Optimizing Web Sites for Search Traffic

Why, as a Web site owner, should you care about Search Engine Marketing?
Search Engine Advertising techniques
Search Engine Optimization techniques
Build, Measure, Iterate!
Copyright (c) 2008 Mohit Srivastava

Worldwide Search - August 2007 Source: comScore qSearch 2.0 95% of worldwide Internet audience uses search Copyright (c) 2008 Mohit Srivastava Market Segment Unique Searchers Searches Searches Per User Worldwide 754 Million 61 Billion 80.9 Asia-Pacific 258 Million 20 Billion 78.7 North America 206 Million 16 Billion 77.4 1. Google 37 Billion 2. Yahoo! 8.6 Billion 3. Baidu.com 3.2 Billion 4. Microsoft 2.2 Billion

Search Engine Marketing, as compared to traditional outbound marketing…
Is “Permission Marketing”, generating qualified leads.
Is highly measurable.
See form Fill out form x% y% click Copyright (c) 2008 Mohit Srivastava

Google makes over 90% of its $19B yearly revenue from “search network” ads.
“ AdSense” ads on partner site
Google shares ad revenue with partner site
Paid listings on Google search
Google pockets all ad revenue

Search network ads are targeted by keyword phrases, language, and geographic location.
Google allows an advertiser to bid on a keyword phrase by letting the advertiser specify
How much it is willing to pay per click for this keyword phrase
A total budget (across all keyword phrases)
Google subsequently displays your ad vs. others’ ads for the keyword phrase in a way that maximizes Google’s revenue.

As a Web site owner, how do you pick the best keyword phrases?
Start by identifying keywords that maximize the chance of conversion (e.g. someone clicking on search ad and then completing a form)
For example, if you are a Chinese restaurant, you do not want to buy the “Seattle appliance repair” keyword. You might get clicks, but you will get low conversion because you are attracting the wrong users.
To minimize cost,
Pick keywords with the highest search volume but lowest competition.
Word your ad effectively: The more your ad gets clicked, the less you have to pay per click.

If cost per conversion is high, you have to improve your keyword choices, the ad itself, or the user experience on your site!
Technical Details: Call AdWords on conversion (e.g. signup, purchase, etc.)
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">  </script> <script language="JavaScript" src="https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion.js"> </script> …

The benefits of SEO (getting listed in actual search results) as compared to Search Advertising:
No cost - Organic results are listed based on the search engine’s measure of your relevance and quality, not your advertising dollars, so you don’t pay a “tax” per click
Get more traffic - Most people click the organic search results, not the paid advertisements [ Mohit – And, you may end up ranking for keywords you would not have thought to bid on via paid results]
Get visitors with a higher education - Research shows those who click on organic search results more often have a higher level of education
Longer lasting rank and traffic - Search engines record your ranking history, helping you rank highly in the future, and they only reevaluate your rank every few weeks or months, allowing you to maintain your rank longer
Source: MarketingSherpa & Enquiro Research via http://www.hubspot.com/organic-vs-paid-search Copyright (c) 2008 Mohit Srivastava

Robot assesses
Can I get to this page?
Has the page changed?
Can I process and download the page?
Where can I go from here?
Does anything look abnormal? (h1, links, text etc.)
Tip
Turn off JavaScript and Flash to see what the robot sees.
Source: Advanced Seo Web Development Tech Ed 2008 by Nathan Buggia Copyright (c) 2008 Mohit Srivastava

Disney.com (as seen by robot) 
Disney.com (as seen by human)

The rank of a page given a search term is a combination of
PageRank TM : Based on the quality of inbound links (independent of the search term).
Text-matching score : Combines
How many times the search term appears in the document, weighted higher for certain HTML tags
E.g. <title>Chinese Food</title> contributes more than <p>Chinese Food</p>
Anchor text of inbound links
<a href=“http://mysite.com”>Chinese Food</a>

The goal of SEO is to achieve a large number of conversions (e.g. purchases, sign-ups, or whatever metric makes sense for your site).
Accordingly, there are two component goals
Achieve a high ranking (of your site and underlying pages) in search engines, especially for relevant keywords
Higher ranking => More page views.
Achieve a high conversion rate .
Similar to what was discussed earlier in the Search Advertising section.

High Ranking: Follow best practices
Site must be understandable to the robot
Use semantic HTML
E.g. <h1>My Article Title</h1> instead of <span class=“heading”>My Article Title</span>
Use proper HTTP status codes
200 OK
404 Gone
301 Moved Permanently
302 Moved Temporarily
Do not fragment your rank: The same page should only have one url. Alterntate url’s for that page should 301 redirect to the canonical url.
E.g. http://www.faves.com 301 redirects to http://faves.com .

High Ranking: Follow best practices (cont.)
Site must be navigable by the robot
Use form posts only for forms
Avoid JavaScript for links unless absolutely necessary
WARNING: ASP.Net postbacks violate both of the above.
Avoid using Flash for navigation. Instead, embed Flash in HTML pages.
Make pages accessible without login, when appropriate.
Implement down-level experiences both for users with limited browsers and for the robot
E.g. <noscript></noscript> (only read if JavaScript is disabled) is understood by the robot

High Ranking (continued)
Include the keywords you want to be ranked for. Note: Certain tags ( <title> , <h1> ) carry more weight than others ( <p> ).
Use clean & understandable urls.
E.g. http://faves.com/users/mohit is better than http://faves.com?st=%3amohit .
Motivate people to “naturally” link and deep-link to your site.
But, don’t go overboard. Google can detect attempts to game their algorithm.
Post to social media sites (e.g. Digg, StumbleUpon).

High Conversion
Make sure the page includes the text you want to see as part of the search result. Alternatively, include this text in the <meta name=“description”> tag.
Google <meta name="Description" content="Mohit Srivastava, Co-Founder & CTO - Faves.com, is a featured speaker at the Search Marketing Expo Conference Series." /> The Page Copyright (c) 2008 Mohit Srivastava

SEO problem with your site? Is it a crawling problem or a ranking problem? Determine both with Google Webmaster Tools.

More About Me
http://faves.com/users/mohit
http://thishostedlife.com
Demoed Tools
Search Advertising : Google Keyword Tool, Google AdWords
SEO : Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics
Questions?

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Optimizing Web Sites for Search Traffic

by mohit on Aug 26, 2008

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Optimizing Web Sites for Search Traffic — Presentation Transcript