Discuss Customer Relationship Management and Search Engine Optimization

Understanding SEO 

Search engines need to help users find what they’re looking for. To make sure they list the best results first, they look for certain signals:

· popularity

· authority

· relevance

· trust

· importance

Search engine optimization (SEO), also called organic or natural optimization, involves optimizing websites to achieve high rankings on search engines for certain selected key phrases. Generally, techniques used for optimizing on one search engine will also help efforts directed at others.

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 analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” (Google, n.d.-a).

SEO can be divided into two main strategies:

· On-page optimization is achieved by making changes to the HTML code, content and structure of a website, making it more accessible for search engines, and by extension, easier for users to find.

· Off-page optimization is generally focused on building links to the website, and covers activities like social media and digital PR.

SEO is an extremely effective way of generating new business to a site. It is a continuous process and a way of thinking about how search engines see your website and how users use search engines to find your website. It’s search psychology.

Search engine optimization is a fairly technical practice but it can easily be broken down into five main areas:

· a search engine–friendly website structure

· a well-researched list of key phrases

· content optimized to target those key phrases

· link popularity

· user insights

Search Engine–Friendly Website Structure

Search engines encounter two kinds of obstacles:

· Technical challenges that prevent the search engine spider from accessing content.

· A competitive marketing environment where everyone wants to rank highly.

To ensure that search engines can access your content, you must remove technical barriers. Those who want to achieve the best results must follow best practices.

The key is to make sure that there are direct HTML links to each page you want the search engines to index. The most important pages should be accessible directly from the home page of your website.

The information architecture, or how content is planned and laid out, has important usability and SEO implications. Users want to find what they are looking for quickly and easily, while website owners want search engine spiders to be able to access and index all applicable pages. In fact, Google has released an update that penalizes sites with poor user experience (such as no content above the fold, or a high bounce rate) (Cutts, 2012).

There are times when user experience and SEO can be at odds with each other, but usually if you focus on building usable, accessible websites, you have made them search engine friendly as well.

Another technical challenge to search engines is Flash. For the most part, search engines struggle to crawl and index Flash sites. There are some workarounds, but the best approach from an SEO perspective is to avoid building sites or delivering key content in Flash. Instead, use HTML5, which provides similar interactivity and visuals while remaining easily crawlable. The chapter on web development and design delves more deeply into building a search engine friendly  website.

SEO and Key Phrases 

How do you start building your key phrase list? It requires a little thought and a fair amount of research and insight, using tools that are readily available to help you grow and refine your list of keywords.

Key phrases are the very foundation of search. When a user enters a query on a search engine, he or she uses the words he or she thinks are relevant to the search. The search engine then returns those pages it believes are most relevant to the words the searcher used, and, increasingly, the implied meaning of the search.

Search engines have built a sophisticated understanding of semantics and the way in which we use language. So, if a user searches for car rental, the search engine will look for pages that are relevant to car rental as well as, possibly, car hire, vehicle hire, and so forth. Search engines have also built up knowledge around common misspellings, synonyms, and related searches.

Google delivers search results for logical synonyms.

Because of these practices, it is crucial that you implement keywords that are likely to be used by their target audience. Websites need to appear when their potential customers are searching for them. A large part of keyword research is understanding search psychology. When we build our key phrase lists, we are tapping into the mental process of searchers and putting together the right mix of keywords to target.

There are four criteria to consider when choosing a keyword:

· search volume—How many searchers are using that phrase to find what they want? For example, there is an estimated monthly search volume of over 338 million for the keyword hotel, but an estimated 6,600 searches per month for a key phrase such as Cape Town Waterfront hotel.

· competition—How many other websites out there are targeting that same phrase? For example, Google finds over 2.8 trillion results for hotel, but only 3.2 million for Cape Town Waterfront Hotel.

· propensity to convert—What is the likelihood that the searcher using that key phrase is going to convert on your site? A conversion is a desired action taken by the visitor to your website. Related to propensity to convert is the relevance of the selected term to what you are offering. If you are selling rooms at a hotel at the V&A Waterfront, which of the two terms (hotel or Cape Town Waterfront hotel) do you think will lead to a higher rate of conversions?

· value per lead—What is the average value per prospect attracted by the keyword? Depending on the nature of your website, the average value per lead varies. Using the hotel example again, consider these two terms: luxury Cape Town hotel and budget Cape Town hotel. Both are terms used by someone wanting to book a hotel in Cape Town, but it is likely that someone looking for a luxury hotel is intending to spend more. That means that that particular lead has a higher value, particularly if you have a hotel-booking website that offers a range of accommodation.

The AdWords Keyword Planner shows the volume of global and local monthly searches.

Step-By-Step Key Phrase Research 

Step 1: Brainstorm 

Think about the words you would use to describe your business and about the questions or needs of your customers that it fulfills. How would someone ask for what you are offering? Consider synonyms and misspellings as well.

Bear in mind that people may not ask for your services in the same way as you describe them. You may sell herbal infusions, whereas most people would ask for herbal teas.

Even common words are often misspelled, and you may need to consider common misspellings, for example, jewelry or morgage.

Google returns relevant results even for common misspellings.

Step 2: Gather Data 

Two ways in which to gather accurate key phrase data are to survey customers and to look at your website referral logs.

Look to see what terms customers are already using to find you, and add those to your list. If they are already sending you some traffic, it is worth seeing if you can increase that traffic.

Step 3: Use Keyword Research Tools 

There are several tools available for keyword discovery, and some of them are free. Some tools will scan your website and suggest keywords based on your current content. Most will let you enter keywords and will then return suggestions based on past research data, along with the following details:

· similar keywords

· common keywords used with that keyword

· common misspellings

· frequency of the keywords in search queries

· industry-related keywords

· keywords that are sending traffic to your competitors

· how many sites are targeting your keywords

See the section, Tools of the Trade below for some tools that you can use.

Bearing in mind the factors that make a good keyword, you need to aim for the right mix of keywords. Low-volume terms with low levels of competition may be a good way to get traffic in the short term, but don’t be scared off by bigger competition in the high-value, high-volume areas. It may take longer to get there, but once you do, the revenue can make it all worthwhile.

It is a good idea to create a spreadsheet of the list of keywords, along with additional information about each one, as in the example below. This will help you to choose the right keywords to target. These lists should be created for the whole website, and can then be broken down for each page you want to optimize.

Optimizing Content for Key Phrases 

Once keywords and phrases are selected, we need to ensure the site contains content to target them. You must ensure that the content is properly structured and that it sends signals of relevance. Content is the most important part of your website: create relevant, targeted content aimed at your selected key phrases.

As you know from the content strategy chapter, content already has several roles to play on your site:

· It must provide information to visitors.

· It must engage with them.

· It must persuade them to do what you want.

Now it must also send signals of relevance to search engines. You need to use the keywords on the content page in a way that search engines will pick up, and users will understand.

Each web page should be optimized for two to three key phrases: the primary key phrase, the secondary, and the tertiary. A page can be optimized for up to five key phrases, but it is better to have more niche pages than fewer unfocused pages.

Here are some guidelines:

· title tag—Use the key phrase in the title and as close to the beginning as possible.

· H1 header tag—Use the key phrase in the header tag, and as much as possible in the other H tags.

· body content—Use the key phrase at least three times, more if there is a lot of content and it makes sense to. You should aim for about 350 words of content. But don’t overdo it! That could look like spam to the search engines.

· bold—Use <strong> tags around the keyword at least once.

· URL—Try to use the key phrase in your page URL.

· meta description—Use it at least once in the meta description of the page, which should entice users to click through to your site from the search engine results page (SERP).

· link anchor text—Try to ensure that the keyword is used in the anchor text of the pages linking to you.

· domain name—If possible, use the key phrase in your domain name.

Optimizing Media 

Images, video, and other digital assets should also be optimized with the relevant keywords. Search engines cannot decipher multimedia content as well as text, so they rely on the way that media is described to determine what it is about. Screen readers also read out these descriptions, which can help visually impaired users make sense of a website. In addition, media such as images and video are often also shown on the SERPs. Proper optimization can give a brand more ownership of the SERP real estate, and can also be used effectively to target competitive terms.

Just as rich media can help emphasize the content on a page to a visitor, they can also help search engines rank pages, provided they are labelled correctly. Here are some ways to optimize images with key phrases for SEO:

· Use descriptive, keyword-filled filenames.

· Use specific alt tags and title attributes.

· Add meta information to the image. Make sure this information is relevant.

· Use descriptive captions, and keep relevant copy close to the corresponding media. For example, an image caption and neighboring text will help to describe content of the image.

· Make sure that the header tags and images are relevant to each other.

Also think about what other digital assets you have, and whether these can be optimized in line with your key phrase strategy. For example, consider app store optimization (ASO), the process of optimizing your mobile and web apps for the specific web stores they are distributed in.

Here are some ways you can optimize your apps:

· Give your app a catchy name that also includes your most important keyword or phrase.

· Include a distinctive, recognisable, and clear icon.

· Spell out the features and benefits clearly, including key phrases where possible.

· In your app store listing, add links to your major social media platforms and your website, and don’t forget to link the other way too!

· Include as much metadata as you can, including tags, categories, and descriptions (this will depend on the app store in question) (Bulygin, 2013).

The best way to ensure results is to focus on writing quality content while sticking to a few guidelines on tags and URLs. Remember, you want search engines to rank you highly for your content, but you also want to ensure that the content is a pleasure to read.

Regularly adding fresh, valuable content will also encourage the search engines to crawl your site more frequently.

Use your website and its pages to establish and reinforce themes. Information can always be arranged in some kind of hierarchical structure. Just as a single page can have a heading and then get broken down into subheadings, a large website can have main themes that get broken down into subthemes. Search engines will see these themes and recognize your website as one with rich content.

What Not to Do 

Black-hat SEO refers to practices that attempt to game the search engines. If a search engine uncovers a website using unethical practices to achieve search engine rankings, it is likely to remove that website from its index.

Google publishes guidelines for webmasters and outlines best practice principles. Google (n.d.-b) has supplied the following list of don’ts:

· Avoid hidden text or hidden links.

· Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.

· Don’t send automated queries to Google.

· Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.

· Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicated content.

· Don’t create pages that include malicious behaviors such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other malware.

· Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines or other “cookie cutter” approaches, such as affiliate programs with little or no original content. If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

· Avoid link farms and focus on attracting quality, valuable links.

The bottom line: design websites for users first and foremost, and don’t try to trick the search engines. It will only be a matter of time before they uncover the black hat techniques.

Tools of the Trade 

There are a number of tools available to assist with SEO. Some are made available by search engines, and some are developed by agencies and individuals who specialise in SEO. Most are available for free.

· Google Webmaster Tools—Google provides guidelines to webmasters, and tools to help ensure your website is being indexed.

· Open Site Explorer—Moz provides a useful tool called Open Site Explorer, which can help you determine the value of links from particular sites.

· Tools from SEOBook—SEOBook provides a number of tools that assist any SEO. For example, Rank Checker is a Firefox extension that allows you to save a number of keywords and to perform regular searches on them, giving you the ranking of your chosen URL for each keyword in the search engines selected. They also have tools to help with keyword discovery.

There are also a number of tools available, some free and some paid for, to assist with keyword discovery:

· Google AdWords Keyword Planner

· Trellian’s Keyword Discovery Tool

· Wordtracker

· Wordtracker Keyword Questions

· Microsoft Advertising Intelligence

· SEO PowerSuite Rank Tracker (the trial version has limited functionality)

· Online forums—Webmaster World is frequented by SEOs and webmasters aiming to stay current with latest trends and search engine updates.

· Google Merchant Center—The Google Merchant Center allows you to mark up any products you sell through eCommerce, ensuring that they also rank for relevant search results.

· SearchStatus—SearchStatus allows you to see a given website’s Alexa and PageRank rankings.

Benefits and Challenges 

Optimizing a website for search engines should entail optimizing the website for users. Done properly, it should result in a better user experience, while ensuring that search engines index and rank the website well.

However, it can be tempting to focus on the technicalities of SEO while forgetting that both robots and humans need to read the same website. One should not be sacrificed for the other.

Search engines update their algorithms regularly. Each update is an attempt to improve search results, but can result in loss of rankings for some websites, depending on the update. A contingency plan, such as a prepared search advertising campaign, needs to be in place to cope with a sudden drop in rankings.

As with any digital marketing practice, SEO should not be the only focus of digital marketing efforts. It works best when part of a holistic online marketing strategy.

The Bigger Picture 

Search engine optimization can be influenced and enhanced by most other digital marketing campaigns, and they should all be approached with this in mind.

SEO and content marketing go hand in hand, since SEO relies on fresh, relevant and popular content, and content marketing can be informed by SEO key phrases and insights.

For example, search advertising campaigns can provide valuable keyword research, which can then be fed into the SEO strategy. Social media marketing can generate an enormous amount of links to a website. Digital PR aims to generate links too, and these can be optimized for search engines.

User research and web analytics can generate insights into how users find the website, which can inform SEO strategy, and effective SEO techniques can provide insights into user behavior.

Key Points

The average website receives a significant proportion of its traffic from search engines, highlighting the importance of SEO. There are two types of search results:

· organic or natural results

· paid results

SEO aims to improve a website’s ranking in the organic results. Search engine optimization is a fairly technical practice but it can easily be broken down into five main areas:

· a search engine–friendly website structure

· a well-researched list of key phrases

· content optimized to target those key phrases

· link popularity

· user insights

Growing trends in SEO include the influence of social content on search results, mobile SEO and local search.

References 

Bulygin, D. (2013). App store optimization infographic: How to promote your app [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://trendblog.net/app-store-optimization-infographic-how-to-promote-your-app/

Cutts, M. (2012). Page layout algorithm improvement. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/01/page-layout-algorithmimprovement.html

Google. (n.d.-a). Technology. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/about/products/

Google. (n.d.-b). Webmaster guidelines. Retrieved from https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/artpub/2007/88758/hipertext_a2007n5a7/answer.py@answer=35769

Licenses and Attributions