6 Answers to Your Burning Call Tracking Questions

Author Note: Every time we publish an article on Search Engine Journal, we receive emails from marketers asking questions about the nuts and bolts of call tracking. This article is an effort to answer the most common questions we receive about call tracking, call tracking implementation, and use-cases.

How is Call Tracking Used to Measure PPC/Organic Search?

Various studies  indicate that marketers are missing out on 30 percent or more of their AdWords generated revenue if they don’t use call tracking. Callers are 10 time more likely to buy than web leads. Thus, even if only one person calls your company for every 10 that fill out a form, that one caller will produce the revenue 10 web leads produce.

Long story short: if you’re not tracking phone calls from your PPC efforts, you’re not getting credit for all the work you’re doing.

In terms of call tracking implementation, some marketers track PPC at a very macro-level. They have one call tracking number that is dynamically generated whenever anyone clicks through from any PPC ad. This allows the marketer to analyze PPC calls vs. organic calls vs. direct mail vs. anything else.

Other marketers (this is the majority) get much more granular. They’ll have a different phone number associated with every AdWords campaign or keyword group. They’ll have various numbers associated with different search engines. They’ll even use session-based call tracking to analyze the precise keywords that paid search visitors used before visiting the site. (That used to work for organic keywords as well…but not after Google’s Not Provided edict).

Does Call Tracking Hurt SEO?

This has been one of the hottest topics in local search for the last several years. And, fortunately, it appears the fog is finally clearing on this issue.

Here’s the short answer: NO. Call tracking does not harm SEO if it is implemented correctly.

The reason many marketers think call tracking hurts SEO is because of (NAP) name, address, phone number. Google demands that NAP remain consistent across all web properties. Call tracking numbers should not be used in online directories, business listings, or places like Google+ Local. For instance, posting a phone number on a business listing that is different from the phone number on a website confuses NAP and could harm SEO. This is an incorrect way to use call tracking. (Though, some marketers still use call tracking on directories because they value the metrics. We don’t advise this).

There are several correct ways to use call tracking that do not hurt SEO. The most obvious, and most common, is to use Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI) on websites, landing pages, and other web properties. This involves inserting a snippet of Javascript in the site’s header (or wherever the phone number appears). This allows unique call tracking phone numbers to instantaneously appear dependent on the source of the web visit. For example, someone visiting the page after a Google organic search would see a different phone number than someone visiting the page after clicking through from a PPC ad. This allows call tracking tools to determine with 100 percent accuracy which ads, campaigns, and keywords generate phone calls.

And it doesn’t harm SEO. Even the most ardent call tracking critics openly admit this.

This technique is, after all, the same technique that A/B testing tools, dynamic content tools, and even marketing automation tools use to dynamically generate things on a website. They use a snippet of Javascript to temporarily and instantaneously generate an element of the website. It simply doesn’t hurt SEO. Your ‘real’ phone number remains hard-coded in the site.

We have written several articles about this subject:

• The Truth About SEO and Call Tracking
• The Authoritative Guide to Call Tracking and Local SEO

Why Do Marketers Use Call Tracking?

Marketers use call tracking because they want to close the loop on their marketing spend. If marketers aren’t using call tracking they’re not getting credit for a portion of the work they’re doing. For example, agencies that don’t provide call tracking data to their clients are leaving themselves open to criticism. Why? Because, for many businesses–particularly local businesses–a call is the predominant lead channel. In fact, 64% of local businesses say calls are the best leads they receive.

And yet, despite the power of phone calls,  some agencies insist upon touting ONLY the web traffic they generate.

And local businesses aren’t the only ones that care about phone calls. One technology company we work with says that 30% of their new accounts each month are generated from phone calls, NOT web leads. If the marketing department at this company wasn’t using call tracking to analyze that data, they would not be getting credit for 30 percent of the revenue they generate.

How Do Agencies Use Call Tracking?

Agencies value call tracking because it provides client stickiness. It helps agencies acquire and retain clients.

Agencies are able to sit down with a potential client and show them call tracking data for their industry, or similar industries. The agencies we work with tell us that this is one of the most valuable ways they use call tracking. They’re able to provide accurate data about the number of calls a potential client can expect to receive on a weekly/monthly/yearly basis. Prospective clients are impressed with the data. They’re also impressed when the agency tells them that they (the client) can log in to their very own White Labeled call tracking portal and look at the data themselves.

And if an agency has a dissatisfied client, very often call tracking data can keep that client from leaving. If an agency is able to provide data about the number of calls that PPC campaigns, organic search traffic, and other local marketing tactics have generated, the client will think twice about leaving. We have agency partners that save 8-10 clients each month simply because they’re able to provide concrete call tracking data.

Because the cost of call tracking is so minimal for agencies (just a few bucks per number with everything included), many agencies just eat the cost because of the benefit they receive from the data (client acquisition and client retention). Other agencies, on the other hand, roll the cost into their offerings–either making call tracking a billed line item or just including it in the packages they offer.

How Are All the Call Tracking Companies Different?

Every call tracking company has its strengths and weaknesses. Some have very strong telephony functionality, others specialize in AdWords and pay-per-call. Our service, LogMyCalls, specializes in analyzing call conversations themselves. Our Conversation Analytics tool mines call conversations–the words and phrases said on the call–and then extracts data like lead score, sales performance, buying propensity, sales readiness, and pricing sensitivity. It can even determine if an appointment was set on the call, if a sale was made on the call, or if the caller got agitated.

Regular call tracking simply can’t provide this data. 

If you’re evaluating call tracking companies it is important to know exactly what functionality is important to you.

What’s The Implementation Process/Timeline for Call Tracking?

Numbers can be set up within 1 to 2 minutes. Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI) takes a few minutes of Javascript work. Templates and a Javascript generator are available on our site. Setting up automated phone lead scoring, appointment tracking, and sales analytics takes 15 – 30 minutes.

The most challenging aspect of call tracking setup is often deciding exactly what you want to track. For example, do you want to track advanced analytics like new appointments and new sales, or just regular old call tracking?  And, for agencies, it’s determining how you want to structure it. In other words, what information, reports, and data do you want your clients to have access to? The answer to those questions will help determine how long implementation takes.

Conclusion

Marketers use call tracking to close the loop on their marketing. They simply aren’t getting credit for all the leads they produce if they don’t use call tracking. The most exciting thing about call tracking is how simple it is to implement. Marketers can get data from a call tracking tool and have that data integrated into their other systems and processes quickly and easily.

Marketers that get more data, make more money. Call tracking is a critical component of that effort.

10 Pillars to Run Top Notch AdWords Campaigns

It is clear AdWords has become a must for businesses who want to drive relevant traffic to their websites. The increase in AdWords’ demand has consequently increased the price for clicks, and therefore advertisers need to know how to boost their results and not waste their budget.

Here are some of the most important pillars to keep into consideration while working on an AdWords Account:

Do Not Bid On Your Brand

People searching for your brand are people who are probably coming back to purchase after they have already compared your website to other brands. If other brands are bidding on your name, users are likely to ignore them since they already know what they want.

It still makes sense to bid on your own keywords if you have marketing budget left and would like to secure the best placement for your brand name. But if you are running on a limited budget, avoid it.

Strategize The Use Of Keywords Match Types

Google gives you the option to use broad match, broad match modifier, phrase, and exact match keywords. Use them to step up your game and make sure to test complex account structures. Also, do not forget to use broad, phrase, and exact match negative keywords to eliminate irrelevant keywords variations.

Using a “broad match” keyword implies that Google will let your ads run for relevant variations of your keywords, including synonyms and misspellings. Google might show your advertising messages for many irrelevant terms if you do not use a compelling list of negative keywords.

The use of “broad match modifier” keywords allows you to be targeted but at the same time broad enough to find relevant long tail keywords for your campaigns. It basically allows you to show up for any search query that includes all of the terms of your keyword that triggered the ad, independently from their order in the search query.

A “phrase match” keyword tells your account to trigger your ads only if a searcher looks for a search term that equals to your keyword or that has the keywords in the same order as you used them. This match type is really useful for long tail variations of your most successful keywords.

Finally, “exact match” keywords are the ones you use when you want to show your ads exactly for the terms as you have inserted them in the AdGroups. This definitively is the most targeted option you can use.

I strongly recommend using a combination of keyword match types in order to optimize the account for a greater ROI. For example, use broad match modifier and phrase match keywords to find new long tail keywords and focus on exact match in order to generate profitable conversions with terms that already converted once in the past.

Group Keywords In Tight, Relevant AdGroups

The best way to reduce costs on AdWords is to work on increasing the CTR and the quality score. The best way to do that is to make sure whenever a user looks for a term he finds an advertising message that is extremely relevant to his search.

It is very common to see accounts that do not group keywords in a proper way. This mistake can cost a lot of money and might cause the account to retrieve a lot of irrelevant terms. Also, the CTR and the quality score will suffer.

While grouping keywords think about how keywords can relate among them. Can you group them by service? Can you maybe group them by call to action? Whatever method you use make sure to avoid duplicates and use custom advertising texts for each AdGroup.

Negative Keywords Are Fundamental To Succeed

You cannot have a good account without ensuring you don’t waste your budget on irrelevant keywords. Negative terms help to tell Google when not to show your ad.

You can add negative keywords at the campaign and AdGroup level. Negative keywords at the campaign level basically apply to all AdGroups and should include terms that you do not want to appear for under any circumstance, such as the word FREE if your service is always pay. AdGroup focused negative keywords refer to terms that should not trigger an ad only for keywords inserted in a given AdGroup. There might be several reasons for this, but the most relevant definitively is to avoid competition among similar ad groups.

There are several ways to find negative keywords. The best way is to constantly monitor the search query report and to look at Google Analytics to find out what you are actually showing up for and use this information to tune the account.

Split Test Advertising Messages For Better Results

Ad copy split testing is fundamental if you want to generate great results long-term. I usually suggest testing one element at a time among headlines, description lines, and display URL. This makes it easier to identify winning variations in all parts of your ads.

Your account should always test at least two ads at the time. You can have many ads testing at once as long as you have enough  data to support it. Your test results should focus on CTR and conversion rates. Do not make the mistake of only focusing on profits! Be sure to look at the long-term benefits of a good CTR.

Being Number One Is Not Always Profitable: Test Ad Positions

Advertising positions can have a big effect on your overall ROI. Generally, users clicking on an advertising message  on top of the page are quick decision makers, while people clicking on ads at the bottom of the page are more likely to be sensitive to price and compare more options before converting.

This might be not true for all industries. Also, at times the first position can be very expensive and therefore it is necessary to find out how you perform at different placements for different keywords.

At the end of the day, it is all about generating a positive ROI and you should not be afraid of testing – this is the best way to improve your account.

Do Not Promise Miracles, But Focus on Realistic Results

Google AdWords is an advertising tool based on data. Data costs money, and therefore the smaller your budget is, the longer it will take to optimize the campaign for great results. The best way to get started is to have a set up that minimizes the budget waste on irrelevant keywords.

You should make a judgement call and decide what topics (AdGroups) to pursue with your budget. I suggest starting on focused keywords and go broader with the successful AdGroups. This will ensure you grow your budget along with results.

Send Users to The Best Landing Pages For The Ad They Clicked On

Many advertisers prefer to send people to the home page of a website rather than taking the time to create a custom landing page. This is a huge mistake. You need to think of AdWords as something that brings the right people to the doorstep. However, if the inside of your store is not appealing or does not make it easy to find a product, people won’t buy.

You need to make sure that each landing page sends users to the page that is most likely to convert. Do you want to create landing pages yourself? There are many tools online that allow you to do that! Take advantage of them!

Know the Lifetime Value (LTV) of Consumers

The Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) should  be at the base of every business decision. Do not look at the immediate earnings from a client to determine your ideal cost per acquisition. Analyze how much you are likely to earn from a client in total and determine how much you are willing to pay to get this earning in your business.

Many companies fail at calculating the LTV and this means they estimate their marketing budget incorrectly. It is difficult to calculate the LTV if you are new in the business. However, you can still estimate it by making some conservative projections and tuning them up along the way.

Outsmart Competitors

Study what your competition is doing and take advantage of their mistakes. This is a very simple principle and also an extremely effective one.

You do not need expensive tools to analyze your competition. Just create a list of your top keywords and look up in the preview tool to find out what ads your competitors are using. Also, look at your auctions insights to find out websites that are sharing the Google Search Page with you. Look at their websites and find out how you can improve your pages!

In Conclusion:

Adwords is a fundamental tool for many businesses but costs are rising every day. As a smart advertiser, you should leverage everything that could give you a competitive advantage. This list includes only the most important pillars you should be looking at, but there are plenty of other factors to consider. What other tricks of the trade do you use to maximize your Adwords budget?

The Real Reason AdWords Isn’t Working For Many Small Businesses

By now, you’ve probably read the New York Times piece that’s been making the rounds lately. If not, here’s the upshot: it concludes that Google AdWords isn’t practical for small businesses.

Unfortunately, it’s not the first time the Gray Lady has gone after AdWords, nor is it the first time that the paid search community has responded so vigorously in its defense. The real tragedy of the latest piece isn’t that AdWords has been singled out – it’s that the Times (and the business owners it interviewed) have once again missed the point.

I Get It

Before I go into how the article got it so wrong, I should say that I see where the author and her interviewees are coming from and that I sympathize with their positions. Let’s face it – times are tough for small businesses.

Customers are becoming increasingly choosy (and have many more options, and therefore more power, than they did in the past), external costs are going up, and rising above the noise of the paid search space is becoming harder. However, saying AdWords isn’t a viable option for small businesses based on a single metric – media cost – is way off base, and more than a little misleading.

In the article, author Adriana Gardella highlighted several small-business owners who chose to turn their backs on AdWords due to cost. Online shopping tool Hukkster was one example. Erica Bell, one of Hukkster’s two co-founders, claimed that “determining which keywords drive traffic simply wasn’t worth the expense.”

Another company highlighted in the piece was event organization firm Skylight Group. For owner Jennifer Blumin, cost wasn’t necessarily the problem with AdWords, but rather the quality of conversions resulting from Skylight’s strategy. Blumin said that her company was “inundated” with poor-quality inquiries, many of which simply couldn’t afford Skylight’s services.

Fundamental Misunderstandings

Both these examples reveal fundamental misunderstandings about AdWords as a paid search platform.

For Hukkster, the perceived costs of running an effective AdWords campaign were prohibitive – but Gardella chose not to mention how much time, if any, Bell and her co-founder had put into researching keywords that would result in higher conversion rates from the outset, or search terms that similar businesses were using. Similarly, Skylight – by Blumin’s own admission – was bombarded with inquiries, suggesting that the problem isn’t with the platform itself, but how they managed it.

Here’s where the biggest disconnect occurs for many people when it comes to PPC. It’s not about the cost per click – it’s about how much effort advertisers put in.

At WordStream, we work with lots of AdWords advertisers, many of which are small businesses. Unfortunately for most, the situation isn’t great. However, dismissing paid search as a customer acquisition strategy would be crazy. Why? Because for many AdWords customers, the cost of the ads isn’t the issue.

Yes, many of our clients come to us in need of some serious help, but empowering businesses to take control of their paid search initiatives is about evaluating what isn’t working – and why – before making decisions based on real insight. If you just throw money at a problem, it should be no surprise when it turns out to be expensive.

Mistake #1: Infrequent Logins

PPC can be a tough nut to crack for small businesses, but devoting just a little more time to managing a paid search campaign can be enough to put you ahead of the vast majority of advertisers.

With more than half of AdWords users only bothering to optimize their campaign once per quarter, is it any wonder that some small businesses are failing to see the results they’d hoped for? Let’s take a look at an example client.

Mistake #2: Not Enough Activity

After this client performed an audit of their PPC campaign, they discovered that their paid search efforts left a lot to be desired. Having added just 30 keywords to a campaign – in three months (and no new campaigns, or ad groups or ads!) – is obviously not enough to generate success.

As a result of the lack of account activity, virtually all aspects of this customer’s PPC campaign suffered. Poor keyword targeting and low quality ads subsequently resulted in low click-through rates. This, in turn, had a negative effect on the client’s Quality Scores and Impression Shares.

Mistake #3: No Negative Keywords

This advertiser also failed to add any negative keywords to their AdWords account, resulting in significant waste in PPC spending.

In the following figure, you’ll see that the yellow bar is our recommendation of how many negative keywords should be added to this AdWords account (based on the advertiser’s budget and industry), versus how many are actually included (zero).

Looking at this example of projected waste for the next 12 months, it’s easy to see why so many business owners mistakenly believe that paid search isn’t for them – but simply putting in a little more work can solve many of these problems.

AdWords isn’t a magic bullet that will solve businesses’ paid customer acquisition problems. Like anything else, success takes hard work and dedication.

However, none of these aspects of paid search were addressed in the article, which is likely why the PPC community was so quick to point out the flawed reasoning behind it. It’s easy to blame cost and say that AdWords is “too expensive” for small businesses, but that doesn’t make it true.

How You Can Beat The Odds (Whatever Your Budget)

So, what does all this mean for the average small-business owner thinking about taking their tentative first steps into the world of paid search? Well, there is some good news.

Firstly, the bar set by many AdWords advertisers is very low. This means that even a small amount of work can make a huge difference and put advertisers ahead of their competitors.

Secondly, it would be easy to dismiss the PPC campaign of the client featured in my example as a failure – but, on the contrary, this business owner is actually a genius. Why? Because they realized their paid search efforts weren’t working, and they proactively took steps to find out why by performing an audit.

Once they discovered why their AdWords campaign wasn’t performing, and learned how they could improve their efforts, they were able to start making improvements.

There are more than enough myths about AdWords out there. Articles like the most recent piece in the New York Times merely serve to create and perpetuate more.

John Steinbeck Google Logo Showcases Author’s Work On His 112th Birthday

Today’s Google logo is a well deserved nod to American author John Steinbeck on what would have been the writer’s 112th birthday. The logo celebrates five of Steinbeck’s 27 novels: Grapes of Wrath, Canary Row, Of Mice and Men, The Pearl and Travels with Charlie.

The Steinbeck logo includes blocks for five of the Google letters that transition into book titles, with a play button in place of the second “G” in Google:

Clicking the play button starts a slideshow of the five books, showcasing the titles and then passages from each novel:

Each of the slides includes a search icon that delivers “John Steinbeck” search results and a share icon that lets users post the logo on their Twitter, Facebook and Google+ pages.

Born on this date in 1902 in Salinas, California, Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath published in 1939 earned the novelist a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize. In 1962, Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Acclaimed for his depictions of the American working class, Steinbeck’s novels continue to be studied in high schools and colleges across the US.

6 Things To Watch For Better Gmail Deliverability

For most email marketers, reaching the inbox at Gmail is difficult, and trying to discover why emails aren’t reaching the inbox is downright confusing, if not nearly impossible. (Though Google is reportedly piloting a feedback loop program for email service providers (ESPs) that might help address this.) For now, Gmail’s Bulk Sender Guidelines offer general advice for marketers sending to Gmail subscribers, but they lack specifics.

At Return Path, we recently analyzed hundreds of thousands of campaigns from thousands of senders to find out what marketers should be paying attention to.

1. URL Shorteners: URL shorteners are a clever way for spammers and phishers to hide links to spam and phishing sites; as a result, Google will block most of them if used in bulk mailings, especially Bit.ly.

2. Unsubscribes: Gmail had been allowing its users to unsubscribe from marketing emails when they clicked on “this is spam,” but only if the sender had included a list-unsubscribe in the header, which is a simple line in an email header with either an email address or a URL to unsubscribe from the email.

In the last week, however, Gmail announced a change in the way it presents the unsubscribe option. Users will soon see a Gmail “Unsubscribe” button at the top of promotional messages, which will work essentially the same way without framing the action as a spam complaint. Here are a couple of examples of what it looks like in the inbox:

To keep your unsubscribe handling from hurting inbox placement at Gmail, best practices remain largely the same. Most importantly, avoid using campaign-based unsubscribes.

Continually mailing to a person after they unsubscribed will have extremely negative consequences to your overall sending reputation. Marketers can have both an email address or unsubscribe page in the list-unsubscribe header, and, before this latest announcement, the best practice was to stick with the web form for Gmail for two reasons.

First, because subscribers appreciate the preference center and can unsubscribe only from campaigns they don’t want to receive, and second, because having too many variations (over three) of a list-unsubscribe header can be negative. The latter part may remain true, but before you switch away from using an email address in your Gmail unsubscribe header, wait to see Google’s recommendations -– this could change.

3. Spam Complaints: Gmail looks at complaints primarily from a campaign-by-campaign basis. Without an official feedback loop, measuring spam complaints at Gmail is difficult, if not impossible. One can look at the number of complaints coming through the list-unsubscribe mechanism mentioned above, or use subscriber panel data by third-parties to measure this.

Continually emailing someone who marked an email as spam won’t only cause future emails to land in spam, but may also have more far-reaching consequences and cause all emails to all subscribers to be delivered to spam.

4. Affiliate Marketing: While Gmail mentions affiliate marketing as a tactic to avoid, if you must send affiliate marketing, use the domain of the primary business and sender. For example, if Widgets.com is using an affiliate marketer, the affiliate marketer should use widgets.com as the mailing domain.

5. Blacklists: While Gmail doesn’t publicly note it uses blacklists, there is a high correlation of spam folder delivery when the sender is on a Real-Time Blacklist (RBL), or a DNS-based Blackhole List (DNSBL), which is based on domain names.

Spamhaus is one of the most widely used RBLs, and URIBL is one of the most widely used DNSBLs. Getting listed on one of these indicates problems with complaints and spam traps, which is likely caused from lack of permission, or lack of list hygiene over the years.

6. Promotions Tab: Forget about asking subscribers to move you out of the Promotions tab. Besides, very few subscribers actually move messages from the Promotions tab to the Primary inbox, and emails classified as promotions aren’t treated quite as heavy-handedly as those that land in Primary.

Past research from Return Path showed improved deliverability for marketing messages after the switch to the tabbed inbox, but for messages that aren’t classified as promotions, updates or social, spam complaint rates must be around .01% versus .1% for messages that are classified as promotions.

While Gmail likely measures many more things, these six items were the most common reasons we found for inbox failure. So next time you see your emails landing in the spam folder, make sure you’re not running afoul of these six things first.

Google Yanks Fake FBI Listing From Google Maps, Puts New Blocks In Place To Stop Further Abuse

In response to a string of cases where fake business/organization listings have been added to Google Maps, Google says it has removed those listings and put in place new hurdles to make it more difficult for this kind of abuse to get through its system.

This latest run of problems came to light about a week ago, when some users discovered they could use Google Map Maker to create fake businesses that would be verified via a phone call. In the beginning, many of the fake listings were harmless.

More recently, the same user took advantage of Map Maker tocreate fake FBI and Secret Service office listings using his own phone number, and even managed to intercept calls to both agencies. Both of those listings were created in close proximity to actual offices, adding to the confusion over which listing was real.

Google has now removed the fake FBI and Secret Service listings, as well as others that have been exposed over the past week.

In addition, contacts at the company tell us that they’ve put new restrictions in place that will make it more difficult for this kind of activity to produce a “live” place listing on Google Maps.

This is hardly the first time users have found a hole in Google’s systems that allowed the creation of fake business listings in Google Maps. More than five years ago, for example, Danny Sullivan wrote about being able to “hijack” Yahoo’s listing and changing the company name to Microsoft.

In this latest case, though, the timing is particularly bad since Google just released its new Google Maps product out of beta.

The hole actually involved Map Maker, Google’s product that allows for crowd-sourced improvements to Google Maps. Hundreds of thousands of edits over the years have helped improve Maps, but it was also still open to the kind of exploits that have been detailed over the past week.

Given the competitive nature of local search, it probably won’t be too long before we find out if Google’s new restrictions succeed in preventing more of this kind of abuse … or if users find other holes they can exploit.

How Two Top European Clothing Giants Overpowered the Search Marketing Competition

Editor’s Note: The comments at the end of this article have indicated one of the companies mentioned in this post may not be as “white hat” as the author assumed in her research. We appreciate our readers’ feedback and comments on this! -Kelsey

There has been a monstrous wave riding through Europe’s search market and it’s crushing the competitors with the force of Poseidon’s trident. The brilliant search marketing conducted by companies like Zalando in Germany and ASOS in the UK reveals strategies to be mirrored, no matter what industry or market you are in.

These two domains have taken the Clothing & Accessories industry as their own and what’s even more amazing is their share of search. Inspiration from these companies can put you on the right path to great visibility in the SERPs. Just wait ‘til you see the tremendous advantage that these guys have over the mere fish in the sea!

ASOS and Zalando: Search Marketing

Let’s take a quick look at the search marketing situation in the Clothing & Accessories Industry in Germany and the UK.

This data refers to the share of search of each domain on January 20, 2014. Asos.com and zalando.de are showing incredible search visibility in several Clothing & Accessories categories in the UK and Germany, respectively. The percentages in the infographic are based on the top 100 most visible domains in each category and the visibility of these domains derives from the top 20-25 most searched and competitive generic keywords per category.

These two domains take the #1 position in the categories above and what’s even more amazing is the share of search of the next ranking domain. The graph below shows the search market situation for Boots in Germany and the difference between zalando.de and the #2 domain (which varies over time) is almost constantly about 30 percent. Do you think Zalando is lonely up there?

So who are these guys and why are they so good at being seen? Maybe we can get some tips to increase our own visibility and rise above the tide? Let’s take a closer look.

ASOS Reinvents Themselves

ASOS, originally As Seen on Screen Ltd., is a UK-based online fashion and beauty retailer that was established in 2000. They sell branded and own-brand fashion items almost all over the world. In 2008, they received high acclaim for their online store from famous magazines like Cosmopolitan, In Style and Maxim. In 2010, ASOS received e-commerce Awards for both Best Direct Retailer and Best Use of Social Media. I could go on about their awards and recognition online and off, but I won’t. The fact is, in almost 14 years of service, they have become UK’s largest online fashion and beauty retailer and Google doesn’t mind at all.

What Google is really happy about, is the augmentation of search engine marketing that ASOS underwent last year to make their website even more retail savvy. SEM is important for any company that plans to convert traffic into revenue, regardless of whether they are actually selling products online or not. According to Marketing Week, ASOS increased their digital marketing efforts in 2013, focusing on country-specific campaigns. Gemma Lovelock, Director of promotions marketing agency Lock-In Marketing, also said that ASOS made sure that their online store was accessible to customers from anywhere and with any device. You can find details about the search marketing strategies of ASOS in recent a blog post by Lara Vogel that compares brands and retailers online. They’re not doing so bad on social media either which supports their organic visibility with social linking.

Large e-commerce sites may find it challenging to implement good SEO, but ASOS has managed brilliantly. According to Ruth Attwood, SEO Manager at 4Ps Marketing, large e-commerce websites should “[c]ome up with a process for optimization, train [their] staff to do it properly, put quality procedures in place, measure the result of those changes, then rinse and repeat.” As someone who monitors share of search results on a daily basis, I can tell you that finding the right service to measure the results can be tricky, but it is definitely an important step. Apparently ASOS has done a great job and even managed the rinse and repeat with the unveiling of a new design for it’s men’s and women’s category pages, focusing strongly on product ideas and good content.

Zalando’s SEO Excellence

Zalando.de success all started in October 2008, with a small range of products from selected brands. Now, Zalando is live in 14 European countries and offers thousands of different brands. It won the 2012 German Marketing Prize for outstanding marketing performance and the 2012 European e-commerce award for best transnational online shop at the Global e-commerce Summit.

Zalando has excelled in many ways as far as marketing. They have poked around in social media, fancy TV ads, Google ads, and with the use of good content and linking, they have managed to optimize their page emphatically. I guess their idea was “go big or go home!” But it worked for them and it’s very likely that it would work for all kinds of industries. In 2011, Sebastian S. Vlasich of Business Development Strategies told us that Zalando uses social media to get potential customers to interact with them. He also talked about how they launched a new business concept, selling their own brand in a Pop-up store in Berlin, while offline, as an inaugural event for the brand. Although this doesn’t really have an effect on share of search, it definitely affects the brand’s recognition.

In an interview by State of Digital in June 2012, Alessio Madeyski, the SEO Manager of Zalando at the time, states that Zalando practices only white hat SEO as it is not a matter of the color of the hat, but what the user gains. “I strongly believe that the brand belongs to the user, not to the company. So we, as Zalando, are trying to do all we can to listen to what the user wants.” He prefers the term “idea building” instead of link building, as he believes in developing authentic relationships brought on by good content and creativity.

Now you know more about the monstrous waves in European search marketing and as you can see, there was no Greek God behind their amazing share of search. They simply followed the rules that we all know and aim to master. Of course, there was a bit of creativity in the mix and that should always be welcome. Gain inspiration from the success stories like these and use them as a guide for your own success, regardless of your industry or market. It might even be an opportunity for a little fish to grab a trident of their own!

Marin & DoubleClick Search Partner With Boost Media To Scale Ad Optimization

Today, ad optimization solution Boost Media (formerly BoostCTR) announced new integration partnerships DoubleClick Search and Marin Software. Boost aims to help marketers scale the taxing process of creating, testing and reporting on search and social ad creative with a network of copywriters working in more than ten languages and algorithmically powers ad testing and optimization. Boost says clients see an average sales volume increase of 30 percent at a 5 percent lower CPA and save some 60 hours a month on ad creative development, testing and reporting.

Marketers using DoubleClick Search or Marin Software will be able to access the Boost solution within the platforms. Ad performance reporting will be streamlined and Boost users can request and approve ad creative directly from Marin and DoubeClick Search.

Boost users will be able to access ad performance reporting within the Marin Platform

Matt Ackley, chief marketing officer at Marin Software, said, “Constantly writing and testing ads at scale across multiple campaigns can be a logistical nightmare for advertisers. By integrating with Boost Media, we’ve streamlined the process, improving customers’ ability to optimize ad copy and maximize profitability.”