Paid Search Fundamentals

Andrew Goodman,
Page-Zero Media
&
Mona Elesseily,
Page-Zero Media

Keyword Research Training

Only a few seats left!

Christine Churchill,
KeyRelevance

A search–engine friendly Web site is a user–friendly, search–friendly, and persuasive site that converts visitors into buyers.

In order for a site to be search–engine friendly, it must meet the terms and conditions set forth by the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, Ask, etc.) Additionally, the site must satisfy the needs of site visitors. Ultimately, the site must be profitable for the Web site owner. Can a single site satisfy all of these groups?

This presentation will how these skills are essential for building a user–friendly, search–friendly, and persuasive site that converts visitors into buyers.

Everyone who promotes Web sites as part of their work should attend these workshops! Web marketers should understand all parts of a search marketing campaign – optimization, shopping search, paid inclusion, and pay–per–click solutions.

For new and experienced marketers
Whether you are a new marketer or a seasoned veteran, our search engine marketing workshops will help you take your campaigns to the next level of effectiveness.

For new and experienced web designers
Minimize advertising expenses by creating search–friendly and cost–effective site designs. Learn how to avoid common pitfalls early in the design process.

Attendees come from many different industries, including:

• Web site designers and developers
• eCommerce
• Business development
• Web site usability
• Direct marketing
• Media buying
• Affiliates
• Public relations
• Web analysts
• Sales and marketing consultants
• Non–profit agencies
• Or any job that requires site development and promotion.

Many search engine marketing speakers are new to the industry or merely repeat information disseminated by more experienced professionals. Why learn search–friendly design from speakers who do not design for a living?

Learn from the leading industry expert on search–friendly and user–friendly interfaces in the field of search engine marketing industry.

• Build a Web site that satisfies your both site´s visitors AND the search engines
• Design dos and don´ts
• Successful Web site information architecture – learn what search engine marketers don´t know
• Avoid costly copywriting and design mistakes
• Link development research: tips and tools
• Learn proven techniques and strategies for long–term results

Understanding search engines
8:00 – 8:50 a.m.

• The major search engines and how they work
• Anatomy of search engine results pages (SERPs)
• Types of search engine marketing
• Questions and answers

Break
8:50 – 9:00 a.m.

Search engine optimization (SEO) process
9:00 – 9:50 p.m.

• Defining the full SEO process:
  • Keyword analysis
  • Site optimization
  • Submission
  • Monitoring – managing expectations
• Web positioning vs. Web analytics software
• Questions and answers

Break
9:50 – 10:00 a.m.

SEO Process – Site architecture and page design
10:00 am to 10:50 am

• Site architecture vs. page design (interface)
• Why architecture and design are important for search engine visibility
• Components of an optimized site:
  • Site navigation schemes
  • Other types of page links
  • Types of Web pages and how to optimize them
  • Web address
• Questions and answers

Break
10:50 – 11:00 a.m.

SEO Process – Link development
11:00 am to 11:50 am

• What is popularity?
• Why link development is important for search engine visibility
• Characteristics of effective link development
• Competitive link development strategies
• Submission guidelines
• Questions and answers

Shari Thurow is a sought–after speaker and trainer on the topics of search engine–friendly Web site design and Web site usability. A popular speaker at Search Engine Strategies, web site design, and online marketing conferences worldwide, Shari´s sessions are very popular and four–star rated.

Shari is the Webmaster and Marketing Director at Grantastic Designs. She has been designing and promoting Web sites since 1995, and is outsourced to many firms throughout the U.S. She has a 100% success rate for getting client sites ranked at the top of search engine and Web directory queries.

She is the author of Search Engine Visibility and a regular columnist for Clickz and SearchDay. Shari is currently a graduate student at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, specializing in human/computer interfaces for the Library and Information Sciences Department.

Grantastic Designs, Inc. has designed and successfully marketed Web sites for a wide variety of industries. Clients include Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, HSBC, National Cancer Institute, WebMD, Reader's Digest, and many other well–known brands.

In the US, 50 million people get news online on a typical day, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. In the UK, about 9 million people get news online on a typical day, according to Internet World Stats. And Yahoo! News and Google News are in the top 10 US news and media websites, while Yahoo! UK and Ireland News as well as Google News UK are also in the top 10 UK news and media websites, according to Hitwise.

When people on either side of the Atlantic conduct a news search, they often find recent and relevant press releases along with articles in the results. And press releases have leapfrogged over trade publications to become the top news source of knowledge workers in the US, according to Outsell.

That’s why your company’s SEO or PR professionals should be optimising press releases for the major news search engines.

This workshop is for managers and professionals in communications departments, SEO firms and PR agencies. Participants should bring a wireless laptop computer. The hands-on portion of the workshop will also be more valuable if each participant can submit a recent press release or a draft press release in advance.

After attending this half-day workshop, you will be able to measure the success of press release SEO by:

• Rank in major news search engines
• Press and blog mentions
• Page views of press releases and clicks on links.
• Rise in site traffic after launch
• Conversion to leads and sales.

In this workshop, you will learn how to optimize press releases, distribute them to news search engines, and measure your results.

Some of the best practices that will be covered in this workshop are used by The New York Times and BBC News. They were mentioned in a wry article by Steve Lohr in The New York Times on Sunday, April 9, 2006, ironically entitled, "This Boring Headline Is Written for Google."

Search engine experts told Lohr that news search engine algorithms "scan the title, headline and at least the first hundred words or so of news articles," so it "would be wise to do a little keyword research to determine the two or three most–searched words that relate to their subject – and then include them in the first few sentences."

So, during this workshop, you will learn how to:

• Conduct keyword research to find 2 to 3 relevant news search terms that your target audience is likely to use;
  
  
• Make sure your release actually includes your target terms – particularly in headline and first few sentences;
  
  
• Add hyperlinks intended to help people find interesting, related content, when applicable;
  
  
• Use press release distribution service crawled by Yahoo! News, AOL News and Google News; and
  
  
• Measure results of your campaign – whether your objective is to build brand awareness, increase web site traffic, generate sales leads, or sell products online.

Greg Jarboe is the president and co-founder of SEO-PR, a search engine optimization and public relations firm specializing in press release SEO.  Danny Sullivan has praised SEO-PR for “focusing on search as a public relations tool.”

SEO-PR’s clients include The Christian Science Monitor, Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), Southwest Airlines, SuperPages.com, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. SEO-PR has won the Golden Ruler Award from the Institute for Public Relations for “using new media and new techniques to tie public relations to sales.”

SEO-PR is also one of companies developing Newsforce, an integrated suite of press release SEO tools. Newsforce combines a keyword research tool, press release SEO tool, link building tool, and news search engine ranking report.

Greg Jarboe is a frequent speaker at Search Engine Strategies and a guest writer for Search Engine Watch. Mike Grehan’s E-Marketing-News named Greg to its “Search Marketing Dream Team.” And Gord Hotchkiss called Greg “the guru of cranking up Web visibility through effective optimization of press releases” in MediaPost’s Search Insider Blog.

Greg has more than 25 years of experience in public relations, marketing, and search engine optimisation at Lotus Development Corp., Ziff-Davis, and other companies. He graduated from the University of Michigan, attended the University of Edinburgh, and worked on his Masters at Lesley College. He lives in Acton, Massachusetts, is a former Chairman of the Acton Board of Selectmen, and won two New England Press Association awards as editor of The Acton Minute-Man.

Contact: Jamie.odonnell@seo-pr.com 415-643-8947

Many marketers say that nothing matches the control, measurability, and ROI they get from paid search marketing campaigns using programs such as Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing. Buying targeted clicks isn´t just the "next best thing" to attracting free "organic" search referrals to your website – many say it´s actually better!

If you count the parallel "content targeting" options available by enabling some settings in the same advertising interfaces, paid search now accounts for 50% of all online advertising spending. Developing expertise in this area is rapidly becoming a must for any serious online marketer

In this full day seminar, Andrew Goodman, author of winning Result with Google AdWords and Principal of Page Zero Media, and Mona Elesseily, Internet Marketing Strategist at Page Zero Media, will cover key principles that drive campaign results. In addition, attendees will be introduced to “hard problems” that can lead marketers to take “wrong turns.” Group exercises and live examples will allow us to customize the session to be a “working day” tailored to your company’s needs. (It’s also a lot of fun!)

Any company or organization needing to generate cost–effective leads or sales through their website, or anyone who advises companies on their web strategy or sales. Some familiarity with the user search experience, and an interest in measuring the results of marketing campaigns, is helpful. Those with existing paid search campaigns, especially those with campaigns recently launched or undergoing review, will be the most likely to benefit from this seminar. The topics denoted with asterisks (*) are considered "practicum" and will typically break from presentation format to show live examples; audience participation and questions are particularly welcome in these sections. To get into the spirit of the session, the instructor recommends consulting any of the following books ahead of time:

Winning Results with Google AdWords, Andrew Goodman

Survival is Not Enough; Purple Cow; Permission Marketing, Seth Godin

Good to Great, Jim Collins

When signing up, don´t hesitate to contact the instructor at agoodman [at] [his gmail address] with your quick take on which of the subtopics below is most important to you, as time will be short and the seminar is intended to focus on the needs of the group.

Fundamentals

1. Intro: Where Paid Search Fits in the Advertising Landscape
   • Understanding how much priority to place on paid search
   • We're Hedgehogs, Not Rock Stars, or why every tweak counts
   • Paid search ads to grow a business (not "to get rich")
   • Why CPC? How you pay for search & contextual ads is evolving
   • Meet the Group (What Are Your Challenges?)

2. The User Search Experience and How it Looks/Feels
   • Eye tracking studies: do you need to be in "premium" ad positions to attract clicks?
   • Where your ads show up, and why
   • The "scenarios" concept (Eisenbergs)

3. Planning, Forecasting, and Campaign Setup
   • What should I budget?
   • What CTR? Conversion Rate? ROI? Is reasonable?
   • Looking at key campaign settings: looking at budget settings, ad rotation, dayparting, geotargeting, and more

4. Writing Better Ads: Basic to Advanced
   • What elements of ads can be tested
   • How to test, how to interpret a test
   • Is it only about performance? (no, not 100%)
   • New ad formats: banners, video…

5. Bid Strategy
   • Bidding to ROI ∓ related metrics
   • Bidding to establish position
   • Competitive jockeying and bid management
   • Pitfalls of bid management and bid management tools
   • Dayparting: what it is, whether it´s for you

6. Keyword Resarch and the Long Tail of Search
   • Not all accounts warrant 20,000 keyphrases – which do?
   • Rationales for large keyword lists: a re–examination
   • Key concepts in keyword expansion
   • Guerrilla concepts in keyword expansion
   • Tools you can use

7. Special Topic: Trademark and Keyword Advertising
   
   BREAK
   
   
8. Different Business Models, Different Tactics: Case Studies (eg. Fast Moving Retail vs. High–Consideration B2B)

9. Measurement Issues – Tracking ROI, Choosing Analytics Software. Remember, there can be no absolute measure of ROI. So what can the primary uses of ROI–related metrics be for campaign management and improvement? In this part, we´ll discuss how to get your campaign set up properly from the start, including settling on key performance indicators, a tracking "regimen," and setting up analytics software. Some examples will be shown of live web analytics reports and what they can do to improve ROI.

10. Landing Page Testing, Site Architecture, and Conversion Rates. What´s a landing page? What is the best one to send visitors to? What are some common myths and best practices in improving conversion rates from a click to a sale? Don´t fill a leaky bucket. If you choose the wrong pages or send searchers to an unpersuasive site, quite simply, they will not buy or take desired actions. To avoid burning the budget, you may need to get back to the drawing board with your site (or at least key landing pages) before you begin buying traffic.

11. Advanced Trend: AdWords Quality Scores. Google´s new auction format is complex and may negatively impact some businesses more than others. Case examples and a broader explanation of trends in Google´s approach to relevancy.

12. Advanced Strategy: Search Engine Relations and the Search Engine Marketing Ecosystem. How do the leading search engine traffic vendors deal with small clients? Large clients? Competitors? Agencies?

13. Yahoo SM & MSN adCenter: Key Differences & Trends. Although time may be limited, a look at interesting features from the #2 and #3 paid search vendors is a must. Discussion of different tactics that may be required to succeed with these vendors.

14. Contextual Advertising: What Is It, How to Buy It, What to Avoid. A brief overview of contextual ad programs, and some settings that may help you control, measure, or opt out of this kind of traffic.

15. 2nd–Tier PPC Vendors: Miva, Kanoodle, Enhance, LookSmart; Niche PPC Vendors: Business.com, IndustryBrains, Quigo

16. Combating Click Fraud: A Balanced Perspective. Examining the main sources of click fraud and the leading tactics for discovering and documenting it, and seeking refunds.

17. Conclusion: Commonalities between Paid Search & SEO

If time: Campaign Clinic, further Q&A

Andrew Goodman is founder and principal of Toronto-based Page Zero Media, a marketing agency which focuses on maximizing clients’ results from paid search campaigns from the planning stage, through the first click, right through to purchase or lead. He is also co-founder of Traffick.com, an award-winning industry commentary site, and author of Winning Results with Google AdWords (McGraw-Hill, 2005). He speaks frequently on search marketing topics at events around the world and his paid search insights are often cited in the business press. Prior to embarking on the entrepreneurial path, Andrew earned an M.A. in Political Science at York University, Toronto, and honed his research and Kraft-Dinner-eating skills further by nearly completing a Ph.D. at the same institution. He no longer eats Kraft Dinner. His latest hobby is brick-and-mortar social networking – that is to say, meeting people face to face.

Mona Elesseily is Internet Marketing Strategist at Page Zero Media, focusing on paid search campaigns and conversion improvement. In her Internet marketing career she has achieved measurable campaign performance improvements for a diverse portfolio of large brands such as Capital One and Cathay Pacific as well as small retailers and high-tech B2B-enterprise niches. She is author of the world's only guide to Yahoo Search Marketing (a.k.a. Overture) the comprehensive Yahoo Search Marketing Handbook (currently working on a 2nd edition),available at page-zero.com. Mona is based in Vancouver , British Columbia. She holds a B.A. from Simon Fraser University and has been active in industry bodies such as the International Internet Marketing Association, and a speaker at Search Engine Strategies. She enjoys West Coast activities such as yoga and hiking.

Keyword Research Training

This program is intended for SEO/SEM consultants, site designers, developers, in-house search engine marketing specialists, Internet consulting professionals and entrepreneurs who want to make the most of the opportunity search engines offer. If you are serious about growing your business, we'll help you get there with this fast–paced training, emphasizing best practices in keyword research.

After attending this workshop, you will be able to:

• Perform a detailed analysis to identify and target the most popular keywords for your site and understand the difficulty of achieving top rankings for each search term.
• Obtain the most accurate information available on the popularity of your keywords and realize which keywords are most likely to convert to sales.
• Know which keywords you absolutely must include on your client's site.
• Choose the optimal keywords so that your PPC ads and organic optimization yield the best opportunities for quality traffic.
• Know where to place your keywords for maximum effect, and how to mix in additional search term modifiers that will let you leverage your targeted search terms for greater traffic.

1. Keyword Strategy Concepts
   1. Breadth
   2. Depth
   3. Targeting
   4. PPC vs. SEO

2. Keyword Research Tools
   1. Keyword Databases: Keyword Discovery & Wordtracker
   2. PPC Provider´ Suggestion Tools (Google, MSN, Yahoo)
   3. Competitive Research Tools
   4. Other Tools

3. Conceptual Keyword Research
   1. Customer research
   2. Seed lists & lateral research
   3. Brand, Product, Problem, Application

4. Competitive Research
   1. No More Secrets: Extracting competitors' keyword lists
   2. Identifying broad, phrase, & exact match bids
   3. Tracking competitors´ ads

5. Organizing & Managing Keyword Lists
   1. Improving Breadth
   2. Meaning Elements
   3. Synonyms
   4. Permutations
   5. How far should you go?

6. Analytics & Feedback Loops
   1. Selling Terms
   2. Negative Matches
   3. Creating synergy with SEO & PPC
   4. Tying conversion to keywords
   5. Closing the loop on conversion

Christine Churchill, the President of KeyRelevance, is a recognized expert in the field of Search Engine Marketing. She is a strong advocate for ethical search engine marketing, and was a member of the founding Board of Directors of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO).

Christine serves as the Associate Editor for e-marketing-news with Mike Grehan and is the Chairman of the Dallas-Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association (DFWSEM). Ms. Churchill holds a Masters Degree in Business and has over 15 years marketing experience.

Christine is a regular speaker at Search Engine Strategies, Webmaster World Publishers Conference, High Rankings Seminars, Internet World, and other Internet conferences. In addition, she has written widely on search engine marketing for publications including SearchDay, MarketPosition, Workz, SitePoint, SearchEngineGuide, and NetMechanic, and has taught SEO classes through the International Association of Webmasters.

Prior to founding KeyRelevance, Christine was the Director of Web Development at NetMechanic. In this role she was the subject matter expert for NetMechanic's Search Engine Power Pack and HTML Toolbox, the best-selling toolkit used by many search engine optimizers.

As the Search Engine Optimizer for the NetMechanic site, Christine consistently doubled search engine traffic to the site every 6-9 months. As Editor of the NetMechanic Webmaster Tips Newsletter, Christine increased the subscriber base from 20,000 to 100,000 happy subscribers.

In addition to running KeyRelevance.com, Christine is the Search Engine Friendly Design and Usability Moderator and the Pay Per Click Moderator on the High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum with Jill Whalen.