Not a Member of the eMA

• Join at this seminar and receive $25.00 off any membership category

• Associate

• Professional

• Corporate

• Details at the registration desk

Welcome to Advanced Search Engine

Marketing

Schedule

• There will be a break at 3:00.

• The seminar closes at 5PM.

• There will be an informal “no-host” networking reception in the lounge area following the seminar.

Seminar Format

• Workbooks are for reference only – they should not be read during the seminar unless the seminar leader refers to a particular section.

• This session is interactive you may ask questions and the seminar leader will on occasion stimulate discussion.

Return on Investment (ROI) for Online

Chart courtesy of Overture

Return on Investment (ROI) for Online Advertising Methods

Do It Yourself or Pay a Professional

• The focus of this seminar is on the do it yourself approach

• Be careful if you are hiring a company to do SEO for you

2500 Submissions for $10.

• 90% of web surfers use the top 10 major engines and directories

• Not of much value

• Focus your efforts

• If you are not in the top 20 results you will not get much traffic from your listings

Your Product or Service Makes a Huge Difference

• Sell “air-plants” and you will have little competition for top listings

• Books, software and computer products will be much more difficult

Directory

• Edited by a human reviewer

• Meta tags are not as important

• Difficult to change once listed

• Most allow paid submission

• Quality of site very important

Search Engine

• Crawled by robot spider

• Meta and title tags are important

• HTML code very important

• Quality of site not as important

Top Search Directories

• Yahoo

• LookSmart

• Open directory

• AOL

Hybrid Engines

• Mixed results

• Favors one type of listing over another

• Yahoo! Favors its own directory over crawler based results (provided by Google), especially for more obscure inquires

Top Search Engines

• Google

• Alta vista

• Lycos

• HotBot

• Overture

How Do Search Engines Rank Pages?

• A ranking algorithm

• Formulas change frequently and are kept confidential

• All search engines have different methods for ranking

Your SEO Plan

• Site design and navigation

• Privacy policy

• Browser friendly colors

• Good contact page

• Good checkout process (for e-commerce sites)

• Fast loading graphics

Metrics

• WebTrends live

• Site log analysis

• In-house software solutions

• Analyze relevant actionable data – not everything

Example From WebTrends

Example From WebTrends

10 Areas of Concern When Submitting Your Site

1. URL status

2. Frames

3. Keywords meta tag

4. Description meta tag

5. Title tag

10 Areas of Concern When Submitting Your Site

6. Head section

7. Page copy

8. Hidden text

9. Image tags

10. Spiderable

Site Design Problems

• Frames

• Flash

• Javascript

• Image maps

• Dynamic URLs

Frames

• Search engines do not index frames very well

• We recommend against them

• If you must use frames there are some solutions, although not using frames is better

Flash

• Often used on home pages as a “splash page

• Search engines cannot index

• Your splash page will not get listed

• If you must use it use as much page copy as possible

Keywords

• Metatags

• Think phrases not keywords

• Pay for click programs (overture)

• Your choices are critical

• Overture keyword generator

Much Too General

• Shoes

• Men's shoes

• Woman’s shoes

Much Better

• Imported Italian shoes

• Men’s leather penny loafers

• Woman's aerobic sneakers

Metatags,titles and Descriptions

• The title is the most important

• Hidden text (no-no)

• Page copy optimization

• Image alt tags

• Text hyperlinks

• Heading tags

Check Out Your Competitors Meta Tags

Go to any website and right click your mouse on an open (not picture) area of the site. A menu will pop up – select “view source” and you will be able to see the HTML code for that page

Text and Graphic Hyperlinks

• Can help improve your listings

• Keywords around hyperlinks

• Text immediately surrounding hyperlinks

Search Engine Spam

• Background text

• Multiple title tags

• Duplicate site pages

• Submitting more than once in 24 hours

• Keywords that do not relate to your site

Pay for Inclusion

• Needs to be done manually

• Does not guarentte position

• SEO is important

• Usually guarentees frequent indexing

Pay for Click

• Get the number one position almost instantly without SEO

• PPC budget and strategy is important

• Listing descriptions are critical

• Keyword selection needs to be relevant

Advertisers' Overall Satisfaction

1. c

2. Jupiter Media Metrix: Online Advertising Effectiveness Study, August 2001

Linking

• Improve your search engine rankings with link popularity

• Find sites that link to your comptetion (page 90 workbook)

• Find sites that accept site submissions

• Outgoing links

• Link keywords

Reception in Hotel Lounge

• No host

• Informal

• Meet with fellow members and marketers

• 5:15

You have completed the Advanced Search Engine Marketing Seminar – Congratulations!