Seo Presentation 200809

SEARCH ENGINE STRATEGIES:Put your web site to work!Presented by: Avery Cohen - Metrist Partners

September 10, 2008

Overview

Trend: Increasing interest in search strategies from consumer and B2B companies

Trend: Online marketing is expanding More integrated campaigns Increased use of Web to find local service

providers Internet and search strategies are a cost-

effective way to expand reach Provides valuable buying stage information

Definitions

Website Optimization Creating a user-friendly Website with good, high-

quality content to serve the visitor Testing alternatives to achieve a desired objective

with more of your site visitors Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Improving the volume and quality of traffic to a site from search engines via “natural” search for targeted key words

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) SEO techniques including paid placement and pay-

per-click (PPC) programs, often called search engine advertising

Do I Need a Search Strategy?

Direct Product Sales Generate more leads

Requests for information Phone call or contact form Email opt-in

Set the stage for warmer sales calls Knowledgeable customers

Support complex sales That have multiple touch points

Elements of a Search Strategy

Set Goals Optimize the Site

Optimize for “conversions” Optimize for search

“Pull” Traffic Linking strategy & PR Advertising, including paid search Email

Measure and Adapt Constantly changing environment

Why SEO?

SEO makes the whole world-wide web better

Following SEO best practices… Provides a better customer experience Drives brand consistency Makes you more connected Brings in more customers

Pursuing the “Holy Grail”

Three questions to ask Three questions to ask when considering when considering Search Engine Search Engine OptimizationOptimization

Pursuing the “Holy Grail”

What are your goals? What do you want to be known for? What do your customers want?

Google Knows People

Estimated at 40 billion searches per month

Primary income from pay-per-click advertising

Makes more money from advertising than the top 4 TV networks combined

Google Knows What People Want

People tell Google what they want.

dog walkers

Google Knows What People Want

When people click on an entry,they are telling Google what looks right.

Google Knows What People Want

People link to good content.

How Do Sites Get on Google?

The “Spider” or “Googlebot” Follows links on the Internet Catalogs Keywords and Key Phrases Calculates Relevance You can talk to the spider

Robots.txt & Sitemap.xml Submit on webmaster.google.com

The Search Engine Presents relevant pages to searchers Profiles items people select Assigns and updates relevance:

“Page Rank”

Care and Feeding of the Google Spider

High quality inbound links Relevant to keywords

Internal linking Strong internal linking on keywords High quality external links

Keyword density Early and often Between 5% and 8%

Likes fresh content

Two Sides to SEO: Marketing & IT

Marketer’s Roadmap

Keyword selection Writing for SEO Linking strategy Fresh content strategy

Developer’s Roadmap

Site structure Page structure Search Vendor

Relationship Analytics Infrastructure

Marketers: Keyword Selection

Be specific “dog walkers” --

“Chicago dog walkers”“Lincoln Park dog walkers”

Be consistent Choose your jargon

carefully Add pages for

“Long Tail” searches Specific Products

Keyword Selection: Be Specific

Keyword Selection: Be Specific

Marketers: Tools for Marketers

Tools (examples): Finding Keywords:

Wordtracker Google AdWords Budgeting Submit to Google Maps Feedburner

Marketers: Writing for SEO

5 – 8% Keyword Density 500 words of content per page

Early and often Use section headings Avoid synonyms, euphemisms and

implied usage Use your other keywords to create

linking opportunities

How Does Stuff Get on Google?

The “Spider” or “Googlebot” Follows links on the Internet Catalogs keywords and key phrases Calculates relevance You can talk to the spider

Robots.txt & Sitemap.xml Submit on webmaster.google.com

The Search Engine Profiles items people select Assigns and updates relevance:

“Page Rank”

The Googlebot Finds Content for Google

The “Googlebot” is a spider-like program Googlebot follows links on the world-wide web Googlebot catalogs keywords and key phrases Googlebot calculates keyword relevance You can talk to the Googlebot

Robots.txt & Sitemap.xml Submit on webmaster.google.com

The Search Engine works with Googlebot data Profiles items people select Assigns and updates relevance:

“Page Rank”

Marketers: Linking Strategy

High quality inbound links Solicit links

Who would want to link to you? How will linking to you help their audience (your

customers)? PR campaigns Stunts: Link bait and stupid Internet tricks

High quality outbound links Link to authoritative sources Link to helpful sites

Linking Strategy: White Hat vs. Gray Hat

Google doesn’t like paid links Access to “link farms” Link exchange networks

Fighting Web spam Comments on blogs and forums Blogs now use “no-follow” links

Developers: Site Structure

Clear text, keyword-based navigation

Human-readable URLs Dogs/Dogwalkers.html Dogs/Dog-walkers.html

Avoid duplicate content Forward obsolete pages

Developers: Page Structure

You get points for keywords in these elements Page titles Headings Meta tags

Description Keywords

ALT tags for non-text content Use CSS and DIV, External JS files

Text-to-code ratio Keywords at top of page

Search Engine Relations

Google Webmaster Tools Yahoo Site Submission

Search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html Robots.txt Sitemap.xml

Implement Web Analytics

Google Analytics It’s free Tracks goals and conversion rates Segments groups of users Poor visit and path analysis

Buying Position with SEM

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Pay-per-Click (PPC) model Bid on keywords and key phrases

Maximum per-click Daily budget

Direct Search and “Content Network” Price & placement based on “Quality

Score” Keyword density and SEO Compliance Click-through history

When to Use SEM

Buy position on a keyword or phrase Drive traffic directly to a service offering Test new marketing messages

Creating and Managing SEM

Campaign Specific target

and purpose Ad Groups

Keywords Broad, exact phrase, negative words

Ads 25-35-35 + url Auto-adjusts for best variation

Measuring SEM

Impressions Clicks

Click-through rate Cost-per-click

Bounce rate Conversions

Conversion rate Cost-per-lead

Measuring Your Results

All SEO can be measured SEOChat.com (and others)

SEO has a cumulative measurable result Contributing to your goals

Financial results CRM or SalesForce.com Google Analytics (and others)

Site Optimization

Focus on conversions Views more than one page Reaches specific “value-add” content Opts in for email Fills out a “contact” form Makes a phone call Makes a purchase

Segment and test

Tracking KPIs

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) Baseline – previous year ± special events Set goals Track results Evaluate based on goals and trends Take action!

Tracking KPIs

KPIJan Goal

Jan Actual ±%

Total Visits

% Paid Visits

Email List Opt-In

Opt in %

Email Unsubscribes

Email List Size

Whitepaper Downloads

Download % Visits

Contact Us form start

Contact Us complete %

Additional Benefits of SEO

SEO makes the whole world-wide web better People read like the spider program People navigate through content links as

much as through navigation options Your message will be more clear Measurement techniques lead from

Search Optimization to Outcomes Optimization

Better “conversion rate” from visits to customers

-Brief “to do” list for the marketing team-Tools you can use to evaluate your site site

Getting Started

Make SEO Work for You

Set goals Audit site content

Consider an outsourced evaluation Pay attention to keyword use

Searchable, specific External links

Get influential sites to link back to you Alliances, sponsorships, news, blogs

Internal links Improve the viewing experience and point

search engines toward the most important pages

Apply intelligence from site statistics Review technology

Technical Considerations

Implement Joomla SEF component Implement web analytics Register site with Search Engines Evaluate

Page structure keyword usage on the site Internal content linking

Free Tools to Use

Wordtracker Keyword suggestions and estimated daily search volume http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Google Tools for smaller businesses and free map listings http://www.google.com/services/

Google Trends Historic search volume on Google to help you decide on keywords http://www.google.com/trends

Rank Checker Reports rankings on key words http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker

SeoQuake Reports on a variety of search factor, good for checking the competition http://seoquake.com

SEO Chat Wide variety of tools for Search Optimization http://www.seochat.com/tools

Ask your search questions…

Q&A

Contact Information

Metrist Partners2525 N. Elston Ave.Suite D230Chicago, Illinois

60647847-926-8280

avery@metrist.comhttp://www.metristpartners.com