¿Que es SEO? (o Posicionamiento en Motores de Búsqueda)

Cada día, hay mas de 5 millones de Colombianos utilizando los motores de búsquedas, como Google y Bing, para buscar información, servicios, productos, y multimedia en la Web. Los sitios que aparecen mas alto en los resultados reciben la mayoría de los clicks, los cuales pueden ser millones dependiendo de la palabra clave que se esta buscando y cuantas personas buscan esa palabra clave cada día.

Una de las mejores herramientas para saber cuales son las palabras claves importantes, y con mayor volumen, es la herramienta de Keyword Research (investigación de palabras claves) de Google. Usando esta herramienta (eligiendo Colombia como país y español como idioma), rápidamente vemos las palabras claves importantes en este país.

Como se puede ver en la ilustración de abajo, las palabras con mayor volumen en Colombia son:

• Facebook – 68.000.000,00 de búsquedas mensuales
• Juegos Juegos – 30.400.000,00 de búsquedas mensuales
• Facebook en Español – 7.480.000,00 de búsquedas mensuales
• Google – 6.120.000,00 de búsquedas mensuales
• Taringa – 4.090.000,00 de búsquedas mensuales
• Películas – 2.740.000,00 de búsquedas mensuales
• El Tiempo – 2.740.000,00 de búsquedas mensuales
• Wikipedia – 2.240.000,00 de búsquedas mensuales

En conclusión, el gran valor que tienen los buscadores para Marketing es el volumen de personas que están activamente buscando información sobre productos, servicio, y información. Estas personas están levantando la mano y diciendo, “yo estoy buscando _____________ (e.g. “cruceros a Europa,” “viajes baratos,” “flores para aniversario,” “abogados en Bogotá”, etc …) y el que aparece en los resultados (de primeras), gana.

¿Que es el Posicionamiento en Buscadores?

Mas de tener varios nombres (Search Engine Optimization , SEO, y Posicionamiento Web), el Posicionamiento en Buscadores es una táctica de mejorar la relevancia de sitios Web páginas Web hacia palabras claves relevantes.

La idea principal es que la página en su sitio (la cual estas optimizando) sea la mas relevante (entre millones de otros sitios) para una palabra clave de mayor valor para su empresa o organización. Por ejemplo, siendo #1 en Google por una palabra popular como “seguro medico” puede significar miles (o millones) de visitantes a su sitio.

Ejemplo:

1. Una búsqueda se hace en Google para la palabra clave: “seguro medico.”

2. Google encuentra mas de 952.000 resultados (paginas) que tienen que ver con la palabra “seguro medico.”

3. De esas 952.000 páginas, Google encuentra que estas páginas (encuadradas en rojo) son las mas relevante para esa palabra clave.

4. Específicamente, la página mas relevante, en la posición #1, es: http://www.portalesmedicos.com/servs/consejos_seguros_medicos.htm

Para mostrarle esta relevancia a los motores de búsqueda (que encuentran, analizan, y categorizan sitios cada segundo de cada día) hay que demostrar varios señales, las cual son importantes para ellos en su clasificación de cuales páginas son mas relevante.

Google es uno de los buscadores mas importante por el hecho de ser el mas grande, mas relevante, y mas usado (especialmente en Colombia). Por esa razón, el posicionamiento en buscadores es principalmente para Google. Y a veces las mismas optimizaciones que haces para Google aplican para los otros buscadores (Yahoo y Bing). Entonces, para mayor impacto en posicionamiento Web, es importante mirar los señales de Google y desarrollar una campana de SEO/Posicionamiento Web hacia esos señales en particular. Afortunadamente, Google e compartido algunos de esos señales que buscan en paginas Web para determinar su relevancia (y su clasificación comparado con los otros sitios).

Unos de los mas importantes señales son:

1. Palabras claves en la etiqueta de titulo
2. Palabras claves en el URL de la página
3. El PageRank de una pagina Web (tiene rango de 1-10)
4. La cantidad de enlaces puntando a una página Web
   1. La calidad de esos enlaces
   2. El PageRank de esos enlaces
   3. La edad de una página Web (diferente a la edad de un dominio)
   4. El contenido de una página Web (cantidad, proximidad, contexto y semánticas de palabras)
   5. La “frescura” del contenido (contenido mas nuevo a veces tiene mejor valor que contenido antiguo)
   6. La rapidez en que se carga la página

Optimizando para estos señales es solo el principio, pero un gran avance, hacia alta posicionamiento en los buscadores.  En la próxima seria, hablaremos sobre como se optimiza una pagina Web para estos señales.

Mozcation en Lima

Es un gran honor poder compartir con el equipo de y la comunidad SEO en Perú, la próxima semana cuando arrancamos con #Mozcationlima en la bella ciudad de Lima! Espero poder conocerlos a todos y poder compartir ideas para que rápidamente crecemos el mercado de SEO en América Latina! Como todos saben, esta región tiene una gran potencial en la área de posicionamiento en buscadores y esperamos el apoyo de todos para que seguemos creciendo y entregando resultados de alta calidad!

Ahora, la única decisión que me queda pendiente es que pisco me tomo primero!?

Un abrazo,
Rodrigo

Información del evento:

Auditorium UPC Escuela de Postgrado
Av Salaverry 2255, San Isidro
Lima, Lima
Peru

Viernes 23 de septiembre de 2011 de 16:00 a 19:30 (GMT-0500)

Se acabaron los cupos pero hay lista de espera!

Time to get a job in Online Marketing

Let’s face it, the economy is not going to magically shift anytime soon. Most industries are down in terms of employment and salaries are getting smaller and smaller as the supply of experienced college graduates is at its near all-time high. In other words, the job market sucks.

Unless…you are in the world of online marketing. Check out this growth over time:

Now, look closely at the social media curve. That’s right, there are lots and lots of jobs in social media, especially for those that know what they are doing. Imagine how many people spend hours and hours of their time each day on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. Now if only they could find a way to put that skill to good use…

Here’s my recommendation to all you job seekers. Go to Barnes & Noble this weekend and get several books on either social media, search marketing, or web analytics and start reading. Take notes, visit online resources, and practice on your own. If you don’t have an account on social networks, create one. If you have never heard of Google AdWords, go learn it. Point is, there is alot of opportunity out there for the ones that are willing to put in just a little bit of effort and attention.

Reading books gives you a huge head-start. Let’s assume for a second that it takes an average of 12 months to write a book on some topic in online marketing. After reading that book, you have gained a full year’s worth of information, research, case studies, resources, and general knowledge. Imagine reading 5 books! What about 10?! There are tons of books on the subject matter at bookstores (the big ones), on Kindle, and at the various other e-book reader stores (e.g. iBooks).

And if you’re not interested in this type of work that’s OK too. At least you’ll have a brand new set of skills that will certainly move your resume closer to the top of that freakishly high pile in HR offices around the world.

Once you’re ready, go search for positions and reward yourself with a nice trip to somewhere cool. Here are some good resources for your job search in online marketing:

• Go directly to the company/agency website under “Media” or “Marketing” departments
• LinkedIn Job Search (use keywords to filter results)
• SEMPO (non-members can search jobs as well) – www.sempo.org
• EMarketing Silo
• Search Engine Watch (job board)
• iMediaConnection (job board)
• Adage (job board)
• MediaPost (job board)

And remember, life is short, so live it to the max each day!

Good luck.

From Puerto Varas, Chile.

Rodrigo

Why Newspapers need SEO

What’s happening to the Newspaper Industry?

• Most American newspapers decreased 8-9% in print subscriptions from 2009 to 2010 (article from New York Times)
• Between September 2008 and September 2009, the U.S. print sector lost more than 24,500 jobs (article from Catholic.org)
• There have been 166 U.S. newspapers that have shut down or stopped putting out a print edition since 2008. (same as above)

**An interesting side-note: the opposite is expected in the Latin American newspaper industry, due to the growth of the Brazilian and Argentinean subscriptions.

So, if people are not reading the printed newspaper as much, where are they going to get their news? Online.

The 4 challenges newspapers are facing

These shifts have not been easy for the industry. In fact, many are not able to adjust fast enough to prevent shut-downs or reductions in staff. But there is hope. Many newspapers are quickly figuring out how to offset the reductions in printed subscriptions with an increase in digital ones. Some even prefer the 100% free model and are increasing revenues via ad sales (boosted from additional website traffic). One newspaper (that we’ve all heard of) focused on search engine optimization to drive more traffic to their website and went from 700,000 to over 8,000,000 visitors per day, by targeting the right types of keywords and having fresh relevant content for readers at all times.

But before we get into the strategy of how to turn things around, let’s first discuss the four main challenges that newspapers face today.

The first challenge: the fall of traditional advertising dollars

In traditional media, just like in print newspaper, it is very difficult, and in some cases- impossible, to track user behavior/interaction with an ad. Tracking the purchase/lead resulting from those ads? Like digging a hole and ending up in China. However, with digital ads (banners, paid search ads, email newsletters, and social media sites) tracking is a realistic and beautiful thing. Moreso, it satisfies a buyer’s dilemma by telling them exactly their return in investment. For example, in traditional media you could pay USD$1,000,000 for a national TV spot, and never know what the return on investment (ROI) was. On the other hand, a digital media buy for USD$1,000,000 could tell you exactly how many clicks, orders, sales, leads, or any other important metric you received for your investment. If you know the value of a customer/client, then it becomes easy to quickly calculate the ROI of the investment. This makes digital far more effective than traditional media, which results in more media dollars being shifted towards it.

So what does this have to do with the newspaper industry? Well, it’s the exact reason why advertisers are moving their budgets onto the internet. It’s easier to see what’s going on, and it provides actionable insight. And with the more money that gets shifted online, the less that is allocated towards traditional mediums like TV, Radio, and Newspapers. This creates a major problem for newspapers since a major portion of their total revenue comes from print advertising and classified sales.

The second challenge: the underperforming classifieds section

For many years (and some still do, today) , newspapers depended on the revenue from paid classified listings to make ends-meet and survive financial volatilities. In fact, some newspaper offices still have long lines of “sellers” waiting to buy a text ad within the classifieds section for a small fee. However, with the rise of 100% free classified sites such as Craigslist, OLX, and Kijiji, “sellers” are now opting for the free option, especially since the results are trackable and the cost = $0. This killed newspaper classified revenues.

The third challenge: the rise of online-only newspapers

When the online news industry took of, the moment also marked the birth of a new news source called, the “online-only” newspaper. These were newspapers that lived exclusively on the web and were (for the most part) free. They had almost no overhead, were relatively cheap to maintain, and were incredibly scalable. Two particular examples are the “Huffington Post,” and “La Informacion” (the later is from Spain). Today, these newspapers compete head-to-head with other major newspapers in regards to web traffic, however, they only pay a fraction of the cost to operate. In fact, several of the fastest growing “online-only” newspapers consist of teams no bigger than 5 people in small offices that cost less than $1,500/month to operate (they break even on just a few ad sales). The question is, who will win?

The fourth challenge: no SEO

Throughout my time as a Newspaper SEO consultant I have had the privilege of looking at many analytics accounts and studying the story behind traffic numbers. And if there is anything that stands 100% clear, it is that search engine optimization (SEO) is vital to online newspapers. In fact, many online newspapers will have between 40-60% of their traffic arriving from natural (organic/free) search results. The traffic opportunity is incredible and very few competitive newspapers are optimizing their web content for search engines. However, this is quickly changing and the urgency has never been so imminent as it is today. Easy as it sounds? Hardly.

Where to start with newspaper SEO?

The first place to start is by identifying some of the major roadblocks in the organization. These roadblocks are likely not only affecting the newspapers’ online edition, but likely the entire organization. Some of the most consistent issues I have seen are:

• Print journalists don’t get along with digital journalists (in some cases, the print journalists produce the digital edition as well)
• The content management system is broken, non-existent, or too complex to figure out
• The organizational hierarchy is a major bottleneck to making important and timely decisions (mostly due to lack of digital know-how)
• There is a lack of internal resources with the thorough understanding and experience in digital media and online news

By addressing these challenges from the beginning, you are well on your way  to making tremendous strides in your news organization. The next thing you will need is a digital gameplan. This plan lays out all of the media channels that you will be exploring along with a specific allocation of time/resources to each one. Here are a few examples:

• Branding campaign (45%)

- Paid Search (e.g. Google Adwords)

- Banner campaign

- Email campaign/RSS feeds

- Social Media Campaign (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Foursquare and Myspace)

• Traffic campaign (30%) – search engine optimization (SEO) used to drive high volumes of website traffic in attempt to further monetize the website

• Tracking & Monitoring (10%) – ensures all website tracking and monitoring is up-to-date, and functioning properly
• Website evaluation and update (15%) – this could either be a series of small edits, or a major site overhaul. In the latter case, more resources and budget may be necessary. The first step to discovering which is best for your website is to do a usability and analytic audit that identifies the strengths and weaknesses of your website from a users perspective.

**It’s important to note that the tracking & monitoring component is always done first. Followed by the website evaluation and update. From there, order is subjective.

Once you have your digital gameplan in place. You will then begin to list out all of the tasks involved within each category, along with the time and performance goals for each task. For example, for the Social Media category, a task could be to “setup the newspaper’s Facebook page.” The time goal could be 3-days, and the performance goal could be, “get 100 fans within 10-days.” It is important to give yourself a realistic (yet, optimistic) goal as this will serve as motivation during the initial “ramp-up” period (first 18 weeks). However, if you are consistent and focused, you will have a successful campaign.

…to be continued shortly.

How to check your site for “bad” links (avoiding the Google slap)

With the recent buzz going around about J.C. Penney and other companies using black-hat link building techniques, it’s important to understand where your Website stands. For that, you will need 1 tool and 2 resource. First let’s start with the tool, the SEOmoz Open Site Explorer. Once you go to the link, put in a url and search (remember this scans page-by-page, not the entire site. Therefore, www.mydomain.com will show you stats for the homepage of that site).

From there, go to the “anchor text distribution” tab (as illustrated below):

From there you’ll want to look at the column labeled, “Links Containing this Anchor Text” and look at the numbers. I would say that anything more than 15 links here is worth noting and looking further into (you may already know about these). From there, look at the anchor texts that are popular short-tail keywords, such as “bedding,” “hotels,” “travel,” etc… What you’re looking for are links that you are getting from other sites, as keyword-rich anchor text, that may not necessarily be relevant to the keyword.  For example, an anchored link with the text: “dresses” from a blog about casinos may not be doing you any good…in fact, it’s likely doing you more harm than good.

Also, it’s always best to ask your SEO partner/agency what their thoughts are on the recent news about J.C. Penney and Forbes and make sure that they have a protection plan in place. If they can’t answer the question, or if they get defensive, they may not be the best partner.

Lastly, read the Google guidelines (particularly, on link schemes) and make sure you are abiding by them. If you are not, or if there are “grey areas,” you may want to reassess what you’re doing and weigh the risk and value.

Good luck.

From Buenos Aires,

Rodrigo

How to get a 20% non-branded CTR

Click-through rates have become a bit of a trivial metric over the past few years, especially since search engines have expanded their broad match targeting to include everything and its mom. For example, if I bid on the keyword “iphone 4″ I see my ad appear for keywords like “android” and “verizon,” making my click-through rate (CTR) as attractive as banner CTRs once were. However, there is hope. There are several ways that you can ensure that your click-through rate stays above the 4% mark, even on non-branded keywords. The best way to explain these to you, is to break them up into two buckets: 1) what you already know, and 2) what you may not know. I’ll get into these in a second, but first I wanted to explain the main value of a high click-through rate, other than the obvious increase in clicks that this can produce. A high CTR also helps the following:

• Quality Scores (QS) – both Google and Bing use a keyword level quality metric to evaluate how relevant an ad is for a particular keyword. A major factor in this equation the CTR of a keyword/ad combination.  In other words, a higher CTR may often yield a higher Quality Score. The real kicker is what happens below…
• Cost-per-Click (CPC)- the best part of a higher QS (above) is that it often results in a lower cost-per-click. However, this is not always the case. And in some cases, the CTR has to be the best out of all other competitors before it can yield any type of CPC discount. Basic rule of thumb, aim for relevancy and you’ll always get the best price.

As you can see, this is all very cyclical: higher CTR=higher QS=lower CPC=more clicks for the same (or less) budget. Therefore, let’s aim high and talk about how to get not a 4% CTR, or even a 10% CTR, but rather a 20% CTR on not branded, but non-branded keywords! Yes, it is possible. But it will require work. Are you willing to put in the time? Here’s your gameplan.

1) What you already know- there are several best practices in paid search that result in a higher CTR. These are:

• Break out the search and content networks into two separate campaigns. Also, separate your branded campaign from your non-branded campaign. For example, I’ll often have a campaign structure as follows:

1. Search+Branded+[Campaign Name]
2. Search+Non-Branded+[Campaign Name]
3. Content+Branded+[Campaign Name]
4. Search+Non-Branded+[Campaign Name]

• Have no more than 5-10 keywords per ad group. This makes writing ads relevant for the keywords in your ad group much easier than if you had 100+ keywords meaning a variety of things. Plus, it also tends to help the search engines match ads to keyword queries.
• Include DKI (dynamic keyword insertion) in your ads. Not just the headlines, but place DKI in the ads themselves. Again, this is much easier to do/control when you have no more than 10 keywords per ad group.
• Remember to be relevant. If you sell wedding dresses and want to attract more “views” by bidding on the keyword “grammys 2011″ you will likely be paying an awful lot for those clicks. Plus, the low CTR these keywords are likely to produce for your campaign may negatively hurt your future campaigns that are much more relevant. Keep it simple, only bid on keywords that are relevant extremely relevant to your business. Maximize the outcome with those keywords and then move into more generic keywords (as appropriate).

2) Thing you may not know

• Keep “Relative CTR” in mind. The relative CTR is a theory that the search engines grade the value of a keyword/ad CTR based on where the ad appeared on the SERP (search engine results page). In other words, if you have a CTR of 2% and rank #3, you may need to jump up to a 7% in position #2 in order to receive a discounted CPC. Another way to think of this is, the higher you rank, the higher the CTR needs to be in order to be seen as “valuable” by the search engines. So, next time you see that you have a 4% CTR in position #1 and are still paying nearly what you are bidding (in other words, you’re not experiencing a discount), keep in mind that you may need a much higher CTR at that position to experience a CPC discount. Also- keep in mind that if you drop down to position #3 (at the same 4% CTR that you had in position #1), you may be well in-line with the necessary CTR to receive a discount. And if you don’t experience a change in conversion rate from position #1 to position #3…well, then you’re in great shape!
• Be tight in your match-types. We’ve all had it happen before…you have the same keyword in different ad groups (under different match types), and a search for the exact query brings up an ad from the other match type’s ad group. For those who like conspiracies, you may argue that a search engine will show the most expensive ad (the ad likely to produce the highest CPC for the search engine) for these queries. The thing to keep in mind is that you need to use the negative-exact functionality as much as possible when you have this type of ad group/match type fiasco. Here’s the simple way to do it:

Ad group #1 >keyword: wedding dresses (broad match)

Ad group #2 >keyword: wedding dresses (exact match)

What you would need to do in the above scenario is add the negative exact keyword “wedding dresses” to the broad match ad group. This basically tells the engine, “if the exact query is searched for, look in another ad group for that exact keyword.” And since you will have an ad group with that exact query, the search engine will display an ad from that ad group, often resulting in a lower CPC. Not always though…in some cases the exact match may be more competitive (and expensive) than the broad match keyword, so you’ll have to check the stats and see where it makes the most sense to pull the ad from.

• Capture the long-tail keywords. These keywords are usually phrases rather than keywords, and usually are much more specific than regular keywords. For example, imagine you are a 5-star luxury resort in Maui, Hawaii and are launching your paid search campaign. You select the keyword: “hotel in hawaii” and the keyword: “luxury hotels in maui.” Which do you think will produce the most bookings? Likely the second one. However, imagine that the searches are even more specific (as you will find by using the Google search query report), such as “most romantic luxury beachfront resorts in maui.” In this case, you would want to bid on that exact phrase, as well as other phrases that you may not already have in your campaign…such as: “romantic maui hotels,” and “beachfront luxury hotels in maui.” Additionally, and equally important, your ads for the phrase “most romantic luxury beachfront resorts in maui” (or any keyword for that matter)  should mention the root words: romantic, beachfront, maui, and luxury. You could have an ad like this:

The basic idea is to be as relevant as possible. Also, keep in mind that the quality of your landing pages is also critical. Search engines are smart enough to crawl the landing page and check for the keywords: “romantic,” “beachfront,” and “maui.” If those keywords are not found, you may have to pay quite a bit more for the traffic. Plus, that wouldn’t make much sense since your conversion rates may also suffer if you don’t actually have those features at your hotel. Keep it real, and keep it relevant.

• Lastly, remember that everything in your entire paid search account is interconnected. For instance, if you have one campaign with a 2% CTR, and another with a .05% CTR, the lower CTR may actually affect your chances of ever taking the 2% CTR campaign even higher. This is usually a result of “negative campaign history” which lowers your impression share (share-of-voice) for the 2% campaign and possibly even increases the CPCs for that better performing campaign. If you find this type of negative history, it may be best to start a new account (you’ll have to be the judge- keep in mind you’re starting from 0), to avoid the effects that lower performance could be having on the other campaigns.

Good luck on your journey and on your efforts to improve you CTRs. Also, check out PPC Hero as they have a wealth of advice/information on the subject as well.

from Buenos Aires,

Rodrigo