The Findability Formula – Search Engine Marketing Basics

In this session at SES San Jose 2009, Heather Lutze gave a session on the basics of search engine marketing. In her presentation, The Findability Formula: The Easy, Non -Technical Approach to SEM, she gave a basic overview of how search engines work and the steps businesses can take to become “findable” online.
Your website’s potential:

• A stagnant brochure vs. lead generation & connecting your product to customers.

Internet Marketing is connecting with customers searching online

When creating your website, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What makes you different from your competitors?
2. What are the pain factors that make searchers look for your services?
3. Who is your ideal customer? What are their demographics?
4. What action do you want a visitor to take?

The Buying Cycle:

• The longer & more specific the keyword phrase, the closer the searcher is to making a purchase decision.

EX: digital camera vs. Nikon Coolpix San Jose, CA

The three essential elements of the search engine marketing

• Pay Per Click – choose the right keywords
• Search Engine Optimization – Optimize customer experience for ranking
• Social Media – Build community

PPC Essentials:
1. How to Generate Keywords?

• Brainstorm keywords people use for your product or service
• Look at your website stats
• Look at competitor’s sites
• Categorize your keywords

2. Negative keywords: generate a list of keywords you don’t want to be found for
3. Bidding Guidelines:

• Start with a comfortable max bid & monitor daily
• Set a max bid for all keywords & then adjust based on budget.

4. User experience:

• Create custom landing pages that are relevant to your ad copy.

SEO Essentials:

1. Focus on the keywords that result in conversions & quality traffic to your website.
2. Focus on your internal linking structure. Pages with similar topics should be linked together. All pages should be accessible from the home page.
3. Web pages should each have a specific keyword theme. Update title, meta tags & content with target keyword phrases.
4. Linking: Inbound links are essential to the performance of your website. The best inbound links will be from reputable, relevant website, with keyword rich anchor text.

Social Media Essentials:

1. Social media marketing allows you to create a community of followers who want your information on a consistent basis. It allows you to build relationships with prospects & customers.
2. Social media profiles should be keyword rich.

Heather recommends starting with PPC advertising & customized landing pages as a way to understand customer behavior. She suggests using the trends gleaned from analyzing your PPC results in the optimization of your website. Focus on those keywords for your long term SEO strategy & use PPC as a supplement for terms that you don’t rank for organically.