Discovering the Hidden Payoffs of Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing has many payoffs, and due to the measurability of the medium, most of these benefits are fairly obvious. Optimize your site and watch your organic rankings increase, driving more site traffic. Launch a pay-per-click campaign and see what kind of click-through rate and conversion rate you generate. Track leads, sales and revenue as they climb. Measure the return on investment from search and observe its positive impact on your bottom line. It's a beautiful thing.

But is there more to search marketing than meets the eye? Are there hidden payoffs? Is it not enough to get the Ginsu® knives - dare we expect the all-purpose shears as well?

Arm yourself with a good web analytics software program and you will indeed find yourself exclaiming, "But wait, there's more!"

In working with Covente, a B2B sales lead generation company, we identified three hidden payoffs from their search marketing campaign - benefits that most websites using search engine optimization and pay-per-click have most likely also experienced. All it takes is a little digging through your web analytics and you'll be able to prove it too.

Documented increase in brand awareness. While many articles and studies recently have discussed the powerful brand-building effect of search marketing, it's always exciting to see it with your own two eyes for a specific website. Before we optimized Covente's site, we ran a pay-per-click campaign for a month on a variety of search terms we were considering targeting with SEO. (Running PPC test campaigns is a great way to ensure that you're selecting the best terms for SEO - the real-time data it generates is priceless.)

The PPC test ran from mid-May to mid-June 2005. In May, there were 73 visitors that came to the site after running a search on Covente's brand name. This number climbed steadily through June and July, peaking in August at 146, or exactly double what it had been in May.

Here's what we believe happened. While the PPC campaign was running, numerous prospective customers ran searches using non-brand terms such as "sales lead generation," "business prospect list," etc. Here, they saw our paid listings for Covente (the site had not been optimized yet, so it didn't yet appear in organic results for these terms). Since buyers of Covente's services typically take a couple of months to finalize their purchase decision, while they were doing their due diligence and making their case internally, they'd return to Covente's site by doing navigational searches, that is, by typing "Covente" into the search box.

Prominent placement for organic searches we never even thought of. With SEO, we carefully chose a number of well-researched search terms that we used to optimize the site. We also, of course, ensured that the site is as search engine-friendly as possible. We've seen over and over again that, in addition to gaining high rankings for our targeted terms, we also increase visibility for search terms we weren't targeting. That's the benefit of having a content-rich, search engine-friendly site with healthy link popularity.

In Covente's case, during November 2004 - March 2005 (prior to the site being optimized), on average, 29 unique search terms each month were used to find the site. We optimized the site for 19 specific terms in October 2005. During November 2005 - March 2006, on average, 112 unique search terms each month were used to find the site. The site is being found for nearly four times as many terms as it was before optimization, and nearly six times as many terms as we are specifically targeting.

More targeted traffic...more qualified visitors. Being found for search terms that we weren't targeting is only a payoff if those search terms accurately describe Covente's offerings and drive targeted traffic. Here, we are not only driving more traffic through SEO, we're also driving better quality traffic, as measured by time spent on the site. Presumably, the more time visitors spend on the site, the more engaged they are and the more content they're consuming.

Using the same year-over-year time periods as we did above for a "seasonality-free" comparison, we found that during November 2004 - March 2005 (again, pre-optimization), the average visitor to Covente's site stayed four and a half minutes. After the site was optimized, during November 2005 - March 2006, the average visitor stayed seven minutes and twenty seconds, a 70% increase in time spent on site.

Increased brand awareness...higher visibility for scores of search terms...more targeted traffic...what's not to love? It can take a bit of time to uncover hidden payoffs of search marketing like these, but when you add them to the more obvious benefits you're already tracking, you'll get an even truer idea of the ROI your search marketing efforts are generating.

Act now...dig into those web analytics and you too can find buried treasure even more valuable than a Pocket Fisherman® or Mr. Microphone®!

About Us

Prominent Placement, Inc., is a full-service, award-winning Atlanta search engine optimization company founded in 2001. Nationally recognized as a leader in its field, Prominent Placement consistently demonstrates its foresight to rapidly adapt and stay ahead of an ever-evolving search marketing industry. Prominent Placement provides comprehensive programs incorporating the strategic use of organic search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, local search marketing, Internet Yellow Pages, press release optimization, linking, online reputation management and SEM en Español.

The company's selective client roster spans multiple industries with numerous mid-size, growth-oriented businesses located in the Southeastern United States that value high impact results, and are well-focused, niche-oriented concerns. Prominent Placement distinguishes itself from the competition by its extensive marketing background and the ability to provide superior service through client collaboration and education.

For more information contact us at 888.SEM.MKTR (888.736.6587)