Search engine marketing

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Search engine marketing

• MARK 430

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After todays class you will be able to

• Distinguish between search engine optimization
  and search engine advertising
• Understand some of the organic methods of SEO
• Be able to explain methods of paid placement,
  and pay-per-click contextual advertising used in
  search engines

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Search Engines and marketing

• Search engines are a narrowcast medium
• Marketing targets those who are already
  interested in your product or service
• ROMI is high
• Low cost relative to traditional media
• Good results in terms of traffic, sales, and
  branding

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Search engines an effective marketing channel

• Statistics on how consumers search for products
  online (from Overture.com)

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Search engine marketing

• Search engine marketing is the umbrella concept
• OBJECTIVE IS TO BE IN THE TOP FEW SEARCH RESULTS
• 2 major methods of achieving this positioning
  within search engine marketing
• Search engine optimization (SEO) - built into the
  design of web pages (organic positioning)
• Search engine advertising and paid placement

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Paid listings
Organic listings
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Search engine optimization (for organic listings)

• Optimizing the web page CODE for search engine
  spiders
• Objective top position in search engine listings
  (without paying the search engine)

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Keywords / Key terms

• Search engine indexing how it works
• Relevancy ranking algorithms
• Keywords or key terms are the search terms
  people type into search engines
• Find out what search terms your target audience
  uses in search engines from your log file
  analysis
• Try out keywords from generators eg. Overtures
  or Googles
• Look at current search trends Yahoo Buzz, Google
  Zeitgeist
• Real-time search from MetaCrawler

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Search engine optimization

• Focuses on
• designing web pages that are friendly to search
  engine spiders
• making sure that the elements that are indexed by
  search engines are all optimal
• called organic methods
• getting indexed and listed by the major search
  engines

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Designing web pages that are friendly to search
engine spiders

• Search engines love simple web site design
• lots of text (optimized for keywords)
• spiders dont have to sift through code to find
  keywords
• Web design elements that impede search engine
  indexing
• Frames
• Flash
• Graphics, Image maps and multimedia files
• JavaScript (can trap spiders)
• Dynamic web pages

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Optimizing page elements in html code

• Page body text content / page copy
• Title tag
• Heading tags
• Graphics alt tags
• Hypertext links
• Meta tags

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Page body text content / page copy

• Search engines love high quality, relevant
  content
• create content your target audience is genuinely
  interested in
• Search engines reward sites that have valuable
  information
• Page copy - make sure your keywords are well
  represented
• Higher in the page the better (definitely in the
  first 25 words)
• Use your customers language not all marketing
  copy uses the words that your customers use
• Relationship of a keyword phrase to the total
  number of words on a page keyword density
• Keyword density is a good indication of relevancy
• But remember balance higher is not always better
  (boring for users and penalized as spam!)

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Title tag

• Probably the most important page element tag
• Should always contain your most important
  keywords or key terms
• Each page of your site should have a different
  title tag
• Example of a good TITLE tag that will generate
  traffic from people searching for da Vinci
• ltTITLEgtLeonardo da Vincilt/TITLEgt (absolute
  relevance)
• This example is less relevant (but contains other
  useful info remember to balance marketing
  needs)
• ltTITLEgtArtefacts Leonardo da Vincilt/TITLEgt
• This one will put you out of business
• ltTITLEgtWelcome to Artefacts.com Your Number One
  Online Resource for Wall Art Solutions!!!lt/TITLEgt

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Heading tags

• ltH1gt, ltH2gt, ltH3gt etc
• Used to indicate importance ie. page or
  paragraph headings
• Should therefore be a good indicator of content -
  these should indicate the theme of the page or
  section
• Use your keywords in heading tags
• Use heading tags when coding rather than just
  making the text bigger using font size

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Graphics alt tags

• Spiders cant see or read graphics
• Make sure all graphics have relevant and
  descriptive ALT tags (not photo34643)
• Use your keywords especially in places like the
  alt tags for your logo
• Especially important for navigation graphics (you
  dont want a spider to get stuck on a page)

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Hypertext links to other parts of your site

• use your keywords in hypertext links
• Never use click here! does that look like
  relevant or interesting content to a spider?
• make it easy for spiders to follow links
• Include text links for navigation in addition to
  javascript jump or hierarchical menus

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Meta tags (description and keyword tags)

• No longer useful as sole tactic to influence
  rankings
• keywords used in meta tags should match those in
  the visible body text
• BUT search engines often use title and
  description in the listings themselves
• See next slide for an example of a MUC listing on
  Google

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Title tag
Meta description tag
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Link popularity

• Strongly influences relevance ranking (for
  Google, the most important factor)
• Number and quality of other sites that link to
  yours (inbound links)
• must be content relevant (dont spam!)
• request links from relevant high-ranking sites
• get a listing in a directory
• Find out who links to you
• linkwww.mala.ca
• Choose a relevant landing page
• remember individual pages are competing - not
  your entire site

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Getting indexed and listed

• It is free to submit pages to most search engines
• However, some engines charge a fee in return for
  a guarantee of indexing - called paid inclusion
• This DOES NOT INFLUENCE POSITION
• Google and AskJeeves do not follow this practice
• Examples of submission to
• Google
• Yahoo directory (Express paid inclusion to
  directory)

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Search engine optimization summing up

• Decide which search engines to target, and read
  all the information for submission and ranking
  eg. Google for webmasters
• Select your keywords use the language of your
  target audience
• Dont attempt to SPAM
• No guarantees search engines change the rules
  constantly
• Remember balance

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2. Search engine advertising and paid placement

• Paying the search engines to get the results you
  want

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Monetizing search (a little history)

• Several years ago getting a top placing based
  solely on optimization techniques (natural or
  organic methods)
• Now paid placement - practiced by all major
  search engines (it provides the major revenue
  stream)
• Now search engines allow marketers to buy
  specific key word positions - ie. buy their way
  to the top
• Priced on a Pay Per Click basis

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Search engine advertising

• Web site design or coding has NO impact on
  position
• Position is purchased as part of an advertising
  campaign - guarantees instant visibility
• The website owner has control over
• Position in search results
• Keyword choice
• Ad listing copy
• Landing page

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Buying keywords search engine advertising

• Keyword bid advertising works on a cost per click
  (CPC) basis
• Advertisers pay only when consumers click on
  their link.
• Sponsored links in search results
• The company bidding higher on the keyword is
  ranked higher in keyword search results.
• Example Google Adwords in action
• Contextual advertisements
• Served to partner/affiliate content sites
• Effective form of advertising because your target
  market qualifies itself

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Major players in PPC search engine advertising

• Google works with an affiliate network
• Overture (renamed as Yahoo! Search Marketing
  Solutions) covers a partner network of search
  engines and content sites

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What does it cost?

• That depends on the keywords, and the competition
  for those keywords
• Overture Bid Tool

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Overture

• Paying for your position across a range of
  websites
• Overture Precision Match search How it Works
  at
• Overture demo

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In the lab following Monday

• Creating a Google Adwords campaign