2. AGENDA
• What is Search Engine?
• How Search Engines work?
• What is Search Engine Marketing?
• Why Search Engine Marketing?
• What is Search Engine Optimization?
• Steps in Search Engine Optimization
• Pay Per Click SEM
• SEO Vs Pay Per Click
3. FACTS
• 81,000,000 Internet users as of Nov/08
7.0% penetration, per ITU.
• 92% of internet users research products & businesses
online.
• 74% of consumers use the Internet to find a business vs.
65% who use Yellow Pages.
• 85% of people use search engines to find information.
(Source: Georgia Institute of Technology)
• 50.5 percent of searchers never looked past the first
search results page and only 29.2 percent made it to the
third page (Penn State Study)
4. What is a Search Engine?
• Definition: An internet-based tool that searches an index of
documents for a particular term, phrase or text specified by
the user. Commonly used to refer to large web-based search
engines that search through billions of pages on the internet.
• Common Characteristics:
Spider, Indexer, Database, Algorithm
Find matching documents and display them according
to relevance
Frequent updates to documents searched and ranking
algorithm
Strive to produce “better”, more relevant results than
competitors
6. A Search Engine’s Goals & Objectives
• Accumulate large index (database) of web
documents to search
• Provide highly-relevant results to users (better
than competitors)
• Generate revenue via paid advertising and
related business ventures that typically
leverage large amount of traffic
7. Major Search Engines
What Search Engines Are the Most Popular?
Figures below show what percentage of US internet users accessed the corresponding sites at least once
during a given month. Counts only search-specific visits. (http://marketshare.hitslink.com/ Aug 2009)
8. Anatomy of a Search Engine
Search box
Sponsored Listings
aka PPC
“Organic” Results
aka SERPs
9. How Do Search Engines Work?
• Spider “crawls” the web to find new documents (web pages, other
documents) typically by following hyperlinks from websites already
in the database
• Search engine indexes the content (text, code) in these documents
by adding it to their huge databases and periodically updates this
content
• Search engine searches its own database when user enters in a
search to find related documents (not searching web pages in real-
time)
• Search engine ranks resulting documents using an algorithm
(mathematical formula) that assigns various weights to various
ranking factors
11. Ranking Factors
• On-Page Factors (Code & Content)
Title tags <title>
Header tags <h1>
ALT image tags
Content, Content, Content
(Body text) <body>
Hyperlink text
Keyword frequency & density
• Off-Page Factors
Link Popularity (“votes” for your site)
– adds credibility
Anchor text
12. So What is the Algorithm?
• Top Secret! Only select employees of the actual search engines
know for certain
• Reverse engineering, research and experiments gives SEOs (search
engine optimization professionals) a “pretty good” idea of major
factors and approximate weight assignments
• Constantly changing, tweaking, updating is done to the algorithm
• Websites and documents being searched are also constantly
changing
• Varies by Search Engine – some give more weight to on-page
factors, some to link popularity
13. Search Engine Marketing
A form of Internet Marketing that seeks to promote websites by
increasing their visibility in the Search Engine results pages and
has a proven ROI.
14. Why Search Engine Marketing?
• 85% of all traffic on the internet is referred from a search
engine.
• 90% of all users don’t look past the first 30 results (most
only view top 10)
• Many websites aren’t even indexed, most are poorly
optimized and get very little traffic from the search
engines.
• Cost-effective advertising.
• Clear and measurable ROI.
• Operates under this assumption:
More (relevant) traffic + Good Conv. Rate = More Sales/Leads
15. Why Search Engine Marketing?
“ If Your Business Can't
Be Found On The
Search Engines,
You Basically Don't
Exist! ”
17. Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art and science of
publishing and marketing information that ranks well for
valuable keywords in search engines.
18. Search Engine Optimization
• Keyword Analysis/Reporting
• Link Building
• Site Optimization
• Content Writing
• Sitemap Submission
1.First and the last stage of our
SEO cycle.
We will analyze target website, it’s
competitor's websites and the
leading websites in it’s industry.
2.Single most important factor to
get any website ranked higher on
the search engines.
Inbound links will help the Search
Engines determine how popular
your website is.
4.Fresh new website articles will help
your website expand and appear on
more search phrases.
New informative relevant articles will
also encourage other websites to link
to target website
3.Optimize target website so the
search engines can easily traverse
your whole website and establish
which keywords should rank highly for.
5.Submit the new pages to Google
& the other Search Engines
19. What Does a (good) SEO Do?
• Researches desirable keywords and search phrases
(Wordtracker, Overture, Google AdWords)
• Identifies search phrases to target (should be relevant to
business/market, obtainable and profitable)
• “Cleans” and optimizes a website’s HTML code for appropriate
keyword density, title tag optimization, internal linking structure,
headings and subheadings, etc.
• Helps in writing copy to appeal to both search engines and actual
website visitors
• Studies competitors (competing websites) and search engines
• Implements a quality link building campaign
• Pushes for more content!
• Monitors rankings for targeted search terms
20. Pay Per Click SEM
According to MarketingTerms.com.
“Pay-Per-Click is an online advertising payment model in
which payment is based solely on qualifying click-through.”
PPC Models
• Flat-rate PPC
• Bid-based PPC
21. STEPS in Pay Per Click SEM
• Bid on relevant keywords
• Advertising engine
displays your text ad on
their results page or
network of web sites
• You only pay when
people click
22. Pay Per Click SEM
• PPC ads appear as “sponsored listings”
• Companies bid on price they are willing to pay “per
click”
• Typically have very good tracking tools and statistics
• Ability to control ad text
• Can set budgets and spending limits
• Google AdWords and Overture are the two leaders
23. PPC vs. “Organic” SEO
Pay-Per-Click “Organic” SEO
• results in 1-2 days
• easier for a novice or one without much
knowledge of SEO
• ability to turn on and off at any moment
• generally more costly per visitor and per
conversion
• fewer impressions and exposure
• easy to compete in highly competitive
market space (but it will cost you)
•ability to target “local” markets
• better for short-term and high-margin
campaigns
• results take 2 weeks to 4 months
• requires ongoing learning and
experience to reap results
• very difficult to control flow of traffic
• generally more cost-effective, doesn’t
penalize for more traffic
• SERPs are more popular than sponsored
ads
• very difficult to compete in highly
competitive market space
• more difficult to target local markets
• better for long-term and lower margin
campaigns
24. Basic Tips & Optimization Techniques
• Research keywords related to your business
• Identify competitors, utilize benchmarking techniques and identify
level of competition
• Utilize descriptive title tags for each page
• Ensure that your text is HTML text and not image text
• Use text links when possible
• Use appropriate keywords in your content and internal hyperlinks
(don’t overdo!)
• Obtain inbound links from related websites
• Monitor your search engine rankings and more importantly your
website traffic statistics and sales/leads produced
• Educate yourself about search engine marketing or consult a search
engine optimization firm or SEO expert
25. Resources
Statistics Provided By
• Search Engine Watch – www.searchenginewatch.com
• Neilsen//NetRatings – www.neilsen-netratings.com
• Our own experience, opinion and bias
For More Information
• Various SEO Forums & Resources online
• Ephricon Web Marketing – www.ephricon.com
• Google (of course) – www.google.com