Search Engine Optimization and Search Marketing
Search marketing helps organizations appear when customers actively look for information, products, services, or locations. It includes search engine optimization for unpaid visibility and paid search advertising for immediate targeted exposure.
Learning Objectives
- Explain how search engines discover, understand, and rank content.
- Conduct keyword and search-intent research.
- Apply on-page, technical, local, and off-page SEO.
- Plan and evaluate paid search campaigns.
Search Intent
| Intent | User Need | Example Content |
|---|
| Informational | Learn or solve a problem | Guides, articles, tutorials |
| Navigational | Find a specific brand or page | Homepage, login, contact page |
| Commercial | Compare available solutions | Comparisons, reviews, case studies |
| Transactional | Take an action or purchase | Product pages, booking pages, offers |
| Local | Find a nearby provider | Location pages and business profiles |
On-Page SEO
- Use descriptive page titles and headings.
- Match content depth and format to search intent.
- Write clear URLs, meta descriptions, and image alternative text.
- Use internal links to connect related topics.
- Include original examples, evidence, and practical expertise.
- Make important information easy to scan.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO ensures search engines can crawl, index, and understand a website efficiently. Important areas include site architecture, robots directives, sitemaps, canonical tags, structured data, mobile usability, secure connections, page performance, duplicate content, redirects, and broken links.
Authority and Off-Page Signals
Search visibility improves when credible websites mention or link to useful content. Authority should be built through high-quality resources, digital public relations, partnerships, research, tools, and genuine community participation rather than manipulative link schemes.
Local SEO
- Maintain accurate business name, address, phone, and opening hours.
- Optimize business profiles and location pages.
- Collect and respond professionally to customer reviews.
- Use local categories, services, photographs, and FAQs.
- Maintain consistent citations across trusted directories.
Paid Search Campaign Structure
- Define campaign objective and conversion action.
- Group keywords by intent and theme.
- Write relevant advertisements and extensions.
- Send traffic to matching landing pages.
- Use negative keywords to reduce waste.
- Set bids and budgets according to value.
- Track conversions and offline sales where possible.
- Optimize search terms, ads, bids, and landing pages.
Key Metrics
- Organic impressions, clicks, ranking visibility, and conversions
- Click-through rate and quality score
- Cost per click and cost per acquisition
- Conversion value and return on advertising spend
- Share of search and impression share