Of all Google’s tweaks to the search engine results page (SERP), perhaps nothing has generated more interest in the SEO community than SiteLinks. SiteLinks are those extra links to internal pages displayed below your SERP listing… but they only show up when your site ranks very highly for a particular search term. SiteLinks are useful links to useful content.

Google designed the SiteLinks algorithm to determine which links inside your domain are most useful to visitors, based on several key factors:

• General site credibility
• Relevance of your internal content to the overall site theme
• Google’s understanding of your site’s structure
• Likelihood that search engine users will click on the SiteLink

Those first three criteria can more or less be summed up in one statement: follow SEO best practices. If you’re running a well-designed site full of useful content, and you’re ranking at the top of the SERPs for your most important keywords, you should be all good. Likewise, it wouldn’t hurt to consider siloing your content. But let’s talk about that fourth item…

If you’ve ever done research on SiteLinks for a client, you probably noticed that links are showing up that aren’t even part of your navigation. This is because Google’s user tracking data is becoming an increasingly important – perhaps even the most important – factor in determining which sections of your site are most “useful”, thus worthy of being rewarded with SiteLinks. Google wants SiteLinks to lead directly to the most visited pages on your site.

Why are SiteLinks important?

• SiteLinks increase your site’s prominence in Google search results. And when you’re occupying more SERP real estate, your site can’t help but see a healthy jump in traffic.
• Users believe listings with SiteLinks are more authoritative. There isn’t any research data that I’m aware of to support this, but I won’t let that stop me from saying it. Especially when you’re talking about the eight link, two column SiteLinks. The first thing that pops into my head when I see these SiteLinks is, “Wow, this really must be the site I’m searching for.” And Google obviously agrees if it’s going to use so much space on the page for a single listing.
• Users can quickly find the content they’re seeking. It’s simple. You want visitors to your site to find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible, or you risk losing them. SiteLinks mean one less click between you and your customers.

When do SiteLinks show up?

SiteLinks are displayed for up to three top search results for any given keyword or search term. There are two types of SiteLinks:

• Long SiteLinks (usually 8 links in 2 columns) are displayed when Google is fairly sure the top listing contains what you’re searching for. Long SiteLinks only appear under the top (#1) listing, but it’s not enough just to be on top. If Google isn’t sure the top result is completely relevant to the search, long SiteLinks will not be displayed.
• Mini SiteLinks (usually 3-4 links in 1 row) are displayed when Google is less sure it has found what you’re searching for. Mini SiteLinks can appear on any of the top three listings, but again, only when Google is pretty sure of the relevance. These are less desirable than long SiteLinks because they’re much easier for the eye to skip over.

How does Google determine relevance for SiteLinks?

This is best demonstrated with an example. KFC is the top search result for a search of either the term “fried chicken” or “KFC”. But “KFC” is obviously more relevant to the KFC Corporation, whereas “fried chicken” searchers may be looking for home-style recipes, nutritional information, reheating instructions, or whatever. Google knows this, and that intelligence is reflected in the use of SiteLinks:

• Search for “fried chicken”:

• Search for “KFC” or “Kentucky Fried Chicken”:

SiteLinks: What Can You Do?

1.  Make sure you’re the #1 search result for important keywords. The top search result for a keyword will usually have SiteLinks displayed, except when:

• Google is unsure of the site’s relevance to the search term
• Keyword has low search volume
• Site has low PageRank and/or credibility
• Site is structured in a way that isn’t clear to Google

2.  Use short, easy-to-crawl HTML navigational links on the home page. This let’s Google know where you think your visitors want to go. This will not result in SiteLinks if your navigation leads to irrelevant content or to a page that is rarely visited by Google-tracked users.

3.  Use a simple site structure that mirrors the navigation. Together with HTML and XML sitemaps, this ensures that Google understands which pages are most relevant to users.

The bottom line? Following SEO best practices results in SiteLinks. Google rewards top-ranking, well-organized sites that contain useful content.

Other resources:

Google SiteLinks Come in How Many Flavors?

Google SiteLinks: Brand Domination through Keyword Ownership

How to Get Google SiteLinks

Google SiteLinks: The Ultimate FAQ

Moderator:

• Danny Sullivan, Conference Co-Chair, Search Engine Strategies San Jose

Speakers:

• Jon Kelly, President, SureHits
• Eduardo Llach, Founder & COO, SearchRev
• Matt Van Wagner, President, Find Me Faster
• Michael Sack, Director, SEM Technology & Development, Idearc Media Corp.

Eduardo Llach:

Talking about multivariate targeting w/ Online Dating: CTR in NYC can be different than Denver. What they do is if the conversion rate is higher in one market, go deeper.

Geotargetting -uses IP address – all AOL users come from Virginia – problematic. Country mapping is 100% accurate. State mapping is 50% accuracy, City mapping is 30% accuracy. Still need nationwide if running on a state level, not to miss 50% of searchers. Large variation for basic products – different cities have different conversion rates. Income level of city is a factor.

Run a campaign nationwide, then replicate on city level – can get major difference in conversion rates from different cities.

Day of week, time – if conversion rate is higher, bid higher. If conversion rate goes up on Tuesdays, bid higher on Tuesdays. For different industries, time is a factor. Finance is busiest on Mondays.

Creative and Landing Pages. It’s all about mixing up all the variables.

Jon Kelly:

Topic: Long Tail Keywords & Geo Targetting

Shows the standard head / tails keyword search curve.  Shows example of long term word “Topeka home loan rates”. These small phrases add up. There is clearer intention, better conversion, and less competition  – which means lower bids.

Three Action Steps: Calculate click value 2) reward users choices 3) whats champaign data.

For a low volume phrase – how do you calculate probality of conversion? What’s the value if they do turn into a consumer? You need to model your market.  Geography, Product (auto insurance), and Request – rates? company? comparison? In retail maybe brand, color, and size. You need to model marketing.

Keyword bucketing: Put similar keywords in same bucket. Bad strategy because you lose some information. The right way to do it is to think of your keywords as tags – like tagged photos. Tag phrases. City phrases have poorer conversion than state conversions in his business. Figure out what a lead is worth – one way is by geography. Use tags to calculate lead value.

Reward the user’s choices: You don’t have to read minds when working with tail keywords. Give a targeted landing page for the individual query. You can still get a leg up in competitive markets if you tag keywords and create compelling landing pages.

City Phrases or Brand Phrases? City phrases are problematic because they are also brand phrases. “Tampa Bay Mortgage” is a company/brand and city modifier. Dual intent. Watch out for this.

Homynyms: “Mobile Home Loans” – also dual intent. Mobile Alabama, and mobile homes.

State phrases: In Texas the click volume was higher than Florida, and Texas is more populated? Was strange case. Turned off state targeting – then did individual markets. Problem was Houston. Traffic spikes in Houston, and conversion dips. Found it by looking at outliers and things that don’t make sense date. Geotargetting works well if you look at your data and see where conversions are low and what to do about it.

Matt VanWagner:

Talks about DKI – Dynamic Keyword Insertion

Claims: Pros – improves CTR, QS, Improves ad relevance

Cons: Loss control of add

DKI Ads Gone Wild. Searched “used fish” – you can compare used fish prices on dealtime and pricegrabber. We’ve all seen these. Sometimes the ad just said “used”.

What is DKI – at it’s core – it’s essential away to customize ads and save time.  It’s an “insert keyword here” feature. Helps the information scent in many cases. Transforms generic ads into custom ads.

How does it work? Google – “Starbucks” – if you can get it in the ad and bypass the TM – get the keyword bolded. The DKI word needs to get data from the keyword list, not just from the query. If it’s too long, defaults to another ad.

Can use all types of capilization schemes. Can violate Google’s own ad policy by making ads all caps. Like PPC is a good example – looks better than Ppc. Good example to use DKI is with caps. Good for state abbreviations. In broad match, need to make sure order of words is proper – “Red Sneakers”.

Yahoo – didn’t need DKI until Panama – called – Dynamic text. On Yahoo can’t buy plural and singular of a word. Might cause problems. Yahoo gives more leaway with casing. In Advanced match – word order is important.

DKI works best around Adgroups tightly organized – Red Sneakers, Blue Sneakers, etc. Or you have one dominant word like “camera”. Less successful in a conception campaign – like getting an emotional message. Also less successful for branding.

Final Thought: Does improve CTR – YES. QS – NO, Relevance – Yes and No.

Michael Sack:

Three strategies: Day Parting,  Hi – Lo Optimization, Portfolio.

Dayparting: Best when you have competive market conditions, limited sales windows, identifiable dempgraphic targets by time, and business capabilities – like a call center. Also patterns in conversion that suggest to daypart.

You need good analytics and ability to track keywords on hourly basis. Need the ability to plot performance against time using analytics, and ability to adjust bids based on data.

Can automate dayparting with rule based portfolios based on performance.

Hi Lo Optimization is a theory based on analysis that suggest most phases have a high performance window. Works by setting a high bid for a defined period of time, and all other times bid is set to minimum. Requires higher level of analytical capability. Looking for small windows of time to bid super agressively, and then bid normally other times.  Heatmaps can shows high impact ROI times.

Portfolio PPC management as an advanced strategy. It’s a strategy to minimize keyword management. De-risks market fluctuation, requires large groups of keywords. Treat keywords like stocks or investments. Look at cost, return, risk, performance tracking, market behavior. Keywords are an investment. You know the performance, and try to achieve goals based on results. Bidding is like playing blackjack. Question is do you take a hit on 17 or stand. And there is always someone that doesn;’t know how to play – and they play stupid. Uneducated PPC marketers change the table. Ego bidding – like being #1. Drives the CPC up. They ruin the landscape.  So we need to put keywords into portfolios – like mutual funds. You have many eggs in different baskets. Not tied to a single investment. Diversification – lets you chose tail terms – and don’t want to manage hundreds of thousands of bids. Use porfolios to bid more effectively.

[tags]SES, Search Engine Strategies, SES San Jose, Paid Search, PPC, Advanced Paid Search, portfolio theory, dayparting,   [/Tags]

Just googling “sexy apartments” came up with 2 paid search results. But neither ad used the search term “sexy apartment/s” in their ad space like all good Adwords ads should. I am going to assume this is because their attempts were shut down by Google as ours were.

We just googled “sexy” and all of the paid search results showed up without once using the term “sexy.” And when we googled “sex” absolutely no paid search results come up at all! Funny enough, when I type in “porn” all paid results come up with the bolded search term “porn” in every couple of lines.

So Google, what’s in the game? Sexy can’t be incorporated into my Adwords ad, but “porn” is fine? Who knows, perhaps “pornographic apartments” will help the CTR of our real estate clients.

As the industry continues to grow exponentially, it’s becoming harder to stand out of the crowd. Nick Stamoulis has figured out a smart and inexpensive way to do so using Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing.

So how does Nick Stamoulis brand himself and make his company known within the space?  Simple. He buys almost every search marketing firm’s name as a keyword, which are mostly “tail keywords”. Tail keywords are keywords that are infrequently searched and priced at about a nickel per click. The keyword set most likely comes from the SEMPO directory or any other site which aggregates search firms. In addition to buying my company name, (Promediacorp), queries for “iCrossing“, “iProspect“, “Acronym Media“, “Bruce Clay“, and other well known firms will all trigger Nick Stamoulis‘s pay-per-click ads.

Now let’s recall the trademark findings of the courts here in the US.  It is legal to bid on any trademarked term, (you can even bid on the keyword “Google” on Adwords). However, organizations can serve the search engines to prevent you from using their trademarked terms in the ads.

What Nick is doing, is perfectly fair game and good strategy.  Let the competitive spirit of the good ‘ole USA live on.

Moderator: Jeffrey K. Rohrs, VP, Agency & Search Marketing, ExactTarget

Speakers:

Brad Geddes, Director of Search Engine Marketing, Local Launch

Ben Perry, Ph.D., Paid Search Director, iProspect

Matt Van Wagner, President, Find Me Faster

Brad Geddes:

Who should use dayparting? Business who want to maximize business hours. Track ROI based on time. Finance industry -huge difference between 4pm and noon. Monitoring conversion rates by hour. Should we place higher bids at different times? In his case study, Sunday night converted well. Examine buying cycle and see how it applies. Expensive items like electronics have a longer conversion cycle. People usually spend their second paycheck of the month on disposable income. Are you adjusting bids based on this info?

Google has “ad scheduling”. MS has “dayparting”. Yahoo does not have an integrated tools. In Google, advanced mode allows us to increase % of bid based on time. Chart out cycle and make decisions from there. Adcenter has a slightly different interface. When bidding, set a base CPC. Incremental bidding – how much more do you want to pay on a Monday? or 3-7pm?

Closing thoughts. Marketing is connecting with people. In a service based industry, Friday is slow. So maybe we want to increase business by bidding up on a Friday. Might want to create time sensative offers. Call between 12-2pm for 25% off. Order before noon for free delivery.

Ben Perry:

Shows graph from 3 different clients.

Tips-

• Mapy our account structure before touching engine interface. Makes life easier, improves quality score. All 3 major engines have same structure. Makes it easier to import. Mirroring might not be the best idea, but could be useful.
• Budgetting: Do not use engine budgets to guide your spending. If you come close to budget, you can miss out on lots of volume. You want to serve ads as if you have an unlimited budget. If not, paying too much for click. More competitive. Shows graph to demonstrate.
• Use as many engines as makes sense.Use Google Website optimizer to test new traffic sources. Create new landing pages. Use multivariate testing that taps each of your main customer types. Send all traffic from a new source to that page only. Let the results tell you whether the source has value and to which customers.
• Keyword selection:Buy “tangential” keywords carefully or not at all. SEM works because of direct relevance. Contextual ads are usually a cheaper way to accomplish goal.
• Use board match with negative keywords to reach max volume under a CPA target. Can’t predict all ways people search. MINE DATA for negatives.
• Position: Side effect of ROI equation, not as a lever for driving the campaign. There’s nothing magical about position. Using it as a lever for your campaign makes you lose money. Calculate bids based on ROI.
• Use Geo-targetting strategically. When targeting most of the country, use a natuional campaign as the base with a geo-targeted overlays. Why? Often using only geo targeting leaves so much volume on hte table that it’s worth paying for clicks you can’t use.

Matt Van Wagner:

Dynamic Keyword Insertion is the topic today. Gets the impression that its not understood in the way it was intended. 4 major engines support DKI. Google started it as part of the secret sauce. MS has DKI on steroids – very neat. Yahoo didn’t have it till Panama.

Query “used fish” – see irrelevant ads by Amazon! Same with “used underwear”. Query “paid search advertisements” on Google. Funny result.

What is DKI? Must understant conceptually. It simply is a campaign with many words, can customize ads. That’s all it is. Time saver. Don’t want to write so many ads. Can increase relevants due to the bold effect. DKI will cause the bold effect. Can transform a dynamic ad to a customized ad. DKI picks up from the keyword list only. Shows the syntax. Can insert dynamic text into titles, description, and display url. If query is long, it will default to static ad. Can control casing of the DKI text. For example “PPC” should be all caps. Can put you in violation of editorial guidelines if you don’t use it properly. Also, on display URL – people may copy and paste the URL and get a 404.

DKI was not need until Panama. Copied the Google model. Also goes to default if query is too long. Yahoo has the ability to give alternative text which can help with mispelled queries and stemming issues. Alternative text field lets you control word casing and grammar.

Adcenter gives the most control. Great online video tutorial. Makes it easy to add parameters. Adcenter allows keyword in display URL. Also, if they cut and paste the URL – 404 error.

Aks just recently added DKI.