Search Marketing Seminar

Workshop

Search Marketing

• The aim: To start to understand what makes

up a search marketing plan and to discuss

the elements involved.

– Through combination of participation and

information.

• So you can go away and start to apply some

of the principles to your own web sites

Search Marketing

• Strategic considerations:• How can we employ search engine optimisation and how does it

work?

• What part can PPC play in our Search Marketing Plan?

• What other strategies can we use online to help our search visiblity, either directly or indirectly?

• What resources are required and what are the timescales to get this work done?

• Why as search marketers do we need to be involved from the outset?

• How can we measure the results of our Search marketing

Search Marketing

• Tactical considerations:• Why do we need to understand keyword research?

• Where can we find the right online tools to use?

• Which social media is relevant and how can it be harnessed?

• What other digital assets have we got and what use are they?

• Is it just about our search engine rankings?

• Set up and Ongoing workload – what to consider form the start.

What is SEO?

• Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results– Wikipedia 2009

• You want to make it easier for search engines to find, index, categorise and rank your web pages

• This can be done on the web site and off the web site.

SEO is about...............

Content Links

Search Engines.............

Share

Google 63.7

Yahoo! Sites 20.5

Microsoft Sites 8.3

Ask 3.8

AOL 3.7

Content - Why are Keywords

important?

• Search engines are text based

• Search engines need keywords to establish

what your web page is about...

• .......so they can index it correctly

• .......so it can be ranked in search results

• .......and to deliver your pages when users

search on those keywords in search results

Search Engines.....................

• Collect information

– Google Bot

– Crawl

– Spiders

• Information is organised

• Information is stored on

servers worldwide

What is the most important keyword

question?

• What are users searching on in

search engines related to our

business?............

• ..............If you dont know this

how do you know what

keywords to use on your web

site to generate more relevant

traffic to your web site?

• YOU DONT!

The first thing we must do in our SEO

efforts is..................

• Keyword Research

– Many online tools, paid

for and free

– Develop your keyword

lists for your web site.

• What keywords would

we think about

researching for our

new Hospitality

Update site?

How many keywords do we need?

• As many as you like, but each page of your

web site needs to be optimised for 2/3

keywords or phrases.................

• ............so the more words you have the more

content you will need

The biggest keywords mistakes are.....

• Trying to optimise all your keywords on one page

• Not including keywords in content or not enough

• Assuming the keywords that users are searching

on and using the WRONG keywords

• Not using keywords at all

• Being broad and not narrow

Where should keywords go?

• Code

– Actual domain name

– URL’s

– Meta Data

• Content – on the page

– .....and in links to other pages

– .....and in links from other sites

• The domain name –

should we care?

• Yes we should!

• If we can get the key

term or terms into the

domain name this will

help your web site rank

highly quickly

• The domain name is

fixed for HU.......so what

else could we do?

If I click excel jobs.................

Notice the new url of this page...........

Excel jobs search in Google.....................this site is in the No. 1 position........

.........and Hospitality Update?

HU has not got keywords in page URL’s

Code – URL’s

• How do I get keywords into my page URL’s?

– URL’s can be rewritten in many web site

development programmes and software, if they

can be set up to give you what you want

– /hospitality – suppliers/kitchen-equipment

is much more search engine friendly than a

series of characters and numbers!

Code-Meta Data

• Meta data is the data about the data in the

source code of a page

• Search engines use this data about the data

to help index web pages.

• Is it useful to get keywords and terms into

meta data?..................

• ..................!

Meta tags appear here....and need to be relevant to THIS page

Meta title will appear at the top of the browser.....

Code-Meta Data

• Title tag 40-60

characters

• Description Tag up to 250

characters

• Keywords tag

– main and secondary

What meta data shall we use for our new

Hospitality Update home page?

• Title:

• Description:

• Keywords:

Content – On the page

• Where?

• If you dont get your keywords into content

then you may have wasted the other seo

efforts

• In the first paragraph or two

• Bold and italics

• As text in links throughout the site = Anchor

text links

Content-On the page

• Clearly the more content you have on your

site the more keywords you can optimise for

• Adding content is key to developing your

SEO

• Be narrow not broad

• Up date your keyword research regularly.

• Keywords?

• Domain?

• URL’s?

• Meta Titles, description, keywords?

• Page content?

So, what is our plan for content for HU?

Why are Links to your site important?

• They bring traffic

• They are seen as a vote

for your site – link

popularity

• The more links to your

site the more popular

your site, the higher

the ranking

Google Pagerank is a guide to your link popularity...

Why do links need to be relevant?

• They bring relevant traffic that might then convert on your site –leave info or buy from you!

• The search engines will see your site as an authoritative site in your market place

• If they are not relevant they are not as strong as far as search engines are concerned.

Where can we get links from?

• Other sites

• Directories

• Industry associations, professional bodies

• PR online

• Social Media

• Optimising and distributing other digital

assets.

Should we use PPC?

• PPC =PAY PER CLICK

• Complimentary to SEO

• Assists the SEO effort

• Short term results

• Needs careful management ongoing

• Needs measuring otherwise you could be throwing money down the drain!

What other strategies can we use?

• Online PR

• Write articles and stories around the launch and OPTIMISE them!

• Distibute them through online PR sites such as PR Web to thousands of sites across the internet.

• Generate traffic, awareness, interest, embed links back, and develop other links as articles get picked up by other sites

What other strategies can we use?• Social Media

• Create your own groups in linkedin, facebook, twitter, flickr and optimise any content

• Distribute Social Media content, releases.

• Social Networking

• Make sure users can share their experience on any number of social networking sites

What other strategies can we use?

• Digital asset

optimisation and

distribution

• Any content you have

can be OPTIMISED and

used on the new site or

distributed online –

pdfs, whitepapers,

photos, video, audio,

datasheets, office docs.

What resources are required and what are the

timescales?

• Consider set up and ongoing work at the outset.

• SEO – medium to long term benefits

• PPC – short term benefits

• Once set up these programmes need to be part of your ongoing strategy – you will need resource to manage these activities daily.

• Important to continue to develop content ideas and manage any adwords campaigns carefully.

measurement

• Is it all about rankings.................?

• ...................no

• Using different strategies means that you need to monitor all of them.

• Google Analytics is the best place to start.

• Social media monitoring

• Ranking and indexation reports.

Search marketing plan

• Not search engine marketing but SEARCH Marketing.

• Think about search from the outset, not after the site has been built, gone live!

• Consider the short term and the longer term – SEO is a medium to long term strategy but Adwords and online PR will give you more immediate benefits

• Consider what other digital assets you have and how you can use them........

• ..........but any content that can be searched needs to be OPTIMISED.

• Measure the results and take action to improve

• Don't just set things up and wait, get an ongoing programme going.

Thanks for listening!