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Search marketing management - which tools to use

Across my years in the online marketing and SEO/PPC industry, I've moved from a very hands-on approach to more strategic roles involving a lot of agency management.
I've now reached a point in my career where I need to assess and recommend agencies for specific projects, and search marketing is an area where choosing an agency can very often decide the fate of a business because of its impact on revenue and ultimately profits.

With so many agencies competing in the same space, you need to have clear objectives and budgets before even starting your search. Get as many quotes as necessary to get good points of comparison, and don't forget to ask for references.

I've recently been introduced to a company called SearchIgnite (SI), and I have to say that I've so far been more than impressed by the solution they are offering. At its core, SI is a paid search bid management & optimisation platform, but it also offer multi channel tracking (paid,organic, social media...)as well as a very advanced forecasting tool.

• Paid search forecasting

This tool is the one I'm the one I'm most interested in as after an initial running period of 3 to 4 weeks, search marketers can accurately start forecasting paid results based on variables such as budgets, CPA, expected conversions or actions....To put it simply, if you'd like to know how a 10% increase in your paid budget is going to affect your signups or sales, you just have to enter the data into the tool to get a prediction. This provides answers that even finance directors or board members cannot contest when looking at your paid budgets, and it also gives you more flexibility in planning.

• Click path analysis vs last click wins

Another great feature is the click path analysis. A lot of paid search management tools work on a last click wins basis (where the action following a click on a paid ad is attributed the search leading to that click). While there is nothing fundamentally wrong with this model, it does however mean that you're not getting the full story on what your visitors have done or searched for prior to that last click. For example, a visitor could have started his research with a very generic keyword, then moved on to a more specific search (long tail) and finally converted on a brand term. If you take the last click wins model, then you'll probably invest more budget on brand terms, but by doing so you may be missing out on all the visitors who did a search for generic keywords.
Click path analysis allows you to find out exactly the path researchers have taken before converting, whether it is organic or paid, allowing you to pinpoint areas in which to invest your spend.

• Bid management

This is what all paid search management tools will do and it can be done manually or fully automated, depending on your requirements. From my point of view, I'm quite happy to let paid search experts manage this part of the process as it is really time consuming . But whatever the solution you use, make sure the settings are right for your business.

As I'm about to get my hands on the SearchIgnite platform in the next few days, I'll let you know how I get on. In the meantime, feel free to let me know which search management tools you use and what you like about them.

Google layout changes...for the best?

Google has officially rolled out its SERP new layout, and at first glance, I'm not entirely convinced by this new presentation.
I guess it's like everything else, as time goes I'll probably just get used to the new layout and there must be a very clever explanation behind the update...but why change something that is so familiar to millions of people across the world?
More information and a comprehensive list of changes:

http://www.reelseo.com/googles-search-result-pages/
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-design-turned-up-notch.html

What do you think? do you like this new look?