Standing Out with SEO: Expert Advice from Melanie Mitchell PDF
Preview Standing Out with SEO: Expert Advice from 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).
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