DIGITAL MARKETING EDUCATION SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING

In the late 1990s, digital marketing debuted to great fanfare, but it was still fundamentally about advertising to customers. However, in the past several years, new social and search engine marketing tools have upended that paradigm. “None of the universities are teaching SEO,” says George Fisher of Response Mine Interactive and Stacey Williams of Prominent Places.  That’s exactly why Adam Lahaie, digital marketing professional, saw a need to create the Digital Marketing Education Series as an educational lecture series provided to students of the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia.

This specific series lecture focused on covering the basics of SEO and Search Engine Marketing.  Did you know that 3,000,000 searches are completed every day?  In fact, commerce from consumer interest has been the business model for Google.  96% of Google’s revenue comes from Google Adwords.  The SERP, or Search engine results page is broken down into 20% on paid advertising, 75% on organic search, and the rest on CTR (Click Through Rate).  Search queries direct users to keywords, on-site, reporting, and off-site.  Types of terms include long-tail terms, torso terms, head terms, and brand terms.  Match types for keywords include phrase and broad.

Each keyword search directs a user to a website based on content, technical issues, and crawlability.  The user will find the title, URL, description, call-to-action, site links, and site architecture appear for what they search for.  In order to increase traffic to your website, you must have PageRank-authority and trust.  By understanding your match types, having relevant landing pages and using site links, you can increase your click-through rates.  Finally, you need to be proactive by using link building tactics such as guest blog posts, directories/forums, blog comments, RSS Feeds, article promotion, and syndication.  

Research publications include seomoz.org, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Journal, AiMA, and SEMPO.  The progression of someone looking to make a career in the SEO Industry is as follows: SEO Coordinator–>SEO Manager–>SEO Supervisor–>SEO Director–>Vice President.  One can also obtain a Google AdWords Certification to understand basic SEO principles.

Understanding SEO VS. PPC

• 70-80% of search is organic VS. 20-30% search
• limited # of keywords VS Unlimited # of keywords
• Slow build VS. Quick build
• Limited control of ranking/placement VS. More Control of ranking/placement
• geotargeting tricks VS. lack of tricks
• Clicks are free VS. money

Understanding the SEMPO eCommerce takes on different roles depending on your market.  In a business to consumer market, you can expect to see immediate sales, accrue fewer expenses, and better find people who are making impulse buys.  In a business to business market,  there is a long sales cycle, expensive or complicated producers, and services, and prospecting data for lead nurturing.

Google Display Network image here

The Google display network is imperative for you to understanding SEO.  In the presentation, I jotted down the key concepts that any search engine marketer should understand:

• • contextual targeting

• • placement targeting

• • remarketing

• • interest categories

• • topic targeting

• • geographic and language targeting

• • Facebook PPC

• • Cost-per-click

• KPI-Key Performance Indicators

Finally, claim pages such as Bing and City Search are now being used.  Remember the old days of tracking phone numbers?  Those days are over.  People are actively participating more in customer reviews online and searching for them in Yelp, YellowPages, and CityGrid.  Lastly, it is important to understand Geo-modified and Geo-targeted keywords.  Check out Google Adwords Certification program for more information on how to master the fundamentals of SEO.