This Is Crazy But Search Me ... Definitely

So this is crazy but did you know there are things called search engines and people use them to find things? 


Did you know "Google" is in the Oxford English Dictionary? In Spanish it's "Googlear?" I have a B.A. in English; I get excited about things like the OED. 

*Side note* I recommend the book, The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary. It's riveting!


Seriously though, Internet Ad Sales and Search Engine Marketing/Optimization (SEM/SEO) is becoming an increasingly important part of marketing. More than half of respondents to a 2013 eMarketer survey said that search engines and keywords were "more" or "much more important" than the prior year.

This thinking is detailed by the fact that 57% of marketers make use of SEO daily. SEO is not performed in a vacuum though and the social and content marketing factors play a large role in search engine marketing. The combined efforts of search engine marketing with its native results and search engine optimization with sponsored results are proving increasing invaluable to the public in their searches for anything airline tickets to video games.

In a recent article, Jennifer Van Iderstyne wrote an article with her take on SEO and the growing emphasis on content marketing, focusing less on the short tail and increasingly on the long tail. She believes that focusing on the longer keywords and keyword groups that are less popular than the more direct keywords will prove as effective in your SEO strategy. 

“If you actually delve into your potential for phrases that don’t have five figure search volume, you may find that you’re just outside the Top 10 or Top 20 for a number of phrases that you’ve just never thought about. The opportunity to perform better for those phrases is real with a little effort and the right strategy.” 

Winning multiple keywords with less competition, thus cheaper cost, can reach the customers who are looking for your product or don't know they want it until it shows up in their results. The ad services of the search engines have started to facilitate this by allowing purchase of not just individual keywords or phrases but keyword groups. Here is a shot from Google's AdWords. While doing research for a group project I came across this Google Adwords page for Bioshock Infinite. Notice these keyword groups all have low competition allowing for possible better ROI.

Compare the following screenshots. 

*Note* I searched for these terms while in Incognito.

The first screen shot I took from a google search for "Bioshock Infinite." This is a highly anticipated game being released soon from Irrational Games and Take Two Interactive Entertainment. 

The product name of a title will definitely be one of the top searches and costly, but a necessity. 

You'll notice that all the "above the fold" results are about the product. To the left are organic search results linking to the game website, the wikipedia page and news items. To the right are sponsored results for various items you can purchase related to the game.

Now look at the next two screenshots. The search terms, "Songbird" and "new infinite" are related to the game but not top terms and aren't combined with the word "Bioshock." You'll see that if you had purchased these terms you would still manage to gain results on the first page and above the fold. Neither of these results link to the main game webpage but to the Bioshock Wiki and to a gaming news site. 

If Take Two or Irrational had optimized the game's webpage for not just the popular, short tail search terms but also the more obscure long tail, they could have replaced these posts and reached more customers. 

It all boils down to remembering that sometimes the "slow and low" - many cheaper, low-competition keywords - method of SEO and digital marketing can earn you as many impressions and sales as blowing your SEO budget on one or two expensive, high-competition keywords.