optimizing web sites for search traffic

Mohit SrivastavaCo-Founder & CTOFaves.com

Copyright (c) 2008 Mohit Srivastava

Why, as a Web site owner, should you care about Search Engine Marketing?

Search Engine Advertising techniques

Search Engine Optimization techniques

Build, Measure, Iterate!


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

Worldwide Search - August 2007Source: comScore qSearch 2.0

95% of worldwide Internet audience uses search


Search Engine Marketing, as compared to traditional outbound marketing… Is “Permission Marketing”, generating

qualified leads. Is highly measurable.

See formFill out form

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Google makes over 90% of its $19B yearly revenue from “search network” ads. “AdSense” ads on partner site

• Google shares ad revenue with partner sitePaid 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


IndexCrawli

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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


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 PageRankTM: 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.Copyright (c) 2008 Mohit Srivastava

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. Copyright (c) 2008 Mohit Srivastava

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).Copyright (c) 2008 Mohit Srivastava

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


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?Copyright (c) 2008 Mohit Srivastava

optimizing web sites for search traffic

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