18.07.2007

Search engine marketing: Experts call the most frequent mistakes

(iBusiness) 07-04-2007 To take out an ad in search engines is protracted and not always successful because home-made mistakes in Germany result in too much money being blown out of the SEM chimney, deplore experts questioned by iBusiness. They have now revealed the mistakes that are frequently made and which factors promise success for campaigns.

With paid search term advertisements the customer determines how far up the rank he stands. Search term advertisements get through to the target group mostly without wastage. Nevertheless money is often uselessly squandered because errors were made criticises Torsten Schwarz, of the service provider's directory Marketing-Börse, and lists seven most frequently made mistakes:

• The campaign is not continuously observed after it is switched on
• Search words are not systematically evaluated on their success
• Too many search terms are booked, which is uneconomical
• These were booked only with Google, but not with Yahoo and Miva
• Visitors land on a site that has no relation to the entered search term
• The website does not contain the search terms and content promised by the search advertisement.
• The main keywords entered by the user were not booked

Companies which pursue SEM, often find out that they must pay a lot to stand really far above in the ranks. Logically, the algorithm that computes the order of the rank prefers those advertisements that are clicked more often. Therefore Torsten Schwarz advises: "Bid with your new advertisements slightly more to combine some clicks for yourself at first. Afterwards you can send again your bid more slowly without losing the won position. By the way, your advertisement can also disappear if the click rate is low on a sustained basis"

Christian Petersen, Eprofessional: "Test systematically"

"The statement: 'Simply book the right keywords with the right texts and right landing page' sounds very easy. The problem is that nobody knows what these are: the right keyword, the right text and the right landing page. For this reason it is necessary to test different options systematically. Often the ROI of a campaign can be improved by testing compared to the 'act on instinct' model", advises Christian Peterson, managing director of the performance-marketing-service provider Eprofessional.

To optimize texts, according to Schwarz, one should run two or more text concepts against each other: "One leaves the better advertisement stand and changes the text of the advertisement with the worst values", advises Schwarz. From experience, it is simplistic to say that advertising slogans belong to text advertising. Whoever says "We are the best" is seldom clicked. When someone can demonstrate a unique selling point they have ("Largest special dispatch for decorative fir cone") then he should state it.

Also the search term should also possibly occur after the advertisement. "You achieve the best click rate if your search term already appears in the title. You should use the company name only if it is well-known and it stands out like a racehorse" advises the marketing expert.

Tim Ringel, metapeople "SEM is often not object driven"

"As a matter of fact, search engine marketing from many companies is mostly not object driven and mostly without concept and grows unorganised very quickly. This makes the campaign mostly unclear and unoptimized" Tim Ringel, CEO of the search engine marketing service provider metapeople, has also experienced.


Furthermore, the emphasis of several optimisation factors in a search engine marketing campaign changes constantly and more optimization factors will be added too. "Two or three years ago we would have controlled the keywords of a search engine marketing campaign in Google on the basis of click orders and click rate, today additional factors like Quality Scoring, landing pages and separate content-bidding play a significant role" added Ringel.

Professor Dr. Bernd Skiera, University of Frankfurt: Pay attention to the requirements of ROI

Since the customer only pays for real clicks anyway, it should be considered whether one always wants to stay on top. The cost per click rises for the top positions on account of the disproportionate auction principle. Professor Bernd Skiera, professor of Electronic Commerce of the University of Frankfurt, has arrived at these recommendations following a scientific investigation. Companies should only deliver orders for the uppermost positions if:

• the profitability (measured as the customer live worth) of the acquired customers is high,
• the cost per click on the highest positions is relatively low,
• the number of clicks on lower positions clearly decreases
• however, the conversion rate on the uppermost positions is high and on positions further below it does not increase strongly.

Paid search advertisements can appear above the natural index or also to the right of it. With in-demand and expensive search words Yahoo switches up to five search advertisements over the index. These are a maximum of three with Google. While the uppermost search hits reach an average click rate of between twenty to fifty percent in the organic index, the paid up content are often less clicked. "Click rates over ten percent are possible with text advertisements above the index" argues Torsten Schwarz. Particularly with less commercial search terms both Google as well as Yahoo do without the text adverts over the index. In these cases the text adverts are shown exclusively on the right edge of the page displayed. The click rates here are around one to five percent.