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Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Website, 3rd Edition

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Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Website, 3rd Edition

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Description

  • Copyright 2015
  • Dimensions: 7" x 9-1/8"
  • Pages: 528
  • Edition: 3rd
  • eBook
  • ISBN-10: 0-13-303922-6
  • ISBN-13: 978-0-13-303922-1

The #1 Step-by-Step Guide to Search Marketing Success...Now Updated and Reorganized to Help You Drive Even More Value

For years, Search Engine Marketing, Inc. has been the definitive practical guide to driving value from search. Now, Mike Moran and Bill Hunt have completely rewritten their best-seller to present valuable new strategies, best practices, and lessons from experience.

Their revamped and reorganized Third Edition introduces a holistic approach that integrates organic and paid search, and complements them both with social media. This new approach can transform the way you think about search, plan it, and profit from it.

Moran and Hunt address every business, writing, and technical element of successful search engine marketing. Whatever your background, they help you fill your skills gaps and leverage the experience you already have.

You’ll learn how search engines and search marketing work today, and how to segment searchers based on their behavior, successfully anticipating what they’re looking for. You’ll walk through formulating your custom program: identifying goals, assessing where you stand, estimating costs, choosing strategy, and gaining buy-in. Next, you’ll focus on execution: identifying challenges, diagnosing and fixing problems, measuring performance, and continually improving your program. You’ll learn how to

  • Focus relentlessly on business value, not tactics
  • Overcome the obstacles that make search marketing so challenging
  • Get into your searcher’s mind, and discover how her behavior may change based on situation or device
  • Understand what happens technically when a user searches—and make the most of that knowledge
  • Create a focused program that can earn the support it will need to succeed
  • Clarify your goals and link them to specific measurements
  • Craft search terms and copy that attracts your best prospects and customers
  • Optimize content by getting writers and tech people working together
  • Address the critical challenges of quality in both paid and organic search
  • Avoid overly clever tricks that can destroy your effectiveness
  • Identify and resolve problems as soon as they emerge
  • Redesign day-to-day operating procedures to optimize search performance

Whether you’re a marketer, tech professional, product manager, or content specialist, this guide will help you define realistic goals, craft a best-practices program for achieving them, and implement it flawlessly.

NEW COMPANION WEBSITE PACKED WITH TOOLS AND RESOURCES

SEMincBook.com includes exclusive tools, deeper explorations of key search management techniques, and updates on emerging trends in the field

mikemoran.com

whunt.com

SEMincBook.com

Sample Content

Table of Contents

Preface    xvii

Acknowledgements    xx

About the Authors    xxiv

Part I: Understand Search Marketing

Chapter 1  How Search Marketing Works    3

Why Search Marketing Is Important    4

Searchers Are Highly Qualified Prospects    4

Search Marketing Is Cost-Effective    5

Search Marketing Is Big Business    6

Why Search Marketing Is Difficult    6

You Need Flexibility    6

You Need Coordination    7

You Need Name Recognition    7

You Need Resources    8

You Have Lots of Competition    9

What Search Marketing Is    10

How to Get Started in Search Marketing    18

Getting Started with Organic Search    18

Getting Started with Paid Search    23

The Steps to Search Success    29

Chapter 2  How Searchers Work    31

Visitor Behavior    32

Buyer Behavior    33

Other Visitor Behavior    34

The Searcher’s Intent    34

Navigational Searchers    35

Informational Searchers    38

Transactional Searchers    39

The Searcher’s Device    41

The Searcher’s Typing    42

The Searcher’s Click    44

How Searchers Look at Results    45

Why Searchers Click Where They Do    46

When Searchers Don’t Click Results    46

The Searcher’s Follow-Through    48

Customer Behavior and the Buyer’s Journey    49

Search Marketing and the Buyer’s Journey    51

How to Work the Searcher    54

Don’t Pick Keywords That Are “Too Hot”    54

Don’t Pick Keywords That Are “Too Cold”    57

Pick Keywords That Are “Just Right”    59

Chapter 3  How Search Works    61

How Search Engines Work    61

Analyzing the Search Keyword    62

Choosing Matches to the Keyword    66

Ranking the Matches    70

Displaying Search Results    81

Finding Content for the Organic Index    82

Analyzing the Content    85

Spotting Words You Don’t Normally See    86

Building the Organic Index    88

How to Work the Search Engines    89

Your Organic Search Writing Philosophy    89

Your Paid Search Bidding Philosophy    92

Your Content Quality Philosophy    98

Part II: Plan Your Search Marketing Program

Chapter 4  Unlock the Business Value of Search    105

Identify Your Website’s Goals    105

Web Sales    107

Offline Sales    112

Leads    113

Market Awareness    115

Information and Entertainment    116

Persuasion    117

Measure Your Website’s Success    120

Count Your Conversions    120

Count Your Traffic    137

Count Your Money    139

Measure Your Search Marketing Success    141

Target Your First Search Marketing Campaign    142

Assess Your Current Situation    147

See Whether Your Existing Landing Pages Are Indexed    150

Calculate Your First Campaign’s Opportunity    157

Chapter 5  Create Your Search Marketing Program    167

Define Your Search Marketing Strategy    167

Choose the Scope of Your Search Marketing Program    168

Divide the Search Marketing Work    173

Choose Your Search Marketing Approach    180

Project Your Search Marketing Costs    188

Sell Your Search Marketing Proposal    194

Assemble Your Search Marketing Proposal    195

Sell Your Proposal to the Extended Search Team    202

Sell Your Proposal to Executives    216

Set Up Your Search Marketing Program    222

Organize Paid Search    222

Organize Organic Search    226

Organize Local Search    228

Part III: Execute Your Search Marketing Program

Chapter 6  Choose Your Target Market Segments    235

Understand the Value of Targeting    236

Building Brand Awareness    236

Increasing Web Conversions    238

Choose Your Primary Targets    239

Brainstorm with Your Team    240

Check Your Current Search Referrals    244

Consult Your Site Search Facility    244

Use Keyword Research Tools    245

Check Out Your Competition    246

Deepen Your Targeting    247

Use Your Buyer’s Journey    247

Decide a Match Type for Each Paid Search Keyword    248

Localize Your Targets    250

Organize Your Targets    254

Understand the Need to Prioritize    255

Choose Your Keyword Tiers    257

Prioritize Keywords by Your Buyer’s Journey    259

Structure Your Paid Search Keywords    262

Optimize Your Keyword Models    263

Segment Your Keywords by Categories    264

Use Searcher Interests for Content Development    266

Use Social Data to Improve Keywords    266

Chapter 7  Get Your Content Listed    269

Get Your Pages Listed in Organic Search Indexes    269

Assess How Many Pages Are Indexed    270

Increase the Number of Indexed Pages    278

Get Social Content Listed in Organic Search Indexes    301

Get Your Blog Indexed    301

Get Your Videos Indexed    302

Getting Your Images Indexed    302

Getting Your Social Network Content Indexed    303

Get Your Merchandise Listed in Product Search Databases    304

Feeding Your Data to Product Search Engines    304

Making the Most of Product Feeds    306

Chapter 8  Optimize Your Content    309

Choose Your Search Landing Pages    310

How Not to Choose a Search Landing Page    311

Landing Pages for Multiple Keywords    312

When You Can’t Find the Right Landing Page    313

Analyze Your Metrics    315

Measure Your Search Referrals    317

Calculate Your Search Conversions    317

Improve Your Content    318

Improve Your Search Results    319

Improve Your Landing Pages    334

Chapter 9  Prove Your Content’s Quality    351

Organic Search Quality Factors    352

Links as Quality Factors    352

Social Media as Quality Factors    378

Human Ratings as Quality Factors    386

Paid Search Quality Factors    390

Using Your Quality Score    391

Understanding Product Search Quality    392

Improve Quality with Co-Optimization    393

Chapter 10  Make Search Marketing Operational    397

Why Is Operating a Search Program So Hard?    398

Multiple Specialist Teams    398

Multiple Product Sites    399

Multiple Audiences    400

Multiple Countries    402

Multiple Technologies    403

Set Up Your Search Center of Excellence    404

Staff the Team    405

Develop the Team’s Skills    406

Establish Search Marketing Best Practices    407

Monitor Your Search Metrics    413

Assess Your Site’s Content    413

Check Your Search Rankings    421

Monitor Search Referrals    425

Calculate Search Conversions    430

Review Your Measurements with Others    434

Monitor Your Search Health    437

Your Organic Page Inclusion    437

Site-Wide Organic Search Problems    439

Your Paid Search Program    441

The Companion Website    445

Glossary    447

Index    487

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