enewton@brightedge.com

M Posted 11 years 6 months ago

t 9 min read

There was much discussion about “SEO vs. PPC” this past year, with many search marketing thought leaders arriving at the same conclusion: they need to learn to get along as one not only complements the other, but improves its performance. As Andy Betts wrote here at the BrightEdge blog, when your organization’s paid and organic search teams are competing rather than collaborating, it makes for a no-win overall in terms of search performance and ROI with redundant - and sometimes counterproductive - efforts.

Heading into the New Year, a more profitable and enlightened enterprise search strategy should consider how to corral paid (PPC) and organic (SEO) team efforts for a greater share in the search engine result pages (SERPs) and smarter resource allocation. So here we thought we’d highlight what search marketers had to say about PPC and SEO in 2014.

Frenemies? How SEO and PPC complete each other

It’s seemingly unavoidable with enterprise-level search firms: one department competes with the other as it hopes to win a bigger slice of the annual budgetary pie in a zero-sum game mindset. Heading up your organization’s search marketing, you’re likely well aware that such divisiveness between your SEO and PPC teams doesn’t serve your bottom line well.

In her recent article for Search Engine Watch, Erin Everhart underscores the need for SEO and PPC “to stop being enemies” as both search strategies contribute to the same conversion funnel. She writes that organic search is a research-based “top-of-the-funnel marketing tactic,” while paid search is an action-based strategy that “targets consumers who are further down your marketing funnel and thus further along in the buying process.” Everhart emphasizes a point made by BrightEdge CEO Jim Yu in his column for Search Engine Land back in June, namely that SEO and PPC is not an “either/or” strategy. He writes:

Most marketers would agree that to be competitive, we do not operate in an either/or environment. It’s not a choice between either SEO or social, or SEO and PPC. It’s a requirement that we understand how these channels work together to impact one another and a website’s ability to stay afloat in the growing search results.

Discussing how SEO and PPC work together for site visits (“clicks”) and conversions, Jim refers to research from Google at Search Engine Land, which shows the synergy of the two search strategies. According to the search giant, even for brands that position first in organic SERP rankings, paid ads provide a hefty 50 percent in incremental clicks - meaning that half of the No. 1 site’s visits would not have occurred in the absence of PPC ads. The contribution of PPC to organic SERP incremental clicks increases even more for listings No. 2 and lower, as detailed by Google in its study (noted above).

On the flip side, SEO informs PPC with page-level metrics such as Web traffic, conversion rates and revenue. Crispin Sheridan also recently addressed how SEO helps PPC strategy in his article for ClickZ, writing, “the need for content creation in SEO provides PPC with more landing pages to satisfy the intent of the user. Learning what content is most effective through SEO can provide PPC with new avenues for growth.”

Sheridan also discusses how PPC can inform SEO via immediate results, noting that the “time advantage” of PPC allows for the testing of keywords and “phrase matches” that drive Web traffic, leading to the creation of content that bolsters SEO. He further notes, “having your company displayed in both paid and organic results can be an indicator of trust to a user.” Google Analytics (GA) provides a multi-channel funnel report that shows what channel contributed to your firm’s conversions, including SEO, PPC and social media. Tapping into Google AdWords data here at BrightEdge, we can further determine:

• Which of your Web pages have a better Quality Score.
• The keywords on which of your site pages have the best Quality Score.
• How users “judge” your Web pages via metrics such as bounce and exit rates, as well as time on page.

We hope this post assists you going forward with a healthy, integrated picture of how SEO and PPC work together for search strategy!  

Anonymous

M Posted 11 years 6 months ago

t 9 min read

Many people I know have been asking me about what life is really like post-grad, and I can say it’s pretty great. There are a lot of factors that have put me in an ideal situation. I thought I’d share a little about the transition between college, “real life,” and a few lessons I’ve learned in between.

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity” - Seneca

This is the most important lesson I’ve learned so far. Essentially, you can’t always predict what’s going to happen to you, but you can prepare yourself to handle the situations as they arise and position yourself for potential success. Here are three lessons:

1. Do your homework

I had a slightly different job search than a lot of my friends. For starters, I was convinced I was going to work in entertainment. But, after a few internships at big-name entertainment companies, I realized it wasn't for me. Personally, I needed more upwards mobility, more room for growth and industry disruption, and immediate financial returns on my work. I also wanted to be located in San Francisco for a variety of reasons, and I can now say it’s probably the coolest city to live in. So, I made a checklist of the ideal post-grad job with a lot of these requirements and headed to the job fair. There, I found BrightEdge by total accident. But, after doing a little homework, I realized it was the ideal opportunity: late-stage start-up with both financial stability and an impressive Year on Year growth; industry leader; lean operation; TONS of opportunity for growth; very competitive salary; The perfect storm. But I wouldn't have made it here without a little leap, which brings me to my next point.

2. Trust your gut

I’ll be frank, I had some options coming out of school. No guarantees by any means but very strong leads. But, for the reasons above, I decided to gun for BrightEdge full force. Despite the pretty quantifiable benefits that I’d done homework on, there was something about the atmosphere that drew me. The work hard play hard mentality. The close mentor-ship between senior BrightEdger's and the new guys. And a competitive environment that was more friendly and supportive than cutthroat and discouraging. Most importantly, though, were the people.

I wouldn't be at this company if it weren't for the people I work with every day. It’s an incredible team of similarly-minded twenty-somethings who are fun, outgoing and interesting. Not only do we grind it out on the floor but we know that it’s okay to have a beer after hitting goal or cut a little loose at the end of a good week with some happy hour. Together we celebrate when things are good, and support each other when it’s just been one of those days. I couldn’t ask for a better group of coworkers.

3. Work hard

This goes without saying but is important to address nonetheless. Regardless of where you go, what profession you pursue, hard work is necessary for success. At BrightEdge, specifically, it’s incredibly important. This is a company that is a get-out-what-you-put-in kind of place. Not only is it extremely noticeable when you’re constantly staying late (I’ve had a lot of conversations with our CEO Jim as the cleaning crew is coming through), but you get immediate financial returns on your work. The equation is simple: the more you work hard, the more successful you are and the more money you make - end of story. Plus, given the fast-paced nature of the sales team, you know that if you can succeed here - if you can develop the good habits early - you can probably succeed anywhere. I know that these are all a little cliche and easier said than done, but they work. At the end of the day, you can’t control luck or the ‘breaks’ that you get--but you can control how you prepared you are to handle them. And, in my experience, there’s no better place than BrightEdge to do just that.  

A BrightEdger

M Posted 11 years 6 months ago

t 9 min read

It’s a wonderful time of the year here at BrightEdge and we want to help make your holiday season merry and bright. And what’s merrier than receiving more data, available in more ways, on a global basis? We can’t think of anything. In partnership with our clients we’re fortunate to be the global leader in enterprise SEO. We now employ over 300 employees, across seven offices around the world. We invest where our customers are, their success is our success. With this release we’re excited to announce we’ve expanded the Data Cube Coverage to also include France and Japan which adds to our existing coverage in the US, UK, Australia, and Germany.  

What is the Data Cube?

The BrightEdge Data Cube is a massive content repository, and the industry’s largest data set, made up of billions of pieces of information which include: keywords, search terms, rich media, and content, along with its web performance metrics. BrightEdge processes over 100 terabytes of data each week. We do so because we realize today’s marketers need a massive data set to be able to understand their entire organic search footprint and take action based on that data. With the Data Cube you also have a view into your content performance score. With the Data Cube Score you have access to our powerful content performance rating to understand your potential site traffic.

You can also see performance over time with the Data Cube Time Machine, and understand what content has performed well historically. Together, the insights from Data Cube Score and Data Cube Time Machine are delivered as comprehensive, lightning fast, actionable intelligence, that help marketers set budgetary priorities for content development and marketing.

Access the power of the Data Cube in Page Reporting

With Secure Search we added capabilities to calculate estimated keyword values (revenue, conversions, visits) for a given page to help customers restore partial keyword visibility. Page Reporting also shows Actual keyword value. Additionally, we enabled customers to “Discover Keywords” that drive traffic to their page by leveraging our BrightEdge index (monthly and quarterly). In our Holiday Release, the “Discover Keywords” functionality now pulls data directly from the Data Cube. Pulling data directly from the Data Cube allows you to quickly access a larger data source that is updated more frequently, providing you with the freshest, most accurate data possible for your keyword discovery.  

Mobile & desktop site audit enhancements

Our gift to you this season is adding features that help users really up their search marketing game. We’ve continued to keep you ahead in mobile as mobile market share continues to increase. Our mobile research shows that tablets and smartphones now make up 35% of organic traffic. With new mobile Site Audit Enhancements, you can now perform more sophisticated analysis of your websites.

How site audit works

Site Audit ensures your site is healthy by doing the heavy lifting and identifying various SEO issues across different page types, and of course, telling you how to fix them. We’ve added six new Site Audit rules alerting you to problems that may be affecting your search performance. 

As always, we’re focused on keeping you ahead of the changes in search. With new Site Audit rules added to Mobile/Desktop Site Audit we help you comply with Google’s best practices, and keep you ahead in mobile.

Voice of customer – two new features

With our Voice of Customer program we’ve taken our commitment to customer success to the next level by enabling customers to submit ideas through our new Feature Ideas Portal. Through our features ideas portal, we’ve built new features you’ve asked for including streamlined data exports, and enhanced task management. With BrightEdge Tasks & Workflow we’ve added new functionality that enables you to easily identify completed work for a given reporting and associate that completed work with other performance metrics reports. You can also align the new features with how you are organizing your teams and allocating your task recommendations.

ssharma@brightedge.com

M Posted 11 years 6 months ago

t 9 min read

Having data that tells you exactly where your web traffic is coming from is an absolutely essential part of successfully running a website. The ability to see exactly what types of marketing initiatives are driving the best results can be the difference between a massively popular vs any largely forgotten website. Of course, with “not provided” it isn’t as simple as using Google Analytics to see which search terms are driving the most traffic. While those secure search terms might currently be the drivers of traffic to your website, the Internet is a rapidly-changing place, with new websites cropping up to compete for your traffic every single day. On top of that, Google’s search algorithm is constantly being updated, all but guaranteeing massive shifts in how search queries generate SERPS.

Analytics is the source of truth

Every time Google comes out with a new search algorithm, SEO marketers and webmasters alike are reminded of how important having robust analytics data truly is. It is simply not possible for anyone trying to earn top levels of web traffic to assume that what works one year will work the next, or for that matter, that what works one month will work the next. With the recent launch of Google’s new “Pigeon” algorithm, everyone was once again reminded of this very important lesson. Google provides webmasters with a robust suite of tools that make it easier to learn what works and what doesn’t.

How to utilze Google Webmaster Tools within the BrightEdge platform

The Google Webmaster Tool is free-to-use and connects to your website to provide a vast amount of useful information. Perhaps the most useful information it provides is “search query data”. Search query data is exactly what it sounds like: detailed information about the search queries that Google users typed in before landing on your website. Search query data will show you exactly how many total search queries returned your webpage, as well as the specific queries that were used to generate that number. Just as important, search query reports will provide exactly how many clicks your website received after being shown on a SERP, and the clickthrough rate (or CTR), which is just the percentage of times your website was clicked after being shown on the SERP. Finally, Google’s search query reports will tell you exactly what your website’s position is on the SERP. For those concerned with SEO (which is likely to be almost everyone reading this), knowing your SERP position, as well as knowing how it changes (hopefully higher) over time, is truly a gold mine of useful information. Google’s Webmaster Tools also allow users to take the search query reports and drill even further into the data. For example, one obvious use is filtering for only search queries that contain a specific word or phrase, or only search queries from a specific form factor (such as a smartphone or a desktop).

However, despite all of these great features, one feature that is sorely lacking in Google Webmaster Tools is the ability to look at data that is more than 90 days old.

Why do you need data that is older than three months?

While Google certainly does provide a robust suite of services within their Webmaster Tools, the fact of the matter is that any webmaster or SEO marketer worth their salt knows that they need access to more than just the last 90 days of data. For some, the solution is to manually copy down the information into an Excel file every month. Not only is this tedious and a waste of time, but it prevents them from using a user-friendly interface to analyze and extrapolate from the data. Google comes out with a new search algorithm frequently, and being able to compare specific data points can be crucial to developing effective SEO content and driving up SERP positioning.

BrightEdge solves the problem of 90-day data

The BrightEdge S3 platform solves the 90-day search query data limitation as all historical search query data is stored within the platform, for use at any time in the future. Instead of being limited to just 90 days of data, or being forced to slave over an Excel spreadsheet every month, BrightEdge clients can access the wealth of information and insights that long-term search query data can provide.  

The importance of understanding what search queries are driving traffic is one of the most powerful tools available to webmasters and SEO marketers. With the BrightEdge S3 platform, that tool’s power is magnified many times over.