I enjoyed participating on the Local marketing panel at The Local Social conference sponsored by Advice Interactive Group. My fellow panelists shared great insights on the convergence of search, social, mobile and local marketing. And the keynotes by Mike Grehan, CMO of Acronym and Larry Kim, founder of Wordstream, were outstanding. Be sure to follow both of those gents on twitter.
My design team does the best work in our space. Check out the work in process on this graphic for our Modern SEO ebook. I’ll post the final colorized piece when it’s done.
The "Bad" – not running paid search ads on your business name
I saw this great article in Search Engine Land yesterday which dovetails perfectly with my prior post. While my colleague Nathan Hanks put forth the logical business reasons to "own" your name by bidding on your brand keywords, David Roth gives a semi-scientific way to prove the value. He recommends that you run a test site visits both with and without the PPC ad for your brand name and then determine the cannibalization/lift that is caused by using the text ad. Here's his definition:
“Lift” is the net amount of
traffic that is added to the mix by virtue of the PPC ad.
Cannibalization is the portion of PPC ad traffic that comes at the
expense of the organic link. If you can quantify cannibalization and
lift in any situation, you can then begin to think intelligently about
what to do.
It sounds like the research proves the value since David says he was ecstatic with the results of his test.
The "Bad" – not running paid search ads on your business name
Check out this blog post by my colleague Nathan Hanks over at Local Online Marketing Gumbo who answers the question many businesses ask "Should I bid on my own business name?"
A quick excerpt below…
When it comes to search engine marketing, bidding on business
category keywords (ex: “Dallas spa”) is a must if you want your
business to show up in a paid ad when someone is looking for your kind
of products or services. But it’s just as important to bid on your
business name keywords (ex: “Sally’s Swanky Spa”). Here are some
reasons why:
It’s your business name – so why pay for it? Because your
competitors are! According to Performics, leading brands only receive
87% of traffic from their business name keyword searches. The remaining
13% are “poached” by competitors!* That’s because they know that when
your customers search for your business, they have an opportunity to
snatch the sale straight out of your hands with a well-worded sponsored
ad. Don’t give them the chance.
Check out Nate's blog for the other important reasons why you should bid on your name.
