MarketingExperiments Blog: Research-driven optimization, testing, and marketing ideas

Earlier this week, Google formally announced the completion of its new web indexing system cleverly named Caffeine. According to Google, Caffeine provides 50% fresher results for web searches than its last index and is the largest collection of web content the search giant has ever offered.

Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.

– Carrie Grimes, Software Engineer, Google

This is great for those of us who use Google to search and find relevant results to our most common inquiries. Results will become timelier, more social and rely more heavily on keyword strings, ultimately providing more useful results as newer content can be indexed much quicker and from a much larger base of sites.

Is your SERP spot threatened?

When Google says “fresher” results, what they’re saying is that ranking principles have not changed, but rather rankings are (and will become) more dynamic, shifting to display the latest and greatest (and, therefore, hopefully best) information as a result of being able to reach deeper and more frequently into the Web.

But what about website owners who have come to rely on the steady ebb and flow of organic traffic that a high Search Engine Results Page (SERP) position provides?

Many website owners who have long enjoyed a top spot, or even a high spot, have suddenly found their sites displaced, resulting in a massive dip in organic traffic. And to make matters even more vexing, the position your site is in this month will likely be different from where you find yourself next month.

Which is not entirely new, right? Anyone well-versed in search engine optimization (SEO) knows that it is a never-ending battle. The difference is, ranking improvements and demotions may happen even quicker than before because content that you and your competitors are creating will have a more immediate impact within the results. So if you thought SEO was a wild ride before, hang on.

Of course, your main goal should be to deliver value to your customers and audience. After all, ranking is only a means to an end. And since Caffeine should do a better job of measuring that value, it might start putting some distance between those who do provide quality content and those who are merely gaming the system.

Caffeine makes it more difficult, although not impossible, for sites using black hat SEO tactics to reach and/or maintain a position at the top of the rankings for long periods of time. And while I believe SEOs will always find new ways to game the system, I think Google has made a step forward in terms of providing better-quality results.

How to get a boost from Caffeine

So if you can’t rule Google SERPs by just throwing up an automated page with repurposed content, what should you do? Here’s my advice to website owners who rely heavily on organic traffic:

• Continually look for opportunities to expand or update the content on your site for improved keyword targeting
• Re-evaluate your current keywords and always look for opportunities to expand and capture more long-tail keywords
• Build a site that contains clean code and  a clear site structure
• Look for opportunities to capitalize on social media as real-time results become more integrated with search results
• Monitoring your competitors will be paramount as new content brought in by them will be indexed quicker than ever.

So fresh and so clean

I think this transition to providing “fresher” results was inevitable as competition from Bing and the massive growth of “real-time” information from social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have created a need for better, faster, (stronger), search engine results. And from a conversion standpoint, I’d argue that this move could ultimately prove to be more beneficial to ecommerce sites that provide high-quality content, because “fresher,” more relevant results also means more qualified traffic.

Of course, cleaner, less manipulated results will have huge benefits to searchers and real, quality sites alike. Remember that both you and Google are on the same mission: provide the right page to the right user. Oh, and don’t be evil.

Related Resources

Search Marketing: Tips on mastering the latest innovations in this mature category

PPC Innovation: How will Google’s new lead capture extension affect your pay-per-click campaigns?

Optimizing PPC campaigns to boost conversions, ROI

Photo attribution: The Official Google Blog

Research Topics, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Most experienced marketers tend to think of anything Internet-marketing related as new, cutting edge, and/or unproven. But a funny thing happened on the way to Google’s $180 billion market capitalization – search has become a commodity.

To wit, a site like GoodSearch. GoodSearch is a search engine, except it’s not. It’s really an advertising platform that donates 50% of its revenue to charities (“You search, we give”) that leverages the commodity of search, in this case Yahoo (which itself is powered by Microsoft Bing).

And, of course, GoodSearch is not unique in this respect. There are many businesses built on the commodity of search. Perhaps we’ll soon see a search futures market develop so it can be traded right along with pork bellies.

The paradox of search commoditization

Now here’s the rub. When most product categories achieve commoditization, innovation dies (think generic drugs) in favor of merciless cost cutting (since once a product is perceived as a commodity the only difference becomes price).

Search has been the opposite – innovation is still occurring at a breakneck pace. So we’re left at an interesting crossroads. Social media marketing is new enough that most marketers recognize the huge learning curve, print advertising is established enough that experience in itself is quite valuable, but search is a shade of gray. As the financial services ads (must legally) tell you, “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

When it comes to search, you need a GPS system, not a map

For all of the above reasons, I’m glad there are people like Jen Doyle in the marketing world. Jen is a Research Analyst at our sister company, MarketingSherpa.

Along with her peers, she is constantly delving into hot-button marketing topics to help you discover how to best use these ever-changing tactics. So what you get is an ever-changing GPS system that helps you navigate this new terrain, not a map that shows you best practices from several years go.

Jen and her team have launched a new research project into search marketing, and she was kind enough to update us on the latest developments in search…

What has changed in search marketing since your last Benchmark Report one year ago?

Any search-engine marketer knows how quickly things change with search, and the past year has been no exception. Between social media’s growth and search innovations such as real-time search and personalization, there are a lot of unanswered questions for search-engine marketers.

How are marketers perceiving and reacting to these new changes in search? This year’s Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report will be stacked with a wealth of information on balancing search and social media to achieve optimal success, as well as sections dedicated to search innovations.

You mention that the rocket-like ascendancy of social media has had an impact. So how can social media help with search engine optimization (SEO)?

One of the most effective, and most difficult, SEO tactics is generating inbound links. With social media, you can generate highly relevant inbound links to your site by attracting links from blogs, forums, social networking sites, and other social media channels.

Another great benefit search engine marketers are reaping out of social media is increasing the number of listings that get displayed for their brand in the search engine results pages (SERPs), pushing their competition to lower rankings and increasing the click-through rates on their own listings.

How can you use social media to optimize for multimedia and universal search, from blended listings to focused multimedia search such as Google Images?

When optimizing multimedia content for search engines, you must strike a balance between traditional SEO tactics and social media integration.

For starters, whether you’re optimizing a video, an image, or a slide presentation, you need to make sure you have good, relevant, link-worthy content. Additionally, check to see that your multimedia sharing site has options to add title tags, description tags, etc. and then optimize these tags for your target keywords.

You can then utilize social media to generate inbound links (not to mention traffic) to your content.

Has social media made universal search more competitive (i.e., harder to get towards the top of listings)?

The search landscape is growing more competitive in nature over time, and this is partly due to social media. Social media has added another venue for marketers to up their SEO ante, so to speak. As the competition is stepping up their game, it continues to be a challenge to keep up.

MarketingSherpa has recently published Social Media Marketing research. In that research, did you find that SEO was the main reason most marketers are using social media?

There are a number of target business objectives that can be achieved with social media, and search engine optimization is a popular one indeed.

Other popular objectives include increasing website traffic, lead volume, sales revenue, and improving brand reputation and awareness. These objectives, of course, can also be achieved with SEO. The key is to balance your SEO efforts with social media in order to achieve success towards these common objectives.

And perhaps as the flip side to that, how can you leverage search to best get your social media content (like blog posts) some traffic?

Whether it be a blog, a Facebook fan page, or a Linkedin profile, leveraging search to attract traffic to social media content starts with good, link-worthy, keyword-targeted content. And a lot of it. You will naturally generate inbound links by creating social media content, and the search engines will take notice.

For your blog, it’s important to use the same optimization techniques you would use for your regular website – and definitely link to your blog from your homepage (or the page on your site with the highest page rank) using optimized anchor text.

Again, the goal here is to achieve balance in your SEO and social media efforts to achieve success.

What are some possible tactics to help more traditional media, like PDFs, get good SEO results using social media sharing options (as opposed to just keywords, etc)?

Taking advantage of social bookmarking sites is a great way to get more traditional media, like PDFs, ranked.

For one, the search engines crawl social bookmarking sites at a high frequency, so the likelihood that your content will get indexed quickly increases as you generate bookmarks.

Social bookmarking sites can also help get your PDFs well-ranked because of the inbound links you will be generating. You can increase the likelihood of generating inbound links by adding social bookmarking icons to your content so that visitors can instantly bookmark or share your content.

Share your search marketing insights

Jen and her colleagues at MarketingSherpa want to hear how you use search marketing in your day-to-day job. They’ve created a quick, easy-to-answer survey to help you add your insights to the search marketing “GPS system” they are creating for the industry. As a special thank you, everyone who participates in the survey will receive a free executive summary report. Survey participants will also be invited to an exclusive webinar covering a review of the results.

Related resources

Paid Search Marketing

SEO Shortlist: 10 search optimization sites and resources

PPC Advertising

Research Topics, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Students and alumni of the MarketingExperiments Training and Certification Program often share their questions and concerns with our analysts before, during, and after they take one of our courses. The questions below are an example of the interaction you can expect if you attend a MarketingExperiments course:

Q: Do you know any other resources, except MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa, that are good at providing useful insights from case studies?

Believe it or not, I’ve been in this Internet marketing field for two years (you’re probably here a lot longer) and been through a lot of misleading information until I accidently found you guys and really learned how to test things and see if they REALLY work instead of blindly believing some “gurus” who told me something like…”this is tested and it’s working 100%!” (the only thing that was truthful was that 100% thing…the problem was that almost 100% of what they were telling me didn’t work.

Surely others – for example online marketing consultancies – will offer to advise you on changing your website to improve performance and will use a third-party testing tool to measure the impact. Also, some of the large-scale testing tool vendors offer hosted and/or managed service engagements using their products.

Unfortunately, as you said, most other organizations are not research focused. MarketingExperiments is a research institute dedicated to discovering what really works in online marketing to help our Research Partners, certification program students, and Journal subscribers succeed. So there are very few resources we can point you to.

One notable exception is the award-winning Get Elastic blog written by ecommerce analyst Linda Bustos. Get Elastic provides useful insights about SEO (search engine optimization), usability, analytics, email, shopping cart abandonment, and social media. Linda is also a MarketingExperiments certified optimization professional and knows our methodology inside-out.

Q: I’ve been through your Fundamentals of Online Testing course. You teach about landing page and order page optimization. I was wondering if you have some specific advice/studies where the SEO effectiveness of a campaign was tested (SEO, not paid traffic) because I can’t find any valid way to measure the effectiveness of an SEO campaign.

Regarding testing in which the primary channel is “natural search” or SEO traffic, we do have considerable experience working with companies and organizations for whom SEO is a significant portion of their demand, and we have published some research on the topic. In fact, all of our research is readily available for free in the MarketingExperiments Research Directory.

As you’re already aware, based upon your question, there are a number of challenges associated with the dramatic differences between the key optimization factors over online marketers can control when choosing between PPC (pay per click) and SEO. Specifically, not only is there a relative dearth of information available to search marketers as compared to paid advertising, the search networks are comparatively opaque about their results-positioning algorithms and tend to change them frequently to confound SEO-gamers. Further, the rate at which changes to a site are detected by the networks and “shaken into the mix” is volatile and unpredictable.

Consequently, the MarketingExperiments approach is to evaluate the subject site/page based upon the principles of Offer/Response-Optimization – such as the Conversion Heuristic that you learn in the Landing Page Optimization course – then develop hypotheses about how to improve its performance and test those hypotheses using paid search traffic (which is designed to mirror the motivation profile of their ideal customers through SEO). This provides comparatively rapid and precise evidence about the specific factors of study. Then, those test results are used in concert with the latest SEO-algorithm information to develop the channel-specific page designs and a plan for deploying them to get the largest and most rapid performance gain.

Q: Do you have some advice/case studies about testing the effectiveness of an online service?

For example, a site like Traffic Bug submits your URL to social networks (Connotea, Propeller) automatically and claims that this increases your rankings and indexes your pages.

I want to do a test to see if what they say is true. I would take 10 very obscure pages (to be exact, profile links) that are rarely indexed by Google. I create 10 of those obscure pages on different URLs and do nothing with them. Then I create 10 pages on the same URL and submit them to Traffic Bug. I wait for seven days.

Of course, I make sure everything is satisfied in terms of validity and all that. So I wait for seven days (that’s the first milestone, I then check them again after 30 days but let’s focus on the period after seven days) and then take a look. My sample size is small but what I’m interested in is discovering if this service is highly effective in indexing pages on Google.

So if the first sample (that is not submitted) gets one out of 10 pages indexed and the second sample (which is submitted) gets nine out of 10 pages indexed, and I make sure that this is a valid test (using the MarketingExperiments validation formula from the Fundamentals of Online Testing course), can I assume an online service is very effective?

I wanted to hear your comments on this. What do you think is wrong/right with the above test and what would be some things to do for improvement? Also, do you think that a sample size of 10 is big enough for a test to discover whether an online service has a dramatic effect?

While the approach you described appears sound in principle, you will probably have difficulty actually achieving valid results based upon the circumstances you outlined. And even if the results are valid, they may not really answer your question.

In evaluation of a tool like this, a different approach may serve you better. When building an SEO campaign and links there are other things to consider:

1. Are you sure where all these links are getting posted? Some indexing tools use less-than-kosher link-building strategies that can actually get your domain in trouble with search engine providers. The appearance of link spamming and posting links on flagged sites can cause domains to suffer penalties that can affect the ranking of their sites…occasionally on a permanent basis.
2. Are these links actually driving traffic and revenue? Many indexing services cost money and you need to perform due diligence with an ROI analysis to see if the efforts are recouping their costs.
3. Does the service provide a list of links they have generated for tracking? Not only is this good for tracking but allows you to see the places your links are getting placed. Some business owners consider it (as you should too), important to see the company you are keeping on these sites.  For example, are links to, “Adam’s XXX site” right next to your link or the content on these pages? You can use tools like Yahoo Site Explorer or Google Webmaster Tools to fish out these links, but the service should do this for you.
4. It is important to note that we are not accusing Traffic Bug of doing any of these things, but with any sort of service along these lines you need to do your research first.

From your experience, how would you answer the above questions? Share your advice in the comments section.

Special thanks to Director of Sciences Bob Kemper and Research Analyst Corey Trent for their help in answering these questions.

Marketing Q&A, Practical Application, Research Topics, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

If you’re joining us for this afternoon’s SEO live optimization web clinic, you already know the topic is way too broad for one hour.

Learning the fundamentals of search engine optimization is only step one. Keeping up with the frequent changes, learning and testing the latest best practices, and steering clear of the mountains of misinformation? That’s a full-time effort.

If you’ve been around the block with SEO, you’re already a regular reader of the following sites and tools. Still, when it comes to reliable SEO info, these resources consistently rise to the top of my shortlist.

10 SEO resources you’ll want to bookmark

• SEOMOZ
• SEOBook
• Search Engine Roundtable
• SearchEngineWatch
• SearchEngineLand
• SearchEngineGuide
  
• TopRank Blog’s Resources list and Big List of SEO Blogs
• HubSpot and Website Grader tool

That’s it? Why not an exhaustive list of 400+ SEO sites?

A few reasons: First, TopRank already has a megalist; it’s right up there (thanks, Lee!). Second, from the sources above, you can branch out to any number of free and paid tools and augment your own list based on your experience level, needs, and preferences. And third, if you really have time to regularly read more than a dozen sites on SEO, more power to you and your Google Reader and/or RSS feeds.

Feel free to add your own favorite SEO resources in the comments section.

And check back with the blog as we’ll be following up today’s SEO clinic with responses to the live audience Q&A, additional resources and specific articles, plus our clinic contest winners — some lucky marketers will not only have their pages optimized, they’ll also win seats at our Landing Page Optimization Training Tour.

Clinic Notes, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Site Design

In the third and final installment of our series, our team fields questions about SEO, AdSense, and mirror sites stemming from our March 25th clinic, Optimizing Spanish-language landing pages. (Did you miss part one or part two of this series?)

Q: You suggest working on SEO and mentioned meta tags and keywords. Why? Google does not look at the keyword tag. I am confused.

A: To clarify the answer, while it’s true that Google and most other engines ignore keyword meta tags, the description meta tag still has value with search results. Keywords used not in meta tags, but in page titles and copy, URL strings, links, and other areas should correlate to the meta description whenever feasible. This not only benefits the organic search results, but in tying these areas together, you can see if the content on your pages is framed properly and consistently. That is, if certain keywords seem like a stretch, you might reconsider your copy, call-to-action links, and so on. This can be particularly useful when dealing with pages that feature more than one language, or in the case of Spanish-language pages, where grammar and usage issues may abound.

Q: Does Google Adsense allow you to display ads in a specific language?

A: If you look at the Google AdSense support page, you’ll notice that AdSense will serve relevant ads to pages based on the primary site language, even if the site contains multiple supported languages. This is based on the site’s primary language selected during the application process.

Additionally, users from WebmasterWorld note that ad language also depends heavily on the country of the visitor. Empirically, they report that Dutch language pages attract 50% Dutch and 50% English ads when visited from Holland, and 70% English, 20% German and 10% Russian ads when visited from Kazakhstan.

Q: We have English and Spanish sites that mirror each other except for language. When we modify content on the Spanish site to better target our Hispanic customers we get complaints from the Spanish speaking audience that they are not getting the same content. They perceive that they are receiving different offers and information (they are not). They want the same as what they see in English. Can you speak to this?

A: We would encourage you to investigate thoroughly before making drastic changes in response to a vocal, yet small, segment of the audience. We’ve seen a major online retailer phase out a major site feature because, as it turned out, one person made a lot of noise on the phone with an impressionable customer service supervisor. At the same time, of course, you don’t want to miss the boat and let negative publicity propagate. In fact, a JupiterResearch survey suggested that Hispanic Internet users are more likely than non-Hispanics to use social media for purchasing recommendations.

Your site should try to communicate clearly that the content is modified from the English version for language only, not offers. If you modify the site beyond just the language, you could test offering a link to an “exact Spanish translation” of the English-language site, right next to the link to the English-language site itself. That way, before a visitor ventures to check up on your English-language version, he/she will immediately recognize that there is an exact translation available. (To test this idea before investing in a major site revamp, link to a translated version of the site, as provided by a free translation service, then review the analytics data to see if there is sufficient demand to warrant a full translation.)

When we say during our clinics that we read every comment, we stand by our word. We hope you find these answers helpful and that they might generate further discussion about effective ways to optimize pages for Spanish-language markets. Comments? Additional questions? You know what to do …

Clinic Notes, Marketing Q&A, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Expressing an effective value proposition is one of the biggest keys to conversions. So it’s no surprise that it was a popular topic on day one of our Landing Page Optimization Workshop.

Problem: Most companies still struggle with value propositions.

This is fertile ground for optimization, and we’ll continue to cover it in more depth in our clinics and workshops. But for this post, I want to focus on a distinction that can help clarify two different types of value proposition — and provide compelling tests that you might run with PPC ads, landing pages, SEO, and other marketing channels.

As the image above illustrates, you can focus your value proposition on your company, or on your specific product or service.

In this example, a search for “lap pools” shows the PPC ads and organic search results include a mix of both styles. (Note: What the image doesn’t show is that all of the sidebar PPC ads use product-centric value propositions.)

What’s the difference between types of value propositions, and why is it important?

Product-centric value propositions and company-centric value propositions appeal to different types of searchers, with different motivations and purchase intentions.

So the style you present in your various marketing channels should match the mindset of the prospects in that channel.

In a search for “lap pool”, the copy from the second PPC ad states: “Enjoy a lap pool in your backyard. Spa Trainer also seats 12 adults.” This line focuses exclusively on the product features.

But the copy from the third ad states: “Whatever Your Needs Are, We’ll Do Our Best to Build You a Dream Pool!” In contrast, this copy is all about the company and the lengths it will go to for customer service.

Tailor your value proposition to the fit the searcher

Each of those approaches is likely to appeal to a certain type of users. In many cases, the copy that is product-specific will appeal to prospects just starting their search. Once the prospect has zeroed in on the product he or she wants, their search may shift to other factors, such as customer service or installation options. At that point, the company-centric copy becomes more valuable to the decision.

This works with SEO, too. Look at the top organic result for that search — it’s another company-centric value proposition: “Really EZ Pools offers complete portable pool packages starting at $999. A proud member of the Better Business Bureau and a one-stop source for portable lap …”

The second organic result is product-focused: “You can put your Endless Pools Swimming Pool and Lap Pool just about anywhere. Take a look at Custom Pools by Endless Pools.”

Identify the right style to use with your search campaigns

Can we tell you which style will win hands-down every time? Of course not.

That’s why you should be testing this with your own products/services, customers, and marketing channels. Especially if your PPC ad or SEO results are surrounded by a bunch of similarly focused (and struggling) value propositions.

This is a powerful way to test how your value proposition sets apart your offer and connects with the right prospects, in the right way, at the right time.

Have you tested similar variations with your PPC ads, landing pages, or SEO? Let us know. And look for more on value propositions, including a contest, in the near future …

Marketing Insights, Paid Search Marketing (PPC), Search Engine Optimization (SEO)