Paid & Organic Search Trends – 41 key insights

Apr 1, 2014 | Search Engine Marketing (PPC), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

FIRST Process Diagram v2-07

FIRST on Paid & Organic Search

  1. An average of 12.8% of mobile searches result in a conversion, 5.3% call a business. Sounds like there is still a lot of scope to increase usage of the AdWords click-to-call ad template. (Source: adwords.blogspot.co.nz)
  2. As a retailer, should you be running AdWords even if your website is not mobile optimised..? – Consider this sobering stat: “82% of (in-store) smartphone shoppers use mobile search to help make purchase decisions” (Source: googlemobileads.blogspot.co.uk)
  3. We’d say this is bigger news than people realise. Google CPC Email will extend person-specific search re-targeting on a massive scale. (Source: news.cnet.com)
  4. EA Battlefield (3?) gaming case study: “After cutting television’s share from 80% to half and boosting spending on video and paid search, sales of the new version jumped by 23%.” (Source: economist.com)
  5. The AdWords auction insights report now runs across groups of Keywords, Ad Groups or Campaigns, revealing “how often your competitors’ ads are appearing above yours, or whether one of your competitors has a higher impression share than you.” (Source: adwords.blogspot.co.nz)
  6. Improve paid search performance with Facebook ads: Kenshoo study shows a 30% lift in ROAS and a 4.5% drop in CPA for paid search audience segment also exposed to Facebook ads. (Source: searchenginewatch.com)
  7. Yep, successful PPC requires a focus on specificity and granularity, as well as regular text ad changes. (Source: searchenginejournal.com)
  8. Fairfax SEM case study from the FIRST team. (Source: firstdigital.co.nz)
  9. Great. This will push up CTRs nicely. (Source: searchengineland.com)
  10. Check your Quality Score KW level reporting for better context on how to improve QS. Note: Ads not affected, reporting change only. (Source: adwords.blogspot.co.nz)
  11. Google Product Listing Ads accounted for over 14.7% of total paid search spend in Dec 12 (Adobe, US). (Source: ppchero.com)
  12. AdWords Remarketing Best Practice #5: Create Custom Combinations. For example, incentivise a return visit for those consumers who added a product to their basket, but did not complete the checkout process. (Source: verticalleap.co.uk)
  13. AdWords dynamic remarketing is an absolute must for e-com sites: Retarget prospects who have viewed a specific product, with a display ad for that exact same product, across the entire product catalogue – dynamically (display ad builder). (Source: wordstream.com)
  14. 2012 avg. CTR for smartphones 107 percent higher than desktops… – This will be quite different for 2013 given the recent mobile-on-by-default change for AdWords. (Source: m.clickz.com)
  15. The new AdWords mobile bid multiplier can be turned up X percent of your desktop bid for high-value keywords in the right location at the right time (mobile). (Source: venturebeat.com)
  16. The study doesn’t really address SEM performance, but interesting to see the clear links to weather. A bit more background on the data sources would have been useful. (Source: searchengineland.com)
  17. E-com post-transaction retargeting of existing customers is now possible for Google search ads also, no longer just GDN. (Source: adwords.blogspot.co.nz)
  18. Marin Q4 report puts Australia at the top for highest percentage of clicks from mobile devices: 26% from smartphones and tablets (combined). (Source: marketingmag.com.au)
  19. The new AdWords Keyword Planner appears to make setup even easier, but don’t forget about AdWords Editor – useful for fast copy-paste account structuring. (Source: searchengineland.com)
  20. Google’s structured data mark-up tool has been given new powers: This rich snippet data highlighter can now handle articles, events, local businesses, movies, products, software applications and TV episodes. (Source: searchengineland.com)
  21. Good intro to SEO for business owners. (Source: moz.com)
  22. Hotels, check your Google+ Local Page! (Source: searchengineland.com)
  23. With respect to organic search keyword [not provided] we’d have to agree with this statement: “If it really meant the explanation given about privacy, they [Google] not only wouldn’t be giving up paid keyword data, but also could have found a sensible middle ground of what to share instead of removing it all.” (Source: econsultancy.com)
  24. GA organic search keyword (not provided) to approach 100% by end of year (Conductor, US). (Source: venturebeat.com)
  25. BeyondD’s Group GM Jon Ostler interviewed by ABC’s Four Corners. (Source: abc.net.au)
  26. Organic position #1 drives 33% of total clicks of top 15. Sites listed on the first Google search results page generate 92% of all traffic from an average search (Chitika, US/CA data). (Source: chitika.com)
  27. Read this slowly: “According to a survey of over 72 Million customers shopping on 86 retail sites, Email is the number 3 source of customer acquisition.” (Custora, June 13). (Source: marketingland.com)
  28. The FTC has sent another batch of letters to search engines re-emphasising the continued need for “visual cues, labels, or other techniques to effectively distinguish advertisements, in order to avoid misleading consumers”. We’d say that’s a good thing. (Source: getpocket.com)
  29. Customer acquisition via email has quadrupled over the last 4 years: An increasing number of e-com retailers are using lead gen tactics to acquire email addresses, and then converting these into paying customers (Custora). (Source: blog.custora.com)
  30. Non-paid search continues to be the primary way people find websites (Forrester, US/CA, n=30,000+). (Source: marketingcharts.com)
  31. Google Now has been released on iOS. (Source: searchengineland.com)
  32. Good outline of how to maximise exposure for YouTube videos. In addition, consider Promoted Videos via AdWords. TrueView will ensure only actual views are payable; optimise for max views at min CPV. (Source: clickz.com)
  33. Search is substantially better at driving e-commerce traffic than any other digital channel, especially social. (Source: marketingcharts.com)
  34. Ignoring Google+ is not an option: “Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification” – Schmidt. (Source: searchenginejournal.com)
  35. You might have heard of Caffeine, Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird. But do you remember Jagger, Big Daddy and Vince? (Source: blog.hubspot.com)
  36. Tip #5 for scaling content marketing: Focus on discovery by establishing your brand as an authority on community sites. (Source: kaiserthesage.com)
  37. For this to yield any meaningful results you will need to be seriously disciplined and also work with a large enough team to execute control tactics vs test group simultaneously. Not for the faint-hearted… (Source: blog.kissmetrics.com)
  38. Social signals correlation with higher search rankings continues to increase. (Source: searchmetrics.com)
  39. If you want to know what “SEO” looks like these days, this is a good summary. (Source: searchenginewatch.com)
  40. Some serious link baiting going on here. (Source: nzherald.co.nz)
  41. Google rejects over 30% of information requests the Australian government makes. (Source: google.com)