At POLC, one of the panels I attended was "Optimizing Your Search Marketing Program." One of the reasons I attended was because the moderator was my good friend from the other side of the aisle, Jerome Armstrong of MyDD.
But more importantly, I attended because I'm running a number of search engine marketing campaigns for my clients and I wanted to ensure that my clients are getting the best ROI.
Perhaps the most important quote which jumped out at me regarding why "search" (and your entry) matters was: “Your Branding/Messaging Starts at The Search Engine—not at your website.” Makes sense.
I've broken down my notes on tips and optimization in to two sections -- paid search versus organic search. A number of the points below are directly from the powerpoint presentation that went along with the presentation.
Overview of PPC Search (PPC - Pay Per Click)
• People seek out information on search engines - hand raisers - you want to serve that person an ad for your product.
• Think of Search as a phonebook: Paid is like the Yellow Pages. Organice is like the White Pages.
• You are in complete control of your listing in the Yellow Pages.
*You choose the keywords that trigger display;
*You control the Wording of the listing;
*You choose the web page or destination the searcher visits;
*You decide the price you want to pay per click;
*You set the daily budget;
*You set the geographic region;
*You can instantly change all of these factors in real-time; and
*You can track results and optimize your campaign.
Best Practices in PPC
• Good campaign structure is the foundation of good campaign performance. In other words, spend a lot of time thinking out the intention of the campaign, what success means, and how best to achieve it.
*Think of lots of keywords that constituents would use to find information on your candidate or cause (Lots = thousands or more);
*Group similar keywords together into Ad Groups, making things as granular as possible;
*Write ad copy that is relevant to the keywords in each Ad Group;
*Select landing pages that are relevant to the keywords in each Ad Group; and
*Tailor campaigns to geographic regions, if appropriate
• Estimate the value of a visitor, and set prices accordingly.
• Track activity and performance (conversion tracking, Google Analytics, maybe others).
• Focus on results, and optimize campaigns based on results.
• Expand once you are successful with core campaigns.
Best Practices in Organic Search Optimization
• Benefits of organic:
*It’s free (except labor); and
*Perceived as more objective (people trust Google more than advertisers).
Baseline Optimization Techniques:
• Web Development/Technical: make sure your site can be read by search engines;
• Site content: Incorporate well-researched keywords onto your pages;
• Off-site optimizations: Get other sites to link to yours; and
• Close the Loop: Analyze visitor behavior.
Top Three Things You Can Do To Improve Organic SEO:
- 1. Keyword Research Tools (Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, and Google's AdWords program has a free service);
2. Basic Site Assessment - Use Yahoo! Site Explorer to see what pages search robots can read and incoming links; and
3. Build content around keywords (check trends.google.com every morning to see what people are searching for and write content about that issue if it fits with your message).
Some random notes:
The best opportunity to get a high-pagerank item is to upload video to Yahoo!, YouTube, Google Video, and title/tag it correctly.
Free Search Engine Marketing for non-profits: Google Grants Program.
Panelists/Experts:
This panel included Jerome Armstrong, Ben Weisberg of Google, Mark Evans of Ionic Media, and Gravida Couzin and Jennifer Grappone who are both SEO experts.
