Optimization Strategies

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Optimization Strategies Tactics for Achieving
High Visibility in Search Results
Barbara Coll CEO WebMama.com, Inc.
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Mission Statement

• Produce product sales, information distribution
  and/or lead generation, with a high return on the
  marketing investment.

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Goal

• High Rankings in Organic Search Engine Results
  that Increase Traffic to Website

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Strategy

• Think of optimization throughout site development
  and modifications
• Look for optimization opportunities
• Look for web developers and designers who have
  SEO experience or partners

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How to Get the Team On Board

• Education the Team
• Convince the Team
• Bribe the Team

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The Team
Inventory Managers
Marketing Manager
Web Producer
Product Manager
Public Relations
MarCom
Customer Support
Graphic Designers
IT
Sales
Copywriters
Investor Relations
Developers
Legal
Webmaster
Marketing
Demand Generation
Executive Management
Content Managers
International
Programmers
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Critical Decisions What to Optimize With?

• Not an easy decision
• Requires extensive research
• What is the outcome desired of search visitors?
• Is it about branding, awareness or lead
  generation?

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What Do We Want?

• To rank very well under phrases that have been
  shown to convert
• To have all pages indexed
• To rank well under keywords that have traffic
  volume
• To have our brands/trademarks visible. To own the
  category
• Quality Visitors not high rankings

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Beware the CEO-ego!!
Beware the CEO-ego!!
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Keyword Selection Tools

• The TEAM
• The Competition
• PPC Volume Estimation Tools
• Your PPC campaigns
• WordTracker for ratios and expansions
• Current WebSite Referring Keywords
• Media Publishers keyword list
• Note 1 Legacy words are important and drive
  volume
• Note 2 Searchers usually dont use PR terms

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What to do with the Keywords/Phrases?

• Map keywords/phrases to pages
• They dont have to be unique to each other
• Use Keyphrases in content on page
• text-based content
• Develop meta data with keywords
• TITLE tags
• Meta Description and Keyword tags
• ALT tags
• Name directories, files and images

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Did you Choose the Right Phrases?

• Test Words and Creatives with Keywords using PPC
  and PI (Yahoo! Site Match)
• Tracking of organic traffic
• Watch which keywords are rising to the top
• See what keywords are driving visitors further
  into the site
• See where those visitors are going
• Challenges of tracking abound

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Second Challenge Getting all pages into the SE
Index
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SpiderabilityRemember that they WANT your Content

• All pages accessible through the navigation
  structure of the site
• Text-Based links
• SiteMaps include links to popular search
  results and dynamic pages
• Paid Inclusion Yahoo! Search Submit
  (http//searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srchsb/index.php
  )
• Google sitemaps new, beta (https//www.google.co
  m/webmasters/sitemaps/login )
• MSN ???

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Technology

• Content Management Systems
• How many parameters on file names? 3 at most. 2
  is better. 1 is best. 0 rocks!
• Templating is it helping you?
• Is the template SEO ready?
• Development Platform
• And the evil (for now ?)..

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FLASH
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Things to Remember (1)

• Content, content, content with keywords
• Tracking is hard
• Organic traffic is effected by all other online
  and offline marketing

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Things to Remember (2)

• If you think it is important then the search
  engines think it is important
• And a question
• How much longer can we call it free?

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Barbara C. CollCEO, WebMama.com Inc.

• Search Engine Marketing Professional
  OrganizationFounder, former President and
  ChairBoard of DirectorSEMPO.org