After morning coffee and mingling, SES Chicago has officially begun. The opening of this conference is a keynote speech by Analytics evangelist and co-founder of Market Motive, Avinash Kaushik.

He began his presentation by stating that one of most frustrating things about search is that many people just don’t understand it. There are two common views of search: consumer centric and tool centric.

But search is a lot more complex than that. What is SEM really?

5 Key Components of Search: According to Kaushik, there are 5 key components of Search:

1. Keyword Discovery

According to Kaushik, “If you’re not good at this point, you’re going to suck at everything else.”  Keywords are the foundation on which you build a Search campaign.  So choose them carefully.

2. Keyword Management & Analytics

3. Keyword Bidding & Optimization

4. Website and Landing Pages

5. Business Outcomes

What to focus on? The last two components (Website & Landing Pages, Business Outcomes) are the MOST important. They are the ones that help you to understand the offline impact of Search.  As Kaushik put it, “You made love to the search engines- now what is to come of it?”

Focus On Outcomes: Kaushik put a strong emphasis on focusing on outcomes. It is important to not only focus on conversions, but to focus on the larger impact of those conversions. How did your SEM efforts affect the entire business (not just the website).

Measuring Impacts: Outcomes are extremely hard to measure.  You have to figure out what exactly the website is trying to do. What is your overall goal? This way you can figure out how much economic value the search program has brought to your business.

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