Tech Solution: Search-Engine Marketing Tools

Rising keyword prices and the inability to track search results across multiple engines continue to bedevil marketers' ability to drive attributable ROI from search engine marketing. These solutions help organizations improve search engine rankings and provide marketers with dashboards that report which campaigns, keywords, and search engines are attracting the most valuable visitors and which ones are generating the lowest profit margins, enabling users to optimize content on key landing pages.

Google Analytics

Delivery Model: Web-based | Price: Free

Business Benefits: Marketers can measure the ROI of online marketing campaigns and can gain insight into customer behavior to help them discern between searchers who are simply browsing and those who want to buy. Marketers learn how users interact with their Web site to build an effective online business and understand which keywords are most effective and where site visitors are coming from.
Functionality: Google Analytics automatically tags keyword destination URLs and can track a variety of marketing campaign results, including referral links, newsletters, banner ads, and paid or organic search. The service is available in U.S. English and 16 other languages. Google Analytics also tracks all online campaigns, from emails to keywords, regardless of search engine or referral source. Those with an AdWords account can use Google Analytics directly from the AdWords interface. Google Analytics also calculates ROI metrics from automatically imported cost and keyword tracking data.

Contact: Google by visiting www.google.com/analytics.

SEMDirector: Organic Insight

Delivery Model: Web-based | Price: Pricing ranges from $75,000 to $250,000 annually.

Business Benefits: SEMDirector: Organic Insight (beta launched in 2006) is part of a suite of search marketing automation solutions that focuses on helping large advertisers improve their search marketing programs. SEMDirector audits every page in a Web site for compliance with a series of best practices in search marketing optimization. The best practices are used to make sure the advertisements for particular products rank on the first page of Google, MSN, and Yahoo!, among others.

Functionality: SEMDirector automatically checks for technical construction of the site, use of search terms in the language of the site, and the effectiveness of the link strategy executed on the site. The product allows marketers to understand how investments and alterations they make to their site will enhance the optimization results in improved or degraded rank on each of the major search engines. Additionally, SEMDirector can be integrated with Web-analytic solutions that track activities when a visitor arrives at the site, allowing marketers to track traffic and conversions.

Contact: SEMDirector at 858-397-1500; or visit www.semdirector.com.

WebTrends Dynamic Search

Delivery Model: Web-based

Price: Pricing is based on a monthly, tiered model that typically ranges between $50,000 and $500,000.

Business Benefits: WebTrends Dynamic Search is an automated search marketing optimization solution that manages, optimizes, and grows paid search advertising across major search networks like Google and Yahoo!. Unlike bid management solutions that ignore variables impacting search marketing performance, Dynamic Search focuses on automating the entire search marketing process, increasing paid search revenue and search profit margins in the process.

Functionality: Dynamic Search uses continuous automated performance analysis and multivariable testing to identify the best performing network-keyword landing page combinations. It captures real-time data from major search networks, analyzes performance, and automatically adjusts variables. Marketers can directly upload product cost, gross margin percentage, and other financial data.

Contact: WebTrends at 503-223-3023; email at sales@webtrends.com; or visit www.webtrends.com.

Contact Assistant Editor Colin Beasty at cbeasty@destinationCRM.com.

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