Search engine marketing MARK 430

After today’s 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

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

Search engines – an effective marketing channel Statistics on how consumers search for products online (from Overture.com)

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 1.Search engine optimization (SEO) - built into the design of web pages (organic positioning) 2.Search engine advertising and paid placement

Organic listings Paid listings

1.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)

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. Overture’s or Google’sOverture’sGoogle’s  Look at current search trends Yahoo Buzz, Google ZeitgeistGoogle Zeitgeist  Real-time search from MetaCrawlerMetaCrawler

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

Designing web pages that are friendly to search engine spiders  Search engines love simple web site design  lots of text (optimized for keywords)  spiders don’t 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

Optimizing page elements in html code  Page body text: content / page copy  Title tag  Heading tags  Graphics: alt tags  Hypertext links  Meta tags

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 customer’s 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!)

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”:  Leonardo da Vinci (absolute relevance)  This example is less relevant (but contains other useful info – remember to balance marketing needs)  Artefacts: Leonardo da Vinci  This one will put you out of business:  Welcome to Artefacts.com: Your Number One Online Resource for Wall Art Solutions!!!

Heading tags ,, 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

Graphics: alt tags  Spiders can’t 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 don’t want a spider to get stuck on a page)

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

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

Title tag Meta description tag

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 (don’t spam!)  request links from relevant high-ranking sites  get a listing in a directory  Find out who links to you  link: link:  Choose a relevant landing page  remember individual pages are competing - not your entire site

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 Google  Yahoo directory (Express paid inclusion to directory) Yahoo directory

Search engine optimization: summing up  Decide which search engines to target, and read all the information for submission and ranking eg. Google for webmastersGoogle for webmasters  Select your keywords – use the language of your target audience  Don’t attempt to SPAM  No guarantees – search engines change the rules constantly  Remember balance

2. Search engine advertising and paid placement  Paying the search engines to get the results you want

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

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

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 actionGoogle Adwords  Contextual advertisements  Served to partner/affiliate content sites  Effective form of advertising because your target market qualifies itself

Major players in PPC search engine advertising  Google works with an affiliate networkworks with an affiliate network  Overture (renamed as Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions): covers a partner network of search engines and content sitescovers a partner network of search engines and content sites

What does it cost?  That depends on the keywords, and the competition for those keywords  Overture Bid Tool Overture Bid Tool

Overture  Paying for your position across a range of websites  Overture “Precision Match” search: How it Works at OvertureOverture demo

In the lab following Monday  Creating a Google Adwords campaign