Search Engine Marketing Optimization Part I

Search engine marketing (SEM) is the process of using natural search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to increase the visibility of your website. To convert your newfound browsers into buyers and make the most of your advertising budget, SEM also includes conversion rate optimization (CRO). The chapters that follow will show you the best (and worst) practices for each of these topics, complete with case studies showing the techniques in action. First, let's explore how people behave when using search engines.

Search Behavior

This introduction to Part I summarizes key research showing how users interact with search engines. Users are very selective in their viewing of search engine results pages and spend little time browsing each page of results. So your headlines (titles and PPC headlines) and summaries must be written with short attention spans in mind.

The two page introduction goes on to show SERP viewing statistics, a graph of view and arrival time versus search position, and the duration of views for natural and PPC results in various positions. The outline of the introduction follows:

Footnotes

Jansen, B., A. Spink, and S. Koshman. 2007. "Web Searcher Interaction with the Dogpile.com Metasearch Engine."
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 58 (5): 744-755.
Ibid, 750.
Found that 69.1% viewed the first SERP and 85.7% the second. Seventy-four percent is the average of 69.1% and Beitzel's 79%; 89.8% who viewed up to the second SERP is the average of 85.7% and Beitzel's 94%. Note that results are based on an analysis of Dogpile.com and AOL.com search logs.
Beitzel, S. et al. 2006. "Temporal Analysis of a Very Large Topically Categorized Web Query Log."
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 58 (2): 166-178. Found that 79% viewed until the first SERP and 94% the second. Beitzel analyzed the query logfiles of AOL.com for this study.
Cutrell, E., and Z. Guan. "What Are You Looking For? An Eye-Tracking Study of Information Usage in Web Search."
In CHI 2007 (San Jose, CA: April 28-May 3, 2007), 407-416; http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1240624. 1240690.
Jansen, B. 2007. "The comparative effectiveness of sponsored and nonsponsored links for Web e-commerce queries."
ACM Transactions on the Web 1 (1): 25 pages. Analyzed search queries from Yahoo!, Google, and MSN.
Gisbergen, M.S. et al. 2006. "Visual attention to Online Search Engine Results."
Checkit, http://www.checkit.nl/ pdf/eyetracking_research.pdf (accessed February 24, 2008). Eye-tracked Google, MSN, Ilse, Kobala, and Lycos.

Chapters in Part I: SEM Optimization

The chapters in this half of the book deal with search engine marketing which includes natural search engine optimization, pay per click optimization, conversion rate optimization, and includes two case studies.

« Table of Contents | Search Engine Marketing Optimization | Natural Search Engine Optimization »