sem schipul-evatt barcamp houston

Search Engine MarketingBoost your Presence, Build your Brand

Steven Evatt, Chron.com & Ed Schipul, Schipul

Search Engine OptimizationPractical Application

Today we’ll cover:

1.Search Engine basics

2. SEM in the real world• Natural optimization

(SEO)• Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

3. Building SEO Into your App

Research your target market!

• Brainstorm:

– How will your target market search for you?

• Flowers, flower delivery, florist, special occasion flowers, birthday flowers, Valentine’s flowers, funeral flowers, bridal flowers, flower shop, etc.

– Are you targeting a geographic area?

• Houston Florist, Houston flower shop, Katy TX Florist, Victoria Florist, Austin Florist, Barton Springs Flower shop, etc.

Source: http://flickr.com/photos/cunisdiabolis/139234237/

How does a Search Engine work?

Keyword DensityAre you writing what you mean to say?

www.schipul.com/en/sem/keywords

Content is King

• Lets talk about the News Business! 6

Newsroom Adoption Top down ‘Buy-In’

Visionaries in VP and EVP of Online Editorial

Automation of SEO Basics

Provide tangible tracking and benchmarking results

Newsroom Editors:Their Role

Page Text Education: SEO best

practices to newsroom Promo Graphics

Easy editing tools so both graphic and text changes are within content management system

Page Title Automation Automatically insert

Headline Leads the Title

Includes metro area – “Houston”

Includes Site and Publication Name

Meta Keywords and Description

Refining to ensure primary keywords are included

Provide mechanism for editorial staff to avoid code editing

Cross Linking (Internal) Site search

results and resource tool links on story pages

Cross linking with Chron.com Blog posts

Research External Link back Opportunities!

http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpopHelp file: http://www.tendenci.com/en/cms/?1470

Site Discoverability File Structure Hierarchy

and Taxonomy Maintain Site Maps Nav, Links, Story

redirection on Error pgs RSS throughout site

Back End Configurations Robots.TXT 404 Error Page Server Side Redirects

Configure multiple URLs to avoid returning the exact same content.

ie www.chron.com == www.houstonchronicle.com == chron.com == etc.

Tracking and Benchmarking

Feb 2007: #7 Feb 2007: #6

Inspect what you expect with Web Analytics

www.google.com/analytics

Care and Feeding of SEO Use keyword-rich content, Updated constantly with less graphical text Topical Meta Data

meta descriptions keywords limited to six-to-eight

Paid Placement

PPC Step by Step

1. Choose terms: keyword research2. Create a paid placement budget3. Campaign Set-up4. Monitor and tweak campaign

Keyword Research Suggestion Tools

• Overture - www.overture.com (free)• Wordtracker - www.wordtracker.com (paid) www.freekeywords.wordtracker.com (free)

• Keyword Discovery - http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html (free) www.keyworddiscovery.com (paid)

Let’s Review!

• Content is king– Keep it fresh– Keep it original

• Links are powerful – be generous!• Keep a healthy SEO and PPC balance• Watch and tweak your campaign

Thanks Steven Evatt

www.chron.com Ed Schipul

www.brandtobedetermined.com

Web 2.0 in your SEM campaign

Social Media Optimization (SMO)

• Web 2.0 = KEYWORDS!!• Optimize your Social Media

content• Enable Social bookmarking

and badging• Track the buzz

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Technorati - a new kind of search

www.technorati.com

Be a participant in the conversation

• Flickr (www.flickr.com) • Facebook (www.facebook.com) • MySpace (www.myspace.com) • Twitter (www.twitter.com) • Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us) • Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org)• Ning (www.ning.com)

– Look for online communities in your industry (or make your own...)