When most people want to find something on
the web, they use a search engine. Millions of searches are conducted
every day on search engines such as: google.com, yahoo.com, msn.com and
many others. Some people are looking for your website. So how do you
capture people searching for what your site has to offer? Through
techniques called search engine marketing (SEM).
This tutorial is foundational information for anyone looking to
implement search engine marketing. This tutorial will also help you
understand how the search engines work, what SEM is, and how it can help
you get traffic.
What is a Search Engine?
All search engines start with a "search box", which issometimes the main
focus of the site, e.g. google.com, dmoz.org, altavista.com; sometimes
the "search box" is just one feature of a portal site, e.g. yahoo.com,
msn.com, netscape.com. Just type in your search phrase and click the
"search" button, and the search engine will return a listing of search
engine result pages (SERPs). To generate SERPs the search engine
compared your search phrase with information it has about various web
sites and pages in its database and ranks them based on a "relevance"
algorithm.
Search Engine Classes
Targeted audience, number of visitors, quality of search and
professionalism is what determines a search engine's class. Each search
engine typically target specific audiences based on interest and
location. World-class search engines look very professional, include
virtually the entire web in their database, and return highly relevant
search results quickly.
Most of us are familiar with the major general search engines;
google.com, yahoo.com, msn.com. A general search engine includes all
types of websites and as such are targeting a general audience. There
are also the lesser known 2nd tier general search engines;
zeal.com,ask.com,whatyouseek.com. The primary difference is that 2nd
tier engines are lesser known and generate significantly less traffic.
There are also several non-general or targeted search engines that limit
the types of websites they include in their database. Targeted search
engines typically limit by location or by industry / content type or
both. Most large metro areas will have local search engines that list
local businesses and other sites of interest to people in that area.
Some are general and some are industry specific, such as
specificallylisting restaurants or art galleries.
Many other targeted search engines list sites from any location but only
if they contain specific types of content. Most webmasters are familiar
with webmaster tools search engines such as; webmasterworld.com,
hotscripts.com, flashkit.com and more. There are niche SEs for
practically any industry and interest.
Search Engine Models
There are two fundamentally different types of search engine back ends:
site directories and spidering search engines. Site directory databases
are built by a person manually inputting data about websites. Most
directories include a site's url, title, and description in their
database. Some directories include more information, such as keywords,
owner's name, visitor rankings and so on. Some directories will allow
you to control your website's information yourself others rely on
editors that write the information to conform to the directory
standards.
It is important to note that most directories include directory listings
as an alterative to the search box for finding websites. A directory
listing uses hierarchal groupings from general to specific to categorize
a site.
Spidering search engines take a very different approach. They automate
the updating of information in their database by using robots to
continually read web pages. A search engine robot/spider/crawler acts
much like a web browser, except that instead of a human looking at the
web pages, the robot parses the page and adds the page's content it's
database.
Many of the larger search engines will have both a directory and
spidering search engine, e.g. yahoo.com, google.com, and allow visitors
to select which they want to search. Note that many search engines do
not have their own search technology and are contracting services from
elsewhere. For example, Google's spider SE is their own, but their
directory is and Open Directory; additionally aol.com and netscape.com
both use Google's spider SE for their results.
There are a few other search engine models of interest. There are some
search engines that combine results from other engines such as
dogpile.com and mamma.com. There are also search engines that add extra
information to searches such as Amazon's alexa.com, which uses Google's
backend but adds data from its search bar regarding tracking traffic to
the site.
Getting In
One of the most important things to understand about the SE database
models is how to get into their database and keep your listing updated.
With a search directory, a submission needs to be done to provide the
directory all the information needed for the listing. It is generally
recommended that this be done by hand, either by you or a person
familiar with directory submissions. There are many submission tools
available that advertise they automate the submission process. This may
be fine for smaller directories but for the major directories, manual
submissions are worth the time.
Not all search directories are free; many charge a one-time or annual
fee for review. Many of the free search directories have little quality
control. For free directories you may have to submit your site several
times before being accepted.
There are three different methods for getting into spidering search
engines; free site submission, paid inclusion and links from other
sites. Virtually all spidering SEs offer a free site submission. For
most, you simply enter your url into a form and submit. Paid inclusion
is normally not difficult, except for the credit card payment. For free
site submission there is no quality control. The SE may send a spider to
your site in the next few weeks, months or never. Typically with paid
inclusion you will get a guarantee that the page you submitted will be
included within a short amount of time. The other standard way to get
included is to have links to your website from other web pages that are
already in the SEs database. The SE spiders are always crawling the web
and will eventually follow those links to find your site.
Once you are in a search engine database, you might change your site and
need the search engine to update their database. Each directory handles
this differently; generally each database will have a form for you to
submit a change request. Spidering search engines will eventually find
the change and add your updates automatically.
Getting High Rankings
Getting into a search engine database is only the first step. Without
other factors you will not rank in the top positions, a prerequisite for
quality traffic. So how do you get top positions? You can pay for
placement with sponsored links that is covered in the next section. To
place well in the free, organic SERPs, you will need to perform search
engine optimization.
Search engine optimization is one of the most complicated aspects of web
development. Each search engine uses a different algorithm, using
hundreds of factors, that they are constantly changing, and they
carefully guard their algorithm as trade secrets. Thus no one outside of
the search engines employ knows with 100% certainty the perfect way to
optimize a site. However, many individuals called search engine
optimizers have studied the art and derived set of techniques that have
a track record for success.
In general, there are two areas to focus on for top rankings; on-page
factors and linking. On-page factors mean placing your target keywords
in the content of your site in the right places. The structure of and
technologies used on your website also play a role in on-page factors.
Linking, refers to how other website's link to yours and how your site
links internally.
Search Engine's Marketing Offerings
Search engines in the early days of the web were focused solely on
serving the visiting searcher. They worked to capture as much of the web
as possible in their database and provide fast, relevant searches. Many
early website owners learned to reverse engineer the relevancy
algorithms and to make their sites "search engine friendly" to get top
rankings. They were the first search engine optimizers, manipulating the
search engine's natural or organic SERPs as a means of generating free
web traffic.
Often times these optimized sites compromised the integrity of the SERPs
and lowered the quality for the searcher. Search engines fought, and
continue to fight, to maintain the quality of their results. Eventually,
the search engines embraced the fact that they are an important means
for marketing websites. Today most search engines offer an array of
tools to balance website's owners need to market while maintaining
quality for the searcher.
You can generally break search engine marketing tools into free and
for-pay. Realize these classifications are from the search engine's
point of view. Effort and expense is required to setup and maintain any
search engine marketing campaign.
Organic rankings are still one of the most important ways to drive
quality traffic. Search engines now seek to reward ethical, high-quality
websites with top rankings and remove inappropriate "spam" websites.
While organic rankings can produce continual free traffic, it takes time
from an experienced individual to achieve optimum results. Additionally,
organic placement offers no guarantees, it generally takes months to get
listed and can be unpredictable once listed.
Some search engines offer services that add more control to your organic
campaign. Most of these services will list / update your site faster or
will guarantee that all essential content is listed. For integrity
reasons, no major search engine offers higher organic rankings for a
fee.
If you need top rankings quickly, pay-per-positioning (PPP) is the most
popular way to go. PPP rankings appear in normal organic SERPs but are
usually designated as "sponsored listings". PPP listings use a bidding
process to rank sites. If you are the top bidder, e.g. willing to pay
the most per click on a given phrase, you will have top placement. The
2nd highest bidder is two; the next is 3 and so on. While most PPP works
using this model, some search engines offer modifications such as
Google's AdWords where bid price and click-through rates are both
factors for positioning.
Search Engines have many other marketing tools, such as search specific
banner ads; listings on affiliate sites and more.
Getting Started
The majority of websites have sub-optimal search engine marketing. Most
sites have no effective search engine marketing and are continually
missing out on valuable leads. Many other websites are too aggressive,
wasting money on low value traffic or harming the functionality of their
site due to over optimization. Too many sites are even paying money and
receiving no results because they have trusted unethical or
inexperienced search engine optimizers.
All SEM campaigns should start with a strategic evaluation of SEM
opportunities based on return on investment (ROI). You need to assess
how much each lead is worth for each keyword phrase and determine which
SEM tools will achieve the best ROI for the phrase.
You also have to decide how much you want to do in-house vs. retaining
an expert. A qualified expert will typically produce better results
faster, but the high expenses may destroy the ROI. Often it is best to
work with an expert as a team, the expert to develop the strategy and
internal staff to perform implementation and ongoing management.
Tom McCracken is the Director of LevelTen Design, a Dallas based e-media
agency. He has over 14 years of experience in software engineering and
marketing. He has developed solutions to improve custom service and
communications for some of the worlds largest companies. With an
education in chemical engineering and economics from Johns Hopkins
University, his background includes; web and software development, human
factors engineering, project management, business strategy, marketing
strategy, and electronic design.
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