Top Ten Tips for Effective Search Engine Marketing in 2014

By Jez Booker

in association with

10 Set up Webmaster Accounts (correctly!)

9 Set up PPC accounts with AdWords AND Bing Ads

8 Use Keyword research to measure the whole market (use PPC at start of any new project)

7 Do your links research

Here are the top 10 tips I will talk about…

6 Use Markup

5 Your content strategy is vital

4 Video is sexy

3 Title & Meta descriptions remain #1 tech change

2 Engagement stats are key

1 Get a good domain name

TOP 10 Tips – Let’s Start the Countdown!

(Don’t worry it won’t be this painful!)

1010. Set up webmaster accounts (correctly!)

Webmaster accounts:

• Job No.1 – sometimes overlooked by new clients we work with.

• Each domain / website should have its own individual account with Google and Bing.

• Most important: all your Google (or Bing) products go into this account – e.g. your Google Analytics, Gmail, maybe your Youtube account, Webmaster Tools account (we’ll touch on this in a moment), Google Local Places, G+, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google AdWords etc.

• If you have more than 1 domain / website, then you set-up a master account (an umbrella account) within which you place each of the individual accounts.

Once you have a Google Account, be sure to set up a Webmaster Tools account which gives you access to a whole bunch of useful data.

The WT account is also where you will receive automated messages from Google (or Bing in their WT) concerning the health of your website.

• Here is an excerpt from the TIW Webmaster Tools account. You can see how we have been granted permission to access our clients’ accounts.

• You can grant permission to anyone with a Google Account – and you have a certain degree of granularity on what you give access to (restricted access) if you want to keep certain business critical information hidden.

99. Set up PPC accounts with AdWords AND Bing Ads

(what we call the ‘blended approach to web marketing)

It’s not all about Google AdWords…

What about me???

• For almost all commercial search terms, the top of the search results pages will be dominated by Ad results.

• You cannot ignore PPC - it must be a part of your strategy.

• You should also include Bing Ads (which also gives coverage on Yahoo! Search engine) – something which many businesses do not do and which means they miss out on up to 10% of UK searches in some sectors and 15% in the USA.

9 What about me???

• Google will most often put three adverts at the top of its search results and often add ‘Sponsored Shopping’ results.

• Look how much real estate is taken up by sponsored messages (87%) vs organic results (13%) on your screen (above the fold). Yahoo’s search also has three main ads, but use Bing and you can get up to four ads while Ask.com has gone wild and sometimes goes with five.

• When signed in to google on my phone, searches that require local results – such as for car mechanic or burger restaurant – get one organic result and then the next 5, 6 or 7 are all local businesses.

8Keyword finder tools:

Intent of search:

• Navigational• Informational• Commercial• Transactional

8. Use Keyword research to measure the whole market (use PPC at start of any new project)

Search categories:

• Brand• Location• Gender• Occasion

77. Do your links research

77. Do your links research

• Majestic is a paid-for tool which all SEO agencies use.• There is a free version which you can explore. However, if you are serious about

understanding link profiles then there are plans starting at £29.99/month.

66. Use Markup

Structured data + Extended Vocabulary

<div itemscope itemtype=“http://schema.org/Product”>

MicrodataMicroformats

RDFa

Schema.org

76. Markup: Authorship

76. Markup: Rich snippets

55. Your content strategy is vital

• Content strategy is your route to capturing long-term traffic.

• As well as establishing your presence for search engines, your organic content gives you ‘permission to sell’ at a later time. Quality web content enables you to grab consumers early in their buying process, when your content demonstrates your expertise and, with a heavy dose of branding, worms its way into the consumer’s brain.

• Early on in the buying process is when your organic content can have a good influence over consumer behaviour.

• Content, as has been said, is the fuel that drives the inbound effect. Content is a conversation starter and is generally the only way to develop a strong standing with search engines.

• (Organic content also is good for confirmation and reducing buyer remorse – ‘you made the right decision, what a clever consumer you are’ – and building brand loyalty for repeat purchases.)

55. Your content strategy is vital

• As the consumption process involves so much online research nowadays, during the early stages of their “decision making journey” consumers build up what McKinsey calls “accumulated impressions” that form the initial set of products of their potential purchasing options.

• You have to accept that the consumer will leave your site and visit competitor sites. You will get some who buy on the first visit but most will not. Later in the buying process they will come back to check details or specifications, re-read things. It can be a long process – even longer with big ticket items.

• QUART – quality - uniqueness – authority – relevance – trust.

• It should have the WOW factor.

5

55. Your content strategy is vital

Persistence is key

44. Video is sexy

• Google and the other search engines often like to have a variety to their search engine results.

• Video is one of the forms in which content can be delivered and where search engines see an opportunity to include them, they will.

• Think about your company’s content assets – do they include any films/video? Is there any content that can be easily translated into video?

• Here, you might wish to engage any of the younger members of your team – the younger generation are whizzes when it comes to creating videos – Ever seen any Vines?

• You might be amazed at how professional they can make a video look!

44. Video

44. Video

44. Video

44. Video

44. Video

“Having a VIDEO compared to just TEXT will almost TRIPLE

the average number of linking domains”

Casey Henry – Moz.com

33. Title tags

• Your title tag remains, even today, the number one technical optimisation you can do to improve your rankings.

• The words you are using in your title tag must be included in the content of the page.

• It is worth taking time getting your title tags right.

• Under 512 pixels in width, generally 55 to 60 characters.

• Place keywords as close to the beginning as possible; the closer a word to the start of the tag, the more influence it exerts.

• Make title tags readable.

• If you include a brand in the title tags, place it at the end unless it is a well-known brand people seek out.

• Make each title unique.

• Avoid stuffing keywords.

3moz.com/blog/new-title-tag-guidelines-preview-tool

3. Title tags

22. Think about engagement

• In the last 2 years Google has made some fundamental changes to its algorithm.

• Possibly the key change is a new emphasis on “engagement”.• Engagement stats are things like – time on page/site, bounce rate, pages per

session.• I am going to introduce you to the concept of the long click:

What's a Long Click?A long click occurs when a user performs a search, clicks through on a result and remains on that site for a long time. They don't come back to the result set immediately to click on another result or to refine their query. In general, long clicks are a proxy for satisfaction and success.

22. Think about engagement

Why are Long Clicks Important?

Long clicks are important to Google because it gives them a way to measure the satisfaction of the result based on downstream behaviour. Sure, a result might get a lot of clicks but did it actually satisfy the query?

Is it a success if 100 people click but 98 go back within 10 seconds? What if those 98 people all clicked on an alternate result?

Google knows that the search algorithm still isn't that smart. It routinely makes mistakes and can often be led down the wrong path by aggressive search engine optimization. Long clicks provide a feedback mechanism, a type of human quality assurance that is lacking in the algorithm.

Long clicks are important to you because they will may help increase your SERP rank.

The chatter from Google makes us SEO’s believe that it is part of the algorithm. How much it is weighted now and in the future remains to be seen. One way or the other Google is saying that longer is better.

11. Get yourself a good domain name!

Five Rules for Choosing a Good Domain Name

1. Choose your suffix wisely

.uk vs .com? – Research by Nominet shows that British consumers prefer local domain names (8/10 in a widely reported survey). It is a question of relevance, trust and reliability.

“A local trust point with a brand”

The new .uk now offers options comparable to what is available internationally (e.g. example.de / example.fr) and is shorter and snappier.

2. If you are planning to expand abroad make sure you can also get the .com and any country specific ones.

3. Avoid long and difficult spellings and make the domain as unique as possible.

Memorability is vital and the easier to type and pass on the better. (Flickr? Flicker?)

11. Get yourself a good domain name!

Five Rules for Choosing a Good Domain Name

4. Avoid hyphens and numbers (if possible)

5. Your Brand is paramount

When someone hears about your domain name for the first time, they should be able to instantly and accurately guess at the type of content that might be found there. For that reason, these are great domain names:

- Ticketmaster.co.uk- NotGoingToUni.co.uk- Rightmove.co.uk- GreenCarGuide.co.uk

Domains like zoopla.co.uk, Amazon.com and Zillow.com are memorable but have required far more branding because of their un-intuitive names