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The Man Who DID Belong -
the use of AdWords in the Nigritude Ultramarine contest
July 14, 2004. Let history note that there were
TWO winners of the contest on July 7th, the less obvious one was at the top of
the column on the right, where the ads go. Here's the story of the search professional
who took a flyer on an AdWords presence in the Google SERPS (search engine results
page) during the run of the Nigritude Ultramarine manipulation contest of 2004.
As far as we're concerned there were two first-place winners
at the top position in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) in Google for the
nigritude ultramarine contest, and they were the one on the left, understandably,
and also the one on the right, in the advertiser's column.
While everyone on the left was trying to get to the top for free (with a lot of
work), the winner on the right - largely unnoticed and certainly unsung - was
the webmaster using AdWords and paying a charge for every user who clicked on
the ad to be carried to the target web site.
We have noted elsewhere that, in any other industry with this kind of competitiveness,
there would be a crowded list of advertisers on the right as well as the surging
mass of websites showing in the "natural" results to the left.
Every time we saw the solitary appearance of the lone advertiser on this front
page of the SERPS - devoid of any other competing advertisers - we felt
like holding our breath so as not to break the surface tension and disturb the
delicate margin that must have existed there.
--2--
The advertiser working that margin was Aaron Wall, a respected veteran of search
engine work. Clicking on the ad took the user out of the noise and dust of the
nigritude ultramarine sweatfest, and into the unexpected calm and order of the
"SEO Book".
This is as nice a landing page as you will ever see: it's pure magnetism, attractive
and readable at a glance, and filled with real information no website owner can
lightly walk away from
We wish we had an award we could give for the SEO Book ad campaign, this review
will have to suffice. Go take a look at the SEO Book, but please don't click on
his ad in Google, because it costs him money when you do that, instead follow
our link to examine the page.
Note that we are not affiliated with the SEO Book in any way, this is simply a
critical review that happens to derive from admiration and marketing approval,
as well as a note for history to include the SEO
Book in the list of players in the nigritude ultramarine contest.
--3--
During the earlier days of the nigritude ultramarine contest, there were several
ads that appeared in the Google SERPS. They seem to have been more for branding
than anything, some were perhaps firms making an appearance just to say hello.
It's reasonable to assume that anyone converting prospects into profits from their
ad would have stayed as long as that situation obtained, but whatever the results,
all the other advertisers dropped out of the space, and in the end only the solo
contender remained.
The actual ad for the SEO Book isn't in itself very compelling, and we assume
this was intentional: this is Pay Per Click after all, and with the kind of traffic
coming to the SERPS to watch the contest, it could be very costly to have an ad
that people just couldn't resist clicking on. Probably the only people clicking
on the ad were those genuinely interested in discovering a body of knowledge about
search engine optimization. Here's how the ad appeared:
The point we have made elsewhere about entrants to "wrong" industries
is reversed in this story. Anybody clicking on Aaron Wall's ad was already a part
of his natural constituency. The market niche he positioned in was almost exclusively
made up of people interested to some degree in search engine optimization and
bringing traffic to web sites - precisely his art.
Without having to undertake the tangential work of entering the contest and manipulating
traffic flows, and without revealing any of his methods or sources, he managed
to introduce a continual stream of new people to his services and his information
portal, and to convert an acceptable percentage of new visitors into purchasing
his book. All from one tiny ad.
--4--
As of this writing (July 14th), a search
in Google for "nigritude ultramarine" shows essentially the same
active "marketplace" as the day the finish line was crossed, and the
SEO Book ad is still running. So although Aaron was kind enough to share his numbers
with us, here we will say only that he received from the ad a conversion rate
that was modest, but greater than one person per every hundred who came, and his
average cost per new visitor clicking through from the ad was less than a dime.
When was the last time someone with those ratios was in the top AdWords position?
We have no award to offer, but we know a job well done when we see one, and we've
made this mention because didn't want it to go unrecognized. The SEO Book gave
a winner's performance in a fleeting opportunity based on a keyword term that
didn't exist two months earlier. To Aaron Wall, well done for unlocking the value
of this transient market.
And the champ's own comment on the economics of the opportunity? "It was
a steal".
[COMMENT Becoming visible to potential customers
is wasted work if you don't induce at least some of those people to do business
with you - conversion is the key, and the landing page is the primary step to
conversion. Landing pages are a subject in themselves, and we have it covered
for you in a concise article in our Services section explaining the
value of landing pages to the website owner.]
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