SEO Fundamentals - Search Engine Marketing PDF

SEM SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM) Google’s search results are divided into two main categories: the paid search results and the organic search results. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM) Google’s search results are divided into two main categories: the paid search results and the organic search results....

SEM SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM) Google’s search results are divided into two main categories: the paid search results and the organic search results. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM) Google’s search results are divided into two main categories: the paid search results and the organic search results. HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK Google Algorithms RankBrain uses artificial intelligence to understand words or phrases it isn’t familiar with. RankBrain rewards websites that provide user satisfaction and return the result that users expect. It converts keywords into known topics and concepts to provide better search engine results – even when queries are unusual. SERPS search engine results page (serp) SERP stands for search engine results page. Search engine results pages are web pages served to users when they search for something online using a search engine, such as Google. The user enters their search query (often using specific terms and phrases known as keywords), then the search engine presents them with a SERP. These are the most relevant, high-quality results, including organic pages and sponsored ads, related to the search query. Every SERP is unique, even for search queries performed on the same search engine using the same keywords or search queries. This is because virtually all search engines customize the experience for their users by presenting results based on a wide range of factors beyond their search terms, such as the user’s physical location, browsing history, and social settings. Search rankings are also constantly in flux, as new content appears on the web and as search engines change their algorithms. GOOGLE SERP FEATURES Featured Snippets Featured Snippets can be displayed above the regular organic results. Sometimes this is referred to as "position zero" in the rankings. In the Featured Snippet, Google highlights a portion of text or video from a website to provide a concise, direct answer to the user’s question. GOOGLE SERP FEATURES Image Pack Image Packs appear when Google thinks that visual content will serve a more comprehensive results page. GOOGLE SERP FEATURES Video A video SERP feature related to a search query appears on a SERP among organic results. GOOGLE SERP FEATURES Top Stories Top stories play a valuable role when people want more information about a significant event or breaking news. GOOGLE SERP FEATURES People Also Ask (PAA) People Also Ask (PAA) refers to questions Google automatically generates based on queries it believes are related to your question. The PAA box questions are connected to answers that users can click to read on Google SERPs. This can help people better understand their initial question without clicking on other results. GOOGLE SERP FEATURES Sitelinks Sitelinks are special links that Google features underneath the website result. Google displays these links to help people quickly navigate to a particular part of a website. Usually, it appears for websites when Google easily understands the navigation system. GOOGLE SERP FEATURES Related Searches At the bottom of the SERPs, Google also provides users with a “related searches” portion, prompting other search queries related to their initial search. GOOGLE SERP FEATURES Shopping Results If Google detects a buyer’s intent, it will display a carousel of products available for purchase in shopping ads from various ecommerce sites. GOOGLE SERP FEATURES Reviews Review snippets complement typical search results with a yellow star rating and sometimes an image. Seeing a rating out of five stars is a universal symbol to communicate value to all kinds of searchers. GOOGLE SERP FEATURES Local Pack A Local Pack shows up in SERPs when a query includes local service, local intent, or includes a geographical name like “coffee shop near me” or “best pizza near in [insert city here].” These results include businesses close to your current location. SEO Fundamentals Paid Versus Organic Search How Search Engines Work Keywords PAID VERSUS ORGANIC SEARCH What is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of getting traffic from free, organic, editorial, or natural search results on search engines. Quote from Search Engine Land PAID VERSUS ORGANIC SEARCH Paid Search Near instant results Pay-per-click Easier to measure ROI Differences Organic Search Results can take weeks or months Free, but requires time and resources Takes time to measure ROI How search engines work The three pillars of SEO Technical optimization On-page optimization Off-page optimization Completing activities on your site that are designed to improve SEO but are not related to content. It often happens behind the scenes. Website speed Mobile-friendliness Navigation Ensuring the content on your site is relevant and provides a great user experience. It includes targeting the right keywords within your content. EAT Tags SEO writing Images Enhancing your site’s search engine rankings through activities outside of the site. This is largely driven by backlinks to build the site’s reputation. Link Building Social Media PAID VERSUS ORGANIC SEARCH Similarities Keyword Research Landing Pages Traffic Measurement Aligning SEO and Business Objectives Types of SEO Objectives Setting Objectives TYPES OF OBJECTIVES Types of objectives Keywords: Research and rank keywords to come up with a target list of keywords. Traffic: Monitor traffic from organic searches. Market share: Examine search volumes to work out what the market share is for a list of keywords that you want to target. Brand or product awareness: Monitor who is searching for and talking about your brand. Types of objectives Measuring your brand Lead generation: Measure how well your website is operating in terms of leads for the services. Backlinks: Build up your website's reputation by encouraging other websites to link to your site. Ecommerce: Set up ecommerce objectives such as tracking activity in Google Analytics. Ads revenue: If selling ads revenue is part of your business strategy, it will be important to set objectives around it. SEO is difficult, so by talking goals through thoroughly, you apply critical thinking to goal setting to maximize your efforts in the right direction. You should end up with a simple statement that represents your overall SMART goal approach. Something like: “We want to achieve leads from organic search by 50% over 12 months. We will do this by moving our target keywords from positions 6-10 to positions 1-5.” Here’s a breakdown: Specific: We want to increase leads from organic search by 50%. Measurable: Easily measurable through rankings, organic traffic and results. Achievable: We can create better content than what is currently number one. Relevant: This will help us drive more sales from proven keywords. Timeline: 12 months gives us a deadline. The 4 p’s within an SEO strategy The marketing mix is often described as the 4 Ps. These are “product,” “price,” “place” (Distribution) and “promotion”. These 4 Ps form the backbone of marketing strategies in any industry. By using the 4 Ps as a guide, organizations are better able to recognize and improve the critical factors that affect their products and services. They play an important role in digital marketing and SEO. Not only do they influence how products and services are presented and perceived online, but also how potential customers find them through search engines. Thoroughly understanding the 4 Ps helps improve organizations’ SEO strategy. It also helps to increase visibility. This improves online success. Product ‘Product’ refers to the goods or services offered by an organization. The product is the basis of marketing efforts. If there were no clearly defined product or service, the other Ps of the marketing mix would be irrelevant. For SEO optimization, it is vital that product pages and related content are clear, detailed and optimized. This leads to the best results among both search engines and users. Use relevant keywords, create attractive and informative product descriptions, and provide high-quality images. price The “price” refers to the cost of the product or service. Pricing strategies directly affect how consumers perceive a product and strongly influence perceptions of value. In today’s digital world, price information can improve SEO, especially by being transparent and responding to searches related to prices. Offering competitive prices or promotions can also cause the Web site to rank higher in search results for price-conscious consumers. place ‘Place’ refers to how and where products are offered to consumers. Local SEO is very important in this. Local SEO focuses on optimizing the online presence of organizations so that they are better found by people searching for products or services in the area. For this, optimize Google My Business, add location pages on the website and make sure contact information is current and consistent. promotion ‘Promotion’ includes all activities with that aim to raise awareness of the product, service or brand. This can be done, for example, through advertising, PR, sales promotion and social media marketing. Promotion is essential to build brand awareness and generate backlinks. Keywords and Building an SEO Content Plan Types of Keywords How to Conduct Keyword Research Walkthrough: Keyword Research Turning Research into Content TYPES OF KEYWORDS TURNING RESEARCH INTO CONTENT Create a spreadsheet to keep track of your keyword research. Identify the top 10 pages from your site that you would like to rank on search engines. Create a new page to rank for specific keywords if your existing content doesn't satisfy the user intent of the keyword. Repeat the keyword research for each page and record it in the spreadsheet. Review your findings and explore relevant topics that aren't already covered by the existing content. Research further pages and content gaps and add them to your content creation plan. Optimizing Organic Search Ranking backlinks Backlinks are links on other websites that point to your website. In the world of SEO, they’re like votes of credibility from other sites. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the higher your website is likely to rank in search results. backlinks Backlinks are the cornerstones of website authority and credibility in the eyes of search engines. They are basically votes from other websites. Each of these votes tells search engines: “This content is valuable, credible and useful”. So the more of these “votes” you have, the higher your site will rank in Google and other search engines. backlink traits Trait #1: They Come From Trusted, Authoritative Websites Would you rather get a backlink from Harvard… or a random guy’s website? As it turns out, Google feels the same way. This concept is known as “Domain Authority”. Essentially, the more authority a site has, the more authority it can pass on to your site (via a link). backlink traits Trait #2: They Include Your Target Keyword In The Link’s Anchor Text Anchor text is the visible text part of a link. In general, you want your links to have anchor text that includes your target keyword. You don’t want to go overboard with keyword-rich anchor text. In fact, Google has a filter in their algorithm called “Google Penguin” which filters out websites that use black hat link building strategies. And it specifically focuses on sites that build backlinks with exact match anchor text. backlink traits Trait #3: The Site (and Page) Linking to You Is Topically Related To Your Site When a website links to another website, Google wants to see that the two sites are related. Imagine you just published an article about running a marathon. Google will put MUCH more weight on links from sites about marathons, running, fitness vs. sites about fishing, unicycles, and digital marketing. backlink traits Trait #4: The Link Is From a Domain That Hasn’t Linked to You Before Let’s say you get a link from Website A. Great! Well, let’s say Website A links to you again. And again. And again. Are the 2nd, 3rd and 4th links as powerful as the first one? No! As it turns out, links from the same website have diminishing returns. Measuring SEO PERFORMANCE Traffic Sources Types of SEO Metrics Measuring Success Walkthrough: Google Analytics & Search Console Measurement TRAFFIC SOURCES TRAFFIC SOURCES Monitor the sources of traffic to your website Direct Traffic Referral Traffic Organic Traffic When people type in a URL to a website — for example, a bookmarked URL or an untagged email. Traffic from another website. Visitors from search engines that are unpaid sources of traffic. PAID SEARCH WITH GOOGLE ADS FUNDAMENTALS OF PAID SEARCH Paid versus Organic Search Search Engines Benefits of Paid Search Campaign Elements PAID VERSUS ORGANIC SEARCH What is paid search? Paid search advertising means advertising within search results and paying only when the user clicks an ad. Search formats Differentiating between search formats Similarities between paid and ORGANIC search Differences between paid and organic search Bidding Paid ads in search is all about bidding. With PPC, you bid on a specific keyword. And when someone searches for that keyword, your ad shows up. The rankings of the ads are usually proportional to how much someone is bidding - if you’re the highest bidder, you’ll appear above all of the other ads. And when someone clicks on your ad, you pay whatever amount that you bid. The amount that you pay when someone clicks on your ad is known as cost per click (CPC). Differences between paid and organic search Speed SEO takes time. A lot of time. Especially if your site is new and doesn’t have a lot of backlinks yet. In fact, one analysis found that it takes an average of 2 years to rank on the first page of Google. And many of the top-ranking pages were first published 3+ years ago. On the other hand, if you focus your SEM efforts in PPC, you can start to see results pretty much instantly. You can run an ad in the morning, and start to get traffic and conversions in the afternoon. But that doesn’t mean that you’ll get an ROI on day 1. In many cases, it can take months of testing and tweaking to get a positive ROI from PPC. Differences between paid and organic search Quality Score Quality Score is a very important Google Ads metric. It’s essentially Google’s way of figuring out if your ad is a good match for whatever someone’s searching for. Google calculates Quality Score based on a combination of click through rate, the quality of your landing page and your Google Ad account’s overall Quality Score. Additionally, if your ad has a high Quality Score, you’ll get a discount on each click. Differences between paid and organic search Ad Copy Writing compelling ad copy is a HUGE part of doing well with PPC - Great ad copy=high CTR. And a CTR means a good Quality Score. Which means that you pay less for the same click. The opposite is also true. If your copy doesn’t push people to click, your Quality Score will suffer. And your PPCs will start to get super expensive. SEARCH ENGINES identify sem strategies that can be implemented at each stage of the consumer decision-making process BENEFITS OF PAID SEARCH key benefits Meet business objectives It can help you meet your business objectives, back to that consumer decision-making process. This is the commercial decision-making process in marketing. So paid search is as close to the consumer decision-making process as can be. Creating campaigns, using ads and keyword lists, that bridge the gap between your consumer needs and those business objectives. key benefits Quick access to market Paid search campaigns can be launched in the market at any time. It can take broadly 15 minutes to half an hour to get your campaigns up and running. key benefits Mobile position And another benefit of paid search in this device-driven economy is mobile position number one. So the first ad that anyone sees on a mobile search is the paid search ad and it’s, therefore, the most likely to be clicked because people don’t really thumb and scroll down. So if you can have your ad serving in a very high position for mobile search, you will drive most of those clicks. There are some additional advertising features within paid search. These are the ad enhancements like map extensions, app downloads, you can click to call, there’s dynamic ad copy. key benefits Manage spend and ROI Consider the control that you get from paid search in terms of managing your ROI. You manage pretty much everything in real time. If you just turn a campaign off in paid search, you will stop serving ads for that campaign in half an hour. If you change the ad copy, if you’ve got a new offer, if you’ve got something that’s time sensitive, that will appear in your ads within a very short period of time. Remember, it can take between two weeks to a couple of months for that to rank in organic search so any kind of time-sensitive activity is more suited to paid search activity. key benefits Compete in the marketplace The other thing is everyone else is doing it. So you have to be able to compete in the marketplace. If you don’t do paid search, all your competitors are going to be doing it. So they’re going to be getting a share of that traffic from those consumers who have that intent to buy. In order to defend your position within the marketplace, you do need to compete on paid search. CAMPAIGN ELEMENTS Creating a Paid Search Campaign with Google Ads GOOGLE ADS What is Google Ads? Google Ads is an online advertising service by Google for businesses that want to serve clickable ads on the Google search results page. BUDGET MANAGEMENT Set a budget to manage spend Daily spend Max CPC Time of day or week Manage daily spend Use budget trackers How can forecasting be used to estimate performance? BIDDING CAMPAIGN OPTIMIZATION Measuring a Paid Search Campaign Paid Search KPIs and Conversion Tracking Paid Search Metrics and Reports Advanced Measurement PAID SEARCH KPIS AND CONVERSION TRACKING Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) Conversions Awareness Brand Impressions Success can be measured by the number of conversions, sales, leads etc. attributed to a campaign. Awareness of your product can be achieved by increasing the total number of impressions from generic searches. When your brand search increases, it’s a good indicator of increased awareness or brand value among searchers. Conversion tracking What type of conversion are you going to measure? PAID SEARCH METRICS AND REPORTS scan the qr code and reveiw ten Paid Search Metrics to Keep Track Of ADVANCED MEASUREMENT Why link your Google Ads account with Google Analytics? Enhance your reporting with detailed website engagement. See how paid search channels perform against other channels. Measure Return On Ad Spend for ecommerce clients. Get a deeper understanding of what searchers do post-click. linking Google Analytics to Google ADS Sign in to both Google Ads and Analytics. Navigate to the admin tab in Google Analytics. Choose Google Ads linking from the property level options list and select the accounts or manager.