How companies should really use search

@annstanley

How companies should really use
search?
by
Ann Stanley
October 2012

@annstanley

Part 1 – Introduction to search

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Digital landscape

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Top UK sites by visits
Source: Hitwise week ending 16/6/2012

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Organic Search Results (SEO)

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Understanding the search results

Display options

Organic or
natural results

Universal results
–
maps, news, sho
pping etc....
Ads - PPC

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Google – local businesses

Display options

Organic or
natural results

Universal results
–
maps, news, sho
pping etc....
Ads - PPC

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Searching for products

Display options

Organic or
natural results

Universal results
–
maps, news, sho
pping etc....
Ads - PPC

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How to get into the Google results
• Map – create a free Google Places listings (also in Bing) – this is
now part of Google Plus
• Shopping results – feed your ecommerce database into Google
Merchant Centre
• Images & videos – make sure these have keyphrases in the file
names and tags
• News, blogs and author results – create ongoing blog content on
your site or via news feed sites (PR)
• Ads – set up an AdWords pay per click account – where you bid
on relevant phrases and you pay if they click on your ad
• Organic or natural listings – search engine optimise your website
ie SEO

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Part 2 – Quick Wins!

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Local listings

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Getting listed in Google Places (Local Search)

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Add your company details

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Google Plus Page

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Create a Google+ page

Bing Map – @annstanley

listing through My118 Information

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Using Google AdWords
or pay per click (PPC)

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Pay Per Click in Action
1
User
submits
search

2
Listings
dynamically
ordered by
bid price &
relevancy

3
User clicks
on paid link,
triggering
payment to
Google

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Ad Extensions, Local Listings (map)
and new Product Listing ads

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PPC Account Hierarchy

Campaigns (<20)
(set a budget and Estate agent
targeting)

Ad Groups
20-100 per campaign
Local estate Professional “City” estate
(each has its own ad
agent estate agent agent
copy and landing page)

Keywords Professional estate Bromsgrove estate
Local estate agent agent agent
3-9 per ad group
Local estate agents Professional estate Bromsgrove estate
3 x match types agents agents

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Typical PPC results

Glossary
Impressions = number of times your ad is seen
Clicks = number of times searcher clicked on your ad
CTR = click through rate is clicks divided by impressions (>2% indicates a more
relevant keyphrase and ad combination)
Avg CPC = average cost per click (amount paid when users click on your ad)
Cost = total spent in period (clicks times average cost per click)
Avg Position = Average position achieved in results
Conversions = completed sales or completed registrations
Conversion rate = conversions divided by clicks
Cost per conversion = total cost divided by number of conversions

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Managing PPC – what’s important
• Quality Score – Google’s measure of relevancy – it affects
your position and how much you pay (eg QS of 8/10 you pays
half as compared with 4/10)
• Click through rate – pause phrases and ads with a CTR
below<1%, otherwise this drags down your QS
• Position and bidding – you may have to bid lower (cost per
click) and settle for position 3-6 to avoid the bidding war of
position 1-3, where the CPC will be too high!
• Cost per acquisition (CPA) – most sites have a typical
conversion rate of 1%. Your cost per sale or lead will be 100 x
your cost per click – can you afford this?

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Remarketing (Google)
• Set-up in AdWords
• Visitors to certain pages on the website (from all
sources) have a Cookie added to their PC
• They are then shown an ad when they visit another
site on the Google Display network
• Ideal for targeting customers that came to your site
but did not convert
• Ad Serving Networks outside of Google offer a
similar technology (called Retargeting)

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Remarketing in AdWords (aka stalking)

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Remarketing results
Client 1 Client 2 Client 3 Client 4

View- Conv. View- Conv. Conv. View- Conv. View- Conv.
Conv. (1- through rate (1- Conv. (1- through rate (1- (1-per- through rate (1- Conv. (1- through rate (1-
Campaign per-click) Conv. per-click) per-click) Conv. per-click) click) Conv. per-click) per-click) Conv. per-click)
TOTAL 445 84 1.7% 2833 220 2.57% 559 118 2.44% 862 1716 1.06%
Brand 39 0 6.7% 413 0 8.99% 433 0 5.13% - - -
Remarketing 9 84 2.3% 54 215 3.11% 15 118 1.34% 179 1716 3.06%
Competitors - - - 216 0 2.01% - - - 184 0 1.88%
Vouchers 29 0 15.26%

• Remarketing In Google is on a CPC basis but its success has pushed the prices up (one
account has increased from 78p to £1.38 in a year)
• Retargeting is also available outside of Google via ad-serving networks or Demand
Side Platforms (DSP) – mainly sold on a CPM basis
• Facebook have just launched Facebook Exchange in the UK (via a limited number of
distributors) - offering Retargeting and Behavioural targeting on a CPM basis

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Google Merchant Centre for
ecommerce sites

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Integration with Google Merchant Centre

New Product
Listing ads

AdWords
product
extensions

Shopping results from Merchant Centre

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Summary of different shopping results in Google

Keywords =
Samsonite luggage

Organic shopping Map
results AdWords Products
Product Listing ads and Places/Local
ad extension
(Merchant Centre) listings

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Part 2 -
Search engine optimisation (SEO)

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On-page optimisation

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How Search Engines Work

A search engine is made of three basic components:

A Spider or Robot A Storage System A Matching Process or
An automated browser, it or Database Relevancy Algorithm
searches the web for new A record of all the pages The rules that tell the search
websites and changes to viewed by the Spider engine how to determine
websites then views the what would be relevant to
web pages and strips out your search
the text content

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Check that your site is indexed?

Do you have
keyphrases in
your url, title
and
description?

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Google keyword research tool

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Determine the level of competition

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Page plan with levels of monthly searches
vs competition (results in Google)

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On-page factors
• Title Tag
• Content
• Heading content
• Frequency of phrases (how many times they are
mentioned)
• Density of phrases (proportion of the text)
• Internal Link structure with anchor text)
• Image optimisation (file names, Alt tags)
• Avoid Spam techniques and over-optimising
• Create new ongoing content on your site eg a blog

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Example of On-Page Factors

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Keyphrase density (using SEO Quake)

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Off-page optimisation

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Checklist for optimising your website
• Carryout keyphrase research
• Prioritise your keyphrase by high search volume and low
competition (use pay per click data if you have it?)
• Produce a topic and a page plan (ie which pages are to be
optimised with which phrases)
• Write new optimised content on existing and new
pages, (URL, title, description, headers, keyphrase
density, anchor text, image optimisation)
• Upload your content through your CMS and add new links
from the homepage for new pages eg in the footer (you
may need to get your developer to do this)
• Add new optimised content every week via a blog
• Review results using Webmaster Tools and Analytics

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Off-page factors
• Domain age
• Domain name
• Filename/full URL
• Directory listings
• External Link Structure
• Anchor text of inbound links
• Page quality of inbound links
• Social bookmarks
• Reviews and testimonials
• Social indicators especially Google +1 and Facebook
“Shares”

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Why are Links important?

Key to Google’s algorithm:
• Indicator of value: PageRank
• Indicator of relevance

Best links from:
• Highly trusted sites (high PageRank / Domain
Authority)
• Pages with relevant content

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Off-page factors - Linking

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Getting Links
• Content that people will want to link to
• Free stuff
• Blog posts
• Useful documents/articles
• Online tools
• Video and audio
• Funny or entertaining content

• Your content on other sites
• Article syndication site
• Guest blogging
• Online PR
• Directories

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Importance of Social

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Importance of social
• Direct sales e.g. Facebook commerce
• Direct traffic e.g. Brand pages
(Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter)
• Community, loyalty and word of mouth
(Facebook
Likes, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Delicious) and
social shopping sites e.g. Kaboodle
• Referrals, links and SEO benefit (Google
Plus, Facebook Shares, social bookmarking)

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Social networking for businesses
(personal vs company profiles)

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Part 3 –
Integrating digital marketing
channels and Attribution Modelling

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Using PPC data to determine the most
effective keyphrases for SEO?
• It can take 6 -12 months to see a significant result for
your SEO activities
• But you may have wasted your efforts on optimising for
keyphrases with high volumes of searches but no
conversions
• We recommend you use PPC data as part of your SEO
strategy
– Narrow down your list to the keyphrases that convert
– Use as many months data as possible and use “See Search
Terms” to see the actual converting phrases
– If you are not currently using PPC then you may want to run
a PPC campaign before starting your SEO, in order to
understand your keyphrase profile

Selecting keyphrases for SEO @annstanley

using PPC conversion data
Competition PPC data See search
(Allintitle: Conv. (1-per- terms Total
Keyword Searches (phrase match) "keyphrase") Ratio click) conversions conversions
1 2900 14,200 0.20 307 307
2 27100 2,050,000 0.01 196 196
3 14800 598,000 0.02 185 185
4 2400 3,540 0.68 86 86
5 73 551 0.13 42 18 60
6 1600 472,000 0.01 29 29 58
7 590 82,400 0.01 49 49
8 58 168 0.35 48 48
9 4400 582,000 0.01 47 47
10 260 8,060 0.03 45 45
11 3600 516,000 0.01 44 44
12 880 210 4.19 43 43
13 16 366 0.04 25 11 36
14 260 28 9.29 16 18 34
15 140 10,500 0.01 29 29
16 210 8,270 0.03 16 12 28
17 3600 51,300 0.07 24 24
18 58 6 9.67 24 24
19 73 30 2.43 23 23
20 1600 205,000 0.01 22 22

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Increase in organic traffic and sales
Jan 2011 - Aug 2012 – monthly visits from organic (dark blue line) vs. revenue (light blue line)

Visits from organic 2011 (dark blue line) vs. 2010 (orange line) – weekly results

SEO project started July
2011

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Attribution –
top paths leading to a sale

Assisted click – in conversion path

Last click before a conversion

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Integration of channels
(last click vs. assisted click)

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Part 4 - Optimising for Mobile

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Device responsive design

• Same url for all devices rather than a separate mobile site or sub-domain
• User detection agent (distinguishes device)
• Liquid or responsive design suitable for each size device/operating system/browser
• Mobile design often has a single column with most important content/features
moved to the top and in some cases some content hidden

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Amazon.co.uk responsive design
or Amazon.co.uk App
Main site – with adaptive CSS Amazon App

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Part 4 -What’s new in Google?

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Google layout – logged in

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Google’s “Search, Plus Your World”
(Google.com)

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Universal results

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Local results – “Venice” update

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Panda?

LSI – Latent semantic indexing
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2104571/Google-Panda-6-Months-Out-Still-Has-People-Baffled

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Google Panda update and need for
‘good quality content’
• In 2011, Google implemented a rolling algorithm
update known as ‘Panda’, which ‘penalises’ sites that
host poor quality content and/or provide a poor user
experience

• The effect of the Panda update was widespread and,
with every update, Google becomes more
sophisticated at judging the quality of content on a
site

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Optimise for the user –
not search engines
• Making sure a site is optimised to provide a rich,
relevant and rewarding experience for visitors is
the best way to avoid Panda penalties, which
means:
– No duplicate content
– All pages to have unique, relevant and useful content
(even the 1000s of product pages on ecommerce
sites!)
– Good levels of interaction on site (low bounce rates,
inbound links to ‘deep’ pages, social mentions etc…)

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Use of Schema.org and rich snippets

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Penguin
• Google Algorithm change to “penalise” sites with:
– Unnatural and poor quality links (very high
numbers, high proportion of “exact match anchor
text”, links on every page of a website, poor
quality source of links)
– Search spam – keyword stuffing
• P-Day = 24th April – if you had a significant drop in
traffic then you were affected by Penguin update
• You may have received an “unnatural links” warning
in your Webmaster tools
• Clean your site up, remove bad links (on other sites)
and put in a “reconsideration request”
• Bing has introduced a “disavow” feature in Bing
webmaster tools. Google expected to follow.

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Summary
• The digital landscape is more complex and fragmented with many channels to sell on-
site and off-site
• You can get quick wins with local listings, Google plus, and paid search
• Paid search continues to offer new ad formats, particularly Product Listing Ads
(integrating with Google Merchant Centre) and Remarketing
• SEO is a long term technique that involves both on-page and off-page optimisation
• Social is important to generate direct traffic and sales; but also indirectly due to the
importance of social indicators in SEO
• Use data from PPC to identify converting keyphrases and use these for SEO
• Understanding Conversion Attribution is key to maximise the ROI from different
channels
• Take advantage of the increasing use of Smartphones by having a mobile responsive
design
• Panda and Penguin has changed the way website need to be optimised – content is
more important than ever!

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Thank You

Ann Stanley
@annstanley
ann@anicca-solutions.com

www.anicca-solutions.com

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