Search Engine Marketing

You are invisible, and how to fix it

Presented By Hans RiemerMarket Vantage LLC

At North By North ShoreDanvers MA - Sept. 12, 2012

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� Search Engines vs Directories

� Organic and Paid Search

� Other sources of Traffic

First, just a few BASICS

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Search Engines and Directories

� Directories – Human-Edited

– Yahoo Directory, Google Directory / ODP (DMOZ)

� Search Engines – Crawler-Based / Algorithmic

– Google, Bing, Ask, etc.

� Recent History

– Google started making money in 2001

– Remember AltaVista? Infoseek? HotBot?

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Organic vs Paid Search

Paid AdsOrganic Results

(2009 model)

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Organic vs Paid Search

(2012 model)

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Website Traffic

On-Line AdvertisingReferrals Brand Awareness(Bookmark or Direct)

Pay-PerClick

Banners& Text Ads

Sponsor-ships

ContextualAds On-Line Pubs

OrganicSearch

ReferringLinks

PR(Online / Offline)

Ads (Radio/TV/Print)

Related Sites E-NewslettersPortals

ViralMarketing

Sources of Website Traffic

PaidSearch

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Google’s Mission & Purpose

� Satisfy two stakeholders:� Search users

– Provide the most “relevant” results

� Investors

– Generate revenue from ads (tied to traffic from Search)

� Not: “Push lots of traffic to your site so can make lots of money”

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Who makes Google’s job harder?

� People who try to get their pages to rank higher than they would otherwise

� Why? Because if they succeed, Google’s users (searchers) may not get the best results!

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So Google keeps tweaking,

Panda

Penguin

Venice

Caffeine

Vince

Dewey

Buffy

Big Daddy

Jagger

Gilligan

Bourbon . . .

2012

2010

2008

2006

2004

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How do I get my website to show up at the top of ?

Without having to pay for the clicks, of course,

The $64,000 Question:

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What Search Engines Do

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1st Generation Search Engine Signals– Keywords and Content

� The site with the most keywords – WINS!

Keyword

Keyword

KeywordKeyword

Keyword

Keyword

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1st Generation Search Engine Signals– Keywords and Content

The Result?

� Keyword-stuffed content

� Lots of spammy, junky websites

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2nd Generation Search Engine Signals– Inbound Links

Google arrives on the scene

� Develops an algorithmic approach

� Patent granted for Page Rank

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2nd Generation Search Engine Signals– Inbound Links

The Result?

� Web 2.0 allows user generated content

� Lots of spammy, junky websites

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3rd Generation – User Experience

Data from Google’s “free” tools

� Google Search

� Google Analytics

� Google Toolbar

� Gmail

� Google+1

� Google Chrome browser (with toolbar)

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3rd Generation – User Experience

The Result?

� Lots of pain and volatility

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How to Show Up at the Top of Google

� Own a famous brand

� Get tons of visitors to your site

� Keep them there

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Do’s

� Don’t try to optimize a lousy website

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Do’s

� Keyword research is still important– https://adwords.google.com/o/keywordtool

– Or search: google keyword tool

– Use: “Exact Match”

– Understand: limitations

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Do’s

� Google understands synonyms– No need to “stuff” keywords

– So, write web copy for humans

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Do’s

� Natural link development– Articles still work

– Keyword anchor text isn’t what it used to be

– Directories still hold sway

– Talk to your partners

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Do’s

� Surprise! SEO is Marketing– Crisp messaging + thoughtful word choices

– Visitor engagement

– Usefulness

– Compelling offers

– Impeccable customer service

– Follow-up and nurturing

– PR outreach

How to tell if your site got nuked

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How to tell if your site got nuked

� Traffic

� This: instead of This:

� site:www.yoursite.com comes up empty

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What to do if your site is banned

� Run, don’t walk, to

� Find out what needs to be fixed and fix it!

� Request reinstatement

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And now a few words about

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Yearly Revenue

6,332

10,625

14,413 15,723

19,443

26,145

4,160

5,788

6,7147,167

8,793

10,386

$0

$5,000

$10,000

$15,000

$20,000

$25,000

$30,000

$35,000

$40,000

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Licensing & Other Network Google.com

$ in millions

AdWords Truths

� If your site isn’t converting, the solution is not to spend more money

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AdWords Truths

� You’re playing against Google and your fellow advertisers

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AdWords Truths

� It’s a live auction

– Pay attention

– Don’t “set it and forget it”

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AdWords Truths

� Target carefully

– Keyword selections

– Display sites

� Sloppy = Expensive

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AdWords Tip

� Use AdWords Preview tool to check ads

– Impressions are costly

– Allows geographic testing

– adwords.google.com/d/AdPreview/

– Or search: adwords preview tool

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AdWords Tip

� Who is seeing your ads?

– Search: check typed keywords

– Display: check sites

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Questions?

Hans Riemer

Market Vantage LLC

978-482-0130

hjr@market-vantage.com

Blog / Tips / Newsletter at

www.market-vantage.com

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