New search strategies designed for making keywords pay off

The rising cost of coveted keywords is a topic that has more than a few e-marketers grumbling these days. Prices for top keywords keep increasing because, as recently reported by Nielsen/NetRatings Inc., the demand for search advertising now outstrips the supply of search terms. Between May 2003 and May 2004, the number of searches generated by U.S. web users grew by 30% to 1.2 billion sessions – but that pales in comparison to the 184% growth in search advertising spending reported by the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

It’s the growing imbalance of supply and demand that’s driving keyword prices up. To afford top keywords, marketers need to get more conversions off them, which is causing search marketers who’ve been more focused on the metric of traffic to shift more emphasis to conversions rates. That fact is driving new interest in on-site "conversion enhancement" at search engine marketing service and technology providers that historically have focused primarily just on getting traffic to sites. Search marketing firms are launching conversion enhancement initiatives that extend their advisory role and technology deeper into areas such as page design and architecture.

Atlas NetConversions, acquired by ad technology firm Atlas DMT earlier this year, captures on-page user behavior in details ranging from mouse movements to scrolling to how much time users spend on each field viewed. The tool looks for friction points and compares them to benchmarks, identifying ways to fix them. An automated testing product speeds up the validation process, Atlas DMT says.

Search marketing company iProspect has gotten deeper into the on-site conversion business with its Web Conversion Enhancement, a methodology on which it’s filed a patent application. Its goal is to create different persuasive buying paths for different web site visitors, moving them towards conversion. To accomplish that, iProspect gets involved in research-based page redesign, which may include graphics, language, content and page architecture, depending on the design and architecture its client site already has in place.

iProspect CEO Fredrick Marckini underscores the need to shift focus from traffic to conversion rates with the story of one B2B client whose average bid for a top position across 50 - 80 keywords on Overture’s search engine was $1 per click last year. That client is facing a marketplace of $4 per click for the same keyword set today, Marckini says. Another company in a similar situation recently called Dave Carlson, CEO of search marketing firm Atlas One Point, to complain that it was suddenly being outbid by a competitor at $5 per click on a keyword for which it had been securing top position for $2.50.

Search marketing providers say that, to make keywords pay, page architecture must drive better conversions from the keywords marketers are acquiring at such a high price. Notes Marckini, "Whoever’s got the highest conversion rate can bid more than his competitors and get the lion’s share of the audience. If you are maxing out at $2 per click, and the marketplace goes up 400%, you are no longer even on the first page of results."