Module 4: SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION & SEARCH

ENGINE MARKETING
What Is Search Marketing?
Search marketing is a tactic used to gain online presence and traffic via paid and
unpaid strategies on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
Visualize the last time you searched for something using a search engine. The text
you typed into that small search box is called your “search query,” which then
directs you to a page similar to the image below. This page is known as a SERP, or
Search Engine Results Page. The higher you rank on the SERPs, the more traffic
you’ll get to your website.

Search marketing is divided into two main categories:

1. SEO (Search Engine Optimization): The process of gaining search engine rankings
via organic, unpaid tactics, such as content marketing.
2. PPC (pay-per-click or paid advertising): The process of placing listings in search
engines via paid advertisements.

Search engine optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and
quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO
targets unpaid traffic (known as "natural" or "organic" results) rather than direct
traffic or paid traffic. Unpaid traffic may originate from different kinds of searches,
including image search, video search, academic search, news search, and industry-
specific vertical search engines.
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, the
computer-programmed algorithms that dictate search engine behavior, what people
search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines, and
which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. SEO is performed
because a website will receive more visitors from a search engine when websites
rank higher on the search engine results page (SERP). These visitors can then
potentially be converted into customers.
On-Page SEO:
On-page SEO is a technique that is used for optimizing individual web pages to
rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. In search engine
optimization, like Google, Yahoo, and Bing on-page optimization refers to a
factor that affects your website and web page listing in the natural search results.

Off-Page SEO:
Off-page optimization refers to the technique that can be used to improve the
position of a website on a search engine results page(SERPS). Many people
associate off-page SEO with link building but it is not only that. It is also used in
promotion methods like blogging, website design, social bookmarking, etc.

S.
No. On-Page SEO Off-Page SEO

On-page SEO includes providing good

content, good keyword selection, Off-page SEO includes link
putting keywords in correct places, building, increasing link
giving an appropriate title for every popularity, search engine, link
1. page, etc. exchange etc.

On-page SEO will analyze the complete In off-page SEO we will

2. website. promote the website.

On-page SEO we will use internal In off-page SEO we will use

3. linking. direct linking.

Off-page SEO is for Article

4. On-page SEO is for Content writing. writing.

5. Techniques that are used in on-page Techniques that are used in

SEO. off-page SEO.
 Publish high-quality content.  Influencer Outreach.
 Optimize page titles and meta  Contribute as Guest
descriptions. Author.
 Optimize page content.  Social Media Engagement.
S.
No. On-Page SEO Off-Page SEO

 Social Bookmarking Sites.

 Headings and content formatting.
 Forum Submission.
 SEO Images and other multimedia
 Blog Directory
elements.
Submission.
 URL optimization.
 Article Submission
 Internal links.
 External links.

According to the MOZ website owners

6.
spend about 70% of time on on-page While on off page it only 30%
activity activity

On-page SEO looks at what your site is Off-page SEO looks at how
about. popular your site is.
7.

Factors that impact On-page SEO are as

follows-
Factors that impact Off-page
 Internal Linking SEO are as follows-
 Mobile Friendly
 Navigation
 Content Quality  Social Media
8.
 Meta Descriptions  Backlinks
 Image Alt Text  Mentions
 Page Speed  Google Business Profile
 Core Web Vitals (earlier Google My
 Title Tags Business)

9. Both SEO work together in a Both SEO work together in a

complementary fashion to achieve complementary fashion to
Search Engine Optimization which is achieve Search Engine
 Optimization which is our
main goal. We cannot select
which is more important
our main goal. We cannot select which between the two. But in the
is more important between the two. But whole process, SEOs
in the whole process, SEOs recommend recommend that the focus
that the focus should be given to on- should be given to on-page
page SEO before off-page SEO. SEO before off-page SEO.

10. Applying relevant subtopics to content Link Building is the example

is the example of on-page SEO. of off- page SEO.

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing search terms that people
enter into search engines with the goal of using that data for a specific purpose,
often for search engine optimization (SEO) or general marketing. Keyword
research can uncover queries to target, the popularity of these queries, their ranking
difficulty, and more.

Why is keyword research important?

Keyword research helps you find which keywords are best to target and provides
valuable insight into the queries that your target audience is actually searching on
Google. The insight that you can get into these actual search terms can help inform
content strategy as well as your larger marketing strategy.

Conducting keyword research has many benefits, the most popular reasons being:
  Marketing Trend Insight

Conducting effective keyword research can provide you with insights into current
marketing trends, and help you center your content on relevant topics and
keywords your audience is in search of.

 Traffic Growth

When you identify the best fitting keywords for the content you publish, the higher
you'll rank in search engine results — the more traffic you’ll attract to your
website.

 Customer Acquisition
If your business has content that other business professionals are looking for, you
can meet their needs and provide them with a call to action that will lead them into
the buyer journey from the awareness stage to the point of purchase.
By researching keywords for their popularity, search volume, and general intent,
you can tackle the questions that most people in your audience want answers to.
 Keywords vs. Topics
More and more, we hear how much SEO has evolved over just the last 10 years,
and how unimportant keywords themselves have become to our ability to rank well
for the searches people make every day.

And to some extent, this is true, but in the eyes of an SEO professional it’s a
different approach. Rather, it's the intent behind that keyword, and whether or not a
piece of content solves for that intent (we'll talk more about intent in just a minute).

But that doesn't mean keyword research is an outdated process. Let me explain:

Keyword research tells you what topics people care about and, assuming you use
the right SEO tool, how popular those topics actually are among your audience.
The operative term here is topics — by researching keywords that are getting a
high volume of searches per month, you can identify and sort your content into
topics that you want to create content on. Then, you can use these topics to dictate
which keywords you look for and target.

Elements of Keyword Research

There are three main elements to pay attention to when conducting keyword
research.
1. Relevance

Google ranks content for relevance. This is where the concept of search intent
comes in. Your content will only rank for a keyword if it meets the searchers'
needs. In addition, your content must be the best resource out there for the query.
After all, why would Google rank your content higher if it provides less value than
other content that exists on the web?

2. Authority

Google will provide more weight to sources it deems authoritative. That means you
must do all you can to become an authoritative source by enriching your site with
helpful, information content and promoting that content to earn social signals and
backlinks. If you're not seen as authoritative in the space, or if a keyword's SERPs
are loaded with heavy sources you can't compete with (like Forbes or The Mayo
Clinic), you have a lower chance of ranking unless your content is exceptional.

3. Volume

You may end up ranking on the first page for a specific keyword, but if no one
ever searches for it, it will not result in traffic to your site. Kind of like setting up
shop in a ghost town.

Volume is measured by MSV (monthly search volume), which means the number
of times the keyword is searched per month across all audiences.

How to Research Keywords for Your SEO Strategy

Step 1: Make a list of important, relevant topics based on what you know about
your business.

To kick off this process, think about the topics you want to rank for in terms of
generic buckets. You'll come up with about 5-10 topic buckets you think are
important to your business, and then you'll use those topic buckets to help come up
with some specific keywords later in the process.

If you're a regular blogger, these are probably the topics you blog about most
frequently. Or perhaps they're the topics that come up the most in sales
conversations. Put yourself in the shoes of your buyer personas — what types of
topics would your target audience search that you'd want your business to get
found for? If you were a company like HubSpot, for example — selling marketing
 software (which happens to have some awesome SEO tools... but I digress), you
might have general topic buckets like:

 "inbound marketing" (21K)

 "blogging" (19K)

 "email marketing" (30K)

 "lead generation" (17K)

 "SEO" (214K)

 "social media marketing" (71K)

 "marketing analytics" (6.2K)

 "marketing automation" (8.5K)

See those numbers in parentheses to the right of each keyword? That's

their monthly search volume. This data allows you to gauge how important these
topics are to your audience, and how many different sub-topics you might need to
create content on to be successful with that keyword. To learn more about these
sub-topics, we move on to step 2 ...
Step 2: Fill in those topic buckets with keywords.

Now that you have a few topic buckets you want to focus on, it's time to identify
some keywords that fall into those buckets. These are keyword phrases you think
are important to rank for in the SERPs (search engine results pages) because your
target customer is probably conducting searches for those specific terms.

For instance, if I took that last topic bucket for an inbound marketing software
company — "marketing automation" — I'd brainstorm some keyword phrases that
I think people would type in related to that topic. Those might include:

 marketing automation tools

 how to use marketing automation software

 what is marketing automation?

 how to tell if I need marketing automation software

 lead nurturing

 email marketing automation

 top automation tools

And so on and so on. The point of this step isn't to come up with your final list of
keyword phrases. You just want to end up with a brain dump of phrases you think
potential customers might use to search for content related to that particular topic
bucket. We'll narrow the lists down later in the process so you don't have
something too unwieldy.

Although more and more keywords are getting encrypted by Google every day,
another smart way to come up with keyword ideas is to figure out which keywords
your website is already getting found for. To do this, you'll need website analytics
software like Google Analytics or HubSpot's Sources report, available in
the Traffic Analytics tool. Drill down into your website's traffic sources, and sift
through your organic search traffic bucket to identify the keywords people are
using to arrive at your site.

Repeat this exercise for as many topic buckets as you have. And remember, if
you're having trouble coming up with relevant search terms, you can always head
on over to your customer-facing colleagues — those who are in Sales or Service
and ask them what types of terms their prospects and customers use, or common
questions they have. Those are often great starting points for keyword research.

Here at HubSpot, we use the Search Insights Report in this part of the process. This
template is designed to help you do the same and bucket your keywords into topic
clusters, analyze MSV, and inform your editorial calendar and strategy.
Featured Resource: Search Insights Report Template

Download the Template

Step 3: Understand How Intent Affects Keyword Research and Analyze
Accordingly.
Like I said in the previous section, user intent is now one of the most pivotal
factors in your ability to rank well on search engines like Google. Today, it's more
important that your web page addresses the problem a searcher intended to solve
than simply carries the keyword the searcher used. So, how does this affect the
keyword research you do?

It's easy to take keywords for face value, and unfortunately, keywords can have
many different meanings beneath the surface. Because the intent behind a search is
so important to your ranking potential, you need to be extra-careful about how you
interpret the keywords you target.

Let's say, for example, you're researching the keyword "how to start a blog" for an
article you want to create. "Blog" can mean a blog post or the blog website itself,
and what a searcher's intent is behind that keyword will influence the direction of
your article. Does the searcher want to learn how to start an individual blog post?
Or do they want to know how to actually launch a website domain for the purposes
of blogging? If your content strategy is only targeting people interested in the
latter, you'll need to make sure of the keyword's intent before committing to it.

To verify what a user's intent is in a keyword, it's a good idea to simply enter this
keyword into a search engine yourself, and see what types of results come up.
Make sure the type of content Google is closely related to what you'd intend to
create for the keyword.

Step 4: Research related search terms.

This is a creative step you may have already thought of when doing keyword
research. If not, it's a great way to fill out those lists.

If you're struggling to think of more keywords people might be searching about a

specific topic, take a look at the related search terms that appear when you plug in
a keyword into Google. When you type in your phrase and scroll to the bottom of
Google's results, you'll notice some suggestions for searches related to your
original input. These keywords can spark ideas for other keywords you may want
to take into consideration.

Want a bonus? Type in some of those related search terms and look at their related
search terms.
 Step 5: Use keyword research tools to your advantage.
Keyword research and SEO tools can help you come up with more keyword ideas
based on exact match keywords and phrase match keywords based on the ideas
you've generated up to this point. Some of the most popular ones include:
 Ahrefs
 SEMrush
 Ubersuggest
 Google Keyword Planner
 SECockpit
 Keywords Everywhere
 Moz
 KeywordTool.io
 KWFinder

How to Find and Choose Keywords for Your Website

Once you have an idea of the keywords that you want to rank for, now it's time to
refine your list based on the best ones for your strategy. Here's how:

Step 1. Use Google Keyword Planner to cut down your keyword list.
In Google’s Keyword Planner, you can get search volume and traffic estimates for
keywords you're considering. Then, take the information you learn from Keyword
Planner and use Google Trends to fill in some blanks.

Use the Keyword Planner to flag any terms on your list that have way too little (or
way too much) search volume, and don't help you maintain a healthy mix like we
talked about above. But before you delete anything, check out their trend history
and projections in Google Trends. You can see whether, say, some low-volume
terms might actually be something you should invest in now — and reap the
benefits for later.

Or perhaps you're just looking at a list of terms that is way too unwieldy, and you
have to narrow it down somehow ... Google Trends can help you determine which
terms are trending upward, and are therefore worth more of your focus.
Step 2: Prioritize low-hanging fruit.

What we mean by prioritizing low-hanging fruit is to prioritize keywords that you

have a chance of ranking for based on your website’s authority.

Large companies typically go after high search volume keywords, and since these
brands are well established already, Google typically rewards them with authority
over many topics.

You can also consider keywords that have little competition. Keywords that don’t
already have multiple articles battling for the highest rank can afford you the spot
by default — if there’s no one else trying to claim it.

Step 3: Check the monthly search volume (MSV) for keywords you’ve chosen.

You want to write content around what people want to discover, and checking
MSV can help you do just that.

Monthly search volume is the number of times a search query or keyword is

entered into search engines each monthly. Tools like searchvolume.io or Google
Trends can help you find out the most searched keywords over related keyword
clusters for free.
Step 4: Factor in SERP features as you choose keywords.

There’s several SERP feature snippets that Google will highlight if used correctly.
An easy way to find out about them is to look up the keywords of your choosing
and see what the first result looks like. But for a quick overview of the types of
SERP featured snippets, we’ll summarize what they are here.

Image Packs

Image packs are search results displayed as a horizontal row of images that appear
in an organic position. If there’s an image pack, you should write an image-heavy
post to win placement in it.
Paragraph Snippets

Featured snippets, or paragraph snippets, are short snippets of text that appear at
the top of Google search results for quick answers to common search queries.
Understanding the searcher’s intent and providing succinct, concise answers can
help in winning the placement.

List Snippets

List snippets, or listicles, are snippets made for posts outlining steps to do
something from start to finish — often for “How To” searches. Making posts with
direct, clear instructions and formatting can assist in winning this placement.
Video Snippets

Video snippets are short videos that Google will display at the top of a search
query page in place of text featured snippets. Posting a video on both YouTube and
your website can help you win this placement if tagged in the targeted keywords
people are searching for.
 Step 5: Check for a mix of head terms and long-tail keywords in each bucket.
Head terms are keyword phrases that are generally shorter and more generic —
they're typically just one to three words in length, depending on who you talk
to. Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, are longer keyword phrases usually
containing three or more words.

It's important to check that you have a mix of head terms and long-tail terms
because it'll give you a keyword strategy that's well balanced with long-term goals
and short-term wins. That's because head terms are generally searched more
frequently, making them often (not always, but often) much more competitive and
harder to rank for than long-tail terms. Think about it: Without even looking up
search volume or difficulty, which of the following terms do you think would be
harder to rank for?

1. how to write a great blog post

2. blogging
If you answered #2, you're absolutely right. But don't get discouraged. While head
terms generally boast the most search volume (meaning greater potential to send
you traffic), frankly, the traffic you'll get from the term "how to write a great blog
post" is usually more desirable.

Why?

Because someone who is looking for something that specific is probably a much
more qualified searcher for your product or service (presuming you're in the
blogging space) than someone looking for something really generic. And because
long-tail keywords tend to be more specific, it's usually easier to tell what people
who search for those keywords are really looking for. Someone searching for the
head term "blogging," on the other hand, could be searching it for a whole host of
reasons unrelated to your business.

So check your keyword lists to make sure you have a healthy mix of head terms
and long-tail keywords. You definitely want some quick wins that long-tail
keywords will afford you, but you should also try to chip away at more difficult
head terms over the long haul.

Step 6: See how competitors are ranking for these keywords.

Just because your competitor is doing something doesn’t mean you need to. The
same goes for keywords. Just because a keyword is important to your competitor,
doesn’t mean it's important to you. However, understanding what keywords your
competitors are trying to rank for is a great way to help you give your list of
keywords another evaluation.

If your competitor is ranking for certain keywords that are on your list, too, it
definitely makes sense to work on improving your ranking for those. However,
don’t ignore the ones your competitors don’t seem to care about. This could be a
great opportunity for you to own market share on important terms, too.

Understanding the balance of terms that might be a little more difficult due to
competition, versus those terms that are a little more realistic, will help you
maintain a similar balance that the mix of long-tail and head terms allows.
Remember, the goal is to end up with a list of keywords that provide some quick
wins but also helps you make progress toward bigger, more challenging SEO
goals.

How do you figure out what keywords your competitors are ranking for, you ask?
Aside from manually searching for keywords in an incognito browser and seeing
 what positions your competitors are in, Arel="noopener" target="_blank" hrefs
allows you to run a number of free reports that show you the top keywords for the
domain you enter. This is a quick way to get a sense of the types of terms your
competitors are ranking for.

SEO Tactics to Improve Ranking

1. Conduct Competitor Analysis

One of the most effective SEO tactics that can help your rankings is extensive
competitor research and analysis. The first step is simply to identify your key
competitors, either by industry, geography, keywords, or any other relevant factors.

A thorough analysis will help you discover areas where your competitor is
succeeding and possibly unearth weaknesses you can benefit from.

Any competitor analysis you perform should include these primary activities:

 Keyword Analysis: As one of the most important factors of good SEO, analyzing
your competitors' keyword usage is absolutely critical. Using keyword suggestion
tools such as - KeySearch, Moz Keyword Explorer, or Google Keyword
Planner can help you find keywords that your competition is using as well as ones
you can use yourself.

 Link-Building Analysis: Another key SEO factor, link-building is vitally

important for improving a site's SERP rankings. Look for their origin, numbers,
and the anchor text they use to help determine how your competition is performing
on this front. It may be worth contacting those sites to see if they can provide
backlinks to your site as well.
 Content Analysis: Take a look at the content on your competitors' sites. How
often do they post new content? What is the length of their blog posts? How is
their content structured? If your competitor is performing better in search rankings,
it may be worth emulating the practices that appear most valuable.

I’d strongly recommend that you use specialized tools available to perform
competitor analysis. Tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or SpyFu help with the tedious
legwork required in optimizing your site for searches.

2. Analyze Your Backlinks

While backlinks are an invaluable part of a good SEO strategy, not all backlinks
are created equally. Some will naturally tend to perform better than others, so it's
important to monitor their performance. This helps you zero in on the types of
backlinks which are most valuable. Or understand which sites tend to drive the
highest quality traffic.

You may want to remove certain links or unilaterally disavow them if they are
adding no value or penalizing your search rankings. Tools like Majestic, Ahrefs,
or Moz Open Site Explorer can help you conduct a thorough backlink analysis of
your website.

3. Optimize for Mobile

The mobile search market has been growing rapidly, and we’ve always anticipated
that mobile may become more influential than desktops eventually. In 2017
mobiles finally took the lead and now account for more than half of all web traffic
globally.

There have been a number of standards for mobile development - from clunky (and
now largely defunct) mobile sites to the far more contemporary, technically, and
visually elegant “responsive design.”

However, it's not enough to just look good. Sites also need to load fast or else your
visitors will get frustrated and leave. With these performance goals in mind
Google, along with a number of other tech companies, introduced AMP - an open
source project to deliver Accelerated Mobile Pages.
 Using a stripped-down form of HTML, Google claims that AMP optimized
pages load up to 85% faster. So, if you’ve not yet optimized your web pages for
mobile, the time to act is now.

4. Use Secure HTTP

Making the move to Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) for encryption,
has a number of benefits:

 Security and Privacy: By securing communication between users and your

servers, chances of interference or damage by third parties reduce greatly. This
results in a greater level of trust from both your users and from web browsers -
many of which now display warnings when users navigate to non-HTTPS sites.

 Improved Ranking: By virtue of your increased trustworthiness, most sites that

make the change to HTTPS can expect to see a small boost in their search
rankings. You can also expect to see a larger number of referrals and traffic over
time as Google is more likely to recommend secure sites in search results.

As of mid-2017, around 31% of web domains have completed the transition to

HTTPS. This number is only set to rise from here as secure communication
protocols increasingly become the norm across the web.

Immediately after making the switch to HTTPS, you can expect to see a dip in
your website rank and search results performance. This is because of the change
you make to your base URL. However, this dip will be short-lived and you should
see your rank recover or even improve in short order.

5. Optimize Page Speed

As internet speeds have increased, so have the expectations of website

performance from mainstream users. According to a study by Adobe, almost 40%
of users will leave a website if it takes too long to load.
Thankfully there's a lot you can do to help boost that load time, most of which can
be easily implemented. Use high compression for images to significantly reduce
your load time. You can even use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to help
global users access your content without having to ping your domestic server.

6. Optimize for Voice Search

As part of your efforts to optimize for mobile devices, integrating better voice
search functionality is a good idea. The ultimate goal of focusing on voice search is
to be considered a source for a “Featured Snippet” - as Google Assistant, Siri, and
Alexa will read out information from these sources and often cite the source as
well.

7. Use Structured Data

Website crawlers have gotten far more advanced and capable over the years.
However, sometimes what is obvious to a human user is completely obscure to a
machine. The result is that, occasionally, site crawlers may make errors or omit
data while indexing your site. The solution, of course, is to use structured data.

Using structured data is nothing more than formatting your website's code into a
uniform layout. When search engine crawlers index your site, they will be able to
pick up a richer amount of data since it was laid out in an “expected” format.

To help webmasters optimize their data, search engines have established the open
source Schema.org. It has all the code conventions and standards to help structure
your site and make it more “crawler-friendly.”

Search engine marketing

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the
promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results
pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising. SEM may incorporate search
engine optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and site
architecture to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages to
enhance pay per click (PPC) listings and increase the Call to action (CTA) on the
website.
 What are SEM Keywords? SEM keywords are words and phrases describing
your product or service. These keywords are words that that you think your target
customers will use to search for your product or service. They help determine
when and where your ad will be displayed in search engine results.

The best free keyword research tools in 2022

 Moz Keyword Explorer for the best all-around free SEO keyword research tool
 Google Keyword Planner for researching paid keywords
 Semrush for advanced SEO professionals
 QuestionDB for finding question-based keywords
 Jaaxy for affiliate marketers
 Keyword Surfer for a free SEO keyword research browser extension