Editorial Articles

If the removal of Google’s Best Practice Funding dominated the search marketing agenda in the first part of this year, the focus now seems to be turning to two other crucial components of search campaigns.

More and more we are being asked by clients and prospects about the benefits of running paid-for search drives as opposed to natural SEO. The other topic on everyone’s lips is how best to combine the formidable power of human teams and technology for great results.

Looking firstly at sponsored links, it’s widely acknowledged that paid search has had to work hard to reach the elevated status it enjoys today. But recent spend analysis shows the effort is bearing fruit. Of the estimated £2.7bn forecast to be spent on search during 2008, £2.4bn was due to be splashed out on paid-for campaigns, leaving only a small proportion of the total outlay dedicated to SEO.

This is no real surprise to those of us involved in paid search. Campaigns are measurable and can be manipulated at will - especially if, as alluded to earlier, human teams are on hand to mine keywords alongside software platforms.

To take a simple example of the benefits of sponsored search versus SEO, try typing in any generic term from a range of pregnancy issues and you will probably pull up a long list of answers from chat rooms, communities and other forums. The reams of results that appear in organic search listings can be at best irrelevant, and at worst irresponsible.

This is where paid search listings are proving their worth. There are intricate calculations and algorithms involved in determining where search engines place results in their sponsored link sections; not to mention the metrics behind running and measuring a campaign. It’s taken a long time to sink in, but finally the message seems to be permeating companies at all levels: paid search is not only successful, it is also reliable.

In my view, the key to making campaigns work is an agency’s ability to harness the best of both human teams and software. When clients are planning Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns, getting the balance of technology and human account management teams right is critical.

Most digital experts agree we are still some way off intelligent systems that will allow sophisticated PPC campaigns to be run solely by software. Programmes are still too rule-based to take over completely from human input. Take the staples of any PPC drive: ad copy, campaign structure, landing pages and keywords. We recognise that keywords are one of the main elements affecting the overall metrics of a campaign, and should be constantly monitored and adjusted to get the best results.

Technology can easily monitor volumes of search entries, and sophisticated agencies will use this to inform an overall PPC cost for clients. But as we still live in the days before the ‘semantic Web’, there is no substitute for human understanding of the nuances of search activity. A good account manager will be able to spot the subtleties of search trends – such as sudden and repeated appearance of a term that had not previously been identified as a keyword – and respond accordingly.

That said, dismissing technology platforms from search strategies can also cause problems of its own. For example, software offers campaign scalability, while auto bid management can be used to ensure some poorly performing or irrelevant keywords are dropped.

The two current hot potatoes of the search marketing industry - paid links vs SEO and humans vs technology - are closely linked. Agencies that can demonstrate their understanding of how balancing these issues can positively affect campaigns and boost ROI will be in the best position to persuade clients to spend their money.

Author: Rob Pierre , Managing Director, Jellyfish