SEO and SEM Guide PDF

- Choosing between SEO & SEM - Specific Goal - Choose SEO if you want to drive long-term growth - Choose SEM for quick traffic to a sale - Existing performance - If you already have strong organic visibility, SEM could supplement...

- Choosing between SEO & SEM - Specific Goal - Choose SEO if you want to drive long-term growth - Choose SEM for quick traffic to a sale - Existing performance - If you already have strong organic visibility, SEM could supplement this - Your margins - High click costs and low profit margins often mean SEM isn’t the answer - SEO will drive stronger returns - Estimate the cost per click that you need to pay with the PPC keyword tool and your conversion rate would need to be to make a profit - Consider the lifetime value of your customer - Higher lifetime value accounts for higher click costs - Lower lifetime value may mean that SEO comes up as a stronger strategy - Situations when SEM can be prioritised - If your company is earlier-stage and doesn’t have a reliable source of sales leads and is comfortable gaining new customers at a higher customer acquisition cost - As a precursor to an SEO campaign to determine which keywords have the highest conversion rate - To complement a targeted SEO strategy - Elements of keyword research - Relevance - Authority - Volume - Why keyword research is important - Marketing trend insight - Traffic growth - Customer acquisition - Keyword matching options - Exact match - show an ad only when the query is the exact same as the keyword; ads also may show on searches that have the same meaning or intent as the keyword - Phrase match - also show the ad if there are extra words before or after the keyword; ads may also show on searches that include the meaning of your keyword - Broad match - show the ad so long as all the keywords are part of the search, regardless of the order; ads may also show on searches that are related to your keyword - Keywords vs topics  - Keywords reveal different terms used to search for the same result - Topics organise information, capture the semantic relationship and are the subjects your content is organised around - To be successful in SEO, you need to develop topic authority (topic breadth - horizontal topical authority and/or topic depth - vertical topical authority). This helps Google associate a website with topics that are tightly related to what the website is about - Short-tail keywords - 1-2 words long; broad topic; no context; harder to rank for - Mid-tail keywords - 3-4 words long; more specific than short tail; mid to rank for - Long-tail keywords - 5-8 words long; more specific about intent of searcher; less competition - Focus keywords - primary keywords - main phrase you want the page to rank for - Secondary keywords - phrases closely related to the primary keyword (subtopics); gives more context - Semantic keywords - terms that are closely linked to one another; can also be synonyms - Market-specific keywords - terms and phrases that focus on a specific industry or kind of business - Generic keywords - usually short-tail and nondescript; points to a broad or general topic - Branded keywords - mention a specific brand - Product-related keywords - can be specific to a brand or generic and specific only to product type - Location-specific keywords - mention a location - Informational keywords - a searcher is looking for information on a topic - Commercial intent keywords - a searcher is heading in the direction of making a purchase - Transactional keywords - a searcher is looking to buy now - Navigational keywords - a searcher wants to find something online or in person - Negative keywords - lets you exclude search terms from your campaigns and help you focus on only the keywords that matter to you. They help you improve click through rate, create more relevant ad groups, save money, raise your conversion rate - Keyword research methods - Make a list of broad topics relevant to your topic - Expand each topic with a list of phrases you think your customers use - Find related search terms - Analyse the strength of your keywords - Determine how you rank in your industry - Verify search intent - Google Search Console - Traffic - what people are searching to find you - Identifying errors on your pages - See if or if not pages are indexed - Submitting sitemaps - Checking status and function of individual urls on your site - See if you have been issued with manual actions and what you can do about them - See broad information about mobile friendliness and potential mobile issues on your site -