• Include your key phrases in the text and/or title of your ppc ads
  By doing so, your readers will see the phrase they have typed in and, therefore, appreciate the relevance to their search terms.  In a study, Yahoo! found that listings that include the search term in both the title and description have a higher click through rate (more than 50 per cent higher on average).

• Write clearly and simply
  Simple language and short, non-repetitive sentences work best within search engine marketing campaigns.

• Reveal the attractive aspects of your offering
  What is it?  What are the benefits? Why is it better?  Give the searcher a reason why they should click through to your site by telling them what they will achieve by visiting.  Possibly even offer an incentive for them to click through. 

• Be objective and informative
  There is no place for hype within search engine marketing.  While you want your ppc ad to stand out from the rest, you need to ensure you are giving the user what they want.

• Avoid superlatives
  Greatest, Biggest, Best etc.

• Use attention-grabbing words
  Free, New, Win, Offer etc are fine for search engine marketing if they are not misleading.

• Be descriptive
  Making sure the readers know exactly ‘what’s inside the packet’.  Again, in the limited characters that are available, show the user what they will find when they visit your site.

• Use a clear call-to-action
  So your readers know what to do and why.
• Make every word count
  Space is very limited so you should spend time honing your ppc ads.

• Target your ads to the phrase
  Where possible try to write different ppc ads for each phrase to make the search engine marketing listings as relevant and targeted as possible.  This also gives you the chance to trial different types of listings to see what works and what doesn’t.

• Direct the searcher to the relevant page
  The landing pages within your search engine marketing campaigns should be relevant to the search phrase. Only send them to the home page if there is a suitable reason as to why they should go there.

In the next Search Engine Marketing post, we’ll cover Deploying your campaigns …

When planning a search engine marketing / pay per click campaign, the first step is to choose the key phrases that you want your ppc ads to appear for.  These are the phrases that, when searched for, will lead people to your listings and your pages.

There are a few tools that can assist your search engine marketing key phrase selection. They include:

• Yahoo! Search Marketing Keyword Assistant
• Miva Keyword Generator
• Google’s Keyword Tools
• Wordtracker

Search Engine Marketing -  Campaign planning

Campaign planning is the next stage of your search engine marketing / pay per click activity. This involves taking your final list of key phrases and using the providers’ tools to calculate the amount of traffic you could expect from running the phrases and at what cost.

Search Engine Marketing Creatives – writing your pay per click ads

When creating your PPC ads the challenge is to:

• Create an ad which generates responses.
• Create an ad which generates as many quality responses as possible.
• Create an ad which generates as many quality responses as possible and as few untargeted responses as possible.

There are a few elements you have to take into consideration when creating your titles and descriptions in order to achieve the above.

The first consideration is character length. Each of the providers has character restrictions which must be adhered to.  They are as follows:

The search engine marketing / pay per click providers also have guidelines regarding the content of ppc ads. They include:

• There must be substantial content on the site that is clearly and obviously relevant to the search term.
• Must include the search term in your title and description (this does not apply to Google).
• Must not use superlatives (e.g. World’s Greatest, Biggest or Best) in your title and description.
• Must not contain universal call-to-action phrases such as ‘click here’, ‘link here’ or ‘visit this link’ (Google only).
• Must not use exclamation points or unnecessary capitalisation (Google will accept one exclamation point in the description).
• Must not use symbols; e.g, & and £)(this does not apply to Google).
• Must not use repetition.
• Must have a functional URL.

In the next Search Engine Marketing post, we’ll cover Creative Top Tips …

This most recent MediaComment (internet marketing newsletter) is now online at:

http://www.media.co.uk/newsletter/270406/index.htm

Next, we thought we’d cover an introduction to search engine marketing and pay per click advertising.

Natural and sponsored listings

The natural (also known as ‘organic’) listings are those which appear within the main area of the search engine results pages (SERPs) and sponsored listings tend to be placed across the top and within the right-hand column.

Some 70 per cent of clicks-throughs are generated by way of the natural search engine listings.

Good positioning within them is primarily gained through:

• Optimised content (textual content enhanced through search engine optimisation to emphasise its relevance to targeted search phrases).
• On-topic page titles.
• Search engine accessibility (how easy it is for a search engine to “read” your pages).
• Inbound links (from relevant, third-party sites).

Search Engine Marketing

The term search engine marketing generally refers to Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.

As well as often appearing under a ‘Sponsored Links’ header, they also appear in the web search results that are presented by pay per click providers’ partner sites and within shopping-style business directories.

Leading pay per click providers include Google (AdWords), Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture) and Miva (formerly Espotting).

How search engine marketing (aka PPC) works is:

• You choose relevant keywords and phrases which you wish to match to your ppc ads (so the appropriate ads appear when your words or phrases are entered as a search phrase).
• You create your own ads (titles and descriptions).
• You place bids against your keywords and phrases (how much you’re prepared to pay per click).
• The higher your bid, the higher your ppc ad will appear in the results.
• Each time someone clicks, you incur your bid cost.

In the next Search Engine Marketing post, we’ll cover key phrase selection …

In a further bid to deliver relevant results, search engines also consider various off-the-page factors. They include:

• Inward and outbound links.
• Click-through measurement.

The click-through measurement is the assessment of what pages are selected from the results of a particular search.  If some high-ranking pages aren’t frequently attracting clicks, they may be dropped in favour of others that do attract clicks.

This will be beyond your control other than by being influenced by your choice of Title Tag content (what the user sees within the link at the top of your listing) during the search engine optimisation of your content.

However, during your search engine optimisation activity, you may be able to influence the inbound and outbound links - what sites are being linked to or from (in terms of quality and relevance) and the text used within those links (meaningful and usefully descriptive content).

This is, currently, particularly important of Google which uses links as part of its PageRank assessment (the system is uses for ranking web pages).

From Google:

‘PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value.

‘In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyses the page that casts the vote.

‘Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.’

However, while off-the-page factors may always have influence as the search engine sands shift (try saying that quickly!), the true and focused content of your web site will win through (if you’ve also used search engine optimisation techniques).

That is, as long as relevancy matters more than payment for position.

If you venture deeper into search engine optimisation territory, you will encounter commentary about keyword density, relevance, stemming and so on. And, by then, you will most probably either retreat back to your writing zone or plunge on into the inner depths of search engine optimisation.

Either way, you will realise what matters most in the search engine optimisation realm is the relevance of your content. And, if it’s not relevant (to readers or searchers), it simply isn’t working in any case!

And, for those who may suggest the contents of Keyword and Description Tags are like search engine optimisation magic bullets, stop! This, at the moment, is simply not the case. I say again, it’s the visible words that matter most.

PS: To find out more about search engines and optimisation, a good place to start is Search Engine Watch:

http://searchenginewatch.com/

ALT TEXT

< IMG SRC=" imagename.gif" WIDTH=" 000" HEIGHT=" 000" BORDER=" 0" ALT=” The Guide to Writing & Editing Online” >

Alternative text is inserted in the code of pages to describe image content.  You can liken it to a caption the browser displays when the reader does not want to or cannot see the pictures presented in a web page. It also appears as a label when a mouse is rolled over an image on a web page.

Since many search engines consider alternative text when indexing pages, using alt text containing relevant key phrases during search engine optimisation can improve the search engine ranking of the page for those words.

Of course, you will only be able to influence this if you know what images are going to be used with your copy.

< SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION NOTE >

Alt Text is also important from an accessibility perspective. This is because computers cannot interpret images and present them in a meaningful, alternative format.

Alternative text, therefore, gives the computer something to present to the user. This is important for users who have turned off image-loading in their web browsers, those using text-based browsers, and people who are blind and require the use of a screen reader to read the contents of the screen.

More information on accessibility can be found within the website of The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at:

http://www.w3.org/

You can also use Bobby™, a comprehensive web accessibility software tool designed to help expose and repair barriers to accessibility and encourage compliance with existing accessibility guidelines:
http://bobby.watchfire.com/

< / SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION NOTE >

In the next Search Engine Optimisation post, we’ll cover Off-the-page factors …

Over the next few days, we also aim to include:

• Deeper search engine optimisation.
• Off-the-page factors.
• Search engine marketing (pay per click).
• Key phrase selection.
• Pay per click creatives.
• Deploying search engine marketing campaigns.

 The Title Tag and Meta Tags are HTML tags giving information about a web page. During the search engine optimisation process, they are inserted within the code. The content of the Title Tag is what you see at the top of your browser.

The two meta tags that some search engines read are the meta keywords tag and the meta description tag.

Visitors don’t see these tags unless they view the source code of the page.

TITLE TAG

< TITLE> Search Engine Optimisation – blog from MediaCo< /TITLE>

Try to use up to 10 words but, if necessary, use up to 15. NB: the first 60 characters (including punctuation and spaces) are the most crucial from a search engine optimisation perspective.

Not only does the Title Tag appear at the top of the web pages, it’s the link people see in search results. For example:

Content Is King - Copywriting and Editing Online - book by David Mill
Content Is King. Writing and Editing Online. The Guide Book for Marketers, Copywriters and Editors. By David Mill.

http://www.writingediting.co.uk

So, well-written Title Tags will result in more clicks.

< SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION NOTE >

The Title Tag is a key influencer of search engine positioning. Therefore, it should be varied on each page to reflect the specific content it heads.

< / SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION NOTE >

DESCRIPTION TAG

(Important to use as the content can be presented as the summary of your page within some search engine results).

< META name=" description" content=" Writing & Editing Online. Guide for Marketers, Copywriters & Editors. Includes copywriting, sub-editing, websites, email, search engines, ezines, newsletters, online ads, banners, pay per click ads …" >

When conducting your search engine optimisation activity, the description tag should include targeted search phrases but keep the important keywords at the beginning and try not to use more than 200 characters (including punctuation and spaces).

KEYWORDS TAG

(Less important at this moment in time as most often ignored by the major search engines).

< META name=" keywords" content=" writing and editing online, guide,book, writing, editing, online, internet, marketer, copywriting, sub-editing, editor, websites, website, email, search engines, ezines, newsletters, ezine, newsletter, online ads, banners, pay per click ads, business to business, business to consumer, david mill, advertisement, banner" >

During search engine optimisation, use the most important key phrases first and use each keyword no more than three times, include plurals.

The keywords tag should be less than 1000 characters (including punctuation and spacing) although no gain will be achieved if a keyword or phrase is not also used within the body text of the page.

In the next Search Engine Optimisation post, we’ll cover Deeper search engine optimisation …

As we know, online readers tend to initially skim text rather than read every word so sub-headings and emphasis draw them to key areas or important content.

And, guess what, it’s effective when deploying search engine optimisation, too. The search engines assume more importance is being placed on phrases in bold and within headings (which a web developer will appropriately tag e.g. < H3> Search Engine Optimisation Heading here < /H3> ) and phrases used in this way will help boost positioning if they match users’ searches.

Another way to make effective use of your targeted search phrases during search engine optimisation - while also assisting (those skimming) readers - is to include them within bullet lists. For example:

MediaCo’s online marketing services include:

• Search Engine Marketing;
• Search Engine Optimisation;
• Email Marketing;
• Strategic Link Building;
• Website copywriting; and
• Viral [buzz] marketing.

But, beware, when conducting search engine optimisation, do not try to stuff every possible search phrase into one piece of copy or a single page. The shotgun approach to search engine optimisation just does not work.

From a search engine perspective, this would simply dilute the weight of the individual phrases and it’s most likely to appear clumsy to your readers.

Rather, during search engine optimisation, organise your content logically with, ideally, each page being focused on a single topic and split material into separate pages or sections.

This will assist your readers and allow the correct emphasis to be placed on targeted phrases – best practice is three to five targeted phrases per page.

Also, don’t be tempted to be over repetitive during search engine optimisation simply in an attempt to shovel your key phrases into short or early copy.

For example, I doubt if you would be comfortable reading or writing this:

Writing and Editing Online is about effective writing and editing for online. This guide on editing and writing online is an essential resource for anyone wishing to improve their writing and editing online. Writing and editing online – the guide.

Google-eyed? Unfortunately, this misguided ‘shuffle the words’ approach to search engine optimisation is adopted by some who have no respect for written words or the people likely to read them.

A craftsperson will achieve better results by weaving the words much more effectively as part of the search engine optimisation process.

In the next Search Engine Optimisation post, we’ll cover Title and Meta Tags  …

Just to get started, we’re going to kick off this blog with an introduction to Search Engine Optimisation (modified from the book “Content is King – Writing and Editing Online”, authored by MediaCo’s David Mill).

There is much talk about search engine algorithms (the closely-guarded “recipes” that search engines use to decide how to rank the results of a given search).

However, the CRITICAL element is not PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + … + PR(Tn)/C(Tn)) …

… it’s the written word – yahoo, say all of us!

Yes, folks, it’s our writing that makes the difference from a search engine optimisation perspective. And, although a specialist search engine optimiser will add to and modify our works, we can minimise these adjustments while, at the same time, actually making our copy better for readers.

This series of posts will take you through the key rules that apply to the main search engines and search engine optimisation.

Search Engine Optimisation – body text

Search engines just love the words we weave within the body text of web pages and nothing has a stronger influence on positioning.

From a search engine optimisation perspective, an ideal target is some 300-500 words per page and keyword phrases (those word combinations most likely to be used by people searching for the kind of information you are publishing) used consistently throughout your body text will boost rankings.

And it’s the initial material (the lead statement - the first two-to-three paragraphs and especially the first 150-250 characters) which is most important.

Of course, if those relevant phrases are important for search engine optimisation, they must be important for readers, too. So where else should they be than near the beginning?

In addition, as with good content practice in general, when possible the targeted key phrases should appear at the start or near the start of paragraphs.

< SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION TIP >

Target phrases, not single words

Please note, your search engine optimisation emphasis should be placed on phrases, not single words.

For example, if you searched on Google for ‘marketing’, you would be presented with millions of results covering a wide range of marketing-related information sources. But if you were really looking for ‘internet marketing’, you would be presented with less sites and ones more likely to be relevant to you.

And you might refine further with ‘uk internet marketing’.

That’s what all searchers do and what we should bear in mind when conducting search engine optimisation.

< / SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION TIP >

And, on many fronts, good practice for search engine optimisation is good practice for readers, too. For example, how often have you seen links like:

• Click here for information about MediaCo’s services.

Hello, what kind of services?

Better would be something like:

• Search Engine Optimisation services provided by MediaCo – useful information.

And, yes, when it comes to links, many search engines consider the text in and around hyperlinks to be more important which is why I’ve presented the key words in the above sentence as the hyperlink.

In the next Search Engine Optimisation post, we’ll cover Sub-Headings and Emphasis …