Benchmarketing… kind of a catch phrase really… It’s a topic that I like to use since search engine optimization (seo) is a topic of hot debate as well as the costs associated with it. A good SEM Campaign, make no mistake, first starts with Benchmarketing against yourself using the following metrics: impressions, clicks and CTR, leads and money spent, in order to determine the cost per click (CPC), total cost of the SEM campaign and the return on investment. Honestly, the search engine optimization marketing is competitive and benchmarketing against competitors leads the way using the following metrics: Coverage, share of the market, share of the costs to market, overall costs and of course ROI… we love ROI.
There are a number of items you can benchmarket your site and your company against, but I believe that none are more important than natural search verses paid traffic. According to ComScore qSearch data, the total traffic from paid and organic varies from 5% paid/95% Organic all the way up to 50/50 and more tilted towards paid. The average across all categories is about 89% of search traffic is organic. Car rental actually gets 54% of its traffic from paid search. This is very useful data on an aggregate/category level. Considerations include weighing the proportion of natural versus paid against the absolute volume.
In any case, when dealing with thousands and tens of thousands of keywords, so many things to consider. Even as deep as the delicate balancing act between PR teams and sales. So: used a centralized organizational structure for all search program management. They set up best practices, then moved on to tactical SEO and SEM execution, followed by establishing the reporting and analytics software framework. Also, then line up search with other marketing efforts… The Intel Viiv press release resulted in 15,000% more Google searches! He ends up with two quotes: Andrew Lang “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts – for support rather than illuminations.” Sherlock Holmes: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data…”
What does this mean? Marketing is changing, and online is going to continue to be a larger percentage of the overall mix. Measurement becomes that much more important. Must use solid data to make sensible decisions.
Contact 92 West for additional information on how you can optimize your website and become a top competitor through not only pay-per-click campaigns, but through natural search as well.
Best wishes!
