This document provides an overview of search engine marketing (SEM). It defines key SEM concepts like paid search, organic search, and search engine optimization (SEO). It also outlines tactics for SEM like keyword research, building targeted ad campaigns, optimizing ad copy, and leveraging different match types and platforms like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. The goal of SEM is to drive qualified traffic to websites through search engine results.

1. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING 101 July 21st, 2009 1

2. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM) 2

3. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING: Market Share

4. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING: Paid vs. Organic PAID ORGANIC 4

5. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING SEM Search Engine Marketing Using the search engines in your marketing strategy SEA Search Engine Advertising A.k.a. Paid Search, PPC Using search engine products such as Google Adwords SEO Search Engine Optimization Optimizing your digital content to appear high on search engines during keyword searches

6. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING Search to represent 40-50% of online spending

7. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING: Heatmap 7

8. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING: Terminology Algorithm: A mathematical programming system used to determine which web pages are displayed in search results, when referring to search engine algorithms. Click Thru Rate: The amount of clicks a visitor makes from search engine results to find the results they sought. Used to track keywords. Conversion Rate: A rate that defines how many visitors are converted into money or how many viewed a page. CPC: Cost Per Click CPM: Cost Per Thousand impressions. Quantifies the average value/cost of Pay-per-Click advertisements. (M stands for the Roman numeral one thousand).

9. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING: Terminology Keyword density: The number of times a keyword or keyword phrase is used in a document compared to the total words in the document. You can take the total number of words in the document and multiply it by the percent required to find out how many keywords you need. Or you can take the number of keywords or keyword phrases you have and divide by the total number of words. Keyword Phrase: A phrase a searcher uses when searching using a search engine. Keyword: A word used when querying a search engine. Landing Page: The page a website visitor lands on after clicking a link, usually in a advertisement and usually contains a sales pitch. Organic Results: Search engine results based on relevance and popularity and are not paid for. PPC: Pay Per Click. An advertising program where you agree to pay a certain amount every time your link is clicked on.

10. SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING (SEA) 10

11. SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING Why is SEA Important? The best single traffic driver online Reach users when they are actively looking for you Measurable advertising Historically great ROI Catch users at the “bottom of the funnel” 11

12. SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING: Features Bid for position (affected by Quality Score) Budget management Pay only when a user clicks your ad (and only 1 cent over next bid position) Geotargeting Dayparting Rotating creative for best CTR Advanced Reporting and Tracking

13. SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING: The Account The Building Blocks Relevant Keywords Engaging Ad Text (aka Copy or Creative) Specific Landing Pages Account Structure Account Campaign Ad Group Keywords

14. SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING: Keyword Tools

15. SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING: Competitive MetaTags: Used to identify the creator of a Web page, what HTML specs the page follows, and the keywords and description of the page.

16. SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING: Competitive

17. SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING: Ad Copy 3 Lines of Text to make your point Poorly performing ads are vague, poorly written, or undistinguished. Successful ads are clear, well-written, specific, and compelling. Here are two sample ads promoting Google Adwords: The first ad has been optimized. It contains clear ad text, a specific benefit to the user, and a call to action. The second ad hasn't been optimized. As you can see, it's vague, redundant, and doesn't offer any benefits or contain a call to action.

18. ADVANCED SEA CAMPAIGN CREATION 18

19. ADVANCED SEA: The Purchase Funnel Awareness Interest Research Purchase

20. ADVANCED SEA: The Long and Short Tail

21. ADVANCED SEA: Feeding the Funnel Home Expenses Impressions: 32,410 Clicks: 612 CTR: 1.89% Avg CPC: $3.75 Awareness Monthly Bills Impressions: 25,000 Clicks: 500 CTR: 2% Avg CPC: $2.50 Interest High Air Conditioning Bills Impressions: 20,000 Clicks: 600 CTR: 3% Avg CPC: $1.85 Research FPL Online Survey Impressions: 10,000 Clicks: 750 CTR: 7.5% Avg CPC: $0.75 Purchase

22. ADVANCED SEA: Match Types

23. ADVANCED SEA: Quality Score Google Definition: “Quality Score is the basis for measuring the quality and relevance of your ads and determining your minimum CPC bid for Google and the search network. This score is determined by your keyword's click-thru rate (CTR) on Google, and the relevance of your ad text, keyword, and landing page. We believe high quality ads attract more clicks, encourage user trust, and result in better long-term performance. To encourage relevant and successful ads within AdWords, our system defines a Quality Score to set your keyword status, minimum CPC bid, and ad rank for the ad auction.” In English… The engines incentivize advertisers to create highly relevant ads by means of A lower minimum bid to even be visible on the engine A higher bid position than even competitors who are paying more per click A lower Cost Per Click Quality Score is based on the relevancy between: Keywords Creative Landing Page CTR Performance

24. ADVANCED SEA: Optimizations Optimization Opportunities Results Keyword Listings Copy Match Type Negatives Bid Price Rank Landing Page Budget/Volume Engines Day parting Demographic GeographicTargets Click Thru Rate (CTR) Conversion % (CTC) Rank Actual Bid Cost Total Media Spend ROI ROAS CPA Profit Margins Lifetime Value Pageviews/Time on Site Avg. Sale Amount

25. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) 25

26. HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES RANK WEBSITES? “Google recognizes 1 trillion unique URLs and adds more than 2 billion new pages of content every day.” Google Press Release

27. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: Page Ranking People ask us all the time, how to get ranked high? There are some important guidelines you have to follow CONTENT IS KING 27

28. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: How does it work? Spiders crawl the web To find new documents/web pages Following hyperlinks (6 Degrees of Separation) Indexes the content Adding it to their databases Periodically updates this content User Searches Engines search their own databases Not searching web pages in real-time Engines rank documents using an algorithm Mathematical formula Various weights and ranking factors 28

29. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Google’s Technology Statement: “We use more than 200 signals, including our patented PageRank™ algorithm, to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important.” PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results. PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Our search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), our technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. We also analyze the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user's query. 29 29

30. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: Algorithms Top Secret! Search Engines want you to be found for your topic but can’t give away the secret in fear of spammers Constantly changed, tweaked & updated Varies by Search Engine Weighs both On-Site and Off-Site factors 30

31. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: Tactics With ever-changing algorithms; reverse engineering, continual research and experimenting is the only approach to growing organic page rank… 31

32. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: Tactics Keyword Factors Ex: Keywords in a Title Tag, in bold / strong tags, in the H2, H3, H (x) Tags, in url or domain name Internal Factors Ex: Quality / related links to external sites, age of document, validation of HTML code, quality of content pages, page update frequency Link Popularity Ex: Verification and validation per Google Webmasters, attributes of external links, links to and from website, page rank of referring websites and internal page popularity among other pages Negative Factors Ex: Excessive use of keywords (stuffing / spamming), external links from spam site, participation in exchange or actively selling links, low level of visit, duplication of title and meta tags, the server is often unavailable for engine crawlers 32

33. WHERE TO RUN SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING 33

34. GOOGLE The Google Network is the largest advertising network available online, reaching over 86% of Internet users worldwide. Includes: Google Search Google Content Google Site Targeting Google Local

35. GOOGLE SEARCH

36. GOOGLE CONTENT TARGETING

37. GOOGLE PLACEMENT TARGETING

38. GOOGLE LOCAL

39. YAHOO SEARCH

40. YAHO LOCAL

41. YAHOO SEARCH SUBMIT

42. MSN ADCENTER

43. OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

44. SUPERPAGES

45. SHOPPING ENGINES

46. ALWAYS NEW TECHNOLOGIES