3 key tenets of successful full funnel search
Recognizing when you need to push upper, middle or bottom activity with your campaigns is fundamental to a full funnel search approach.
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Josh Dreller's latest articles
Why has paid search been pigeonholed to the bottom of the funnel?
To grow your total business impact from SEM you'll need to invest in upper funnel tactics to drive more consumers into your funnel.
The future of search engine marketing is full funnel
A search click is not just a click. It’s a consumer on a purchase journey.
The state of cross-channel paid search, part 3: SEM & display
In the third installment of his series on cross-channel digital marketing, columnist Josh Dreller explains how search and display can work together to inform one another and drive results.
The State Of Cross-Channel Paid Search, Part 2: SEM & TV
In the second installment in a series on cross-channel marketing and search, columnist Josh Dreller explores the relationship between TV and SEM, discussing how these can be used in conjunction with one another to improve ROI.
The State Of Cross-Channel Paid Search, Part 1: SEM & Social
In this first in a series on cross-channel marketing, columnist Josh Dreller discusses how paid search and paid social efforts can work together to improve overall marketing efforts.
10 Reasons Why You, The Search Marketer, Can Call Yourself A Data Scientist
You may consider yourself a paid search marketer, but columnist Josh Dreller explains why "data scientist" may well be a fitting label.
The 5 Reasons Paid Search Will Be Second Behind Display Starting Next Year In The US
Spend on display ads is projected to surpass that of search ads in 2016. Columnist Josh Dreller explains why, and what this means for search engine marketers.
Re-Examining The Top 10 Paid Search Best Practices, Part 2
Do the established best practices in paid search have merit? In Part 2 of his two-part series, Contributor Josh Dreller examines five more best practices to see if they truly hold up.
Re-Examining The Top 10 Paid Search Best Practices, Part 1
Is following the conventional wisdom on search advertising actually wise? Contributor Josh Dreller asks tough questions about five of the biggies.
Where Do You Go From Here? 7 Career Paths For The Search Engine Marketer
The career path for a search engine marketer is not very linear. Columnist Josh Dreller outlines your options for growth within this nascent and ever-expanding industry.
Are You Ready For Mobile Paid Search v2.0?
Columnist Josh Dreller asserts that when it comes to paid search, staying current means investing in mobile -- but getting ahead means adopting a "mobile-first" mindset.
Search Marketers: The 4 New Expectations Of You In A Cross-Channel World
Columnist Josh Dreller notes that siloed marketing departments are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Search marketers, are you ready to embrace this cross-channel reality?
7 Audience Targeting Data Types Versus Search Data (The Keyword Is Still The Undefeated Champ)
Columnist Josh Dreller argues that when it comes to audience targeting, nothing beats keyword search data.
10 Key Takeaways From Meet The Search Engines @ SMX West
Another SMX is in the books! This show definitely had one of the most engaged attendee groups I have ever seen at any conference in recent memory. The polite, attentive search engine marketers weren’t there to just network and enjoy the San Jose sun. They were interested and looking for answers. And on day three […]
Excelling (Again) At Excel For Search Engine Marketers
On Thursday, March 13th, I will be presenting on the Extreme Excel Excellence panel at SMX West with John Gagnon and Brett Snyder (moderated by Chris Sherman). In the session, we will be delivering power-user tips for marketers using Excel, and Chris has raised the bar very high for us to deliver truly advanced-to expert-level hacks on what […]
A Paid Search Christmas Carol: Learn From The Ghosts Of SEM Past, Present & Future
‘Twas the night before Christmas in the search marketing department and SEM Director Scrooge was heading out hours before his staff. “Director Scrooge,” said one of the young SEM analysts, Tiny Tim. “It’s Christmas Eve. The gang and I wanted to know if we could get a paid search management tool for the holidays so […]
10 Things RTB Rookies Can Learn From SEM Vets
If I were to describe to you a digital media channel in which marketers bid on ad inventory in an auction-based model, would you think of paid search? Of course! But this also describes the relatively new online display category of real-time bidding (RTB) in which banner impressions are sold in a similar fashion. eMarketer […]
How Recent Organic Search Changes Will Affect Paid Search
Search marketers were pitched not one but two curveballs recently which have forever reshaped the landscape of search engine optimization (SEO). The industry saw the first one coming a mile away as Google began encrypting organic search queries two years ago. Now, there’s almost zero visibility into the organic keywords which drive visitors to websites […]
The Top 7 Milestones Of Google Search
I think that I can confidently say that anyone reading this post has an intimate relationship with Google. After all, it’s one of the most important companies in the world and has helped to spearhead the Internet revolution — which is up there with invention of the wheel, the discovery of electricity, and the creation […]
10 Bad Assumptions About SEM That Might Get You Fired — Part 2
It can be embarrassing to admit when you’ve been wrong. But that’s what I did in my last post where I listed the first 5 of the 10 bad assumptions about SEM that could have gotten me fired. Today, I admit even more blunders that I hope will help keep some of you out of […]
10 Bad Assumptions About SEM That Might Get You Fired — Part 1
I’ve been a search engine marketer (both paid and organic) for over ten years, and in that time I have made my share of mistakes. I’m not talking about pure accidents here — most of these mistakes were caused by poor assumptions on my part which turned out to be horribly wrong. These mistakes cost […]
Maximizing The Synergy Of Paid Search & Social
Are there any two online activities more ubiquitous than searching and socializing? According to eMarketer, “search is the first stop on the Web when it comes to finding information on anything,” and 90% of U.S. Internet adults regularly use search engines. Social is also huge. Research from Pew Internet shows that more than two out of […]
Why Big Data Is The Future Of Bionic SEM
Once and for all, I will prove why Big Data is the future of bionic SEM. But first, indulge me for a minute. In the classic 1970s TV show, The Six Million Dollar Man, when all-American test pilot Steve Austin (played by Lee Majors) teeters on the verge of life after a crash, the government […]
Welcome To The Mobile Era Of Search
It’s rare when you can pinpoint the moment of a major game changer for an industry to a single day. Usually, these shifts happen over time; and then one day, you look back and realize how momentous a particular event really was. For paid search, there have been many catalysts that have accelerated the industry, […]
A Good Start For Paid Search In 2013
It’s April, which means that spring is here and the first quarter of 2013 is in the books! The birds are chirping, the flowers are blooming, and the ads are clicking. Aren’t the landing pages pretty at this time of year? At Kenshoo, we sit on some massive data sets that we share each quarter […]
Deep Dive Into Bing Webmaster Tools – Part 3 Wrap Up
In the first and second posts in this series, Vincent Wehren has taken us through an insider’s guided tour of Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT). We’ve learned that BWT was originally an internal SEO toolset that progressed into a very robust external platform and continues to evolve. Users can access very handy dashboards that the everyone, […]
Deep Dive Into Bing Webmaster Tools With Sr. Program Manager Vincent Wehren, Part 2
In the first post of this series, we briefly explored Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT) with Sr. Program Manager Vincent Wehren. In that article, we discovered that BWT is a well-rounded suite of SEO tools that have the added benefit of the massive amount of search engine data provided by Bing. We also learned from Vincent […]
Deep Dive Into Bing Webmaster Tools: Part 1
Over the last decade, search engine marketing has become a multi-billion dollar media channel powerhouse. It currently represents half of the $35B digital marketing budgets in the U.S., and it’s even bigger globally. The marriage between search practitioners and the engines has always been, at best, a work in progress. On one hand, search engines […]
Kenshoo: Filling the Gaps That Search Marketers Desperately Need
I remember the first bid management tool I ever used was GoToast back in 2003. It was absolutely amazing. I could manage bids on multiple engines from one location. SCORE! At the time (I almost started with In my day…, ha), there were many different engines other than Google and Bing that were viable options […]
Crowdsourced SEM: Under The Hood With Trada
In the June 2006 Wired magazine article The Rise of Crowdsourcing, Jeff Howe presented the phrase crowdsourcing as a combination of the words crowd and outsourcing. Although crowdsourcing actually has roots that precede the Internet, certainly the Web has been a powerful activation tool for crowdsourcing to go mainstream. In fact, there are crowd workers in […]
comScore’s Search Planner: The Benefits Of Rich Panel Data
Five years ago, I shifted my career from a pure search agency to a full-service, digital media firm in order to expand my knowledge from just SEM to the other disciplines of this industry. I was pleased to discover that many of the ingrained, good habits I developed while honing my search marketing skills translated […]
Zenya’s Next Gen Keyword & Categorization Platform
The case could easily be made that keyword list construction is the most vital part of the paid search marketing process. Yes, optimization is clearly a crucial component to profitable SEM, yet without the right keywords (and campaign/ad group structure), the chance for success drops dramatically. So, wouldn’t you think that after more than a […]
Clickable’s Widget Dashboard: Expansion Into Cross-Channel Intelligence
Along with Google AdWords, it seems like the common denominator in every search marketer’s tool stack is Microsoft Excel. But for years, technology vendors in the search marketing industry have vowed to get us out of workbooks and have built workflow, analytics, and reporting tools aimed at doing just that. But no one’s really solved […]
Using Wordstream’s AdWords Performance Grader For An Instant Audit
No matter how good you are at something, you can always use a second opinion. For paid search, getting even a surface level audit of your AdWords account can be fairly expensive. A consultant would have to access your account, pull your reports, check your settings, and evaluate your Quality Scorse, match type usage, etc. […]
Preview Live Search Engine Results Pages With The LiveSerp Toolbar
Every search practitioner, either paid and organic, has at some point received the same questioning phone call or email from their client or boss: “I’m was searching on Google for our natural listing (or paid ad) and I don’t see it.” Most of the time, this is due to the search engines personalizing their results for […]
AdGooroo Trademark Insight Tool Makes Infringement Monitoring A Breeze
Some of you may not have any issues with other advertisers infringing on your trademarked terms via search marketing… count yourselves lucky. For those of us who have been left by the search engines to self-police these problems, AdGooroo’s Trademark Insight tool can turn a laborious challenge into a fairly efficient task. AdGooroo is well […]
The Career Path Of The Search Marketer
For those of you who read my columns regularly, you know that I’m fascinated with watching the paid search industry develop. Having been one of the lucky ones who fell into this marketing niche early on, I’ve seen it grow from a little seedling into a giant oak. In fact, one of the major draws […]
The Technology Behind Autobidding: Q&A With OptiMine’s Dr. Rob Cooley
Autobidders. Every SEM management tool has one. The promise is powerful: simply input the performance you’re trying to achieve and sit back, have a sody-pop, and smile as the little robots make your job easy. Ha! If it was only that easy! Most of you reading this post have used one in the past. Have […]
Why Display Is Changing The Value Of Search
A few weeks ago, I was talking shop with Josh Shatkin-Margolis, CEO and founder of search retargeting firm Magnetic, when he stated, “Display is changing the value of search.” I balked. But I took the bait. “What’s that even mean, dude?” I said. Josh went on to explain that all signs point to the fact […]