Introduction to Search Engine Strategies

[Garrett]

Search Mecca. Next week the search engine industry's descending on Chicago for a three day convention called Search Engine Strategies (http://searchenginestrategies.com).

With experts like Danny Sullivan, Jill Whalen, Andy Beal, and Shari Thurow, along with representatives from Google, Overture, and AskJeeves, this conference promises to blow the lid off of search marketing.

From the event organizers: "At this intensive three-day event, you'll learn the ins-and-outs of search engine marketing from top experts in the field and from the search engines themselves."

WebProNews/WebProWorld On The Scene. I'm going and I'll be reporting back to you extensively on the latest trends and techniques in optimization, along with real quotes from search engine optimization professionals and representatives of the search engines themselves.

I'll be posting in the forums throughout the three-day event, so be sure to check in periodically to get live updates on the search engine industry.

In addition, our issues of WebProNews during the event will be in the form of special reports from the conference, so you’ll have all the latest information in your inbox.

Highlights. Danny Sullivan's Tuesday presentation, called Search Term Research (http://www.jupiterevents.com/sew/fall03/agenda.html#130-1), should really help with one of search marketing's fundamental skills: choosing search terms. How can you really know which terms are best to target? I'll let you know.

Balancing Organic & Paid Listings (http://www.jupiterevents.com/sew/fall03/agenda2.html#1130-2) looks like Wednesday's winner, with a focus on how to get just the right amount of pay and search optimization for your site. There has to be some steady ground between Google's constantly changing algorithm and the price of clicks.

Measuring Success Case Studies (http://www.jupiterevents.com/sew/fall03/agenda3.html#130-2), from Thursday, should offer some creative ideas on measuring the success of your search campaign. While the bottom line is always, well, the bottom line, there just might be some out-of-the-box results to shoot for with search engines that could really drive sales.

Who's Going With Me? If you're already going, send me an email at Garrett@WebProNews.com to let me know. I'd like to meet you and chat for a bit about your business. As if the pleasure of my company weren't enough, I'll also give you a linked mention in WebProWorld, and possibly in WebProNews.

If you're interested in going, visit the Search Engine Strategies (http://searchenginestrategies.com) site to learn more.

Important Links.
The Conference at a glance. (http://www.jupiterevents.com/sew/fall03/glance.html)
Registration Information. (http://www.jupiterevents.com/sew/fall03/registration.html)
Conference Day 1 session descriptions. (http://www.jupiterevents.com/sew/fall03/agenda.html)
Conference Day 2 session descriptions. (http://www.jupiterevents.com/sew/fall03/agenda2.html)
Conference Day 3 session descriptions. (http://www.jupiterevents.com/sew/fall03/agenda3.html)

[janeth]

Hi Garrett,
That sounds great I have something to look forward to all week now.

I'm posting here in hopes that I will get an email when ever you start posting.

Take care and good luck.

[limitup]

Garrett,

Due to time restraints I am only going to the exhibit hall, but would like to attend:

Shopping Search & Merchant Sites
Auditing Paid Listings
Buying Search Engine Advertising
Balancing Organic & Paid Listings
Dealing With Directories
Paid Inclusion & Trusted Feeds
Budget & Overlooked SEM
Ad Management Case Studies

Hope you find time to cover some of the above. If I get a chance maybe I’ll see you there.

Lawrence Brown

[achronister]

I will be attending the full conference as well. If anyone has any questions that we all have trouble answering, I'd be more than happy to try and get some concrete info. I'll of course contribute to the rest of the group on anything new. I will be attending the Advanced Organic Listings track the majority of the time, although I have two co-workers attending as well.

So, feel free to post your questions here or email me aaron.chronister@ticketsolutions.com and I'll be happy to follow up.

Aaron Chronister
VP of Internet Marketing
Ticket Solutions, Inc.
aaron.chronister@tickets4u.com

[freelancemom]

WebProNews/WebProWorld On The Scene. I'm going and I'll be reporting back to you extensively on the latest trends and techniques in optimization, along with real quotes from search engine optimization professionals and representatives of the search engines themselves.

I'll be posting in the forums throughout the three-day event, so be sure to check in periodically to get live updates on the search engine industry.

In addition, our issues of WebProNews during the event will be in the form of special reports from the conference, so you’ll have all the latest information in your inbox.

Wow!

Thanks Garrett! I can't wait to hear all about it. Lucky you... and lucky us! It would have totally escaped me if it wasn't for Webproworld.

Have a terrific time!

Lori

[successu]

Hi Garrett!

Can't wait to hear the news.

I'm following Janet's Lead in hopes of an email - LOL

Cheers!

[zululander]

[quote="Garrett"]
From the event organizers: "At this intensive three-day event, you'll learn the ins-and-outs of search engine marketing from top experts in the field and from the search engines themselves."

Hi Garrett

What would you suggest one focuses on, as a newcommer to the game? There constantly seems to be the risk of trying to absorb too much, which translates into lots of reading and little doing.

My interest lies in writing good copy for websites, and I have tried some ppc on Google Adwords, and Looksmart with traffic success (up 95% in two months) but a conversion rate of only 3.5%. We are also getting into dmoz.org and Web Position Gold 2. Site Build It is another route that we are trying.

Thanks

Sean
http://zulucom.co.za/contact/sean.gif

[dmcgill]

Garrit,
I understand through a phone conversation I had with Ron Penny that Genieknows.com will be at that conference. I would love to know more about them. We have partnered www.proudlycanadian.net with them and are thinking of doing something on www.webworldindex.com as well. If any of you at the conference get any feed back, good ideas or hints on projection of this company, let me know. I need to create a new plugin if I am going to sponsor some listings with them and an inside track to the "real deal", would be great.
Dmcgill

[thusmann]

Hello Folks,

Just thought I would give my advice about positioning websites in the free Googl results, before the conference. I offer this as perhaps a foundation to expand upon or criticize if necessary.

The first step of search engine positioning is identifying target keywords and phrases. This requires that you first visit wordtracker.com and search for the relevant terms that come to mind. The Google Adwords and Overture.com softwares have similar functions built in (however, their methods of calculation are different, so results will vary) After you have long lists of keywords/phrases and their variations, you need to determine the most feasible targets. Look for phrases that have keywords in common, like website design and web site design, both include the word design. So using design in the anchor text of inbound links, and within the site, can enhance positioning for both terms.

You may want to start by targetting the most often searched for terms, however this could be a mistake. Many times, the competition for highly trafficked terms like real estate, or travel, is overwhelming. They may also have so much of a headstart, that it would be nearly impossible to get top 10 position.

So what you are looking for, initially, are the "sweet spots", meaning, terms that have significant popularity and relevance, and are not too competative. Search for each keyphrase at, say Googl .com, and for each domain presented on the first page of results, check their link popularity by modifying the following links, changing domain name to whatever is shown in the search results:

(to display all sites that Googl says links back to overture.com)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=link%3Awww.overture.com%2F

(to display all sites that Googl says displays the url, http://www.overture.com)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22%2Bwww.overture.%2Bcom%2F

What you are looking for is a website within the top 10 results for your keywords that has fewer than 5 or so pages of inbound links and/or page mentions(more or less depending on the amount of effort and resources available, keeping the value of the term in mind)

Once you have found your preliminary targets (and assuming you have the website already published), test out the marketability of the terms by using the PayPerClick advertising options available. Setup a campaign and integrate your reporting software (such as clicktracks or the built in Adwords tracking script) and put your website to the test.

With a software like Clicktracks.com, you will have the opportunity to see how your visitors interact with your website, and can position elements by importance based on this information. You will also be able to tell which keywords produce the most sales, and traffic. While doing this testing, you are also bringing in customers from the exact same pool as your target.

Now that you can accurately determine the best performing keywords and phrases, it's time to write, or borrow, some content. Be sure that you choose content that is relative to the terms that proved most effective. Rewrite your site content using your keywords and phrases apprpriately, and as often as possible. Include your most important keywords and phrases on your front page, and have other pages that focus on individual terms/phrases. From all internal pages, create links back to the frontpage using the specific keyword for that page. For example a link from your services page may be

Website Design (http://www.yoursite.com)

If you used this link on your services page, you should also change the title for the services page to "Website Design Services" or simply website design. Then remember to include the term website design as many times as possible on the services page. Also, on the front page, include a link to the services page that includes the term website design in the anchor text. Website Design (http://www.yourdomain.com/website_design_services.htm)

When naming files or directories, also include the specific keyphrases in the file name, for example, website_design_services.htm

Once you have competled those steps, the website is pretty much optimized, but you may also want to edit the meta tags, most importantly, the keywords and description tags. You can also set the refresh rate of your site, but Googl pretty much refreshes the top rated results every month.

<META NAME="REVISIT-AFTER" CONTENT="4 days">

The more content you have, the more times keywords and their variations will show up on your site. It is important to create a helpful and informative website that includes articles and resources that are related to your products or services. This also enhances your sites stickiness, meaning visitors are likely to stay longer and refer friends (everybody loves freebies)

Now comes the hard part, inbound linking. Avoid free for all pages. You may not get caught, but everyone agrees that they are frowned upon.

That being said, goto Googl and search for your keyword/phrase plus one of the following terms in parentheses

"add url"
"submit url"
"add link"
"submit link"
"links page"
"resources"

"addlink.html"
"add-url.html"
"add_a_site.html"
"links.html"

"Powered by WSN Links"
"links4trade"
"links manager"
"links engine"

example Googl search: Website Design "links page"

By targetting websites that show up in the results for your target keyphrase, you are more likely to gain a higher position for that keyword/phrase. It is now your job to convince the owners of these sites that they should link to your site using the link text that you provide them with (WARNING: DILIGENCE IS REQUIRED).

Be sure to include a description with the target terms included, when possible. For example

Website Design (http://www.ibuilt.net)


iBuilt.net provides ecommerce website design services. The iBuilt.net website builder allows even the novice to create a website without the need for expensive or complicated website design software.</p>

You will want to achieve a higher link count than the site you determined was the sweet spot. However, when you target the link partners as I described, you may see results with a much lower inbound link count. Remember, Google updates results sometime around the end/beginning of each month. Sometimes, the page that serves the inbound link does not get recrawled by Googl, and remains uncounted. To help remedy this problem, you can place a link to that page from your frontpage, so when the next time Googl crawls your site, they may also crawl the site with the inbound link.

Be careful though, Googl may not give you credit for the link until you are no longer linking back from your homepage. Not only that, but your voting power (Percentage of PageRank Credit added to your "linked to" pages) decreases for every additional link you add that page.

For help with link campaigning, check out ARELIS.com.

For more info about the PageRank Algorithm and the innerworking of Googl, checkout

http://www-diglib.stanford.edu/diglib/pub/slides/berkeleydlijan98/berkeleygoogle2/

or

http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/showDoc.Fulltext?lang=en&doc=1998-8&format=pdf&compression=

and hear it from the horse's mouth.

For help with link campaigning checkout arelis.com

They offer two products for people interested in search engine positioning.

The most important NO-NO is hidden text. Googl will punish a website for hidden text, whether it be in a hideen layer, or text on same color background, any hidden text can be used against you.

Other Members, please post any additional info you may have, or contrary opinions. In an effort to better focus Garrett's, and the other Conference attendees, reporting on the subject, we should try to cover as much as possible, before the conference.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback

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