Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Website(IBM Press)

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  

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  

About the Author :
Mike Moran has worked on the web since its inception, in both marketing and technical roles, including eight years at IBM.com, IBM’s customer-facing website. In 2008, Mike retired from IBM to pursue speaking, writing, and consulting at Mike Moran Group, and also serves as a senior strategist for both the social media consultancy Converseon, and its spin-off social analytics company, Revealed Context. He’s twice been named one of the top 50 Internet marketers and regularly consults for Fortune 500 companies around the world.   Mike is also the author of Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules, perhaps the first book on agile marketing. He writes regular columns on digital marketing at WebProNews and Search Engine Guide, and is the founder and senior author at Biznology (www.biznology.com). He’s a Senior Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research and an Open Group Distinguished IT Specialist. Mike is a frequent keynote speaker on digital marketing at events around the world, serves as a Visiting Lecturer to the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, works as an instructor for both Rutgers University and the University of California at Irvine, and holds an Advanced Certificate in Market Management Practice from the Royal UK Charter Institute of Marketing.   Mike also has a broad technical background, with over 30 years of experience in search technology, working at IBM Research, Lotus, and other IBM software units. He led the product team that developed the first commercial linguistic search engine in 1989 and has been granted 11 patents in search and retrieval technology. He led the integration of ibm.com’s site search technologies as well as projects in content management, personalization, and web metrics. Mike led the adoption of search marketing at ibm.com back in 2001 and pioneered product search facilities that dramatically raised conversion rates. Mike was named an IBM Distinguished Engineer in 2005.   Mike can be reached through his website (www.mikemoran.com).   Bill Hunt has been a pioneer in search marketing, first optimizing pages in 1994. He is considered the top thought leader on enterprise and global search engine marketing and is an internationally recognized search marketing expert who has spoken at conferences in over 30 countries.   Press, industry analysts, and corporate leaders frequently seek Bill’s advice to help them effectively leverage enterprise and global search marketing. Bill is the CEO of Back Azimuth Consulting. Through Back Azimuth, Bill provides cutting-edge keyword data-mining models to identify missed opportunities and increase revenue based on understanding consumer needs. Bill is also responsible for Back Azimuth’s search marketing thought leadership and for developing global search marketing strategic roadmaps for multinational corporations such as Absolut Vodka, Cisco, HP, MGM, and Pernod-Ricard.   Bill is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, and he earned a B.A. in Asian Studies/Japanese from the University of Maryland, Tokyo Campus, and a B.S. in International Business from California State University, Los Angeles. Bill can be reached through his company website (www. back-azimuth.com) or his blog (www.whunt.com).