Blizzard UniversityAdvanced SEO

By Trent Blizzard, PresidentBlizzard Internet Marketing, Incwww.blizzardinternet.com

How Important is SEO?Using BlizzardTracker.com – 129 Vacation Rental Websites

Organic Search drives 43% of Website Traffic.

Size MattersThe average website has 405 pages that received inbound organic search traffic

Large Websites Outperform

The average website received 2 (or more) visitors from 776 unique keyword phrases.

Single visitor keyword phrases 2,162Average # of keyword phrases per page: 10Average # of visits per page from search: 30

Duplicate ContentThe top SEO issue in the Vacation Rental Industry

Sharing your property descriptions with Distribution and Channel partners undermines your website.

The solution in NOT to stop sharing

The solution is to write original descriptions for your website

Tools to check your photos and images:

BlizzardLINK.com/25 BlizzardLINK.com/26

Website Speed is a new component of algorithm and impacts your conversion rates too

Extremely slow loading websites are penalized

Google Website Speed Tool: BlizzardLINK.com/1

Google Analytics tracks your website speed. Add this snippet to track: _trackPageLoadTime(); Site Speed Overview from Google:

BlizzardLINK.com/6

Website Speed

Understand “Keyword Theme” is available in: Anchor text Theme of linking page Theme of linking website – “Hubs” or “Authority Sites” Internal links

Understand Quality and Trust: Domain level PageRank of website linking to you Page level PageRank of webpage linking to you

Understand Diversity: Diversity of websites Diversity of C-blocks

Link Components of Algorithm

SEOmoz research on Google’s algorithm and the role of links: BlizzardLINK.com/7

Search in Google “link:www.yourcompetitordomain.com” Open Site Explorer: BlizzardLINK.com/a Yahoo Site Explorer: BlizzardLINK.com/8 Majestic SEO: BlizzardLINK.com/9 Google Webmaster Tools (for your website) BlizzardLINK.com/b 10 Good Links for VRMs Blizzard Recommends:

BlizzardLINK.com/23

Link Resources

Are You Tracking Online Reservations using the E-Commerce Feature?

New Features:

Multi Channel Referrer Google Webmaster Tools Shows Query Data New “Who’s On Now” Report

Google Analytics

5/6/2009

5/6/2009

The world of Online Reviews is changing.

Google (Yahoo and Bing) leading the charge

Don’t Just use just Flipkey and TripAdvisor

Use Google Places. EyeTracking Example: BlizzardLINK.com/24 Google Places Tips:

Achieve 100% score Get more reviews

Develop plan to put original and non-duplicate reviews into your website Code them so they can be read by Search Engines

Reviews

Schema is a new way to code your html that was created collaboratively by Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Use it especially for: Your contact info (name, address, phone, email, etc) Your Reviews

Learn more at BlizzardLINK.com/n

2012: Schema

Growing Evidence that Social Indicators can impact your rankings

Research at: BlizzardLINK.com/7

Consider creating strategies to increase: # of Facebook Shares # of Facebook Likes and Comments # of +1s

2012: Social Indicators

Google Plus Does NOT have a business outlet yet

Equivalent of “Like” but at web-page level Affects search results of you and your circle

What you should do:

Enable +1 sharing in your website Start a personal account to get comfortable

with it See if “Hangout” offers you anything Wait for the inevitable business components

to be rolled out.

2012: Google Plus

Start Here: tips for newbies: http://www.blizzardlink.com/2

How to add a +1 button to your website: http://www.blizzardlink.com/3

Google Plus impacting search: http://www.blizzardlink.com/4

Sample of upcoming Google+ Business page: http://www.blizzardlink.com/5

2012: Google Plus Resources

The concept of Brand is important to Google. Potential Brand Quality indicators:

Presence of Brand social indicators in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+

Google Places Reviews Press Releases Videos # of Brand searches by consumers “Halo” effect of distribution Domain Registration information Security Certificates Consistency of phone numbers and addresses

2012: Brand Factors

Google can measure how happy are users are with your website:

Your Click-Thru-Rate in Search Results. Your Bounce Rate, Average Time on Site and #

pages viewed Usage of video

Some Indicators you control: How fast your website loads Broken Links Misspelled Words / Poor Grammar Hard to read text

2012: Users Signal