What I Won

1
What I Wont Cover

• Online Travel Agencies
• Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, others where you
  can search and book, how most people apparently
  tend to look
• Travel Meta Search
• Kayak, SideStep, Mobissimo, Yahoo FareChase,
  aggregation of prices from online travel
  agencies, actual travel vendors, suppliers
  companies
• Vertical Search Sites
• Travelzoo, Cheapflights, endless others pointing
  at deals and prices, offering reviews
  (TripAdvisor, Yahoo Travel)
• Vendors/Suppliers/Companies
• They sell direct and often include partner deals

2
What I Will Cover

• General purpose search engines
• Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live, Ask
• Use by most people as a starting point
• Swiss army knives of multiple users
• How to be included and rank better is often a
  mystery

3
Session Overview

• There are many ways to be listed
• Its not just be 1 on Google for a particular
  term!
• Web search versus vertical search
• Free versus paid
• Search Engine PR influencing free listings
• What you can and should do to improve
• Search Advertising buying paid listings
• Overview on purchasing these
• Search Marketing PR Advertising
• Getting in front of someone that expresses an
  active desire

4
Google Free Listings

• Also called editorial, naturalor organic listings

5
Google Paid Listings
6
Google Local Listings
7
Google Local Listings
8
Google Local Free Listings
9
Google Local Paid Listings
10
Whos Number 1?
11
Google Travel OneBox
12
Yahoo Travel Shortcut
13
What To Do?

• Being number one is changing and will continue to
  do so
• At some point, it may even be the vertical
  results showing up by default

14
What Is Why Vertical Search
InfoNewsHealthShoppingMusicVideoCars

• Horizontal spectrum of many interests general
  web search
• Vertical search focuses database around a
  particular type of content and interest

15
Start With Basics Web Search

• Focus on web search free and paid -- is a good
  starting point
• So lets talk web search free listings....

16
Search Engine PR

• Major search engines all have free listings that
  come from crawling the web
• Search Engine PR is about influencing the free
  listings
• Perfectly OK, like trying for good PR for your
  company, but

17
Appropriate PR

• While your efforts MAY help improve yourfree
  listings, there are NO guarantees
• And go too far, youll find no one will listen
  to you
• Want guarantees? Buy an ad
• Search engines can and will list what they want
• Dont depend on free listings, but dont ignore
  them, either. Do a mix.
• As with any PR, know your message

18
Search Terms Research Tools

• WordTracker.com
• Yahoo Keyword Selector Tool http//inventory.over
  ture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
• Google AdWords Keyword Toolhttps//adwords.google
  .com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• Country-Specific Tools
• http//www.dwoz.com/default.asp?Pr123

19
Research From Yahoo, Google
20
Leveraging Your Content

• Cant guess everything but pages can
• Have good content on different topics using HTML
  text -- can you copy and paste it???
• Ideally, have a page or section with real
  content for each key term
• Hits for less important terms add up
• The Search Tail predates The Long Tail or
• Consider your site as pyramid

21
The Long Search Tailhttp//blog.searchenginewatch
.com/blog/050314-164653
22
Inceptors Pyramid
23
Crawlers How They Work

• They follow links and read pages found
• Text of pages is stored in an index
• When you search, they look for pages with
  matching text
• Other factors involved in ranking those pages,
  which are

24
Ranking Pages

• Page content is crucial
• Title is important
• Design issues have an impact
• Link analysis plays an important role
• Other off-the-page criteria may be considered,
  such as age of site, clickthrough, the
  neighborhood

25
Submitting To Crawlers

• Crawlers should find some pages naturally
• They are especially likely to get pages with many
  or important links pointing at them
• Submitting MAY speed the listing processand MAY
  increase representation
• Here are free Add URL links

26
Major Crawler Add URL Pages

• Googlehttp//www.google.com/addurl.html
• Google Sitemapshttp//www.google.com/webmasters/s
  itemaps/
• Yahoohttp//submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request
• Windows Live Search http//search.live.com/docs/s
  ubmit.aspx
• AskNo free Add URL page build links!

27
Patching Up Weak Content

• You need pages that are rich in text
• Text in graphics doesn't count, and don't think
  ALT text is enough
• Be creative with HTML and font tags,don't just
  reach for Photoshop
• Your human visitors may appreciate it, too.
• "Expand" terms where appropriate
• Say running shoes, not just shoes
• Create new pages targeting particular terms

28
(No Transcript)
29
Title Tag Your Secret Weapon

• The title tag? Yes -- the lttitlegtlt/titlegt tag!
• Every page should have a unique title
• Title is built around target term for that page
• This will be a two or three word term
• The Nike Running Shoes Collection
• Keep it short, attractive and enticing.
• Remember, you want people interested
• In a hurry? Take at least one minute and give it
  your best shot

30
Design Issues

• Search engines prefer big, dumb ugly pages
• Design issues that can impact ranking (or just
  indexing) especially include
• Splash pages, frames dynamic delivery
• Consider these issues when building a site,
  though I dont expect you to change everything
  just for search engines.

31
Browser ShareFeb. 2006, HitsLink
(http//marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid
0)
32
Surfers Who Have Ever SearchedSept 2005, US
Users (http//www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_SearchD
ata_1105.pdf)
33
The Third Browser

• Everyone uses search engines
• More use them than any single browser
• Search engines see web sites differently than
  humans
• Design for them, and you help humans using the
  third browser of search engines find you
• Ignore them and miss out on visitors

34
Whos Tops For Shoes?

• Zappos 21 of all traffic for shoes
• Top of 191 sites measured by Hitwise.com in the
  United States for Feb. 2006
• Nike 1 of all traffic for shoes
• 14th ranked for the term

35
Nike What Google Sees
36
Nike What Google Sees
37
Zappos What Google Sees
38
Leveraging Links

• More difficult for web site owners to manipulate
  links than their own pages
• So link analysis a great advance in relevancy of
  crawler-based listings
• Major component of Google, also used by nearly
  everyone else, to some degree
• Get out there and link build!
• See my handout on link building and

39
Link Quality

• Its more than sheer numbers
• Is a site more important than others?
• If so, then a few links from quality sites is
  better than hundreds of links from bad sites
• These pages can transmit their importance to
  other
• And context is also key

40
Link Context

• Text in or near the link may be examined in order
  to determine what the linked to page is relevant
  for
• Huh? For example

41
Context Examples

• This is a great place to buy running shoes.
• These are great places to buy running shoes
• Nike
• Adidas
• Joes Shoe World
• Miserable Failure

42
Use The Search Engines

• Take your top terms list and search for pages!
• Pages in the top results are pages you want links
  from
• Search engines think they are important
• People will be visiting them
• Those non-competitive with you more likely to link

43
Search Engine Advertising

• Free crawler listings are PR. As with all PR,
  good coverage is NOT guaranteed
• Search engine ads do give good coverage, in the
  formof guaranteed paid placement
• Can be a good way to plug holes in free coverage

• Good companies run PR ad campaigns in real
  world and also should in the SE world

44
Paid Placement Listings

• Buy your way to the top, generally on a cost per
  click basis (CPC)
• Success can depend on your description, landing
  page as well as quality of search network
• Buy Google Yahoo, and you buy a network of
  sites beyond them, as well

45
Google Paid Placement

• AdWords appear on right-hand side of page at
  Google and sometimes above
• Ads also distributed to others such as AOL and
  Ask Jeeves
• Hard to know exact position of AdWords, since
  ranked CPC x clickthrough/quality score
• Windows Live works the same

46
Paid Placement Providers

• Yahoo Sponsored Searchhttp//searchmarketing.yaho
  o.com/srch/
• Google AdWordshttps//adwords.google.com/select/
• Live Searchhttp//advertising.msn.com/MSNKeyWords
  /default.aspx
• Ask Sponsored Listingshttp//sponsoredlistings.as
  k.com/
• Miva Pay Per Clickhttp//miva.com/
• Others at
• http//sewatch.com/links/article.php/2156291
• http//www.payperclicksearchengines.com
• http//www.payperclickanalyst.com

47

• http//searchengineland.com

• Stories and news from me and othersby feed or
  email