My communication with some clients has shown that, understanding search is also hard for them (and of course it should be as it is not their industry, try asking me what I know about engineering!…).

To try and overcome this problem I have put together a guide to search jargon that I hope will help those who don’t know much about search marketing to understand what we do. Most of the terms described are in the simplest form and are of course far more technical in reality.

Search Engines – are machines that index other websites, allowing you to search using a specified choice of word. Search engines exist to the user as a web page. However, behind the scenes the engine is running a complex set of algorithms, which are configured by developers to bring up the most relevant results depending on the search term

Algorithm (algo) – is a program used by search engines to determine what pages to bring up in search results for a given search query – its the technicality that goes on behind the scenes when we enter a search term

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – is the term used to describe actions associated with researching, optimising and positioning a website within search engines to achieve maximum exposure for that website.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – is the process of increasing the number of visitors to a website by achieving  a high rank in the search results of a search engine. The higher a site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that users will visit the site. Research indicates that users tend not to click past the first page of search results, therefore high rank in search engine results pages is desirable for obtaining traffic to a site. SEO, and the processes associated with it, help to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be indexed and favourably ranked by the search engine.

Target Search Engines – this is the choice of search engines targeted in a particular campaign, the most popular targets are Google, Yahoo and Bing. You might also target the same search engines in different countries.

SERPs – this is shorthand for Search Engine Results Pages, and refers to the pages of search results that are generated when a user types in a key word or phrase into the search box.

Organic Search Engine Results – are sometimes called natural results; these are what are displayed right down the centre of the Results Page when you search at a search engine. Although they are supposed to occur naturally they can be manipulated by using SEO techniques and in most cases are not paid for directly to any search engine.

Organic Search (campaign) – refers to the strategies and tactics implemented by SEO professionals to improve the organic search results for a brand or set of key words/phrases.

Paid Search (campaign) – this is also known as PPC (pay per click). It is when a relevant text advert with a link to a company page is displayed in search engine results when the user of a search engine types in a particular phrase. Companies bid for rankings and the bid amouint is  charged every time someone clicks on the ad. The most common PPC provider is Google AdWords, and you can recognise AdWords as the results which appear as ’sponsored listings’ at the top of the page and on the right hand side.

Keyword / Key Phrase – is the word or phrase that a  search engine user enters into a search engine when searching for something – for example if I am searching for Tesco, the keyword I might type in is ’supermarket’.

Keyword Research – is the hard work carried out by SEO professionals of determining which keywords are appropriate for targeting in an SEO Campaign.

Target Key Phrases – are a highly researched list of keywords or phrases that have been selected as appropriate to target after extensive keyword research. In order to create target key phrases Zeta undertakes a complex key phrase analysis and research process.

Primary Key Phrases (PKP’s) – this is a term used to group the most important key phrases in a campaign. The primary key phrases are deemed the most competitive, have the highest search volumes and are the most relevant.

Brand Key Phrases – are key phrases that feature a brand name or the brand names of products stocked or sold by a supplier– e.g. if our client was Pepsico -  Pepsi drink, Pepsi can, Walkers Crisps, Pepsi would be brand key phrases.

Non-Brand Key Phrases – are keywords or phrases related to a brand, products or services but not mentioning the brand name itself – e.g. (with relation toPepsico again) drinks manufacturer, drink cans, cola, fizzy cola.

Analytics – the most common analytics program is Google Analytics. In simple terms Analytics is used to gain, analyse an report statistics and data relating to website usage, traffic and conversions.

If I have missed any out which you would like us to define please let me know.

Personalised search works by ranking results higher if a user has shown a tendency to click on them more often. So if I search for [news] every morning while I am drinking my coffee, and I choose the number-eight result www.thesun.co.uk each time then Google will assume that I probably want to see that site higher up the rankings and put it at the top for me in future.

Apart from during our daily checking-of-rankings routine, this might not be such a bad thing for SEOs: we just need to encourage users to click our results instead of our competitors and the next time we might be rewarded with a higher ranking. Frankly, that’s something we should be thinking about anyway, so how can we do it?

Optimise title tags for clicks

As SEOs we are judged on rankings not on clicks, so we tend to optimise title tags for keyword prominence to grab that extra place where we can. But if we write title tags for clicks we might get more traffic from a lower ranking and be rewarded with high rankings in subsequent searches. So in the new world of personalised search would the title tag:

Zeta Widgets > Click now to see the best deals on the web

Be more effective than its keyword-stuffed alternative? And unlike AdWords no-one can stop us from using unsubstantiated superlatives

Meta Description

The long-neglected meta description tag could play a vital role in the world of personalised search. We can use it to display a custom snippet that is designed to drive clicks and boost our personalised rankings. Because the meta description is only ever displayed as a search snippet you can use language that you wouldn’t normally use on your site.

Google has been telling us for years that we should write better meta descriptions, but now they have given us an even better reason to do it.

Conclusion
When a website has strong rankings altering the Title tag is a scary proposition, but I know that the Zeta team is going to be busy looking at ways to maximise click through rates where possible over the next few weeks.

If personalised search only has the effect of making us think more about getting users to actually click on our results in the SERPs then I think it has done a good job. And even though, as an SEO, I will have to disable it in all my browsers I think the average user will find this change an improvement.

I wrote about Google’s search options after the launch back in May. Since then Google has included the “Images from the page” option. Image search has become one of the fastest growing verticals in search so my guess is that this will become extremely popular over the next 12 months.

This does not work like searching through Google images, the results are different; thumbnails are included alongside the normal text results and this causes the listings to change in priority. The results are still based on relevance but the image option appears to add another filter over the top, adjusting the results to combine page relevance and image optimisation.

John Lewis gets relegated to page two

I have experimented with a few different search terms to see if the option influences the rankings. One term was [flat screen tv] which had 74,000 exact searches in October. A very well known brand (John Lewis) ranks position two for a standard search, but when I select “Images from the page” the listing is relegated to page two. This is a seriously big drop especially for such a powerful brand and on a term that is ideal for the “Images from the page” option.

Maximum exposure through search

This is a good example of why image optimisation has become so important for generating the maximum exposure through search. Without a well planned strategy your website could end up like John Lewis, deep in the relegation zone of page two.

How to create a PKP traffic advanced segment

Open your Google Analytics account and select Advanced Segments.

Select  +Create new customised segment.

To create your segment, drag and drop your chosen dimensions into the statement boxes. The two you need to select are both under Traffic Sources: Keyword and Medium.

Drag Keyword into the first statement box and choose Matches regular expression from the Condition drop-down menu. Value is where you insert the key phrases, but we’ll add these in a moment.

Choose Add “and” statement, and drag Medium into the second statement box. Choose Matches exactly from the Condition drop-down menu, and choose Organic from the Value drop-down. This is what it should look like:

Now we need to add the primary key phrases in the Value box of the Keyword statement. The easiest way to do this is with a text editor capable of regular expressions such as Ultra Edit, as you need to add carat, pipe and dollar symbols to separate the key phrases.

Open the text editor and paste in your primary key phrases.

Now you need to place a ^ symbol before each key phrase and a $ symbol afterwards. In between each key phrase there needs to be a |. So it will look like this:

^keyword one$|^keyword two$|^keyword three$

To do this, go to the Search menu and select Replace. You need to replace ^p with $| and tick Regular Expressions. Then select Replace All. This is what it should look like in the replace wizard:

Now you need to replace $| with $|^ and untick Regular Expressions. Then choose Replace All again.

Make sure there is  a ^ before the first key phrase, and a $ after the last key phrase so that it looks like this:

^keyword one$|^keyword two$|^keyword three$

Now that you’ve added the symbols, select all and copy and paste into the Value box in the Keyword statement box in Analytics.

The last thing to do is name your segment e.g. Client PKPs and select Create Segment. And that’s it. Now you have a quick, easy way to measure a really important KPI.

To help out all the people who find this behaviour unacceptable Zeta has created a simple Firefox search extension to allow us to search Google UK with the default “The Web” option selected. The addon has already had thousands of downloads and a five-star rating.

Download and rate the Google UK Search extension

If you’re part of a global company that is using a .com domain and hosting all its websites from its US head office you are going to incur some costs to appear in the UK results, but is it worth it?

A quick survey round the Zeta studio revealed that around half of us are still selecting “pages from the UK” as a matter of course. I stopped doing this when Google started giving higher rankings to UK sites on google.co.uk even when “the web” is selected, but it looks like many people still haven’t broken this habit. I’m going to call them PfUKers (Pages from the UK [er]).

To allow us to do a cost–benefit analysis of moving a site to the UK or changing to a .co.uk domain name we need to know what proportion of the general population are PfUKers. I can’t find any useful data for this online, but we can analyse the referring URLs in our web server’s log files to find out.

I have taken the logs from a wide selection of sites and run them through my trusty old log analyser. This is a very small sample of data; if anyone has access to a large pool of log files please let me know.

• Sample Size: 527,942 google.co.uk referrals
• Number of “Page from UK” searches: 151,775
• Percentage of “Pages from the UK” searches: 28.75%

From this we can estimate that around one in three UK searchers are still choosing “pages from the UK”. If you’re not a PfUKer the odds are the person sitting to the left or right of you is… go on, ask them.

How to contribute your stats

If you have log files with at least 100,000 Google.co.uk searches then it would be useful to add your stats to the mix. You need a good quality log analyser or Excel 2007 (I don’t think an older version will handle this much data).

You just need to find out two things:

• The total number of referrals from “google.co.uk/search” (this excludes product search, image search etc)
• The total number of referrals from “google.co.uk/search” that also contain the string “countryUK|countryGB”

Please post your results in a comment or email me and I will collate the data.

Timing could not have been more appropriate as Twitter is surrounded with speculation of challenging Google’s search share with its own search functionality.

So the announcements cover three main features:
1.    Search Options
2.    Rich Snippets
3.    Sky Map for Android

There are 100s of possibilities now available with Search Options, deciding what is relevant for each client and how to make the most of the technology to gain market share is the fun part.

Search Options

Many of the search options were already available through the top level links and advanced search. What this feature adds is an easy-to-use filter system giving users greater control over their search results. Great for shopping and the latest news (Maybe a step towards Google’s Twitter-style search). This addition has strengthened the importance of fresh content and multi-channel optimisation.

Two great new tools are the Timeline and Wonder Wheel. Anyone familiar with Google Analytics will recognise the timeline functionality as it is similar to the date navigation, and I love Wonder Wheel because it provides a key phrase related visual tool.  There are already many questions we are asking ourselves and will be asking our clients.

Google’s official post about Search Options

Rich Snippets

Microformats and RDFa standards have a serious calling with the introduction of Rich Snippets. This feature is really cool and adds a lot of customer value to search results. So developers and publishers need to get on board. Find out more on the Rich Snippets help page.

SkyMap for Android

This application looks so much fun it nearly made me put my iPhone down and go pick up an Android based mobile. Nearly! Check out the video below, this application proves Google’s potential to challenge the iPhone stronghold on the mobile market. The king of cool, easy-to-use applications delivers again.

When performing keyword research for any market one is never short of surprises. I always find a popular key phrase that makes me stop and wonder what on earth people were thinking when they typed it, but there is one very popular search that takes the biscuit.

Every month 68-million people worldwide search Google for “google”. (And for those of you familiar with the keyword tool: yes that is on exact match.) That means around 600 people have searched Google for Google while you were reading this post.

So if you think you know what people will type when they are looking for your products and services: think again. In-depth keyword analysis will always surprise you.

Upon meeting the team for the first time I was left very impressed. I felt that these were guys who had a strong vision of where they were going and they really had their finger on the pulse.

For as long as I can remember I’ve been interested in the internet and computers so when a career opportunity opened up for me in this field I jumped at the chance.  It was explained to me in my interview that it was a work-based learning experience that Zeta were looking for and not academic qualifications. I was to be taught from the ground up. After being told this all my initial worries about what was ahead were relieved and I was ready and motivated to learn.

My first insight into the world of a digital agency came with online marketing and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) I had no previous experience with this and quickly found I had a lot to learn.  My introduction into the world of SEO began with studying Zeta’s marketing activity for the previous year.  I began to gain an understanding of how it all worked and it wasn’t long before I had gained a basic understanding of the tactics and practices involved in online marketing. I was soon building partnerships across the web.

You would be forgiven for thinking that online marketing is just about Google AdWords and buying text links in paid directories. We approach SEO in a much more focused way. Starting from the very foundation of our sites, I learnt about sitemap planning, keyword research and how to integrate all the components together to achieve optimum results.

So with 2009 speeding along I look to build on this ever expanding knowledge base and I am very excited about the direction that we’re heading in. The future for Zeta is bright and I am very proud to be a part of it.

Businesses that have already laid organic foundations will reap the rewards in 2009. Even if budgets get cut, this year provides a rare opportunity to grab market share without breaking the bank. And if you haven’t already set the groundwork, now’s the time to invest. The longer you leave it, the further ahead your competitors will be, and the further you’ll be from page one.

Organic over paid search

Around 80% of clicks are on organic listings. Why spend your entire budget on pay-per-click (PPC) when only 20% of people click on paid ads? Although PPC has its benefits (you appear in search engines immediately, and it’s great for short-term promotions like new products and special offers), it doesn’t give your business long-term stability.

Take these two examples. Company A has spent its entire budget on a PPC campaign for the past 18 months. Company B has invested 30% of its spend on PPC and 70% on organic over the past 18 months. Which company will be better off in 2009?

With a mixture of PPC and organic, company B will see long-term benefits in 2009 because the organic foundations that have been laid will really start to pay off. Company B was right in thinking PPC would provide short-term exposure (after all, they’re a new company and nobody has heard of them), and organic would give long-term stability.

After six months their PPC spend was reduced because the organic strategy was really starting to gain momentum. And after 12 months, the focus really shifted away from PPC. Even if company B cuts its budget in 2009, the business would still be better off because the foundations have been put in place. As soon as company A cuts its budget, it can kiss goodbye to page one rankings because no long-term investment has been made.

The changing face of organic

Since the launch of Google’s Universal Search in May 2007, targeting across all media types has really moved into the spotlight. Web pages, videos, images, news and blogs now appear in one place. This means businesses need to have a finger in every pie to increase sales and enquiries in 2009.

To compete successfully in the universal future, companies must create, distribute and promote tiptop content across news and industry-relevant sites, blogs, forums and social networks. In layman’s terms you need to show customers (and Google) that your brand is worth buying into.

This includes creating a branded blog, distributing optimised press releases worldwide, optimising videos and podcasts, and engaging in social networks to generate a buzz about your company. Organic provides endless ways for businesses to reach their customers in 2009. And one of the most important factors is content.

Content is king

Top-notch content gives a business wider exposure at a reduced cost.  For example, company B uses its blog to communicate to peers and customers. But not a simple “blogger blog”, a branded blog that fits into the design of their website.

As a result, their brand has been strengthened, and because they post once a week, their customers know that they’re up-to-date with the latest products, events and news in their industry.  It also tells Google their site is worth visiting time and time again, which improves their organic rankings each month. It’s first-class content along with promotion through social networks and online press releases that help to retain loyal customers.

Lower annual spend

Many businesses and top bods are sceptical about organic because it takes time, but it’s the most cost-effective form of advertising in the long run. When you compare the annual spend of organic to PPC, or even traditional types of media like newspaper advertising, organic costs a fraction compared to other forms of marketing. And with tough times ahead, a strong organic campaign really is the ticket. Once you’ve got initial rankings, your business will get long-term visibility at a low annual cost.