the web started out something a little like this: Open web browser –> type URL to visit business’s website –> customer acquisition.

Then it became: Open web browser –> query a search engine –> click to business’s website –> customer acquisition.

Today, the process goes more like this: Open web browser –> query search engine –> click to a site where a business is featured –> read something interesting enough to engage the user –> click to business’s website –> customer acquisition.

Hidden in this process is an obvious, but often overlooked, point: the distinction between the behavior of search engines and the behavior of people. Getting in the results (with your own site, and with referring sites) is only the start; getting people to click on one of those links and be motivated enough to actually get in touch with you is the key.

Conclusions and advice

What we’re really seeking with this process is almost omnipresence, to be everywhere we possibly can.

The advice then, considering my area of experience, is to use local search sites, vertical directories, and general business directories to list your business in as many places as possible, with relevant keywords and key phrases, and with links back to your own site if you have one (if you don’t, choose one of these directories as your main presence, and direct all other breadcrumbs to that site). You also must be prepared to invest the small amount of time required to keep these fresh and current.

This is not something that needs big budgets and large marketing teams.  It can be done on a shoestring, if you pick your places carefully.  It doesn’t necessary require paid listings; a lot can be done with free listings.  Consider that the ‘traditional’ directory companies are built on a sales model that required expensive sales forces and the corresponding high overheads, and their prices will reflect this.  Consider, also, that it’s often not the traditional directories that have the best chance of getting you into the search results pages—many of them still think that they are the point of entry for consumers, when most of us know its Google—so a strategy that embraces several of the alternatives at lower cost may be more effective.

Search marketing firm Internet Engine released findings from a new “Retail Search Presence Study,” which analyzed paid search results in ten product categories over the past three holiday shopping seasons. What the study found was the following:

The results show that on-line retailers have a very strong presence, representing well over 30% of the listings shown, while bricks and mortar retailers consistently have had the weakest presence of any group showing up only 12% of the time.

The overwhelming majority of product purchases are made in stores. E-commerce remains a tiny fraction (<4%) of US retail. However, each year more offline/local consumer purchase behavior is being influenced by the internet, as consumers use search and other online resources to get information about products:

Source: Krillion-eTailing Group (2008), n=1,000

In early 2008, research firm Nielsen asked, “If you were only able to use one source of information to support your next consumer electronics purchase, which would you choose?” Here’s how respondents answered:

• Internet – 58%
• Visit to local stores – 25%
• Reviews in newspapers/magazines – 8%
• Friends and family – 8%
• Other – 1%

Despite the influence of the internet and search in particular on in-store sales, traditional retailers are doing a relatively poor job of SEM and SEO according to the “Retail Search Presence Study”:

Search and online marketing are in the DNA of a company like Amazon in a way that they’re not for a traditional retailer. However, ShopLocal is trying to change that with a new product that takes retailer content (i.e., deals and offers that otherwise appears in newspaper “circular” ads) and makes it dynamically available for SEM. It’s a pretty compelling offering that should improve the relative visibility and ad response for traditional retailers in search.

I’ve written up the program in more detail on my personal blog Screenwerk.

Regardless of the approach they take, US retailers need to do a better job with both SEM and SEO but in particular — showing consumers locally where they can buy the products and services they’re researching online. (Mobile is another area of opportunity for traditional retailers, but that’s another conversation.)

Many small business owners realize the need to market online to local customers, but few know where to begin. A new web site that offers a much-needed launch pad for local businesses launched this week.

GetListed.org operates with a simple premise: It should be as easy as possible for small businesses to find and claim their business listings on local search engines. To that end, the process begins with only two demands of the small business owner: enter your business name and enter your zip code. With that information, the site looks for the company’s business listings on four local search sites: Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Live Search Maps, and Best of the Web Local. GetListed provides a listing snapshot, letting the business owner know if any listings were found on each site and providing links to add and/or claim those listings.

That functionality alone makes GetListed.org a valuable starter tool for local businesses. Additional pages also tell the business owner how many local citations and reviews the business has on each search engine, and one page provides a To Do list to help the business owner begin the process of creating or editing local listings.

Search marketers might find the local dashboard helpful for storing all the business listings of a variety of clients, and being able to check on new reviews they’ve received from a single location.

From my perspective, GetListed.org is a very necessary and unique service for small/local businesses. It’s not a guarantee of local search success, but it is an easy-to-use first step in that direction for business that are just getting started with search marketing.

(Disclaimer: I was one of the beta testers while GetListed.org was in development.)

The Google AdWords team has announced a group of new features for Local Business Ads, some of which are in place now, and others that will be coming soon.

In place now are new links that will appear at the bottom of the ad’s info window: Get Directions, Street View, and/or Save to My Maps. Here’s a look at my wife’s local business ad showing two of the new links:

(We don’t have Street View in our little backwater hamlet, but maybe someday.)

A “Send” link will be added soon, allowing searchers to send business information to their phone or email address. If I’m reading the announcement correctly, advertisers won’t pay when searchers click on these links: “Users will still be able to click through to your site if they wish — the info window simply offers additional free functionality.”

Also coming soon — in “a few weeks,” according to the announcement — is a new report detailing things like how often an ad’s info window was opened and how often users clicked on the new links.

Google’s announcement emphasizes that these new features won’t be available to all advertisers: “… while local business ads can appear in several countries and on a number of web properties, the changes described here will only affect local business ads that appear on Google Maps.”