This document summarizes a presentation about search engine optimization (SEO) given to Georgia Tech. It discusses the importance of SEO for businesses and provides an overview of key SEO strategies and tactics. These include conducting keyword research, optimizing on-page elements like titles and meta descriptions, building high-quality links, measuring SEO results through rankings and traffic, and leveraging social media. Case studies demonstrate how SEO can increase a website's organic traffic, conversions, and paid search leads. The presentation emphasizes the importance of usability and calls SEO and paid search most powerful when used together.
"SEO 101" for Georgia Tech Digital Marketing Class
1. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION:
TALES FROM A PRACTITIONER
Presented to:
GA Tech
College of Management
September 11, 2012
2. ABOUT ME & PPI
Degrees in Business/Marketing and Communications
Management
Marketing = 25 years
Search engine marketing = 14 years
President of SEMPO Atlanta – event at Google’s office
this Thursday evening: http://bit.ly/NWW5wI
Full-service, award-winning search engine marketing
agency based in Atlanta since 2001
Provide search engine optimization (SEO) & pay-per-
click (PPC) services to clients nationwide
8. ECOMMERCE VS. LEAD GENERATION
Often B2C Often B2B
Goal is to make an Goal is to capture a
immediate sale prospect’s data for lead
Usually less nurturing
expensive, more Usually more
simple products expensive or
Short sales complicated products &
cycle, impulse buys services
Longer sales
cycle, decision by
committee
12. SEARCH TERM RESEARCH: CRITICAL
Use the verbiage your target audience uses – not what
your industry or internal experts use
“search marketing” or “web optimization”?
“healthcare” or “health care”?
“financial solutions” or “financial software”?
13. KEYWORD RESEARCH
Search volume
Competitiveness
Stage in buying cycle servers
used used used ibm
servers as/400 as/400
servers servers
Search volume
Competitiveness
Probability of buying
Likelihood of high rankings
18. BUT WAIT…
Search engines don’t just look at the web page itself when
determining how to rank it
They also look at the quantity and quality of links pointing to that web
page
Links are an implied endorsement
Source: SEO Solution Blog
19. LINK-BUILDING: CRITICAL & MUST BE DONE
RIGHT
YES: high quantity of quality links, relevant sites, hand-
selected sites, diversified link types, content/campaign
creation (“link bait”), social media, leveraging other
marketing tactics
NO: link farms, irrelevant sites, automated submissions,
too many links from the same type of site, reciprocal
links, paid links, content farms
20. THE CRIMES OF SEO Source: eZanga.com
Source: Reload Media
25. GOAL: TAKE UP AS MUCH ROOM IN THE
SERPS AS POSSIBLE
Website
Website
Website
Twitter profile
Facebook profile
LinkedIn profile
BusinessWeek profile
(not us)
Optimized press release
Video (not us)
36. USABILITY: MORE IMPORTANT THAN SEO
EVEN? (YES!)
Starting Site Visitors Good Site Conversions
• 1% conversion
• 100,000 • 1,000
point rate
SEO only
Site Visitors Good Site Conversions
after SEO • 1% conversion Usability
• 2,000 Great Site
• 200,000 rate Site Visitors Conversions
only • 100,000
• 2% conversion
rate
• 2,000
Site Visitors Great Site
after SEO • 2% conversion
Conversions SEO +
• 4,000
• 200,000 rate Usability
37. HOW PHONE CALL TRACKING
WORKS
Type in URL directly & see this:
Click on a Google organic listing & see this:
Click on a Google paid listing & see this:
39. CALL TRACKING ENSURES YOU’RE
MEASURING ALL RESULTS
Mini Case Study:
-71% of leads came in by
phone
-Increased PPC bids
-Doubled the number of
PPC leads generated
47. SEO & PAID SEARCH TOGETHER ARE EVEN
MORE POWERFUL
48. WANT MORE?
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placement-inc.
View other presentation on Slideshare:
www.slideshare.net/stacywms
We are always looking for good interns – email me your resume at
StacyWilliams@ProminentPlacement.com if you are interested!
Editor's Notes
Example of an optimized page, both the visible content and the “behind the scenes” coding (meta tags, which Alex will be talking about).
One of the things that all marketers should do is Search Engine Reputation Management. This can be as simple as running searches on your company name and any key product brand names to see what shows up in the results. We’ve heard from a number of companies that have seen leads or sales drop off unexpectedly. Sometimes, after digging into every possible problem for a week or two, someone will think to check the search engine results and see a negative mention of the company in a blog post or on a social media or review site.It’s important to know what your prospective customers, employees, vendors and investors see when searching for information about your company. If there’s a conversation going on about your brand, you should probably participate in that conversation. And, you may want to try to optimize additional web content to rank high so it pushes the negative mentions lower in the search results – perhaps to the second page – so fewer people will see it.
Rankings are no good unless searchers click and go to your site. Site visitors are no good unless they convert – buy something (ecommerce sites) or fill out a form (lead gen sites). Will also talk very briefly about two of the newer ways we’re measuring results (bottom right corner) – this is constantly evolving and allowing us to track more data more accurately.