Can Volunteers Find You When Searching Online? First Steps in Search Marketing & Measurement

2 Learning Objectives After this training you will: Understand why you need to be listed on search engines Know how search engines work, and how user friendly content can help your rankings Be able to start brainstorming and selecting keywords Understand why inbound links are important and have the tools to start a link campaign (including links from social media)

3 Three Legs of Search Marketing Step 1: Ensure that your constituents and search engines can find your online content. Keyword Research & Selection Modify content with keywords, keep content fresh Eliminate technical issues Step 2: Develop a network of sites linking to your content Register on directories Establish a link campaign strategy Use social media to build links Step 3: Measure results based on business goals & refine above strategy

4 Why Search Marketing?  More than 86% of all people arrive at websites through search engines.  HUGE cost for volunteers to find you solely through brand recognition/remembering your URL/web address  Without search marketing you will not be found in search engines  Space on search engines is getting competitive. Your competitors are engaged in search marketing, and you should to.

5 How Search Engines Work Google, Yahoo, Live and Ask create their listings automatically. They "crawl" or "spider" the web and add those websites to their index. When a human visitor to the engine puts in a keyword phrase, the engine serves up relevant, fresh content based on the pages in their index who have those keywords, or are link to from other sites based on those keywords. Keyword Phrases

6 Sites That Work for Humans Fact: New visitors spend 8 sec or less evaluating your site Make sure “above the fold content is clear and provides action. People scan online. Make sure content is bulleted and short. Make use of bold for key points Use Alt Text to make your site friendly to all users

7 Sites That Work for Search Engines Use of title, description, and keyword tag Fresh, relevant content that uses keywords All images have alt text Registered in search engines/directories Links from other sites No flash or duplicate content

8 Step 1: Keyword Research BrainstormphrasesConstituents may use to find you How? 1.Brainstorm with staff, use thesaurus 2.Look at your literature, competitor literature 3.Ask your volunteers 4. / / 5.Add variations: volunteer, volunteering, community service, Texas, TX

9 Remember: It’s not about the keywords You want to be found on. It’s about the keywords the Volunteer uses to find you.

10 Selecting Keywords Step 1: Brainstorm keywords and phrases Home page should feature the most universal keywords, such as “volunteer” or “volunteering” plus location-based keywords. Every page should have unique set of keywords Step 2: Visit Wordtracker, to learn:Wordtracker How times people used that keyword in their searches How many other sites contain that keyword, and The Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI), a ratio between how many other sites contain that keyword, and how many searches were performed with that keyword. A higher KEI is better.

11 Other Keyword Research Tools  Yahoo Keyword Selector Tool  Google AdWords Keyword Tool

12 Where do you put the keywords? Meta tags: Title, description Page text Alt text for all images Links Opportunity titles Footer Contact us section

13 How People Search The Long Tail of Search: 3% of Excite’s search traffic was 3 keywords – 97% of the rest was in the “long tail” Amazon.com makes 57% of sales from keywords outside of the “popular” terms.

14 Step 2: Registering in Search Engines & Directories It is important to get your site linked on the major and minor directories. Submission for non-profits/non-commercial are free. Your site should be submitted to the following major directories: Yahoo! ( free for non- commercial sites Yahoo! Google’s Open Directory ( free Google’s Open Directoryhttp://dmoz.org/add.html Other directories, both paid and free, can be found at or Directory ArchivesDirectory Archives

15 Step 2: Creating a link campaign Who would place a link to your site? Newspapers you currently work with Schools, community sites, professional associations, chamber of commerce, businesses Just ask the webmaster and follow up! Links from.edu and.gov are more important What should think links look like? Make sure the text around the link is relevant, and not all sites are using the same phrase How can you place your own links? Some suggestions here, more on the next slide… Postings on online boards, listserves Write articles for enewsletters DON’T BUY LINKS!!!

16 Step 2: Using Social Media to build links Create accounts in Local search engines (local.google.com, local.yahoo.com, askcity.com) Post on craigslist.org Post news on Reddit Post photos on Flickr Optimize press releases, and use pr.com, prleap.com to distribute releases Post answers on Q & A sites (like Yahoo Answers)

17 Step 3: Measure your success Why Use Web Analytis? Shows if visitors are actually USING your website Allows you to troubleshoot technical or usability issues with your website Shows you what kind of service your community actually wants to be engaged in Helps you measure success of online marketing efforts. Free Web Analytic Tool: Google AnalyticsGoogle Analytics

18 Step 3: Measure your success Tips for how to read Web Analytic reports: You’re looking at a computer conversation, human translation required Trend tracking process It is part science, part art driven by curiosity: Why are people doing that? Make sure to look at more than one data point OVER time

19 Step 3: Web Analytic Terms Hits – Measures every element that loads when a visitor request a page (images, javascript, the html itself). A visitor requesting a page with 30 elements would register as 30 hits! This is an inflated # you shouldn’t measure. Conversions – the # of visitors that did what you wanted them to do when they were on your website For us this is volunteers clicking on “express interest” on an opportunity Industry standard conversion rate is 8-10% Bounce rate – Measured in two ways: % of visitors who see just one page on your site, or % visitors who stay on the site for a small amount of time (usually five seconds or less). Your homepage bounce rate should be 30% or less

20 Step 3: Web Analytics – Questions to Ask Are my visitors coming from all search engines? Are my visitors finding me through campaigns, do they convert? Which keywords are they using? Can I add more of those to my site content? Are my visitors converting? Which of my website partnerships is sending me the most traffic?

21 Quick Review Benchmark site performance Traffic #s, referrals, keywords, rankings in Search Engines, competitors Fix technical issues/check site content (keywords, description tag, etc) Start link campaign Measure success Build more links!!!

22 Additional Tools SEO for Firefox SeoMoz’s Tools Compete.com SEO Book’s Keyword Tool Google Webmaster Tools Yahoo Site Explorer Live Search Webmaster Central

23 Learn More – Search Marketing Search Marketing for Nonprofits Blog: How Search Engines work: The expert on linking strategies: SEO Chat Web Marketing Today Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day (book)

24 Learn More – Web Analytics How web analytics is like using Evite for a holiday party How web analytics is like using Evite for a holiday party Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik Web Analytics Demystified (book) Google Analytics 2.0 (book) Web Analytics: An Hour A Day (book)

25 Questions? Katherine Watier Watier Creative Nonprofit Search Marketing Consultant