CCT356: Online Advertising and Marketing

1. CCT356: Online Advertising and Marketing Class 5: Search Engine Optimization/Marketing

2. Administration • Articles.. • First assignment (online ad critique)? Due next week! • Reminder on campaign/ads and online nature

3. Search Engines – A Brief History • Major wayfinding device for Internet • Early days of Internet – Yahoo! and others as browsing portals, similar to library categorization = unsustainable model • Altavista and others – limited full-text search, unclear and biased results • Google’s revolution – crowded out browsing based options and less sophisticated search engines • Now Google and limited alternatives (e.g., Bing)

4. Strategic Considerations • Searches are goal-oriented – searchers want what you have to offer • Visibility is key – hardly anyone goes to page 2 (or more) • Trust in organic search results – first options are perceived to be good • Search as gateway – many people have search embedded in browser or as homepage

5. Mechanics • Spider – goes out to find pages to add to index • Index – a cache of all pages spidered, on which search terms correlate with (implications?) • Engine – runs massive eigenvector centrality measure (among 200+ other factors at Google) on search terms vs. index to generate results

6. Search Results • Paid placement – highlighted results based on payment (Google’s revenue model) • Organic – “earned” placement based on relevance to search terms • Two different strategies – one paid but more guaranteed, one free but based on strategic value • SEM = SEO+PPC

7. SEO vs PPC SEO PPC Easy to set up ads Measureable and trackable Can leapfrog SEO sites Expensive Can lead to bidding wars • Long term ROI • Nature exposure, potential for high volume • Difficult to quantify/track results • Requires ongoing content generation • Prone to changes in engine rules

8. Google as Integrated Search • Search among Google platforms – not just pages, but maps, images, videos, etc. • Even more tight integration to come with recent changes in Google privacy policy – one policy for all services = tighter integration and linking (for better or worse?)

9. SEO history • Spider index page content and metadata • Quick realization that some tags/words would enhance placement – and good writing would lead to high placement (e.g., Sheridan example) • “White hat” SEO – creating quality content gets you results (e.g, the Oatmeal) • “Black hat” SEO – a dishonest attempt to game the search engine (examples?) • Reaction of engines – why does Google care about black hat techniques?

10. SEO friendly infrastructure • What do spiders access? • What *can’t* they access? • Page design should be as much (or more!) about what the spider sees vs. human audiences

11. Considerations • Use alt tags – good for both accessibility and SEO • Title pages intelligently and obviously • Create user-friendly URLs for landing pages • <meta> = less keywords (overabused) and more description • Flash, Applet, image-based text = not spider-friendly • Content behind firewall = same.

12. Key Phrases • What are users searching for regarding your product/service? • Engines increasingly sophisticated re: guessing synonyms, misspellings, etc…and Google Suggest helps as well • Know your scope – “hotel”is pointless (without geolocational-filtered searching) • Know your audience - “luxury Cape Town hotel” and “budget Cape Town hotel” – two audiences, likely mutually exclusive

13. Considerations • Search volume – what are common words? • Competition – what may be words common to other sites? • Propensity to convert – if someone find your site via a keyword, are they likely to click through? Buy something?

14. Generating keywords • Brainstorm – from an empathetic point of view! • Look at referral logs and search terms already used • Survey users

15. Keyword Optimization • Free tool: https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__c=1000000000&__u=1000000000&__o=kt&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS (horrible URL!) • What comes up with various searches?

16. Link Networks • Early PageRank – relevance of other’s opinions of pageimportant • Led to link farms – people creating pages of links that themselves had little relevance – and link trading for the sake of link trading (also little relevance) • Also behind comment spam on blogs (why rel=“nofollow” was introduced)

17. Building solid link networks • Create a personal connection – from the emotive to the entertaining • Create documents that are earnestly useful • Analyze existing link networks (yours and competitors) through link: searches

18. Looking at usage data • How are people looking at your page already? • Examining search terms used to get to your page can be helpful (…or not?)

19. Social Search • Increasingly relevant (esp. with Google integration?) • Are pages with multiple likes/+1s more relevant – likely, even if not admitted yet to be so (even nofollow URLs through Twitter can be relevant) • Social media marketing can fuel search engine optimization as a result (again with Oatmeal – every post = thousands of likes)

20. Mobile considerations • Design for different platforms • Force platform choice? (e.g., Toronto Star’s iPad page) • Leveraging geolocational information? E.g., compatible information in Foursquare, etc.

21. Avoiding black hat techniques • Hidden text/links • Dishonest redirects • Keyword overload • Duplicate content and landing zones • Avoid link farms • Avoid being targeted as spam/phishing scheme

22. In the end… • Creating quality content will get you further than gaming the system • Similar to questions of plagiarism in school – the shortcuts usually don’t pay off as much as hard work, and the potential downside is huge • Be wary of SEO optimizers promising big things – they tend to use black hat techniques (why?)

23. Next week • Pam Shaw on marketing strategy – a good framework for final project, so pay attention!