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What is the main challenge in search marketing?

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

May 11, 2012 | 5 min read

As part of The Drum’s special report on search marketing, we speak to a number of agencies operating in the space to gain an insight into the key issues surrounding this heady topic.

In a series of features, we’ll be looking at the industry’s responses to the questions we posed, to determine the challenges and trends facing search marketing in 2012. So, what is the main challenge search marketers face?Dan Peden, head of SEO, Epiphany SearchStaying ahead of Google is probably the biggest challenge. Q1 2012 has seen some of the biggest updates to Google's algorithm since inception and to ensure we weren't adversely affected by the recent updates we began planning and building a team to benefit from these changes almost 18 months ago. That's a huge period of time in this industry as things typically change from month to month. It's key to get ahead of the game and to essentially stop 'chasing your own tail' or Google's tail.Andrew Girdwood, media innovations director, LBi bigmouthmedia “Main challenge” rather implies “one issue” – so I’ll get to that very soon. First, though, it’s worth noting that we have seen an incredible amount of change in search marketing in recent months. There has been the Search Alliance between Yahoo and Bing, with its UK rollout now complete, big steps forward for Google and the Google Display Network and hugely significant events for SEOs with big algorithmic updates. There is a non-trivial challenge in keeping clients and other agencies on the account up to date with the changes. Picking just one significant area – a main challenge is find the appropriate blend of creative costs with media results.To be successful in search, sites need to have engaging content, outreach needs to provide the sort of content to bloggers and site owners that is actually worth posting and the most advanced PPC targeting is greatly reduced if the cost effective banner ads cannot be found for the campaign. Brands that can provide fun and sharable content to their communities will more easily generate social signals than those brands that cannot. Some agencies and in-house teams face a significant challenge in not only coming up with the ideas for this content but generating it. Some agencies and brands may find it increasingly expensive sourcing content and this will drag down the returns generated by the search campaign. Throughout 2012 and into 2013 agencies and clients will need to adapt and make sure they can produce content, sites and apps as viable media assets.James Lowery, head of SEO, LatitudeThere’s ingrained behaviour around looking at conversion based on keyword level data. This needs to become more advanced. The biggest challenge in search is personalisation and ensuring that we rank for the right people at the right time, as much as ranking for the right term.The biggest challenge though will be from the availability of data from analytics. SSL data from Google search combined with the ill thought out cookie legislation is going to seriously hamper the ability of agencies to optimise campaign activity.Kevin Gibbons, director of strategy, SEOptimise Ensuring that your key focus on a campaign is delivering ROI, whilst also keeping up-to-date within the industry and how things are evolving. I really like the quote, “the only constant is change” and it’s very true in search marketing – but it’s also very easy to get caught up in it. The best marketers will pick out the game-changing updates to integrate into their strategies – to keep them ahead of the curve. But they won’t let it distract them from the main goal; delivering great results and ROI for their clients.Hannah Miller, head of SEO, 4Ps Marketing The main challenge in my experience is educating clients that it’s not just about keyword positions. Search is evolving and aspects such as localised search and social signals make it difficult to highlight specific positions for specific terms. Use your analytics software to monitor how successful a keyword is and track engagement once onsite to monitor if a campaign is successful or not.Subscribers can download a copy of the full report here.Search Keyboard image via Shutterstock
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Epiphany

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