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What Is
Search Engine Marketing?
Learn the secrets of how to drive traffic to your website?
What is
Search Engine Marketing?
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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“.
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What does this mean? Basically it is the art/science of placing your Web
site in favourable positions on the search engine results pages (SERPS)
when a search engine user is conducting a keyword query related to your
product/service/content.
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• What is the difference between organic and paid listings?
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What is Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing?
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Gives business owners the ability to nominate what particular search phrases they would like their
advertising to appear on.
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Who are the MAJOR PLAYERS in PPC advertising?
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PPC is based on the following attributes
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Ads are displayed at the top and the right-hand side.
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There is no cost associated with the ad being displayed.
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Costs are associated only when somebody clicks on your ad.
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Position of your ad is determined by the amount you are prepared to bid and the quality
(relevance) of your ad and Web site.
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Campaigns need to be tracked very closely and decisions made on conversion analysis.
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Google Adwords Ad Group
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PPC Business Example
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AVERAGE SALE - Joe Bloggs has a bus company that transfers visitors from Ballina airport to Byron Bay.
Joe conducts some research to find out that a lot of people type in "Ballina airport transfers" into Google
so decides to open up a PPC account with Google AdWords.
BID AMOUNT - Through his business Joe knows that on average most people will book two return seats at
a cost of $60 return ($15 each way). Using Google AdWords he was able to bid a maximum of $.20c per
click.
HIGH QUALITY SCORE RESULTS IN PAYING LESS - Because his advertising copy, and the information on
the page that he was sending them to was 100% relevant to the keyword, he only had to pay on average
$.14c per click.
CLICKS RECEIVED - Now let's say that the ad receives 100 clicks and the special traffic code tells us that
he received 4 bookings (4% conversion rate) you would assume that he would have spent $14 to produce a
bare minimum of $60 in bookings.
CONVERSION RATE - You can safely say that Joe is receiving a very healthy 428% return on investment.
Joe also keeps track of his telephone bookings and knows that he has taken another $60 in bookings over
the phone, increasing his return on investment to 857%.
COMPETITIVE TERMS - Now this is an example of a campaign that probably doesn't have too many
competitors and decent margins to work on. Businesses running tight margins with plenty of competition
really need to make sure that they track their campaign very closely and have a good understanding of the
lifetime value of a customer.
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What is Search Engine Optimisation
• Just like pay per click marketing, SEO is built around phrases people are using to find
things on search engines. The difference here is we are targeting the organic results.
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What is Search Engine Optimisation
Organic search results facts:
• The organic results are determined by a range of different factors (algorithm) that a search
engine uses to determine what is the most relevant web page for that particular query.
• Having your Web site show in the organic results is by no means luck! A website will be shown
in the organic rankings by meeting the search engines criteria of what it determines is
important and "trustworthy". This process is entirely automated.
Organic search results facts:
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Search engine users are 85% more likely to click on organic results.
Search engine users perceive organic results as more trustworthy.
Search engine users perceive organic results to be more relevant.
Studies have shown organic results produced more end results (sales and leads).
Pay per click costs are steadily rising.
Results can last for month's if not years depending on competition levels.
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The Golden Triangle
• 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
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It's all about Key Phrases
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If you have been paying attention you probably would have noticed a recurring theme, search
engine marketing is all about phrases. And it's important to note that I said phrases not words.
One of the most important concepts to grasp is that any successful search engine marketing
campaign is made up of at least two or three word key phrases.
Brainstorming exercise
Exercise 1:
• On the paper provided write down what you consider would be the five most important key phrases for
your business.
Ideas for brainstorming key phrases:
• Don't try to judge keyword effectiveness at early stages (let data be the judge).
• Create themed groups of key phrase lists.
• Create industry related key phrase lists (PPC, SEO, etc).
• Create key phrase lists based on the personas of your ideal customers.
• Use existing sales collateral or industry literature such as magazines and books.
• Survey existing customers.
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Exercise 2:
• On a sheet of paper - create a persona of your ideal customer.
– For example, Barry Kirk is a managing director who is extremely time poor and an advanced Internet
user. He is likely to know exactly what he is looking for, has probably already researched the subject
and will tailor a search query that is quite long and detailed.
Exercise 3:
• On a sheet of paper - create a list of five phrases your ideal customer would use.
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Keyword Research Tools
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There are a number of tools provided online to help with key phrase research. Some of these tools are
provided free by the search engines and others by companies specialising in providing search engine
marketing data.
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We currently use a tool by the name of KeywordDiscovery which allows us to quickly expand our key
phrase lists based on actual search engine data. These tools also provide you with an estimate on the
level of competition for each phrase.
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KeywordDiscovery provide a free trial that is well worth checking out.
Other Tools worth looking at:
• Word Tracker
• Google Keyword Suggestions Tool
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Keyword Discovery Sample
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Basic Search Engine Optimisation Techniques
• Optimising your Web site for the search engines can be broken down into two separate
technical areas. On Page Elements and Off Page Elements.
ON PAGE ELEMENTS
Web site copy:
• It is important to use your selected key phrases within your Web site copy.
• Don't overdo it and make sure that it reads naturally.
• Aim to target two to three phrases per page.
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Basic Search Engine Optimisation Techniques
Search engine friendly code:
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This is hard for most business owners to check on but you really need to make sure that the search
engines spiders can access all of your important information.
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Internal Linking – proper linking leads
to better indexing. Using your keywords
in your internal links helps boost relevancy.
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Your content needs to be structured
in themed groups of relevant content
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Basic Search Engine Optimisation Techniques
Title and Meta tags
• Title is the most important on page element.
• Meta tags are predominantly useless except for the description snippet in the search engine results.
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Basic Search Engine Optimisation Techniques
THINGS TO AVOID
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Dropdown boxes for navigation
Java or JavaScript navigation
Flash-based or overly graphical website
Splash pages
Too many parameters in the URL
Nonstandard characters in the URL
Session IDs or user IDs in the URL
Site spread across multiple domains
Title tags same on all pages
Error page returning a 200 status code
Incorrect redirects
All of these practices will potentially prevent the search
engine from accessing your web site content.
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Basic Search Engine Optimisation Techniques
Off Page Elements
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Ultimately there is only so much that can be done correctly on your Web site and the search engines must
look at off page factors to determine the most relevant result.
All major search engines use linking data in their ranking algorithms
Factors analysed include popularity of the linking page, context of the linking page, and the context of the
anchor text used in the links.
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Basic Search Engine Optimisation Techniques
LINKING STRATEGIES
• Competitive Intelligence – Analyse the back links of your competitors. Try to get links from the same sites
• Submit to Quality General Directories
• Submit to Verticals/Topical Guides
• Search Ad Networks – AdBrite, Adwords, Blog Ads, etc.
• Use Blogs and RSS – Google loves blogs
• Create Podcasts/Screencasts – Bloggers love posting them
• Buy Text Links – But be careful. Google doesn’t like it
DIRECTORY SUBMISSIONS
Important due to the amount of trust search engines place on high-quality human edited directories.
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Some recommended Directories include:
Yahoo http://au.dir.yahoo.com/
DMOZ http://dmoz.org/
Joe Ant http://www.joeant.com/
Best of the Web http://botw.org/
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Basic Search Engine Optimisation Techniques
LINKING STRATEGIES TO AVOID
• Participating in “link farms” or FFA (“Free For All”) sites
• Splogging, comment spamming, guest book spamming
• Linking to “bad neighbourhoods”
• Hiding links
• Hoarding all your PageRank
• Unnatural link structures
Types of links that are likely to get discounted:
• Reciprocal links
• Affiliated sites (on the same IP range or hostname)
• Footer links (at the bottom of the page)
• Site-wide links
• Links contained on a page called links.htm / links.asp
Remember: the more links on the linking page, the less PageRank you’ll get.
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Web Site Analytics
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If you have Web site and you are not checking your statistics you may as well be throwing money down the
drain. It's important to make any of your online marketing decisions based on actual data that each and
every Web site can provide.
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There are a range of tools that can be used – from free to $1,000’s per month.
The tools that we recommend are:
AW Stats (Free with your web hosting)
Google Analytics (Free – but requires installation)
Click Tracks (Ranges from Free to $10,000 +)
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Web Site Analytics
Web site referrals
• Look at where you or traffic is coming from whether it be search engines or your linking
partners.
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Web Site Analytics
Keyword performance and quality indicators
• Break down your data to determine what key phrases are providing traffic from both PPC and
SEO. Good analytics software should be able to tell you which phrases are actually producing
conversions.
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Analysing conversions
It is important to put processes in place to analyse where your
sales and leads are coming from.
Common conversion points include:
• Completing shopping cart order
• Filling in contact form
• E-mail subscription
• Membership sign-on
• Telephone order/lead
• Click to call
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Budget & Pricing
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Use analytics and statistics to budget and plan.
Don’t sit still on your site. (…Your competitors won’t)
Make sure you are budgeting for online marketing.
Don’t wait .. It is only going to get harder and harder as the years go on.
There is no reason why you can’t do a lot of it yourself if you’ve got the time and inclination.
• Pricing is based on client needs, keyword competition and recommended strategies.
Source:
www.seomoz.org
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For more information and to download a copy of this presentation
visit http://www.emediaworx.com.au/hbbn/
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