Standing Out with SEO: Expert Advice from Melanie Mitchell

106 Pages·2013·2.24 MB·English

by  Melanie Mitchell

Standing Out with SEO
Expert Advice from Melanie Mitchell (Collection), 2/e
Melanie Mitchell
Vice President, Publisher: Tim Moore Associate Publisher and Director
of Marketing: Amy Neidlinger
© 2013 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Publishing as FTPress Delivers
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458
Company and product names mentioned herein are the trademarks or
registered trademarks of their respective owners.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form or
by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN-10: 0-13-344320-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-344320-2
For more information, please contact us at [email protected]
Contents
SEO & PPC: Better Together
Understanding SEO: Building a Foundation for Long
Term Success
Unleash the Power of Paid Search
In-House SEO: Taming the Challenges to Win in
Search
SEO & PPC
Better Together
Melanie Mitchell
© 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published by Pearson Education, Inc.
Publishing as FTPress
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458
Company and product names mentioned herein are the trademarks or registered
trademarks of their respective owners.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form or by
any means, without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN-10: 0-13-303880-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-303880-4
For more information, please contact us at [email protected]
SEO & PPC: Better Together
Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of digital marketing that seeks to
promote web sites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages
(SERPs) through the organic search listings (also referred to as natural search or
SEO or Search Engine Optimization), paid search listings (also referred to as
PPC or Pay Per Click) and also through contextual advertising (also referred to
as content targeting or in-text advertising).
Search engine marketing is constantly changing and it can be confusing,
especially when getting started. While there are several forms of search engine
marketing, there are typically two paths where most marketers spend their time
and budgets. Those are paid search and organic search.
Paid Search
Paid search marketing is the process of gaining traffic by purchasing ads on
search engines. It is sometimes referred to as CPC (cost-per-click) marketing or
PPC (pay-per-click) marketing. Unlike some digital advertising where you pay
for impressions, an impression is considered a page view; with PPC search, you
only pay if your ad is clicked on.
In a search engine, the paid search ads are usually found at the top, bottom, and
right-hand side of the search engine results page, often denoted by “sponsored
listings” or “ads” (as shown in Figure 1).
Figure 1. Highlighted example of where paid search ads are typically
located within the SERP
Paid search marketing continues to be the largest investment area for digital
advertising (as shown in Figure 2) mainly due to its targeted nature and because
it can be tracked from click to conversion.
Figure 2. Paid search 2012 spending expected to reach $19.8B, up 12.4%
YOY with no slowdown in sight
Organic Search
Organic search are the listings that are not paid for by advertisers. These listings
are determined by the search engines’ algorithms for finding, sorting, and
ranking pages based on relevancy. To increase visibility in organic search,
people optimize their web pages (called search engine optimization or SEO).
It is important to understand where you should focus your time and efforts for
long term gain, since time is clearly better spent on a more balanced SEO
approach than trying to game the system with spam tactics.
When you break it down, the attributes considered “quality” by a search engine
are fairly obvious:
• The page is relevant to the keyword(s) being searched for.
• The page has good, useful content.
• The page is considered an authority about its topic.
• The page doesn’t have a bunch of broken links.
• The page loads quickly.
Search marketing has long been a primary source from which companies
generate leads. According to September 2011 data from Webmarketing123,
82.2% of B2B marketers and 75% of B2C U.S. marketers said search-related
tactics including paid search and SEO were top online marketing tactics for
generating leads. SEO continues to be the most impactful source when it comes
to generating these leads (see Figure 3).