Natural Search Marketing Myths Debunked

Search marketing is hot: analysts predict the industry will reach almost $15 billion in marketing spend in 2005, up more than 30% over 2004.

There are two primary flavors of search marketing: paid search, dominated by Google’s and Yahoo’s pay-per-click networks; and natural search, also known as “organic search”, “unpaid search”, or “search engine optimization.” As cost-per-click fees have risen over the last few quarters, marketers have increased their focus on natural search efforts.

To help catalogers improve their online sales, this article examines ten common misconceptions about natural search marketing.

Natural Search Misconception 1: Don’t Try This Yourself At Home

Some natural search experts would have you believe the entire field is shrouded in mystery and insanely complex.

It isn’t.

Yes, gaining top rankings on highly competitive terms takes specialized expertise (“mortgage re-fi”, “New York hotel”, “search engine optimization”).

However, many retailers can gain large improvements in their natural traffic from only modest improvements to their sites, an enjoyable “90-10″ situation.

Tip: Get educated. For a gentle introduction, pick up a copy of the “For Dummies” search engine optimization book (Kent, 2004). You may discover small improvements to your site can yield large improvements in your traffic. If you later decide to bring in a consultant or an agency, you’ll have a much better understanding of what expertise and services you’re buying.

Natural Search Misconception 2: Natural Search Is Free.

While site owners don’t pay per-click fees for natural search traffic, smart marketers find it worthwhile to make some investment in improving their natural search rankings.

How can you spend money on natural search? Most commonly, retailers hire a consultant, hire an agency, purchase training for in-house staff, purchase content, or upgrade their site technology.

Tip: Establish a program, budget, and revenue goals for increasing natural search.

Natural Search Misconception 3: Natural Search Is Expensive

Search marketing is a young field. Prices have yet to stabilize. You can pay consultants or agencies small fortunes for their services. Sometimes this is money well-spent, sometimes not.

How do you know if your pricing is fair? Learn exactly what services you’re buying. Compute a rough hourly cost for this work. Compare this rate to what it would cost to do the work in-house. Compare this rate to what you pay other professional service providers, like outsourced designers, programmers, or accountants.

Paying large fees to outsource large amounts of work can make good business sense. Paying large fees for “secret” information does not (see Misconception #1).

Make sure any contracts you sign have friendly “out” clauses if you don’t see good efforts and results within a reasonable time frame.

Tip: Make sure you know exactly what you are buying, and roughly what you’re paying per hour.

Natural Search Misconception 4: We sell widgets, so winning means ranking #1 for “widget”

Many retailers believe that winning at organic search means gaining the top position on Google for their “hero phrase” – that single word or two that best describes what you sell.

This limited view is wrong for two reasons.

First, you likely face incredible competition for that top spot. For a variety of reasons, your site may not be able to obtain (or even deserve to obtain) the top position for your hero phrase.

Second, this view misses the importance of optimizing the entire site to score high on more specific searches. While individually these more specific searches command far less traffic than your hero phrase, collectively they can equal or surpass the hero phrase in traffic.

Tip: Look beyond optimizing for a few hero phrases. Make every page on your site more search-engine effective.

Natural Search Misconception 5: All that matters is getting the HTML tags right

Yes, it is important to use smart HTML for the search engines. Pay particular attention to your title tags, headlines, and link text. However, other factors are equally important, including inbound links from relevant sites, well-written content, site architecture, page size, load speed, URL structure, and site availability.

Tip: Develop a holistic approach to optimizing your site, focusing on inbound links, content, and markup.

Natural Search Misconception 6: All search agencies are created equal.

They’re not. There are big differences in experience, expertise, staff, and tools among agencies offering search marketing services. How to pick the best agency for your firm? Hire an agency dedicated to search, rather than a general online agency. Check client references carefully. Seek an agency that offers transparency: you should clearly understand the work they’re doing for you, and what you’re paying them to do it.

Tip: If you choose to hire a search marketing agency, select a firm specializing in search.

Natural Search Misconception 7: Sales resulting from natural search should equal the sales from paid search.

Many retailers desperately seek to learn the “correct” ratio between natural and paid search revenues. Sadly, there’s no one correct ratio for all retailers.

The ratio of natural search revenues to paid search revenues could be low for several reasons. It could be you’re doing a poor job with natural search. Or it could be you’re doing a great job with paid search. Or it could be your site, or your merchandise category. Conversely, it could be high for just as many reasons.

As a very general rule of thumb, retailers with both strong natural and strong pay-per-click programs report a ratio of natural search revenues to paid search revenues somewhere between 0.8 and 1.2.

Tip: As a manager, don’t focus on the relative size of the two efforts. Instead, charge your marketing team to grow each program by appropriate percentages this year.

Natural Search Misconception 8: We need natural search optimization “applied” to our site.

Would any cataloger ever say anything like this? “We’ve finished building all the pages for our upcoming catalog; before they go to our printer, we’ll send the pages to our design-and-copy-optimization agency to rebuild them.”

Just as optimizing copy, photography, and layout occur at every point in the print catalog design process, so should decisions regarding natural search optimization occur at every point in your web design process.

Yes, you may have an existing site that performs poorly for natural search, and so need improvements. And making those improvements will require some work for your in-house staff or agency (see Misconception 2).

If you’re like most catalogers, however, your site is constantly evolving. Going forward, make sure all new pages are designed to score well for the engines. It is more efficient to build decent pages in the first place than to suffer ongoing retrofitting.

The key here is training. Your web merchants, writers, designers, and developers can and should understand the rudiments of natural search. They needn’t be experts, but as the 90-10 rule applies, teaching them the basics will pay off handsomely.

Tip: Going forward, train your staff to build search-engine-friendly pages.

Natural Search Misconception 9: If we really get natural search done right, we can turn off our paid programs.

Perhaps. Most likely not.

The relationship between natural search and paid search resembles the relationship between public relations and paid advertising. Both have their role in the smart marketer’s portfolio. Few companies rely solely on one to the exclusion of the other.

Over the long term, I believe it will become increasingly important for catalogers to have strong paid search programs. (Disclaimer: my firm provides paid search marketing services.)

Tip: If your paid search programs are generating true incremental revenue and earnings (do make sure you understand the role your brand name plays in your campaigns), keep them running!

Natural Search Misconception 10: Paid search is dead; long live natural search.

Search engines are not public utilities. They’re for-profit companies and they’re very smart. Most (if not all) of the major engines want to wring as much ad revenue as they can from their traffic.

A rush to embrace natural search by retailers, if taken to the extreme, would represent a threat to the engines’ business model. If enough consumers opted to block paid search ads, or if enough retailers opted out of advertising (both of which are highly unlikely), the engines might respond by blurring the church-state separation between natural and paid search.

Looking into my crystal ball, I predict we’ll see this blurring regardless over the next two years.

Just as the rise of TIVO and other television ad-zappers have led the television networks to generate ad revenue from paid product placement, thus blurring the line between advertising and content on television, so might some of the major engines monetize their natural search traffic via paid-inclusion style programs.

Tip: Keep a close eye on future developments in paid inclusion advertising.

Conclusion

Search marketing presents a great opportunity for catalogers. Don’t rely on paid search alone: if you haven’t invested time or money in your natural search efforts, now is the time to get started. There’s still time to influence this fall’s critical holiday season.

May all your pages rank highly, and may all your visitors buy!