Search engine marketer gets clients clicked

BOULDER – Fittingly perhaps, it’s easy to find Internet search engine companies these days. They’re popping up like, well, pop-ups.

Add another to the list. This one is ClickDepth, which spun off from Boulder design agency Imulus in September. (Imulus created ClickDepth in 2002 to add to its menu of services to clients.)

One possible reason for the increase in search engine marketing companies, analysts say, is because second to e-mailing, searching is the second most popular online activity.

“Searching is clearly growing, and it’s one of the main reasons we broke off from Imulus,” says George Morris, client services manager at ClickDepth. “Definitely more and more people are searching and looking for information on the Internet, and it’s great for us and our clients.”

Here’s the important part for companies looking to get found on the Internet: ClickDepth reports that if your company isn’t in the first two pages of search engine results, then your competition is out-performing you.
Speaking of competition, how does ClickDepth plan to stand out from all the other search engine marketing agencies out there?

Morris says simplicity of reporting, Web design experience and tracking abilities.

“A lot of search engine marketing companies use a ‘shock and awe’ approach to reporting and give clients 30-plus page reports of dehumanizing statistics that actually require a lot of trained interpretation,” Morris says. “We interpret the reports and just deliver simple, easy-to-understand information.”

He also says the company has a strong background in Web design and development so it can recommend the right kind of changes for clients and help them make those changes.

“We also have outstanding tracking abilities,” he says. “Our software gives the client very detailed reports about Web site visitors and their search and navigation behavior.”

As for getting found on the Internet, insiders say the key to success is twofold: Choosing the right combinations of key words and communicating with clients about their return on investment.

Unlike traditional marketing, online marketing and search engine optimization can be tracked, so many search engine companies, including ClickDepth, give clients reports on their ROI.

ClickDepth focuses primarily on sharing paid and natural results.

In paid search engine marketing, or pay-per-click advertising, advertisers’ messages appear next to search results because of key words associated with those ads.

ClickDepth reports that the majority of users tend to click on the top five results, including the ads. So it works to keep its clients in the top five placements via those key words.

Natural search optimization is simply getting a client’s Web site to come up in a search – not an ad. And these results are often flanked by the paid results, typically to the right of the natural search results.

Studies show that 80 percent of the clicks on search results are for the natural results, while only 20 percent click on paid results.

So far, Morris says business is great. “We’ve increasingly been getting more and more leads, and we now have nine customers.”

He says all of those clients are under nondisclosure agreements, but they consist of very large software manufacturers, mid-size pharmaceutical companies and local real-estate agencies.

He wouldn’t share revenue projections, but did say “we obviously see great potential in this space, and we feel like we are very well-positioned to capitalize where others have failed to seize the opportunity.”

The company will be launching a ClickDepth blog before 2007. Later this year it will be releasing several free search tools to help companies understand the value of search engine marketing.

60 million use Web searches on typical day

Move over e-mail, search has arrived.

That’s the finding of Pew Internet & American Life tracking surveys and consumer behavior trends from a comScore Media Metrix consumer panel.

About 60 million American adults are using search engines on a typical day. These results represent a sharp jump from 2004 when that number was just 38 million – a 55 percent increase.

So search engine use is gaining ground on e-mail use as a primary Internet activity. Pew data shows that on any given day, about 52 percent of American Internet users are sending and receiving e-mail.

Data from comScore show that Google was the most heavily used search engine in late 2005 with 89.8 million unique visitors, followed by Yahoo! Search (68 million), MSN Search (49.7 million), Ask Jeeves (43.7 million) and AOL Search (36.1 million).

Findings also show a rise in local searches related to geographic places – searches that involve “local qualifiers” – or search terms including specific items such as ZIP codes, telephone numbers and street addresses.

Search engine users are in their 30s, tend to use the Internet a lot and are much more likely to have broadband connections than dial-up connections. They are also more likely to be socially upscale – college-educated and living in households earning more than $75,000.

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