Search engine marketing

1. Search engine marketing MARK 430

2. 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

3. 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

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

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

6. Paid listings Organic listings

7. 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)

8. 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’s • Look at current search trends Yahoo Buzz, Google Zeitgeist • Real-time search from MetaCrawler

9. 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

10. 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

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

12. 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!)

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

14. Heading tags • <H1>, <H2>, <H3> 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

15. 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)

16. 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

17. 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

18. Title tag Meta description tag

19. 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:www.mala.ca • Choose a relevant landing page • remember individual pages are competing - not your entire site

20. 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 • Yahoo directory (Express paid inclusion to directory)

21. Search engine optimization: summing up • Decide which search engines to target, and read all the information for submission and ranking eg. Google 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

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

23. 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

24. 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

25. 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 action • Contextual advertisements • Served to partner/affiliate content sites • Effective form of advertising because your target market qualifies itself

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

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

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

29. In the lab following Monday • Creating a Google Adwords campaign