Search Engine Marketingfor Micro Enterprises

Thomas PouliosTeaching Assistant

Dpt. of Project Management

TEI of Larissa(University of Applied Sciences)

What is “Search Engine Marketing”?

Search engine marketing (SEM) is defined as "the act of marketing a Web site via search engines, whether it be improving rank in organic listings, purchasing paid listings or a combination of these and other search related activities“.

The Rise of Search

What is a search engine? (1)

Def: An internet-based tool that searches an index of documents for a particular term, phrase or text specified by the user. Commonly used to refer to large web-based search engines that search through billions of pages on the internet.

Different than a Directory

Common Characteristics: Spider, Indexer, Database, Algorithm Find matching documents and display them according to relevance Frequent updates to documents searched and ranking algorithm Strive to produce “better”, more relevant results than competitors

What is a search engine? (2)

Why is Search Important?Why is Search Important?

Highest ROI Entry Point to all thingsMeasurableOptimizableDeal Closer

Why Search Engine?

85% of all traffic on the internet is referred from a search engine

90% of all users don’t look past the first 30 results (most only view top 10)

Many websites aren’t even indexed, most are poorly optimized and get very little traffic from the search engines

Cost-effective advertising

Clear and measurable ROI

Operates under this assumption:More (relevant) traffic + Good Conv. Rate = More Sales/Leads

Search market share

1999

Northern Light 23,86%

Infoseek 11,36%

HotBot 11,93%

Snap! 11,36%

AltaVista 12,50%

MSN 10,80%

Google! 5,68%

Excite 5,68%

Lycos 3,98%

Yahoo! 2,84%

February 09Europ

e US

Google 87.30%

68.29%

Yahoo! 4.09% 19.95%

MSN 3.72% 5.89%

Ask 3.07% 4.23%

Major Search Engines

Google feeds AOL, Netscape, Earthlink & others

Yahoo owns Overture, AltaVista, AlltheWeb, FAST & others

Google, Yahoo & MSN results account for 80-90% of all search traffic (rough estimate)

How Do Search Engines Work?

Spider “crawls” the web to find new documents (web pages, other documents) typically by following hyperlinks from websites already in the database

Search engine indexes the content (text, code) in these documents by adding it to their huge databases and periodically updates this content

Search engine searches its own database when user enters in a search to find related documents (not searching web pages in real-time)

Search engine ranks resulting documents using an algorithm (mathematical formula) that assigns various weights to various ranking factors

What is the difference between organic and paid listings?

The Golden TriangleEye Tools Research

Pay Per Click $$$

Organic = Free

Golden Triangle Statistics

85% click on “natural” (unpaid) results

72% of searchers click on the first link of interest

25.5% read all listings first, then decide

Position 7-10 in natural listings = top 4 PPC slots on the right hand side of the page

Ranking Factors 4.9 Keyword Use in Title Tag 4.4 Global Link Popularity of Site – “Weight” or “Authority” 4.4 Anchor Text of Inbound Link 4.1 Age of Site 4.0 Link Popularity within Internal Site Structure

3.7 Keyword Use in Body Text 3.5 Links to Quality/Relevant External Sites 3.4 Age of Document 3.3 Keyword Use in H1 3.2 Age of Link 3.1 Text Surrounding the Link 2.8 Keyword Use in H2, H3 etc… 2.8 Keyword Use in Page URL 2.6 Keyword Use in ALT Tags 2.4 Frequency of Page Updates 2.0 Keyword Use in Meta Description Tag

1.4 HTML Validation 1.2 Keyword Use in Meta Keywords Tag

Search Engine Indexing Limits

Page File Size

No more than 150 kilobytes Before Images, CSS and other Attachments

Links Per Page

No more than 100 unique links per page

Title Tag

No more than 70 characters

Meta Description

No more than 155 characters

Parameters in URL: No more than 2

Depth of URL: No more than 4

Bad Examplehttp://www.mysite.com/people/places/things/noun/danny/car

Best Practicehttp://www.mysite.com/people/danny/

Avoid

Image Text

Iframes for displaying content

Flash, Silverlight or video for content without text equivalents

AJAX – Avoid navigation thatrelies on javascriptonClick="navigate('ajax.html#)

Keywords

Determine the value of keywords/phrases to increase traffic to a page or site.

Use keywords in the navigation that visitors use to find your site. Easier for visitors to navigate the site Improved rankings, search engines better

understand how your site is related to searches.

Keyphrase Research Tools

Assists with keyword/phrase brainstormingShow how often search terms are usedQuantifies the effectiveness

of keywords/phrases

Less competition for a keyword/phrase mean that it will be easier to reach the top of SERPs.

Keyword/phrase Tools

Google AdWords is the best free keyphrase toolhttps://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

WordTrackerThe industry standard, a subscription is required – also has a free tool

Overture Database Search No longer consistently available

Microsoft AdCenterNot for Mac/Safari

Other Keyword Search Tools Trellian – Keyword Discovery Spyfu Nichebot Hitwise Trends Yahoo suggestion on search

PageRank One of the methods Google uses to determine a page’s

relevance or importance. Each web page - not site - has a PageRank score Developed by the founders of Google, Sergey Brin and

Larry Page It’s an algorithm which helps rank web pages based on

the probability that a random person surfing the Internet will find a given page.

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value.

Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B.

Votes cast by "important" pages weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Links are Key

Link Popularity / Authority Links = “Votes” Links from many pages signify an important page Links from important pages carry more ‘weight’ Important pages rank higher

Link Reputation Links from related pages enforce the theme Links from related words pass on that theme Strongly themed pages rank well for related

queries

Links - Best Practices

Bad http://mysite.com http://www.mysite.com/index.html http://mysite.com/index.html

Good http://www.mysite.com/ Use redirects and make all internal links point to

your domain using the “http://www.mysite.com/” Always include trailing “/” on folders.

Avoid “click here”

SEO: Link nouns not verbs

View the course catalog.

View the course catalog.

How can I create a Google-friendly site?

Google Webmaster Help Center http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/ http://

www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40349

Google on SEOhttp://www.google.com/support/

webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35291

Basic Tips & Optimization Techniques

Research keywords related to your business Identify competitors, utilize benchmarking techniques and

identify level of competition Utilize descriptive title tags for each page Ensure that your text is HTML text and not image text Use text links when possible Use appropriate keywords in your content and internal

hyperlinks (don’t overdo!) Obtain inbound links from related websites Monitor your search engine rankings and more

importantly your website traffic statistics and sales/leads produced

Educate yourself about search engine marketing or consult a search engine optimization firm or SEO expert

What is Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing?

Gives business owners the ability to nominate what particular search phrases they would like their advertising to appear on.

Who are the MAJOR PLAYERS in PPC advertising?

PPC Related Terms

CPC – Cost-per-clickThe cost to advertisers per click by a user.

CTR – Click through rateThe number of users who clicked on an ad divided by the number of times the ad was delivered (impressions). Usually seen as a percentage.

Definitions

PPC

Growing in CostGrowing in CompetitionBidding Techniques (Start a campaign

at the end of the day or the end of the month)

Organic clicked 5x more than PPC

PPC vs. “Organic” SEO

Pay-Per-Click “Organic” SEO results in 1-2 days easier for a novice or one without much knowledge of SEO ability to turn on and off at any moment generally more costly per visitor and per conversion fewer impressions and exposure easy to compete in highly competitive market space (but it will cost you) can generate exposure on related sites (AdSense) ability to target “local” markets better for short-term and high-margin campaigns

results take 2 weeks to 4 months requires ongoing learning and experience to reap results very difficult to control flow of traffic generally more cost-effective, doesn’t penalize for more traffic SERPs are more popular than sponsored ads very difficult to compete in highly competitive market space can generate exposure on related websites and directories more difficult to target local markets better for long-term and lower margin campaigns

Social Media Optimization

“Linkbait”

Potential for organic traffic and quality backlinks

Resources: On the Web

SEOmoz.orgEspecially see SEOmoz Beginner’s Guide

SearchEngineWatch.comhttp://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/

Google Webmaster Toolshttp://www.google.com/support/webmasters/http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40349

SEOBook.comhttp://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/