BUS572-3

BUS572-3       Search Engine Optimization

Concept 1: Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO), also called organic or natural optimization, involves optimizing Web sites to achieve high rankings on the search engines for certain selected key phrases. SEO is broken down into 5 main parts:

1.     A search engine–friendly Web site structure

2.     A well-researched list of key phrases

3.     Content optimized to target those key phrases

4.     Link popularity

5.     Emerging trends

Search engine optimization is crucial to digital marketing because it allows you to constantly update and improve your site, driving new business. SEO will help you to figure out and improve how search engines view your site and how customers find your web site. There are, however two obstacles faced by search engines: technical problems that prevent the search engine spider from accessing content from your site and a competitive marketing environment where everyone wants to be highly ranked. This means that technical barriers must be removed and constantly monitored to ensure they do not prevent search engine spiders from accessing your site; this can be prevented by providing direct HTML links to the desired content.

 My Questions/Concerns:

1.     Are the search spiders only able to follow HTML? Or do they follow words and key phrases as well?

Concept 2: Keywords

Probably the most important aspect of our GOMC project is developing a list of potential keywords. Keywords are a word or words used by a searcher on a search engine. In other words, they are the words or phrases we type into the search bar in order to locate the content we are searching for. For example, if I am looking to search prices on couches, I might type “couches Pittsburgh” into the search bar, or “couches cheap”. It all depends on what type of information the user is looking to find and what words they associate with that information. Keywords are an important part of online marketing and search advertising because they are what will bring customers to your site. Careful research into keywords and search psychology is needed to achieve a successful keyword bank. Online marketers and advertisers must consider 4 things when developing a keyword list:

1.     Search volume

2.     Competition

3.     Propensity to convert

4.     Value per conversion

Here is where I see a potential problem when we are developing our own keyword lists for the GOMC. Many of our client’s competitors may be using the same key words. I would be interested to know how we can avoid that, or tactics used by search advertisers to get around that or use t to our advantage.

Skill: Utilizing Data Services

·       Google AdWords

·       Google AdSense

·       Google Analytics

·       Google Web Site Optimizer

·       Google Checkout

·       Google Toolbar

Search Engine data services are tools used my marketers, webmasters, etc. to collect data on the user. These tools can help gather data on clicks, impressions, time spent on a site, number of times a person views a site, how they get there, etc. These services, in my opinion are the most important skill I’ve learned this week. Without these services you will not be able to determine why users are not going to your site, or how to increase traffic to your site. Without them we would have no way of knowing even the simplest things such as how many user viewed the site. Data is absolutely necessary to improve the efficiency of our ad campaigns.  The problem for us as search advertisers in this class is being able to use them accurately and in a timely fashion to be able to implement changes to our campaigns. I am worried that I am spending too much time on keyword development and not enough on learning how to use Analytics.

What I Have Learned:

This past week I have learned a lot about AdWords. I have been in there constantly messing around, learning the controls and researching different functions. However, all of our campaigns are paused and I am not sure how everything is going to work once the campaigns actually begin. Has anyone done any research on this? I was going to look up some YouTube videos to see if there are any examples of what a running campaign will look like. I am also still confused on how to actually write keyword analysis. I’m hoping more research on that ill help. For the next two weeks I hope to learn more about our campaigns and maybe see some examples or more information about how all of this actually works. I am also looking forward to the group presentations as I think they provide a lot of good, condensed information that is oftentimes easier to understand than reading the literature.

Helpful Links:

http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35291?hl=en

BUS572-2

         BUS572-2       Web Analytic's and Conversion Optimization

Funnel Analysis explained:

http://webanalyticssimplified.blogspot.com/2010/04/funnel-analysis-for-online-business.html

Concept 1: Funnel Analysis

One of the most important concepts in eMarketing is understanding the goal of your website and how consumers/users will achieve that goal, as well as what process they will use. This is commonly referred to as funnel analysis, which is a defined path that visitors should take to reach the final objective. An example would be as follows:

                Event 1: Consumer does a search for shoes

                Event 2: consumer checks prices of different shoes

                Event 3: consumer chooses a shoe and proceeds to check out

                Event 4: enter personal/payment details and confirm order

                Creating and analyzing a funnel analysis will help you measure the success of the Web site or campaign and are crucial to maintaining focus within online activities. Understanding the goal of your website and how reaching those goals are separated into actions will help you to minimize problems in the conversion process.

                Although it is helpful to plan out a funnel analysis it is also helpful acknowledge that not all consumers are going to use your website in the way you intended. Although you as a nosiness owner or website developer may think your website/products are clearly defined and easy to access, a consumer might not think so. It is important to explore all aspects of how a website may be used.

Concept 2: Content Characterization

                Content characterization help characterize how visitors move through your Web site. For example, content characterization can tell you how visitors react to your content. Content characterization includes;

1.       Page exit ratio: Number of exits from a page divided by total number of page views of that page.

2.       Single-page visits: Visits that consist of one page

3.       Bounces (single page-view visits): Visits consisting of a single page view

4.       Bounce rate:  Single page-view visits divided by entry pages

http://catalog.flatworldknowledge.com/bookhub/reader/19?cid=#fwk-105454-ch14_s03

This is the one of the most important metrics to measure because it allows you to see if visitors left your web-site after viewing it or view another page on your web-site. If you are getting a large number of visitors who go to your site but then leave, then you can begin to troubleshoot as to why that is. Maybe your site isn’t visually attractive or they typed in a certain set of keywords hoping your site would match, but it didn’t.  I am interested to see the AdWords content characterization tool and what metrics it allows you to see.

Skill: A/B Split Testing

                “A/B split testing” measures one variable at a time to determine its effect on an outcome. An example of an A/B split test would be creating two different advertisement headings and seeing which one proves superior. This type of testing is useful because results can be interpreted to see if there is a statistically significant difference between the variables being tested. This is crucial during our campaigns because it will allow us to see which campaign is more successful and if we have to drop or change our strategy. The challenges to this method is the timing required to get accurate results. You will have to allow your campaigns to run for a specific amount for time before being able to test. For this project which is very short in duration it might not be an effective test to use.

http://www.emailloop.net/resourcecenter/ab-split-basics.html