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Search Engine Marketing &

Optimization 101

Janette Toral

http://www.digitalfilipino.com

Search Marketing

• Maximize number of searchers coming to

your site.

• Attracting visitors to your site from search

sites.

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Kind of search results

• Organic or natural– Best pages found for the words the searcher entered.

• Paid– Inclusion

• Guarantees that a site’s pages have been catalogued by a search site and returned when they closely match an organic search.

– Placement• Pay to have its page shown in response to a particular

search word entered, regardless of how closely the page matches what the searcher entered.

– Listing or Directories• List website according to subject categories.

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Search engine optimization

• How you get your site’s pages to be

shown in organic search results.

Search engine marketing

• Encompasses any kind of research

results.

• Everything you do to raise your site’s

visibility in search engines to attract more

visitors.

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Where Searchers Go

• Google

– AOL

• Yahoo

– AlltheWeb

– AltaVista

• MSN

– Live Search

• Ask

– Excite

– Iwon

– Teoma

Search Engine Ranking

• Relevance

• Keyword density

– Number of times mentioned in whole website.

• Keyword proximity

– How close are the words closer to each other.

• Keyword prominence

– Where does the words appear?• Page title, initial paragraphs, headings,

emphasized text, body text, description.

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Search Engine Ranking

• Link popularity or analysis

– Number and quality of pages linking to you.

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Web Searcher

• Visitor

– What are they trying to accomplish?

• Buyer

– What buyers are looking for?• Inform

• Make them selective

• Voter

– How they decide to vote?

– What makes them go to the polls?

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Search Marketing Program

• Web site goals

– Sales

• Online

• Offline

– Leads

– Market awareness

– Information & entertainment

– Persuasion

Search Marketing Program

• Measure web site success

– Count

• Conversion

• Visitors

• Revenue

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Search Marketing Program

• Search Marketing Campaign

– Target area of your site

– Focus on keywords searchers use

– Identify landing pages

• Is it index?

• What is its rank?

• Check competitor ranking

Be found in Google

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Keyword research

• Identify your website keywords

– Listen three keywords or key phrases

– Do a search on those keyword phrases and

identify the top three companies, specifically

competition.

• Record your findings for presentation later

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Keyword research

• Check keyword popularity

– Use http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

– Check Google Trends to identify volume and where

(http://www.google.com/trends)

• Identify popular keywords and enhance your list

– Do a search again on those keywords and find out

popular competing sites.

– http://www.spyfu.com for additional keyword

reference.

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How users read

• Finding a new article to read: 1 minute

• Short articles:

– 600 words, meaning a cost of 3 minutes to read (assuming a reading speed of 200 wpm)

• Long articles:

– 1,000 words, meaning a cost of 5 minutes to read

• Scanning text is an extremely common behavior for higher-literacy users

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Users read fast

• The first two paragraphs must state the

most important information.

– Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet

points with information-carrying words.

People prefer to read short

articles

• If you want many readers, focus on short

and scannable content.

– advertising-driven sites or sites that sell

impulse buys.

• If you want people who really need a

solution, focus on comprehensive

coverage.

– sell highly targeted solutions to complicated

problems.

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Meet half-way

• Start with overviews and short, simplified

pages. Then link to long, in-depth

coverage on other pages.

Scannable text

• highlighted keywords

• meaningful sub-headings (not "clever"

ones)

• bulleted lists

• one idea per paragraph

• start with the conclusion

• half the word count (or less) than

conventional writing

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Focus on user wants

• Brief and get to the point quickly.

• Actionable content.

• Support the user's personal story.

Credibility is important

• Use high-quality graphics, good writing,

and use of outbound hypertext links.

• Users detest promotional writing style with

boastful subjective claims ("hottest ever").

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Credibility is important

• Avoid quickly written, shallow postings.

Instead, invest your time in thorough,

value-added content that attracts paying

customers.

Inform search engines what your

site is about

• Familiar words spring to mind when users

create their search queries.

• Supplement made-up words with known

words.

• Supplement brand names with generic

terms.

• Avoid "politically correct" terminology.

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Keyword placement

• Within article title

• Title tag

• Within the article itself

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Page Titles

• Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags

are descriptive and accurate. When writing

Title tags you only want to use 96

characters or about twelve (12) words.

• Use keywords in title tags

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Text formatting

• Use text instead of images to display

important names, content, or links.

• Use h1, h2, h3 tags

• Somewhere on that page you want your

keyword bolded, italized, or underlined (or

some combination of those three, it

doesn't matter) one or two times only.

Meta tags

• Meta tags for every page that appears in the site itself. Keywords in the page too.

• Well-researched keywords

• Tools– http://www.submitexpress.com/analyzer/

– http://www.addme.com/meta.htm

– http://www.addme.com/keywordsuggest.htm

– https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

– http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/

– http://seodigger.com/

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Site Map

• Must have a site map and uploaded in

Google

• Tools

– http://www.rorweb.com/rormap.htm

– https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemap

s/login

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RSS for content propagation

• Let search engines and readers know that

you have new content

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Submission to Web Directories

• Submit them manually or in automated

manner

– Google

• http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

– Yahoo

• http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

– MSN

• http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=

WSDD

Communicate trustworthiness

• Design quality

• Up-front disclosure of all aspects of the

customer relationship.

• Comprehensive, correct, and current

content and product selection feel solid.

• Connected to the rest of the Web with

links in and out.

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Push your articles to the top of

search engine results

• Right keywords– http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com

• Social media– Digg.com

– StumbleUpon.com

– Del.icio.us

• Plug– Twitter

– Plurk

– Social Networks (Facebook, Friendster)

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For more info:

• DigitalFilipino.com Readers Social

Network

– http://digitalfilipinocom.ning.com

• 2nd Social Networking & eBusiness

Conference 2009

– http://socialnetworkphilippines.blogspot.com

• DigitalFilipino.com Club

– http://www.e-commercephilippines.com