Optimization Strategies

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Optimization Strategies Tactics for Achieving
High Visibility in Search Results
Barbara Coll CEO WebMama.com, Inc.
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Ours Sponsors
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Mission Statement
Produce product sales, information distribution
and/or lead generation, with a high return on the
marketing investment.
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Goal
High Rankings in Organic Search Engine Results
that Increase Qualified Traffic to Website
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Smarter?

• Searches are 2-3 words now
• Searchers are using search boxes to find things
  they already know where to find
• ebay 1 search term
• Getting used to seeing ads and not clicking on
  them, kind of like banners
• Better organic results? Spam Busters.
• Better targeted local results -yes

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What is Search Engine Marketing?

• Text-based online advertising

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Search Evolution text-based ads

• 4Natural/Organic
• 4 Impression Based
• 4 Paid Inclusion
• 4 Pay-per-Click

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Google Adwords Paid Search
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Organic/Natural Listings
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Yahoo! Sponsored Search Pay-Per-Click/Keyword-bas
ed
Overture/Yahoo! Search SubmitPaid Inclusion into
free resultsPage/URL based
Free Organic Results basedon Spidering of Sites
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Content-Based Ads
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Uniqueness of Search Engine Marketing
The Good Cheap Highest Return On Investment
EVER! Measurable Flexible and Responsive
The Bad Hard to Budget Requires Company-wide
buy-in Day-to-Day Management Quickly Evolving
Industry
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How to Get the Team On Board

• Educate the Team
• Convince the Team
• Bribe the Team

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The Team
Inventory Managers
Marketing Manager
Web Producer
Product Manager
Public Relations
MarCom
Customer Support
Graphic Designers
IT
Sales
Copywriters
Investor Relations
Developers
Legal
Webmaster
Marketing
Demand Generation
Executive Management
Content Managers
International
Programmers
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What Do We Want?

• To rank very well under phrases that have been
  shown to convert
• To have all pages indexed
• To rank well under keywords that have traffic
  volume
• To own the category!

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Search Engine OptimizationNatural and Organic
Results Visibility

• More important than ever
• PPC prices going up
• 60 of people click on organic
• Big companies are playing now
• But only 10 of large B2B companies are doing
  SEO
• Competition is heating up

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Strategy

• Think of optimization throughout site development
  and modifications
• Look for optimization opportunities
• Look for web developers and designers who have
  SEO experience or partners

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Critical Decisions What to Optimize With?

• Not an easy decision
• Requires extensive research
• What is the outcome desired of search visitors?
• Is it about branding, awareness or lead
  generation?

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Organic Challenges

• It isnt FREE
• Spammers
• Difficult to Measure and prove effective
• Very, very visible to management!
• Constantly changing algorithms/engines

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Keyword Selection
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Beware the CEO-ego!!
Beware the CEO-ego!!
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Keyword Selection Tools

• The TEAM
• The Competition
• PPC Volume Estimation Tools
• Your PPC campaigns
• WordTracker for ratios expansions
• Current WebSite Referring Keywords
• Media Publishers keyword list

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• Note 1 Legacy words are important and drive
  volume
• Note 2 Searchers usually dont use PR terms

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What to do now with Keyphrases?

• Map keywords/phrases to pages
• Use Keyphrases in content on page
• Develop meta data with keywords
• TITLE tags
• Meta Description and Keyword tags
• ALT tags
• Name directories, files and images

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Organic and PPC Strategy
Limited of keywords you can optimize for. Do
PPC for second tier words
Optimize on expensive keywords
Same Keywords
Pay for words not repre-sented on website - that
convert!
Convince them to add all converting words to
keyword bucket for organic and paid
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Did you Choose the Right Phrases?

• Test Words and Creatives with Keywords using PPC
  and PI (Yahoo! Site Match)
• Tracking of organic traffic
• Watch which keywords are rising to the top
• See what keywords are driving visitors further
  into the site
• See where those visitors are going
• Challenges of tracking abound

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• Integration with other Online Marketing
• From the Team and Project Management Point of
  View

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Education

• Come to a common terminology
• Talk about why you cant just to organic search
  optimization
• Provide case studies and suggestions as to how
  and why to integrate
• Sources for information
• www.sempo.org, marketingsherpa, iab research
• Clickz, searchenginewatch (blog especially)
• Attend conferences

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Overlapping Budgets

• Tighten relationship with other agencies
• Talk about who owns what budget

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Measurement

• Offline marketing effects online traffic volume
• Online marketing effects offline sales
• Attempt to merge multiple tracking systems and
  backend CRMs

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Creatives

• Consistency but not the same
• Text vs Images
• Keywords vs page location
• Pay-per-click vs cost-per-thousand (PPC/CPM)
• Searchers vs Eyeballs
• Shared Branding experience responsibility for
  trademarks
• Includes reputation monitoring

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Search

• All bets are off as ..
• Google moves to Print Ads
• MSN goes to demographic targeting for search
• Local / City Classifies go online
• EBay craigs list, Google Base, Yahoo Local,
  Mapquest
• Personalization
• Community based search
• The rise of vertical search

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Barbara C. CollCEO, WebMama.com Inc.A Search
Engine Marketing Companybcoll_at_webmama.com

• Search Engine Marketing Professional
  OrganizationFounder, former President and
  ChairBoard of DirectorSEMPO.org
• Clients HP, WebEx, Verisign, Shoes.com,
  Homegain.