SEO is dead.You have no time.

Welcome to BIG SITE SEO!

SEARCH CHURCH

November 2013

Adam Audette@audette

SEO IS DEAD

SEO IS DEAD

SEO IS DEAD

SEO IS DEAD

SEO IS DEAD

SEO IS DEAD

SEO IS DEAD

SEO IS DEAD

SEO IS DEAD

SEO IS FOR SURE SUPER DEAD

PAID : ORGANIC CLICKS IN B2B

SEO IS DEAD

SEO IS DEAD

SEO IS DEAD

SEO IS DEAD

SEO IS DEAD

SEO IS DEAD

SEO IS DEAD

PAID : ORGANIC CLICKS IN B2B

SEO IS NOT DEAD

MARKETING & INNOVATION

Digital Visibility

Content

SEO cannot exist in a silo

PPC

CSEs

PLAs

Display

SEO

Tech

On-PageLinks

Social AdsWebsite

SocialSearch

Digital Visibility

PPC

CSEs

PLAs

Display

SEO

Tech

On-PageLinks

Outcome

Search

SocialPaid

SocialSearch

Content

Social Ads

Community Management

Website

SEO WILL ALWAYS CHANGE

THE BLUE SKY…

YOU KNOW WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE

BUT YOU HAVE NO TIME

YOU HAVE NO RESOURCES

SEO KNOWLEDGE IS NOT WIDESPREAD

LEADERSHIP WANT QUICK FIXES and SILVER BULLETS

WHAT YOU DON’T SHIP, DON’T COUNT

TIP #1PROJECT THE OPPORTUNITY

PROJECT THE OPPORTUNITY

PROJECT THE OPPORTUNITY

PROJECT THE OPPORTUNITY

PROJECT THE OPPORTUNITY

PROJECT THE OPPORTUNITY

PROJECT THE OPPORTUNITY

PROJECT THE OPPORTUNITY

PROJECT THE OPPORTUNITY

PROJECT THE OPPORTUNITY

Traffic Organic

conversion %

Leads / sales

LOTS OF TIPSSTUFF YOU CAN DO YOURSELF

1. GWT TOP PAGES REPORT

GWT TOP PAGES REPORT

2. GET QUERY LEVEL DATA

(Not Provided) SUCKS!

INTERNAL-ish SOURCES

Internal Paid search query report Site search data GWT queries New paid & organic report Bing queries

ADWORDS SEARCH QUERY

Good: Actual queries that triggered paid ad Data IS available via API

ADWORDS SEARCH QUERY

Not so good: Paid search ≠ organic search behavior Have to be running paid ads And there’s this…

ADWORDS SEARCH QUERY

Not so good: "you’ll only see search terms that were

used by people at least 24 hours ago and have either received clicks in the past 30 days or were searched for by a significant number of people."

ADWORDS SEARCH QUERY

Not so good: "Any search terms that did not meet this

criteria will be summed up in the 'Other search terms' row.”

ADWORDS SEARCH QUERY

SITE SEARCH DATA

Good: Hey, it’s keyword data!

SITE SEARCH DATA

Not so good: Site search ≠ organic search Your site probably has issues

GWT DATA

Good: The actual queries! FTW! Impressions, avg. position, CTR

Uncovering (Not Provided)

GWT DATA

Not so good: Limited to ~2,000 queries per day

(there’s a trick to expand this) Queries are bucketed Clicks ≤ 1 don’t count Data is ‘sanitized’

PAID & ORGANIC ADWORDS REPORT

Good: Query data!

Impressions, avg. position, CTR View of paid + organic

PAID & ORGANIC ADWORDS REPORT

Not so good: Not in the API

(at least not officially?) You’ve gotta’ be running paid search!

BING / YAHOO! BABY

Good: You’ve got actual organic query data It’s raw and unfiltered

BING / YAHOO! BABY

Not so good: Small segment of organic search

~20% of RKG’s clients’ traffic

BING + YAHOO! = 20%

HOW ‘BOUT EXTERNAL SOURCES?

HOW ‘BOUT EXTERNAL SOURCES?

External Competitive insight tools (SEM Rush,

Search Metrics, etc) SEO analytics (Brightedge, SEO Clarity,

etc) Panel data (comScore, Alexa,

Quantcast)

CONUNDRUM OF SCRAPED DATA

What scraped data gives you: Query data Ranking position Competitive insight Ecosystem insight

3. VERIFY MORE FOLDERS IN GWT

Why verify more folders? GWT limited to ~2,000 daily queries You don’t control what these are

3. VERIFY MORE FOLDERS IN GWT

Verify folders and subdomains Requires folder structure like

/drinks/whiskey Gives individual account access / data Can be used for subdomains, too

4. ANALYZE LOG FILES

Ask IT for 4 weeks of log files

4. ANALYZE LOG FILES

Ask IT for this: Timestamp URL requested User agent (limit to Googlebot and

Bingbot Response code

Googlebot is spending most of its crawl allotment on two error pages, which could mean these pages return the wrong status code.

Googlebot is crawling the same page with 3 separate URLs, which could indicate a canonicalization/duplication problem.

These URLs with ?utm_source and ?creative_desc parameters shouldn’t be indexed.

SERVER LOG ANALYSIS

Look for: Which URLs have the most requests? Are there duplicate URLs? Any language selector issues? Are 404s returning the wrong status

code? Are parameters being indexed?

5. ADD PARAMETER HANDLING RULES

5. ADD PARAMETER HANDLING RULES

WARNING: Use Care! Be holistic w/other tools.

TECHNICAL READING

SEO tools for duplicate content:http://plotin.us/17ChBFp

Robots.txt best practices for SEO:http://plotin.us/1gnC8Ae

LOG FILE TOOLS

Adam’s: http://www.rimmkaufman.com/blog/seo-diagnostics-tool/15072008/

Ian’s: http://www.portent.com/blog/seo/log-files-for-seo-32011.htm

Sawmill: http://www.sawmill.net/features.html

Splunk: http://www.splunk.com/download/

6. SETUP SEO LUNCHES

Use monthly ‘brown bags’ for: Building bridges across departments Keeping other teams up to speed on

changes Finding out what projects are in the

pipeline

7. USE THE BATHROOM

Put up “did you know” posters: Did u know? SEO isn’t about spamming

search engines! Did u know? When you permanently move a

page use a 301. Did u know? Your SEO team is in building Q

and we’ve got beer!

USE THE BATHROOM

Put up “did you know” posters: Did u know? SEO isn’t about spamming

search engines! Did u know? When you permanently move a

page use a 301. Did u know? Your SEO team is in building Q

and we’ve got beer!

8. CREATE A RUTHLESS ROADMAP

Create a 2014 technical roadmap: Be ruthless: what are THE TOP 3 technical SEO

things that MUST be accomplished in 2014? Say why they must be accomplished (back it up with

data) Build a business rationale with all that time you have

don’t have. Have a year end meeting and set owners and

timelines for 2014.

9. TAKE (OVER) YOUR G+

The G+ is without country: Does social own it? Marketing? Search? In G+ you have a CMS and social channel at

your fingertips With rel publisher and authorship this is ever

more important Hummingbird-ness….

10. QUORA FOR CONTENT IDEAS

Quora and social sites vet for you: What topics are most popular What types of content get shared the most Hat tip: Mike King @ipullrank follow him

11. STEAL YOUR COMPETITOR’S IDEAS

12. INSIGHT FROM TWITTER

BUILD A REVERSE PROXY TOOL

Why a reverse proxy tool: Allows you to make SEO changes w/out need

for IT or dev Gives you flexibility to implement metadata,

titles, and optimizations Provides a relief for swamped dev teams, too

Marketing Engineering Merchandising UX Content

Lives here Spans this and more

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Marketing Engineering Merchandising UX Content

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Get your CEO thinking about SEO

Thank you Philly!

Adam Audette@audette