Post on 06-May-2015
SEO – HIGH TRAFFIC ROUTING Global Information Internship Program from BUDNET
www.budnetdesign.com
Today’s Agenda What is SEO? The Seven Steps to Higher Rankings
Get Your Site Fully Indexed Get Your Pages Visible Build Links & PageRank Leverage Your PageRank Encourage Clickthrough Track the Right Metrics Avoid Worst Practices
Part 1: What Is SEO?
Everything Revolves Around Search
Search Engine Optimization 6 times more effective than a banner
ad Delivers qualified leads 80% of Internet user sessions begin
at the search engines (Source: Internetstats.com)
55% of online purchases are made on sites found through search engine listings (Source: Internetstats.com)
SEO is NOT Paid Advertising
SEO – “Search Engine Optimization” – seeks to influence rankings in the “natural” (a.k.a. “organic”, a.k.a. “algorithmic”) search results
PPC – paid search advertising on a pay-per-click basis. The more you pay, the higher your placement. Stop paying = stop receiving traffic.
SEM – encompasses both SEO and PPC
Natural
Paid
Paid
Google Listings – Your Virtual Sales Force
Savvy retailers making 6-7 figures a month from natural listings
Savvy MFA (Made for AdSense) site owners making 5-6 figures per month
Most sites are not SE-friendly Google friendliness = friendly to other
engines First calculate your missed opportunities
Not doing SEO? You’re Leaving Money on the Table
Calculate the missed opportunity cost of not ranking well for products and services that you offer?
# of people searching for your keywords x
engine share (Google = 60%) x
expected click-through rate
average conversion rate
average transaction amountx x
E.g.10,000/day x 60% x 10% x 5% x $100 = $3,000/day
Most Important Search Engines Google (also powers AOL Search,
Netscape.com, iWon, etc.) – 60.29% market share (Source: Hitwise)
Yahoo! (also powers Alltheweb, AltaVista, Hotbot, Lycos, CNN, A9) – 22.58%
Live Search (formerly MSN Search) – 11.56%
Ask – 3.63%
What Are Searchers Looking For? Keyword Research
“Target the wrong keywords and all your efforts will be in vain.”
The “right” keywords are… relevant to your business popular with searchers
Keyword Research
Tools to check popularity of keyword searches WordTracker.com Trellian’s KeywordDiscovery.com Google’s Keyword Tool Google Trends Google Suggest
WordTracker.com
Pros Based on last 60 days worth of searches Singular vs plural, misspellings, verb tenses all separated
out Advanced functionality: keyword “projects”, import data
into Excel, synonyms, … Cons
Requires subscription fee ($260/year) Data is from a small sample of Internet searches (from the
minor search engines Dogpile and MetaCrawler) Contains bogus data from automated searches No historical archives
Keyword Popularity –According to WordTracker
Trellian’s KeywordDiscovery.com Pros
Full year of historical archives Data is from a large sample of Internet searches (9 billion
searches compiled from 37 engines) Singular vs plural, misspellings, verb tenses all separated
out Can segment by country Advanced functionality: keyword “projects”, import data
into Excel, synonyms, … Cons
Access to the historical data requires subscription fee (~$30/month)
Contains bogus data from automated searches
Keyword Popularity –According to KeywordDiscovery
Google AdWords Keyword Tool Pros
Free! (Must have an AdWords account though) Data is from a large sample of Internet searches (from
Google) Singular vs plural, misspellings, verb tenses all separated
out Can segment by country Synonyms
Cons No hard numbers
Augment this tool with other free Google tools: Google Suggest (labs.google.com/suggest) Google Trends (www.google.com/trends)
Keyword Popularity –According to
Google AdWords
Keyword Tool
Keyword Popularity –According to
Google AdWords
Keyword Tool
Keyword Popularity –According to
Google Trends
Keyword Popularity –According to Google Suggest
Keyword Research
Competition for that keyword should also be considered Calculate KEI Score (Keyword
Effectiveness Indicator) = ratio of searches over number of pages in search results
The higher the KEI Score, the more attractive the keyword is to target (assuming it’s relevant to your business)
SEO. A Moving Target. A lot is changing…
Personalization & customization Vertical search services (Images, Video, News, Maps, etc.) “Blended Search” – aka “Universal Search”
Fortunately, the tried-and-true tactics still work… Topically relevant links from important sites Anchor text Keyword-rich title tags Keyword-rich content Internal hierarchical linking structure The whole is greater than the sum of the parts
The Search Engines Are Your Friend Sitemaps.org Webmaster tools (e.g. Google Webmaster
Central, Live Search Webmaster Center, Yahoo Site Explorer)
Rel=“nofollow” tag Meta NOODP tag Speaking at search engine conferences Publishing blogs dedicated to helping
webmasters Participating on SEO forums “Weather reports”
SEO Can Dramatically Improve Traffic/SalesNon-optimal site with few pages indexed
Optimized site with many pages indexed
Few visits/sales per day Many visits/sales per day!
$=
Part 2: Seven Steps to High Rankings
Begin The 7 Steps
1) Get Your Site Fully Indexed 2) Get Your Pages Visible 3) Build Links & PageRank4) Leverage Your PageRank4) Encourage Clickthrough6) Track the Right Metrics7) Avoid Worst Practices
1) Get Your Site Fully Indexed
Search engines are wary of “dynamic” pages - they fear “spider traps”
Avoid stop characters (?, &, =) ‘cgi-bin’, session IDs and unnecessary variables in your URLs; frames; redirects; pop-ups; navigation in Flash/Java/Javascript/pulldown boxes If not feasible due to platform constraints, can be
easily handled through proxy technology (e.g. GravityStream)
The better your PageRank, the deeper and more often your site will be spidered
Lack of links down into all content pages;
Common Barriers to Spidering:
!Non-textlink sitewide navigation;
• Search-form-only;
• Javascript/Java-only (ie: dynamic menus);
• Flash apps / Splash pages;
Non-optimal URL formats of pages;
http://www.example.com/app.jsp?sid=abc123xyz
URL Framed Content
1) Get Your Site Fully Indexed (cont’d)
Page # estimates are wildly inaccurate, and include non-indexed pages (e.g. ones with no title or snippet)
Misconfigurations (in robots.txt, in the type of redirects used, requiring cookies, etc.) can kill indexation
Keep your error pages out of the index by returning 404 status code
Keep duplicate pages out of the index by standardizing your URLs, eliminating unnecessary variables, using 301 redirects when needed
Results in “Supplemental Hell”
Example of Non-Optimal Site Design:PR 8 site has META refresh redirect on homepage – spiders not redirected to destination page:
Also, indexed “shell” page doesn’t contain any text content!
Not Spider-Friendly GET http://www.bananarepublic.com --> 302 Moved
Temporarily GET
http://www.bananarepublic.com/browse/home.do --> 302 Moved Temporarily
GET http://www.bananarepublic.com/browse/home.do?targetURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bananarepublic.com%2Fbrowse%2Fhome.do&CookieSet=Set --> 302 Moved Temporarily
GET http://www.bananarepublic.com/cookieFailure.do --> 200 OK
2) Get Your Pages Visible 100+ “signals” that influence ranking “Title tag” is the most important copy on the page Home page is the most important page of a site Every page of your site has a “song” (keyword
theme) Incorporate keywords into title tags, hyperlink
text, headings (H1 & H2 tags), alt tags, and high up in the page (where they’re given more “weight”)
Eliminate extraneous HTML code “Meta tags” are not a magic bullet Have text for navigation, not graphics
Pretty good title
Not so good title – where’s the phrase “credit card”?
Dynamic Site Leaves Session IDs in URLs:
Titles not specific to page (“jewelry”)
Main text on page just nav labels –Little text/keyword content
Good link text and body copy
Good link text and body copy
No link text or body copy
No link text or body copy
Take a peek under the hood
The “meta tags”
Unnecessarily bloated HTML
3) Build Links and PageRank “Link popularity” affects search engine rankings
PageRank™ - Links from “important” sites have more impact on your Google rankings (weighted link popularity)
Google offers a window into your PageRank PageRank meter in the Google Toolbar (toolbar.google.com) Google Directory (directory.google.com) category pages 3rd party tools like SEOChat.com’s “PageRank Lookup” &
“PageRank Search”
Scores range from 0-10 on a logarithmic scale Live Search and Yahoo have similar measures to
PageRank™
Google’s Toolbar – with handy PageRank Meter
Google Directory – listings are organized by PageRank
Conduct any Google query and get results organized by PageRank
4) Leverage Your PageRank
Your home page’s PageRank gets distributed to your deep pages by virtue of your hierarchical internal linking structure (e.g. breadcrumb nav)
Pay attention to the text used within the hyperlink (“Google bombing”)
Don’t hoard your PageRank Don’t link to “bad neighborhoods”
Ideal internal site linking hierarchies:Homepages often will be highest-ranking
site pages since they typically have most
inbound links.
Good link trees inform search engines
about which site pages are most
important.
*Sitemaps can also be used to tell SEs about pages, & to define relative priority.
4) Leverage Your PageRank Avoid PageRank dilution
Canonicalization (www.domain.com vs. domain.com)
Duplicate pages: (session IDs, tracking codes, superfluous parameters)
In general, search engines are cautious of dynamic URLs (with ?, &, and = characters) because of “spider traps” Rewrite your URLs (using a server module/plug-in) or
use a hosted proxy service (e.g. GravityStream) See
http://catalogagemag.com/mag/marketing_right_page_web/
Duplicate pages
Googlebot got caught in a “spider trap”
Search engine spiders turn their noses up at such URLs
Thus, important content doesn’t make it into the search engine indices
5) Encourage Clickthrough Zipf’s Law applies - you need to be at the top of
page 1 of the search results. It’s an implied endorsement.
Synergistic effect of being at the top of the natural results & paid results
Entice the user with a compelling call-to-action and value proposition in your descriptions
Your title tag is critical Snippet gets built automatically, but you CAN
influence what’s displayed here
Where do searchers look? (Enquiro, Did-it, Eyetools Study)
Search listings – 1 good,1 lousy
6) Track the Right Metrics Indexation: # of pages indexed, % of site indexed,
% of product inventory indexed, # of “fresh pages”
Link popularity: # of links, PageRank score (0 - 10)
Rankings: by keyword, “filtered” (penalized) rankings
Keyword popularity: # of searches, competition, KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Indicator) scores
Cost/ROI: sales by keyword & by engine, cost per lead
Indexation tool –www.netconcepts.com/urlcheck
Link popularity tool –www.netconcepts.com/linkcheck
Avoid Worst Practices
Target relevant keywords Don’t stuff keywords or replicate
pages Create deep, useful content Don't conceal, manipulate, or over-
optimize content Links should be relevant (no
scheming!) Observe copyright/trademark law &
Google’s guidelines
Spamming in Its Many Forms… Hidden or small text Keyword stuffing Targeted to obviously irrelevant keywords Automated submitting, resubmitting, deep
submitting Competitor names in meta tags Duplicate pages with minimal or no changes Spamglish Machine generated content
Spamming in Its Many Forms…
Pagejacking Doorway pages Cloaking Submitting to FFA (“Free For All”) sites & link
farms Buying up expired domains with high PageRanks Scraping Splogging (spam blogging)
BMW.de hosted many
“doorway pages” like
this one
“Sneaky redirect” sent searchers to
this page
Not Spam, But Bad for Rankings Splash pages, content-less home page, Flash
intros Title tags the same across the site Error pages in the search results (eg “Session
expired”) "Click here" links Superfluous text like “Welcome to” at beginning of
titles Spreading site across multiple domains (usually
for load balancing) Content too many levels deep
What Next? Conduct an SEO Audit! Is your site fully indexed? Are your pages fully optimized? Could you be acquiring more PageRank? Are you spending your PageRank wisely? Are you maximizing your clickthrough
rates? Are you measuring the right things? Are you applying “best practices” in SEO
and avoiding all the “worst practices”?
Review Errors/Messages in Webmaster Tools
Content Opt Opportunities via Webmaster Tools
Check Robots.txt Exclusions in Webmaster Tools
Case Study: Homestead.com
What worked Comprehensive SEO & usability audit Intensive on-site training sessions with
their IT and marketing teams 6 months of support
What didn’t work No significant changes to the look of the
home page were allowed for political reasons, significantly reducing the options available
Case Study: Homestead.com
Results Within 8 weeks of launch of some
preliminary optimization work, on page 1 for “website hosting” in Google
With our audit as a blueprint, later that year launched an internally built site redesign which landed them the #1 Google position for “website hosting”
Consistently held #1 position for 2 years
In Summary
Focus on the right keywords Have great keyword-rich content Build links, and thus your PageRank™ Spend that PageRank™ wisely within
your site Measure the right things Continually monitor and benchmark
Further Reading blogs.cnet.com/seosearchlight google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?
answer=35769 www.google.com/webmasters/ www.mattcutts.com/blog googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com blog.outer-court.com www.searchengineland.com www.seroundtable.com www.naturalsearchblog.com www.stephanspencer.com
Q&A!
Special White Papers Available:
Image Search Optimization
Local Search Optimization Tactics
New Link Building Paradigms
Online Marketing Tips for Universities
Tips & Tricks for Local Search Ads