Relevancy is what Matters in SEM	Visited: 1828 4.6/5.0 (13 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Michael McVeigh May 12, 2008

Relevancy is both the most critical and most misunderstood aspect of today’s changing advertising landscape. Advertisers who engage their customers with the most relevant message, at the most relevant time, and in the most relevant manner, are rewarded with the greatest return on their marketing investment. Rising CPCs or CPMs are an afterthought for advertisers who enjoy declining costs of sale. And when you sell more at less expense, the price paid is academic.

In many ways, Search Engine Marketing is the clearest lens by which we view this trend. Each day, millions of searchers query their favorite engine in search of what they seek at that moment, while dozens or hundreds of advertisers bid in auction on that searcher’s query. In an instant, we find the advertiser at the top of the page who won the most prominent position by being among the most relevant – and not necessarily the highest bidder.

Because relevancy is now king in search algorithms, searchers are increasingly finding their needs met with fewer clicks. Still, it is evident that many industry observers do not understand the underlying lesson to be learned here.

Among those who missed the point recently were investors who recoiled from Google shares in April based on a story from ComScore, which had reported a decline in paid search ad clicks on Google versus the same period last year. Yes, a decline had occurred, but few asked the question, “Are advertisers paying more for those clicks?” Maybe investors assumed that if advertisers had been paying more for clicks, we all would be hearing many more complaints.

You probably know the rest of the story, and if you own Google stock, you certainly do! When Google issued its earnings report on April 18th, its stock immediately climbed 20 percent on strong revenue. It turns out that Google had been doing an increasingly better job in monetizing search results by expanding its network and serving only the most relevant ads.

Meanwhile, advertisers are continuing to realize strong returns on their investments in SEM. Paid search is a performance driven medium. If traffic quality increases while site-side efficiencies smooth a consumer’s path to conversion, then increasing costs per click are of less importance. In the end, the advertiser is acquiring more business at a reduced cost. This does not occur unless an advertiser is as relevant to the customer as possible.

With this in mind, I’d like to share with you some best practices that our agency employs to achieve and sustain relevant communication with customers.

• Serve the ads that make you the most money: Test and measure your ad copy, not just your keywords, to conversion. The messaging in your ad copy can often have a profound effect in attracting more qualified or unqualified clicks. Note that the default setting for ad rotation offered by SE’s is to serve an ad group’s highest CTR ads most often. This practice always benefits the search engine, but will benefit you less if you have not weeded out ad copy that underperforms in conversions. Track ad performance all the way, and just like Google, you may find how to drive more revenue on fewer clicks!

• Keywords are just the tip of the search query iceberg: Advertise the keyword ‘bicycle’ on broad match and you could very well serve for searches on the terms bike, bicycle helmet, and even moped or motorcycle. If your analytics only shows you the rolled up performance of ‘bicycle’, than you are bidding the same price on all those terms.

• Landing page is destiny: Always route searchers to the most relevant page to their search. Your visitors will convert more frequently, and the search engine’s own spiders will be less likely to penalize your quality score, which can cost you higher CPC’s for poorer ad positions.

• Speak your customer’s language: Message your ad creative to align with the way your customers are thinking about your product or services. For ideas on this, try looking to the blogosphere and read what customers are writing on related topics. Services like Zeta Interactive’s RelevantNoise make this easy to track and review.

• Understand that brand searches don’t occur in a vacuum: Your brand name probably delivers the highest Return on Ad Spend you’ll find in paid search. But don’t overlook the valuable marketing dollars you spent to encourage your customer to think of your brand first. For example, if you own JoesCamera.com, you probably know how many customers purchase from you after searching ‘Joes Camera’. But how many of those visited your site a little while earlier on the keyword ‘digital camera’? The visitor you thought was a returning customer, actually never heard of your brand until earlier today.

• Stay relevant with retention marketing: Acquiring customers on competitive generic keywords is expensive. Help those customers keep your brand top of mind with an integrated email program and you won’t have to pay to win them twice.