Search Marketing Essentials

Search Essentials
Jeremy Chatfield
21st October 2010

Contents
Intro
Who Uses Search
Why Search Is Used
Main Search Engines
What Do People Search For?
Structure of a Search Results Page
Paid Listings
Getting “free” listings
Interaction with Social Media

Why Am I Here...
First commercial website,1994 - topped Search Engines, accidentally
Returned to UK from US in 2000, set up Merjis in 2003
Clients since then have included BUPA, Thomas Cook, Skype, Gumtree, Qype, uSwitch, Perrys Motor Sales, Globrix, & others
Emphasis on troubleshooting traffic problems in SEO and PPC leads to strong understanding of search and conversion
Amusingly, our services sell by word of mouth, rather than on the web

Who Uses Search
Most people...
Google estimates around 70% of users in any session
It varies by country and language

What Is Search?
Search is just one way to navigate
Directories used to be big - when the web was smaller. But directories don’t scale well; they still work well for niches
Search engines use vast amounts of automation to collect data and index it for access
Brand is actually another type of navigation

Why Is Search Used?
Information – research; to learn more about a topic
Purchasing - buying stuff; finding the best product and cheapest place, trusted by other users
Entertainment - celebrities, video
Navigation - people type domain names, business names, addresses and phone numbers in search bars.

Main Search Engines
Google - more than 80% of search in the UK
“Binghoo” - most of the rest (Bing and Yahoo!)
IMO, YouTube is a search engine as well as an entertainment site

Google
Google
FaceBook
Google
YouTube
FaceBook
BBC

What Do People Search For?
If we’re selling something, or offering information, we want to know what people are looking for
Google Trends and Insights for Search tell us:

Structure of a Search Page
Google’s mission statement, the ten things.
Number one: “Focus on the user”
Search results pages are optimised based on user response, to a substantial degree
Although Google says “algorithm” which sounds like humans aren’t involved, the algorithms are picked by humans - so results are not culturally insensitive

Rich Results
Rich results:
Text
Images
Video
News
Live feeds
Product lists
Maps
Reviews
“Universal” results, but also vertical specialist search

Paid Listings
Known as Pay Per Click - someone clicking on an advert makes the vendor pay a click cost.
Extended to non-search interfaces, for display advertising
“Focus on the user” - Google will do so, and makes advertisers do so: disappointing users raises advertising costs
Targeting by keyword, language, geography, time of day

Display Networks
Additional advertising opportunities, or, for publishers, additional revenue sources
Cued from text on the page - display network adverts are more or less relevant to the page content
Tends to have lower conversion rates, and lower average cost per click

“electronic products blog”
Number 3 ranking on Google

Free listings
About half the page allows “free” listings
The techniques to get free listings are known as “SEO” Search Engine Optimisation
Notice and use the chances that you have:
Organic text
Video
Maps
Reviews
Images
Product search
Live feed (Twitter)

How You Get Free Listings
Two main paths - “White Hat” and “Black Hat”
White Hat - follow the search engine’s recommendations
Black Hat - give the SE’s what they use to rank with
By and large, major brands must use some White Hat.
Throwaway sites, like the “top notch electronic products in the world” example, can use Black Hat exclusively

White Hat Techniques
Major Media mentions (newspapers, magazines, TV-related websites)
High quality articles - hosted on own site, and elsewhere
Social Media mentions
Black Hat techniques typically rely on articles, domains and social media - less reliance on established media, unless they can sneak it in

Social Media
Mentions in Social Media are often regarded as part of Brand Building
Increased awareness and mentions often result in increased search engine ranking for complex reasons.
But that’s the point where I stop and Mark Cook takes over...

Search Marketing Essentials

by Jeremy Chatfield on Oct 21, 2010

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Search Marketing Essentials — Presentation Transcript

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