She goes on to say that marketers also need to utilize the recently combined Yahoo and Microsoft adCenter. Operating as one, “Binghoo,” as Churchill calls it, has approximately 30 percent of the paid search market share. Although Google AdWords is established and has great tools, there is still value in “Binghoo.”

“Keep advertising on Google, but don’t give up on adCenter. I think that it will prove in the long-term to be a beneficial thing because it gives us another opportunity to get in front of potential customers,” she said.

For those marketers who still need to embrace adCenter, Churchill offers an easy tip. She suggests that marketers download their Google accounts into the AdWords Editor tool, which is free. Marketers can then export the information into an Excel spreadsheet. Although marketers will need to do some tweaking especially regarding negative keywords and geo-targeting, this step saves a lot of time when beginning an adCenter campaign.

In this interview with WebProNews, Churchill also discusses several basic, older tools that are still relevant today. For instance, Xenu’s Link Sleuth is still very effective for checking links.

In addition, she talks about recent changes to Google’s keyword tool. The search engine changed the data source from Google.com and its partner sites to just Google.com. Google is also looking at commercial words as opposed to informational words. Churchill personally believes this was a bad move on Google’s part since 80 percent of searches on the Web are informational.

“I think Google is doing a real disservice to users by doing that,” she adds.

What are your thoughts on adCenter and Google’s recent changes to its keyword tool?

As he explains to WebProNews, the new methodology is, essentially, keyword opposition to benefit score (K.O.B.) In this concept, the opposition is the competitive nature of a search result. The benefit is the search volume times cost-per-click. To get the total K.O.B. score, take the opposition times the benefit.

Many people utilize Wordtracker but keep their competitive analysis separate. Malicoat’s idea, however, brings the two together to show the benefit beyond the raw search volume.

He goes on to say that there are two parts to the idea. The first is determining whether or not there is commercial intent involved, to which the price of the cost-per-click is the deciding factor. The other side is determining what to rank for. To find this, users need to look at the opposition. A few factors involved in opposition include age, on-page optimization, local set links, and unique linking domain.

To learn more about keyword opposition through benefit score, visit the SEO section on Market Motive.

Search engines make this determination through topic modeling. The search engines are even able to look at advanced queries and break them down to see which words are the most important out of a specific query.

Having this knowledge could be very important for SEOs, since it could let them know if they need to improve their content. For this reason, Rand Fishkin and the SEOmoz team developed a tool for doing just this called the LDA tool (Latent Dirichlet Allocation).

“Whenever we build, there’s no way it’s nearly as sophisticated as what Google’s using, but what we’re hoping is that maybe it can help people to analyze that and see if it’s a factor in their own rankings or on their pages,” Fishkin tells WebProNews.

The tool is free and is currently available in SEOmoz Labs. Fishkin says he does not know what the implications of the tool will be, but he believes the concept of it is, “a great thing for SEOs to be doing and thinking about more robustly…”

How would this information improve your SEO efforts?

As the economy continues to turn around, there are some elements that retailers should apply to better leverage the comeback. From a paid search perspective, Gibson recommends that retailers update their keywords based on incoming inventory.

During the recession, many retailers cut back on their inventory. Now that the economy is starting to improve, they are ordering more products. Gibson says retailers need to make sure that their new inventory is represented in paid search. He also adds that retailers need to optimize pages to guarantee that they are found in the search engines. Ultimately, no one will benefit if the new inventory cannot be found.

Gibson also tells WebProNews that The Rimm-Kaufman Group is adding products. In the past, the company focused primarily on paid search. As Gibson explains, it is now adding an attribution management component that will help its clients understand what is happening outside of paid search. RKG will talk with clients about the data it collects and help them build an attribution model.

To make the most of your data, Kaushik recommends using the following strategies: inline segmentation, tag clouds, and keyword trees. These strategies take thousands of keywords and create visualizations that allows marketers to understand all the data.

For example, by using tag clouds, Kasushik tells WebProNews that marketers can determine the relationships between keywords. They can also find out how consumers are behaving and what their intent is.

One big problem regarding data is the way that marketers go to their bosses and try to convince them the invest more in search, based upon data. This is often a problem because the data the marketers use does not usually connect with the boss. To resolve this issue, Kaushik says marketers should calculate the value of each goal they have for their site. In turn, this information would provide more clarity to upper management.

Kaushik also suggests that marketers measure all the site’s revenue to help understand that microconversions are happening and where.

“Quantify the complete impact of the site; otherwise, you’re going to be making very bad decisions,” says Kasushik.

Are you looking at the right data?

They found that these companies are spending a lot of money on paid search. Interestingly enough, they are not investing in natural search despite the many opportunities there.

In the report, Conductor looked at 6.7 million keywords and found that only 2 percent of the companies involved showed a significant percentage of keywords in the top 30 results. In other words, these companies are spending millions of dollars daily on PPC and yet only 2 percent showed up in the top 30 results.

The report also found that more than 50 percent of the companies were not showing up at all. In reality, Dotterer says that these keywords would be found if these companies ranked in organic search. In addition, the companies would not have to spend as much for natural search.

“As people started to get more and more specific about what they were searching for, Fortune 500 tanked even further,” adds Dotterer.

In the end, natural search has many opportunities that PPC does not. In addition, companies could save a lot of wasted money by investing some of their time on the organic side of search.

Are you utilizing the opportunities natural search provides?

Up to this point, Google has used keywords as a proxy for relevance. In the future, however, the search engine hopes to allow advertisers to state their desired outcome and then, use its machine-based learning to produce that desired result. In other words, Google would essentially take the necessary information and put the ad in front of the most relevant audience.

Why is all this important? According to Elesseily, it’s important because query length is increasing, new and unique search terms are increasing, and searcher sophistication is increasing. All these elements make it hard for advertisers to keep their keyword lists fresh.

Incidentally, not all of the advertising community supports this new development. Elesseily said that some advertisers believe it’s too broad of an approach and don’t like the idea of putting that much trust in Google.

Although Elesseily doesn’t believe keywords will go away, she does believe the future of paid search is changing.

What are your thoughts regarding paid search without keywords?

While he believes keywords are important, he believes people need to realize the value of search queries as well and use the two together. He said if you look deep into a query, you will be able to improve your targeting.

Many people have a problem with match types in paid search because Google decides which keyword to match it with and charges people every time it is used. On the contrary, by looking at the search queries, users have more control.

ClickEquations provides software that allows users to see every query that matched to every keyword by match type. With this information, users can make adjustments with match types and save money.

Google’s Conversion Optimizer essentially allows Google to take responsibility for delivering conversions. It does just as any good “human” PPC bid manager would do and watches query reports, assembles keyword lists, makes sure the right negative keywords are in the list, and more. Interestingly enough, all these jobs are more suitable for an algorithm.

Szetela told WebProNews that he believes PPC will eventually evolve to the point that the advertiser only needs to be concerned with their area of expertise, which is the creative side such as the actual ad and the landing page.

Incidentally at SES San Jose, Google’s Nick Fox spoke about this topic with WPN and the idea behind paid search without keywords. It appears this is the future of paid search.

1.    Can we go beyond keywords?
2.    Can we go beyond text ads?
3.    Can we go beyond cost-per-click (CPC)?

Fox suggests that instead of “guessing” on keywords, matching the advertiser’s actual business objectives directly with the action the users are trying to do. For text ads, why not change the ad format to include items such as maps, video, directions, and more since users are accustomed to those enhancements in their searches.

To go beyond cost-per-click, Fox advocates the idea of cost-per-acquisition or pay-per-conversion systems. Advertisers do not simply want visitors to their site, but instead, want to see business results such as sales and relationships. Google’s Conversion Optimizer is one step in moving toward this direction.

While keywords, text ads, and cost-per-click have all worked well in the past, there is always room to boost the experience for both the advertisers and the users.

What direction would you like to see search advertising take in the future?

All the search engines have recently stepped up their efforts with semantic search and hope to better understand each user’s intent. For example, if a user searches for “cougar” are they looking for an animal, a car, or a TV series?  Semantic technology has potential to provide a better understanding of that intent.

While many questions pertaining to semantics remain, one certainty that Dana Todd of Newsforce points out is that semantics go beyond keywords and produce new and intriguing data layers to calculate.

Where do you think semantics will take us moving forward? Do you have concerns about semantic search?

Christine Churchill, the President of KeyRelevance, said in an interview at SMX Advanced that she’s seen some “amazing changes” take place in respect to what’s working. “This past year or so, with this economic depression that we’ve had . . . some of the terms that have been very consistent over the years . . . you’ll actually see a very strong downward trend,” stated Churchill.

“Online behavior is changing. People are trying to find ways to stretch their dollars, get more for their money,” she continued by way of explanation.

So one specific tip is to pair core keyword phrases with terms like “discount,” “cheap,” “overstock,” and “inexpensive.” Churchill said, “We’ve found that to be very useful.”

More generally, she likes to just take advantage of what several different keyword tools offer. You can use some for brainstorming, some for gathering trend info, and so on. And it’s best to make sure you’re on the right path by seeing if they offer consistent suggestions.

Two of Churchill’s favorite tools are Google Trends and Google Insights for Search.

There must be a web page to support every keyword. Similar words do not count; they must be exact. Make sure your keywords are a good investment. If you choose the wrong keywords, you’re going to lose money and waste time.

Mike refers to people who do this as “people with their heads in the clouds.” He says people who dream up keywords are not going to have success in their efforts and need to come back to earth and be practical.

Mike suggests looking at the following factors when selecting a keyword list:

-    Keywords in domain name
-    Website analytics
-    Competitors’ rankings
-    Inbound links
-    Where you ranked today, which page ranked, and on what search engine

Also, look for value in your PPC campaign. If someone is paying for a keyword, then it should be taken under consideration for your SEO program as well. It is possible that the same keywords could work for both programs.

Lastly, don’t look at who is ranking number 1 or 2. Look where websites are ranking that are similar to your site. You could be comparing your website, which is operated by 3 people, to a website that is run by a large corporation. Mike recommends first looking at the website’s age, size, and other factors before taking action. You may need to address other issues on your website to compete effectively.

SEO is a long process and the investment into keywords should not be taken lightly. After looking at the above factors, let’s again ask the question: Do your keywords support your website?

Even though people are aware of the importance of building a keyword list, Mark says they tend to leave out one of the first and very important steps to the process, which is brainstorming. In this video, Mark suggests that businesses brainstorm to build a strong foundation of keywords.

He suggests involving the public relations department, customer service department, and even customers in the brainstorming process. Taking these steps can help get your creative juices flowing and can sometimes bring words to the surface that you might have overlooked.

Mark says:

“Many people will get focused primarily on the head of search, and if you want to look at the head of search, then you need to know who you are today; and then find who you might want to be when you grow up.”

Let competitive analysis be your road map. It is important for businesses to be aware of their competitors and the keywords and phrases that are driving people. Using that information, develop a strategy that is ideal for your business.

Lastly, Mark discusses how big brands are embracing SEO and what it means for small businesses and marketers. Mark indicates that smaller players can still hold their own against the big guys if they maintain authoritative sites that have quality content, valuable links, and creative tactics for visitor engagement.

To briefly summarize the case, American Airlines accused Google of infringing upon its trademarks by using them as keyword targets for paid ads from other airline companies. Essentially, when a user searched for “American Airlines” in a Google search, the user was then redirected to the site of an American Airlines competitor. (Clarification: When a user searched for “American Airlines” in Google, paid advertisements and organic results would show up. Some of these paid ads and organic results were from the competitors of American Airlines who chose “American Airlines” as a keyword phrase. The searcher could then be led to believe that the competitor was either affiliated with American Airlines or superior to American Airlines.)

In July of 2008, the companies settled the lawsuit. As mentioned above, the terms remain classified so there is no real winner that we know of. Incidentally, several companies have sued Google over trademark infringement, but American Airlines is the first well-known trademark owner to take action.

In this video, Clarke speculates that Google has a policy that it implements for most all businesses, but for recognized brands like American Airlines, the giant search company may make exceptions to its policy. He takes it one step further and says there is a possibility that in cases such as this, companies create their own policy through a confidential settlement.

Clarke also guesses that if a user conducts a Google search for “American Airlines” today, competitor’s ads will not show up. Interestingly enough, I did a Google search for “American Airlines” and no ads showed up.