© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 1 Marketing Your Site: Search Engines, Links & PPC Ads NMSU Extension Service Enhancing Economic Prosperity In New Mexico’s Frontier Communities Through E-Commerce Mesalands Community College Tucumcari, NM 9/8/05 Jan Zimmerman, Author Marketing on the Internet 6th Ed., Maximum Press Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 4614 Sixth St. NW Albuquerque, NM

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 2 Search Engines vs. Directories SE Necessary But Not Sufficient Directories use categories –Anywho.com AT&T White/Yellow Pages –Superpages.com (GTE Yellow Pages) –DMOZ.com (Open Directory Project) InfoSpace Yellow Pages & Map –MapQuest Search engines use content –keywords or links

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 3 Search Engine Market Share June/July 2005 Google47.0%46.2% Yahoo 22.3%22.5% MSN 12.5%12.6% AOL 5.5% 5.4% –Google gets 80% of B2B searches –Choose search engines by audience

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 4 Search Engine Relationships overture DMOZ

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 5 Get through the Search Engine Maze: 3 DIY Must-Have Sites google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html dmoz.org/add.html others are “gravy” don’t need 100,000 search engines

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 6 “Natural” Search Engine Ranking l Need first page of results to be noticed l Different search engines have different rules -Keywords & tags for Yahoo -Even different keyword-based engines weigh things differently -Inbound links for Google

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 7 Improve Ranking on Most Engines l Select good search terms –Wordtracker.com –Overture.com –Check competitor keywords (>view>source) l Extra “points” for keywords in links, navigation, headings, subheads l No tricks –No hidden keywords or “magic” pixels –Don’t overpopulate with high keyword density

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 8 Keywords Tool: Free Trial or Paid

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 9 Interpreting Word Tracker Results Will YOUR audience use this term? Re-check by typing word into search engine to make sure businesses like yours appear.

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 10 Overture.com searchinventory/suggestion/

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 11 Basic Approach (except Google) View>Source on high-ranking competitors Use metatags to improve ranking Optimize pages Submit individual pages when possible Check position, tweak & re-submit if needed No need for monthly re-submissions

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 12 Meta-Tag Guidelines Items that appear in source code for search engines to review. Use View > Source Keyword tag: maximum 30 Optimize pages for 4-5 search terms each Title: 5-7 words including 2 search terms –Put business name at end after a colon Page Description: max. 256 characters, with 4 terms Tags appear when hover over photos; use same 4 search terms

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 13 Lunar Cow :: Results Driven Design in Web, Print and Multimedia. Good Metatags

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 14 What Search Engines Don’t See Frames Pictures Flash Splash pages Dynamically- generated or some active server pages (.asp,.jsp) Database contents whose URLs have a ? & or = (use special database search and shopping search engines)

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 15 Make Your Site Search Engine-Friendly Avoid “not-seen” errors on prior page Put text above photos Use linkable footers on every page Site index Outbound links page If you have a database-driven site, ask developers to feed Google an XML index

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 16 Identify Specialty Search Engines & Directories Meta-indexes (e.g. allsearchengines.com) Shopping search engines –shopping.yahoo.com –froogle.google.com Price comparison sites –shopping.com –buyersindex.com

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 17 Arabian Horse Directory

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 18 Cowboy Search Engine

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 19 Google Ranking: Special Case Need inbound links from high Google-ranked sites that share a keyword Google Page Rank >5 (toolbar.google.com) Alexa Traffic Rank (alexa.com) To view links (yours or competitors) –On Google: link: –Linkpopularity.com or Linkstoyou.com Internal and outbound links also count

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 20 Spider To Check Inbound Links

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 21 Inbound Linking l Find Your Audience Online l Check Competitors’ Links l Check Google & Alexa rank l Remember directories, maps, yellow pages l Send request l Be selective about reciprocal links l Avoid –Free-For-All Link Sites –Link Exchange Services –Web Rings or Alliances

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 22 Other Ways to Increase Google Rankings Inbound links from blogs Press releases online with links Links from.org and.edu sites –Check all the organizations you belong to –Check all trade shows or fairs where you exhibit –Check local, regional, state sites

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 23 Other Online Advertising Pay-Per-Click (PPC) –Some shopping sites, some directories and secondary search engines, Yahoo Express Pay-Per-Action (PPA) –Some commissions or affiliates in this category Sponsorships of others’ newsletters Banner Ads –Click-through rates average <0.8% for banners –Use for branding and exposure –Banner Ad Exchanges - most 2:1; not well targeted

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 24 Google AdWords PPC adwords.google.com

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 25 Overture PPC Program

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 26 Google Adwords Vs. Overture Feeds AOL, Netscape, Lycos, others Content sites (AdSense) 5¢ minimum PPC Set daily ad limit Can track conversion rate Geographical and language targeting CPM option by impression Graphic ad option Feeds Yahoo, Alta Vista, MSN (temporarily), others Content sites (Content Match) 15¢ minimum PPC Set monthly ad limit Can track conversion rate Local, Yahoo shopping, travel targeting Not as much budget control

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 27 Writing A Good Google Ad Like writing a classified First line 25 characters Second line 35 characters Third line 35 characters Include search term in ad The more specific the ad, the better Select right landing page Include benefit or call to action

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 28 Bidding Strategies for PPC Google appearance based on clickthroughs as well as bid price; Overture based on bid price only 2nd-4th position may have better conversion rates that 1st position Do not pay more per click (or cost/conversion) than a sale is worth!

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 29 Don’t Go Broke with PPC Conversion code allows you to see what % of visits from an ad/search term result in a sale or other call to action. Can put on thank you page. Revise to reach a click-through rate of at least 1% (5% or better preferred) Look for conversion rate of 2-4% Be “ruthless” about deleting terms and ads that don’t work.

© 2005 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing 30 Exercises Go to Word Tracker or Overture to select some good search terms for your site Write several Google Ads using that search term