Search Engines and Social Media Build Traffic and Customer Loyalty

1. Search Engines andSocial MediaBuild Traffic and Customer Loyalty Presented by: Greg Petry, President, NetSource Media

2. About NetSource • Founded in 1995 • Acquired RVUSA.com in 1999 • Largest provider of RV Dealer websites • Began working with Trailer Dealers in 2009 • Operate TrailersUSA.com and HorseTrailersUSA.com • Nearly 50 Design Awards • Staff of 22including 5 designers and 4 programmers • Full Service Online Agency offering everything from Logo Design to eCommerce and Custom Programming

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) • What is SEO? • Organic – Natural or free listings in Search Engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. • Organic listings are based on things like: • Page Construction • Page Content • Number of Sites Linking to them

4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) • Pay-Per Click or PPC – Paid or Sponsored Listings appearing at the top and sides of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) • PPC listings are based on thing like: • Page Construction • Page Content • Number of Sites Linking to them • Amount bid for the term • Relevance of both the ad and the destination page to the search • The same factors for everyone else bidding on the term

5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) • WARNING!!! If you ask 20 different Search Engine Specialists their opinion on the best way to optimize your site you will likely get 20 or more opinions. Of those , 30% or more will be wrong and many of the right ones will be in conflict with each other

6. What Makes a good Search Engine Specialist? • Google Certified • Avoids “Black Hat” techniques • The intent is to look for shortcuts or loopholes that would rank pages higher than they deserve to be ranked, include keyword stuffing, link schemes, etc. • Employs “White Hat” techniques • Improves the usability of the site, helps create great content, make sites faster, etc., which is good for both users and search engines. • Has good references from customers • Doesn’t make wild promises

7. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) • Who Do You Want to Target? • Lookers vs. Buyers • Brand Specific vs. Type Specific • Where Do You Want to Target • Local vs. Regional or National • The lower the units value, the less likely buyers will be willing to travel a long distance to purchase • Your local market will nearly always be your easiest sale, so make sure that you do a good job of targeting locally

8. Starting SEO • Understand where you are and where you want to go • Use Google Analytics or Webmaster Tools to understand what keywords and phrases that your site is being found on now • Use tools like SpyFuwww.spyfu.com to see what keywords your competitors are appearing on in both paid and organic searches

9. Starting SEO • Create a list of specific keywords and phrases you want to show up on • Use Google Keyword Tools to find other relevant words and phrases • Once your list is complete, Webmaster Tools can help you determine search volume on all of the words and phrases in your list • With all of that information, you can begin to rank which keywords and phrases are most important to you

10. “Short Tail” vs “Long Tail” Keywords • Short Tail: “Trailers” “Horse Trailers” • Long Tail: “Featherlite Horse Trailer in Texas”, “3 Horse Slant Load Trailers” • 1-2 Word Phrases tend to be lookers – learning and researching • 3+ Word Phrases tend to be buyers

11. Page Optimization • On Page Elements that impact SEO: • Page Construction using HTML5 and CSS3 • Title Tags • H Tags • Alt Tags • Page Description* • Description is important to sell searchers on your page, but does not have a large impact on SEO rankings

12. Page Optimization • On Page Elements that impact SEO: • Type of Page Content • Page content must be relevant to and in harmony with all of the other elements of the page • Note that for a long period of time, page content played a minor role your rankings. Over the last 18 months, page content has become MUCH more important • Links • The number of links, quality, and relevance of links are very important

13. Page Optimization • Off Page Elements that impact SEO: • Page Load Speed • Quality of Inbound Links • Canonicalization of URLs • Presence of a properly formatted site map

14. Creating a Strategy • Create a basic map of the core pages for your site • Pick 1-3 keywords or phrases to emphasize for each page • Once you have your initial sitemap, create a strategy for your inventory pages • Decide if you are going to focus on brands, types, or both • Both is the best strategy if you can afford it

15. Creating a Strategy • Next, see what phrases that were important to you that you don’t have a strategy for yet • Determine if you are going to create landing pages or write blog articles to target them • Create a schedule for creating blog articles and additional landing pages

16. Penguins and PandasWhy do They Matter? • Google’s 2 most recent updates • Panda – February 2011 • Penguin – April 2012

17. Panda Update • Significant Changes • Page Title importance • Page Layout • “Above the Fold” Content • Sitemaps • Crawl Error reporting in Webmaster Tools • More focus on local results • Improved recognition of Keyword Stuffing • Better ranking of Site Links

18. Penguin Update • Tighter Guidelines on content optimization • More emphasis on natural language content • More emphasis on Brand Name usage in both Title Tags and content links • More emphasis on fresh content like blogs, press releases, white papers, etc. • More localization of content to searchers location

19. Googles Roadmap • All current roads lead to more localization of content • Becoming harder to optimize for out of area searchers • Pushing towards more Pay Per Click advertising to reach wide audience

20. Link Building • High Quality links from other websites will help your pages have higher search rankings • Links must come from sites that have content that is relevant to the content on the page they link to • In other words, a link from a page on a popular horse website to your horse trailers page is much more valuable than a link from a local classified sites home page to your home page

21. Link Building • Be careful to avoid “link farms” that sell you a link from a non relevant site – Google penalizes these types of actions • Find Relevant sites that you can provide content or articles to in exchange for a link back credit • Create great content or blog articles that other sites want to link to • Press Releases are another great way to get relevant inbound links

22. Search Engine Optimization Questions? 10 minute Break

23. Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)

24. PPCThe Differences Between SEO and PPC: • You can influence SEO, But you have much more control over PPC • SEO costs tend to be “soft” – hard to directly tie an SEO expense to a specific result • PPC costs tend to be “hard” much easier to tie costs to results • If you work at it, SEO can be free or very cheap other than your time

25. PPC • Google Adwords • Target Specific Keywords or phrases • Can advertise locally, regionally, or nationally • Cost is on a Per-Click basis • You establish a maximum daily budget and your monthly spend will be within a few percent of that • Once your daily money runs out, your ads will not appear until the next day.

26. PPC • Google Adwords • Tools allow you to track exactly what your cost for conversion for each keyword or phrase is • You can also buy display or banner ads on a Pay Per 1,000 impressions rate as well (CPM) • Text ads can be purchased to appear only in Google searches or near relevant content on sites using the Google Adsense network • Display ads do not appear in Google searches

27. PPC - Buying Ads • Originally, ads were placed based on who the highest bidder was on a given keyword or phrases • Today, a complex “quality score” is used to weight each bid with a number of other factors that may result in the highest bid not being the first ad listed

28. PPC - Buying Ads • Elements of Quality Score • Relevance of keyword or phrase you are bidding on to the searchers search term • Relevance of your ad text to the searchers search term • Relevance of the ads destination page to both the ad and the searchers search term • The Bounce Rate of the destination page from previous searches

29. PPC - Buying Ads • How Google ranks your bid • Qscore * Bid = Bid Ranking • An ad with a bid of $1.00 and a Qscore of 8 will be ranked above an ad with a bid of $2.00 and a Qscore of 3 It is important to continually work on improving your Qscores to maximize the Return on Investment of your ads

30. PPC • Elements of a successful AdWords campaign • Keyword Research • Wide variety of Landing Pages • Brand Specific • Type Specific • Location Specific • Good Ad Copywriting • Conversion Tracking • Continual Experimentation and Testing

31. PPC Questions?

32. Social Media

33. Social Media • A Powerful way to increase the results of all of your online marketing efforts • “Live” Content / Social Media – a Necessary Evil • Display your recent Facebook and Twitter posts on your website - Search Engines like sites with fresh content • Social Content on your web site also invites site visitors to engage with you socially by liking or following you

34. Social Media • Our goal is not only to tie in our visitors to everything we are doing, but to let them help become evangelists for our company by sharing or liking our posts • Becoming more powerful and important in driving sales

35. Social Media • Posts that your “friend” base see as valuable are liked or shared with their friend base, widening your companies reach • Likes create an endorsement of your company to their entire friend base • Live Content / Social Media Content Ideas • New or Special Inventory • Events you host/attend/sponsor • New Products / Services • New Deliveries with testimonials • Blogs • How to / Technical articles • Buying Guides • Industry Issues

36. SEO, PPC, and Social Media • Focus on Conversions instead of impressions • Try to make weekly blog and facebook posts. • Don’t post too frequently • Consider hiring a Search Engine or Social Marketing Professional that knows your industry to maximize results

37. Questions? Greg Petry NetSource Media TrailersUSA.com / HorsetrailersUSA.com 352-732-7700 greg@netsourceinc.com