Last Thursday, I spoke at the Search Engine Strategies
conference in San Jose on the topic of advanced paid search techniques. I thought it was a lively
discussion and that each of the panelist brought a unique perspective to help
marketers take their paid search campaigns to the next level.
I focused my discussion on three areas: 1) Utilizing search
query reports; 2) Mining the long tail and 3) Seasonality.
First, marketers use their search query reports effectively
to improve ROI through search term performance management. Marketers need to comb
their reports to understand which search terms are matching to their broad
match keywords and refine their terms accordingly. By sorting the report, marketers can expand
their keywords, add exact match types and expand their list of negative
keywords to focus on improving overall ROI.
Next, I discussed the importance of mining the long tail that
systematically exposes under explored keywords to uncover each keyword’s full
ROI characteristics. It also
reduces the revenue reliance on top keywords and expands it down the
funnel. Also, by using
mathematical modeling techniques, marketers can cluster keywords to maximize
exposure efforts and understand the relevance between various keywords. Understanding semantic similarities
helps utilize click and conversion data across like keywords.
Finally, marketers can deploy the above techniques along
with looking at historical data to determine if there are any seasonal trends
that they should use to bid specific terms up or down based on data from
previous years. Marketers
can save money and maximize ROI by following these trends more closely.
All in all, I thought it was an informative panel and I hope
the audience learned some valuable tricks of the trade to take home with them.
Bill Lan, Vice President of Account Development
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