SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING 101

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July 21st, 2009

SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM)

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SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING: Market Share

SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING: Paid vs. Organic

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PAID

ORGANIC

SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING

• SEM– Search Engine Marketing– Using the search engines in your marketing strategy

• SEA– Search Engine Advertising– A.k.a. Paid Search, PPC– Using search engine products such as Google

Adwords• SEO

– Search Engine Optimization– Optimizing your digital content to appear high on

search engines during keyword searches

SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING

• Search to represent 40-50% of online spending

SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING: Heatmap

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SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING: Terminology

• Algorithm: A mathematical programming system used to determine which web pages are displayed in search results, when referring to search engine algorithms.

• Click Thru Rate: The amount of clicks a visitor makes from search engine results to find the results they sought. Used to track keywords.

• Conversion Rate: A rate that defines how many visitors are converted into money or how many viewed a page.

• CPC:  Cost Per Click• CPM: Cost Per Thousand impressions. Quantifies the

average value/cost of Pay-per-Click advertisements. (M stands for the Roman numeral one thousand).

SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING: Terminology

• Keyword density: The number of times a keyword or keyword phrase is used in a document compared to the total words in the document. You can take the total number of words in the document and multiply it by the percent required to find out how many keywords you need.  Or you can take the number of keywords or keyword phrases you have and divide by the total number of words.

• Keyword Phrase: A phrase a searcher uses when searching using a search engine.

• Keyword: A word used when querying a search engine.• Landing Page:   The page a website visitor lands on after clicking

a link, usually in a advertisement and usually contains a sales pitch.

• Organic Results: Search engine results based on relevance and popularity and are not paid for.

• PPC: Pay Per Click. An advertising program where you agree to pay a certain amount every time your link is clicked on.

SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING (SEA)

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SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING

• Why is SEA Important?– The best single traffic driver online– Reach users when they are actively looking for you– Measurable advertising– Historically great ROI– Catch users at the “bottom of the funnel”

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SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING: Features

• Bid for position (affected by Quality Score)• Budget management• Pay only when a user clicks your ad (and only 1

cent over next bid position)• Geotargeting• Dayparting• Rotating creative for best CTR• Advanced Reporting and Tracking

SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING: The Account

• The Building Blocks– Relevant Keywords– Engaging Ad Text (aka Copy or Creative)– Specific Landing Pages

• Account Structure– Account– Campaign– Ad Group– Keywords

SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING: Keyword Tools

SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING: Competitive

MetaTags: Used to identify the creator of a Web page, what HTML specs the page follows, and the keywords and description of the page.

SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING: Competitive

SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING: Ad Copy

• 3 Lines of Text to make your point– Poorly performing ads are vague, poorly written, or

undistinguished. – Successful ads are clear, well-written, specific, and compelling.

• Here are two sample ads promoting Google Adwords:

• The first ad has been optimized. It contains clear ad text, a specific benefit to the user, and a call to action. The second ad hasn't been optimized. As you can see, it's vague, redundant, and doesn't offer any benefits or contain a call to action.

ADVANCED SEA CAMPAIGN CREATION

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ADVANCED SEA: The Purchase Funnel

Awareness

Interest

Research

Purchase

ADVANCED SEA: The Long and Short Tail

ADVANCED SEA: Feeding the Funnel

FPL Online SurveyImpressions: 10,000

Clicks: 750CTR: 7.5%

Avg CPC: $0.75

High Air Conditioning BillsImpressions: 20,000

Clicks: 600CTR: 3%

Avg CPC: $1.85

Home Expenses Impressions:

32,410Clicks: 612CTR: 1.89%

Avg CPC: $3.75

Monthly Bills Impressions:

25,000Clicks: 500CTR: 2%

Avg CPC: $2.50

Awareness

Interest

Research

Purchase

ADVANCED SEA: Match Types

Match Type Example Term Would Appear For

Queries: Pros Cons

Broad cell phone Buy a cell phone, phone treo cell

create a wide net for traffic on terms you may

not think of

very general - high cost, low converting

Phrase "cell phone" Buy a cell phone, Cell phone ring tones

targets queries for keyword but

still allows flexibility

may be left out on many impressions

Exact [cell phone] cell phone highly targeted will only receive traffic on those searches

Negative - tom not appear for cruise vacation terms

used to qualify users before the

ad is servedcould dramatically drop

impressions

ADVANCED SEA: Quality Score

• Google Definition:– “Quality Score is the basis for measuring the quality and relevance of

your ads and determining your minimum CPC bid for Google and the search network. This score is determined by your keyword's click-thru rate (CTR) on Google, and the relevance of your ad text, keyword, and landing page. We believe high quality ads attract more clicks, encourage user trust, and result in better long-term performance. To encourage relevant and successful ads within AdWords, our system defines a Quality Score to set your keyword status, minimum CPC bid, and ad rank for the ad auction.”

• In English…– The engines incentivize advertisers to create highly relevant ads by

means of A lower minimum bid to even be visible on the engine A higher bid position than even competitors who are paying more per click A lower Cost Per Click

• Quality Score is based on the relevancy between:– Keywords– Creative– Landing Page– CTR Performance

ADVANCED SEA: Optimizations

Optimization OpportunitiesKeyword

ListingsCopyMatch TypeNegativesBid PriceRank

Landing PageBudget/VolumeEnginesDay partingDemographicGeographic

Targets

ResultsClick Thru Rate

(CTR)Conversion %

(CTC)Rank

Actual Bid CostTotal Media

SpendROI

ROASCPA

Profit MarginsLifetime Value

Pageviews/Time on Site

Avg. Sale Amount

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)

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HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES RANK WEBSITES?

“Google recognizes 1 trillion unique URLs and adds more than 2 billion new pages of content every day.”

Google Press Release

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: Page Ranking

• People ask us all the time, how to get ranked high?– There are some important guidelines you have to follow

• CONTENT IS KING

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SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: How does it work?• Spiders crawl the web

– To find new documents/web pages– Following hyperlinks (6 Degrees of Separation)

• Indexes the content – Adding it to their databases – Periodically updates this content

• User Searches– Engines search their own databases – Not searching web pages in real-time

• Engines rank documents using an algorithm– Mathematical formula– Various weights and ranking factors

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SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

• Google’s Technology Statement:– “We use more than 200 signals, including our patented PageRank™

algorithm, to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important.”

– PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results. PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value.

– Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Our search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), our technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. We also analyze the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user's query.

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SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: Algorithms

Top Secret!

• Search Engines want you to be found for your topic but can’t give away the secret in fear of spammers

• Constantly changed, tweaked & updated• Varies by Search Engine• Weighs both On-Site and Off-Site factors

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With ever-changing algorithms; reverse engineering, continual

research and experimenting is the only approach to growing organic

page rank…

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SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: Tactics

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: Tactics

• Keyword Factors– Ex: Keywords in a Title Tag, in bold / strong tags, in the H2,

H3, H (x) Tags, in url or domain name • Internal Factors

– Ex: Quality / related links to external sites, age of document, validation of HTML code, quality of content pages, page update frequency

• Link Popularity– Ex: Verification and validation per Google Webmasters,

attributes of external links, links to and from website, page rank of referring websites and internal page popularity among other pages

• Negative Factors– Ex: Excessive use of keywords (stuffing / spamming), external

links from spam site, participation in exchange or actively selling links, low level of visit, duplication of title and meta tags, the server is often unavailable for engine crawlers

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WHERE TO RUN SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING

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GOOGLE

• The Google Network is the largest advertising network available online, reaching over 86% of Internet users worldwide.

• Includes:– Google Search– Google Content– Google Site Targeting– Google Local

GOOGLE SEARCH

GOOGLE CONTENT TARGETING

GOOGLE PLACEMENT TARGETING

GOOGLE LOCAL

YAHOO SEARCH

YAHO LOCAL

YAHOO SEARCH SUBMIT

MSN ADCENTER

OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

SUPERPAGES

SHOPPING ENGINES

ALWAYS NEW TECHNOLOGIES