Search Engine Marketing Strategy

SEM = Search Engine Marketing

SEO = Search Engine Optimization• optimizing (altering/changing) your page in order to get a higher ranking in

Search Engine results• pages are often optimized by placing keywords (preferably phrases of two

or more words) into certain parts (both hidden and visible) of your web site’s pages (see location & frequency method later on)

Note that much of this information can be found at:http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=webmasters

Search Engine Marketing

Spider/Crawler-based Search Engines• results are determined by computer program• example is google.com• listings include Natural and Sponsored results

(sponsored results are a form of advertising (Google Ad))• Spiders or Crawlers are tiny programs that record all the pages on the

internet and return the results to the giant Google database• Google’s secret program (algorithm) determines the results of your search

based on things like popularity

Search Directory• listings are determined by humans• listings are set up in categories and sub-categories• example is Yahoo’s Directory (http://dir.yahoo.com/ )• Yahoo now uses both a directory and crawler-style engine• being listed in the Directory can help improve your rankings in Google

results

Search Engine Marketing

Location and Frequency (repetition) Method• used to help improve search engine rankings

(try to get on the first page)• view the Source Code (HTML) of the page

(in Internet Explorer go to the View Menu: View>Source)• use the Google Keyword Tool to determine your keyword phrases• https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal?defaultView=2• repeat your keyword phrases in the following page locations:

• Title• Description• Keywords• text content near the top of the page

*Note that linking to and from sites with similar keywords can greatly help your rankings (the spiders will follow all links in your site, both internal and external!)

Search Engine Marketing

Spider Blockers• there are several things that can stop one of Google’s spiders from

indexing (recording) your site, these include:• web pages that are created with frames• rich media content, such as Flash (the spider cannot read information

within a Flash movie)• too many keywords (spider may skip pages with too many keywords

as it thinks it is trying to be spammed)