There are many online marketing tactics you can employ to drive traffic to your website or brand profile, but you can’t underestimate the importance of keywords.

In paid search, choosing the right keywords can be the difference between a campaign that delivers results at a great ROI and a campaign that just costs you money; in search engine optimisation (SEO), choosing the right keywords can help you to achieve search engine rankings, resulting in increased visitors from natural search results, and increased sales; and on your blog, compelling headlines that are keyword-rich have the potential to attract many more visitors than just compelling headlines by themselves.

All of this means choosing the right keywords is absolutely crucial when building links to your website. In fact, in the 2009 SEOmoz Search Ranking Factors survey, the number one factor as agreed by SEO experts was ‘Keyword-focused anchor text from external links’.

We know that many things can drive external links, including press releases and articles: so do your press release and article headlines contain appropriate keywords, and are these also included in the content? Are you using keywords in your social profile links and signatures? And have you thought about how important keywords are in other areas?

If optimised correctly for the right keywords, YouTube videos can also appear in the search results for relevant phrases and more people will find the video via a search on YouTube. Are you generating as many viewers by including relevant keywords in the video title, description and in the assigned tags? If not, you may not be leveraging this media as much as possible.

Real-time results such as those from Twitter are also now included in the search results. If you are in a competitive industry, this offers another opportunity to be seen in the search results for relevant phrases.

The use of brand keywords is absolutely essential for online reputation management success in the search engines. And by including keywords in social profiles and leveraging those profiles, you can increase the number of positive results for brand-based keyword searches.

Keywords are of extreme importance in so many ways. So it’s important to take advantage of these opportunities to optimise and increase results.

Grant Osborne, First Rate’s Director of Strategy & Performance, will expand on this topic at the Social Media Junction event on 17 May.

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Insurance is one of the most competitive industries in the New Zealand online space.

This is demonstrated by the high visibility scores achieved in both natural and paid search, as well as the high CPCs Adwords is commanding for various terms – up to $25 per click for the top placement according to Google’s Keyword Tool!

First Rate’s third insights report into the New Zealand insurance industry in the last 12 months highlights a number of trends:

• Some organisations appear to be getting more advanced in their use of Adwords, reducing focus on generic terms.
• The high CPCs are forcing organisations to look to SEO as a more cost-effective acquisition channel.
• With hundreds of thousands of relevant online searches, there exists a significant business opportunity for search marketing to be used as both an acquisition and a retention tool – and many companies are now seizing this opportunity.
• Incredibly, there are still large organisations that have almost entirely failed to either grasp, or indeed exploit, the online opportunity. This allows their competition to gain market share unopposed. Of these, Vero is the most puzzling, scoring an incredible 0% visibility not just for paid search, but for natural search also.
• The gap between those who are “getting” the online opportunity and those who aren’t is getting progressively bigger. Some companies are getting left behind and this will without doubt have an impact on the bottom line.
• The direct nature of the online market means that organisations selling on behalf of others (through brokers or other 3rd parties), need to find the balance between the channel and the direct relationship. For example State’s Life Insurance is underwritten by Sovereign yet online Sovereign rank second for both Life and Health insurance – whilst State fail to rank at all for this term despite ranking well for many others.

In summary, the “intelligence gap” is getting bigger.

Make sure you are not left behind, download First Rate’s SEO and PPC observations on the insurance industry or contact us to have a chat about your online marketing tactics.

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One of our long-standing team members, Stuart, is moving on to pursue his desire to work in the non-profit space. Good for the non-profit but sad for us. As a result, there is a opening on the team right now & WE WANT YOU! (or someone you know).

The opening is for an Internet Marketing Consultant. If you know someone who would be perfect for this role, there is NZD$1000 in it for you if you refer them. Just use the bounty form to recommend them (and then tell them to be awesome so you can get the cash!).

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So what is the Google QDF Factor?

Quality Deserves Freshness, or QDF, is a concept that has been around for a while and one that Google is using more and more aggressively.

To summarise this concept in plain English, Google basically switches to “QDF-mode” when it detects a surge in searches for certain keywords (amongst other factors).

The result is that it temporarily increases the focus on fresh content in the search engine results page (SERP), instead of a more conventional ranking algorithm where freshness plays less of a factor.

The QDF algorithm was first discussed by Amit Singhal in a New York Times article; here is what Amit had to say about the Google Algorithm back in June 2007:

“Search over the last few years has moved from ‘Give me what I typed’ to ‘Give me what I want,’ ” says Mr. Singhal, a 39-year-old native of India who joined Google in 2000 and is now a Google Fellow, the designation the company reserves for its elite engineers.

The QDF solution revolves around determining whether a topic is “hot.” If news sites or blog posts are actively writing about a topic, the model figures that it is one for which users are more likely to want current information. The model also examines Google’s own stream of billions of search queries, which Mr. Singhal believes is an even better monitor of global enthusiasm about a particular subject.

As an example, he points out what happens when cities suffer power failures. “When there is a blackout in New York, the first articles appear in 15 minutes; we get queries in two seconds,” he says.

“Tiger Woods” is likely an example where QDF was recently activated:

Above: Search volume graph on "Tiger Woods" spikes around Feb 19th, 2010.

How does QDF affect SEO and Online Marketing..?

Using the same Tiger Woods example, let’s firstly clear up that QDF appears to be playing a greater part in Google’s algorithm than any others, for example Yahoo:

Above: How QDF can change the Top 10 organic ranking landscape

It is clear that when QDF kicks in for the keywords that you are targeting – without fresh and relevant content – it is highly likely that your site will be outranked by other sites. This is particularly true for news and blog sites as these generally carry fresh content at all times.

In the worst case scenario where the affected keywords are in fact your primary conversion generators, this can literally mean a “temporarily closed shop” – conversions will drop drastically as searchers are reluctant to flip through the search results pages to find your website.

In the case of e-commerce related upstream traffic from search, we would also postulate that in the situation where QDF is active, during this time the paid search ads are likely to receive increased clickthroughs. We see this likely to be happening because for a short period of time the ads would be offering more relevance to “purchase” related search motivators than the organic search listings. (Again, the reason being that searchers would be reluctant to flip through the search result pages to dig for product-related information). More research in this area is needed.

E-Commerce Tactics to Counteract the QDF Factor

Admittedly, when your website content is structured rigidly around product sales, it may be hard to accommodate the “freshness” requirement. News articles may not be suitable to be added to your website. In this situation, sometimes it is inevitable that you just have to bite the temporary bullet and make alternative efforts to minimise the QDF effects.

• Targeted Paid Search: Target the keywords in question and create relevant ads that highlight your products. This would leverage the (likely) increased attention given to paid search ads mitigate the potential loss in clicks from the organic search listings.
• Direct Marketing: Consistently build a marketing database using your website and/or third party database generators (co-registrations, competitions, etc) over time that can be utilised when required (- eg. a temporary organic search traffic drop due to QDF pushing fresher pages to the top).
• Blog: Where possible QDF can in fact be utilised to provide a permanent lift to your e-commerce search keyword footprint in the SERPs by using a good blog strategy. Writing fresh content related to your business will increase the probably of ranking on the first page when QDF is active. Make sure the content is linked through to the relevant products on your website.
• Ratings are Reviews: These can either be third party syndicated or delivered as part of your e-commerce build, in either case a ratings and reviews platform delivers up-to-date content ongoing.
• Social Search: Take part in the conversation. Twitter, Facebook and Buzz all offer opportunities to get involved with your customers and talk about how your products relate to the current news. The difficulty (just like with blogs) is not the technology, but instead having access to experts that understand how to navigate the social sphere in a way that is relevant but also commercially minded.

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Tom Skotidas, Head of Marketing for First Rate, is writing for Australia’s Marketing Magazine:

We all know how hard it is to consistently beat competitors at SEM.

The low barrier to entry doesn’t help. It is an uncomfortable feeling knowing that just about anyone with a credit card can become a search engine marketer.

The low barrier to creative isn’t that great either. Just when you think you have the best ad creative (i.e. the best 3 lines of text), a competitor goes and copies most of it, neutralising your advantage.

Even Quality Score is losing its competitive advantage, with Google offering automatic rotation of ad creatives based on click-through rate (a key quality score factor), and publishing of each keyword’s score along with several improvement tips.

There is however, one often ignored factor that can give search engine marketers an unfair advantage.

In his article Tom covers the following:

• The immediate benefits of a higher conversion rate
• The unfair advantage revealed
• How will CRR affect my Search Engine Advertising program?
• How to increase your conversion rate

You can read his article here: An unfair advantage in SEM.

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