Tomorrow marks the first day of SES Chicago 2010. In earlier parts of our SES Chicago interview series we chatted with Chris Long about B2B marketing tips and Hollis Thomases about Twitter and automation.
For part III of our interview series, I had the opportunity to connect with Robert Murray, CEO of iProspect, a search engine marketing firm. Robert will be on a panel of speakers discussing the future of search tomorrow. During our interview Rob provided great insight on changes in search and what the future of search holds.
Brian Camen (BC): I’ve noticed there’s a wide spectrum of knowledge when it comes to paid advertising campaigns. Many people either know very little or have a full grasp on paid campaigns. What are some misconceptions businesses have about paid search advertising campaigns?
Robert Murray (RM): The biggest misconception about paid search is the degree to which it can be automated. Many marketers perceive it to be something that can be done with the push of a button. Big retailers are especially prone to this thinking.
But the reality is that paid search relies heavily on human thought and judgment. An automated bidding system is just a tool that employs rules. It won’t develop a strategy for you. Nor will it devise a series of tests. And it certainly won’t develop your ad copy.
While there are definitely parts of paid search that can be automated, it is not something that you can just set and walk away from. In fact, you can have the best tool in the business, but if you don’t have savvy and strategic search marketers “driving the bus,” it won’t get you too far.
BC: There has been a lot of online chatter about SEO being dead or close to it. How alive is SEO?
RM: SEO is very much alive. However, it’s a lot different now. Before, SEO was all about meta data and links, and driving traffic to a destination website. But with the advent of universal search, the focus of SEO has shifted. Today, it is all about a distributed content strategy. It’s about leveraging different content types such as videos, press releases, and images. It’s about knowing how to optimize those digital assets and syndicating them across the Web.
BC: You’re part of a panel of speakers that will discuss the future of search. Before we discuss the future, it’s important to understand how we got to where search is today. In your opinion, what has been the biggest change in search over the course of the past few years?
RM: I think personalization has had a big impact. While it’s a good thing for consumers, it’s made things a tad more difficult for marketers. Why? When the results for keyword searches vary for each consumer, you end up with hundreds of thousands of variations of a search results page. Because it will look far different for each consumer, it makes it much harder for a marketer to dominate the page for their entire audience. That’s why marketers are now trying to target consumers by audience rather than by keyword.
BC: The integration of social media has forever changed search results and the way people search. How will social media continue to evolve search in the future?
RM: As part of Web 2.0, social media is inherently interactive and user-generated centric. And its proliferation has essentially created unlimited opportunity for marketers to show up in the search results. On top of that, searchers are also tapping into the search function within social networks. This creates even more exposure opportunities for marketers. And this is exactly what’s happening with Facebook. For example, a popular online gaming company is seeing a dramatic decrease in searches on the major search engines for one of their key terms. However, they are seeing an increase in searches for that same term on Facebook. What does that mean? Eventually, social networks could very well end up impacting the search volume on the major engines.
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