Paul Mosenson

President, Founder

Nuspark Marketing

September 2013

A B2B Executive’s Guide To

Lead Generation SEO

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Or, What Are Those Guys Doing to Get Me More Leads, Sales, & Conversions?

About NuSpark Marketing

• Founded in 2010; Team members average 25 years of experience

• Philadelphia based, but works globally; virtual team of experts

• Provides the process, consultation, strategy, tactics for firms that need better lead generation, lead nurturing, and funnel optimization.

• Founder Paul Mosenson is a long-term Media Director and has been managing digital campaigns for 15 years successfully

• Proven SEO techniques that drive leads and sales

What This SEO eBook Is and Is Not

What It Is What It’s Not

• An overview of SEO strategy & tactics from a bird’s eye view

• An attempt to show most of the major tasks of what an SEO does, so there is a better understanding of the value

• Focus on B2B lead generation sites

• This is not a book of how-to. But a book of what and why (with some “how” elements)

• It’s not targeted to SEOs, but rather B2B firms, marketing executives, and those who wish to understand the importance of search engine marketing to a firm’s bottom-line

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NuSpark Marketing SEO Approach

• We: ▫ Are technical analysts; making sure your website is optimized for

search engine bots and crawlers ▫ Are content consultants; making sure your words and paragraphs

are readable and searchable ▫ Are social media strategists; we understand the role of social

media optimization and its contribution to your search visibility ▫ Are public relations professionals; we create relationships with

influential authors, and pitch great content for publishing ▫ Are Internet detectives (aka link builders); we scour the web for

highly ranked sites that are willing to include a link to your website and content.

▫ Are marketing consultants; we take pride in managing your content properly for search engines, so that you generate increased website traffic, leads, and sales

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Contents

• Why SEO

• Keyword Research

• Technical Optimization

• Content Optimization

• Social Media & SEO

• Mobile SEO

• Meet Panda & Penguin

• Link Building

• Measuring SEO

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Stating the case for search engine optimization

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Help me understand the process, the value, and the

strategy

Why B2B SEO

• Each new lead is valuable; an SEO campaign can make a measureable difference to your bottom line with just a few conversions.

• Challenge: Long life cycle from inquiry to sales, and

it can be difficult to measure conversion value

• However, a commitment to a combination of writing valuable content mixed with proper SEO tactics will grow your business in the long-run and generate positive ROI

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Top Online Activities; Search and Email

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2 Reasons Why People Search

•I Want

•I Need

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Your Goal; be there with an answer to your prospect’s query

SEO Works for me…

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#1 organic listing

How Important is SEO for Lead Generation

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2012 Marketing Sherpa Survey; from their LinkedIn Group SEO is the most effective tactic But SEO is also the most difficult tactic

SEO is the Biggest Impact on Lead

Generation

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Webmarketing123 survey of 500 marketers in 2012: State of Digital Marketing

B2B Buyers Use Search Frequently

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2012 Buyersphere Report

Tech B2B Customer Study: Search #1

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Search Starts When Prospects Have

Needs

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B2B Search Across the Funnel

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Your Goal: Get on the Short List

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Get to the first page; the importance of search engine rank

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Tell me the benefits of getting to Google’s first page for my keywords and how you guys determine your tactics

How Search Works

• Spiders or bots crawl your site and builds indexes of URLs and keywords on web pages

• The spider crawls your site by reading it and follows links to other pages within the site

• When a user performs a query, the search engine combines on-site factors such as keyword relevancy and frequency with off-site factors such as quality incoming links from other sites that point to your site as well as other factors to determine your search ranking

• The result of the complex calculation is your position within the search engine rank result page called SERP

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Search Results Vary by Query Type

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Google Rewards Relevancy

• Good quality relevant pages

• X

• Good quality relevant links

• =

• High Search engine rankings

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Google Most Important Ranking Factors NuSpark Marketing

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Link quantity and quality to your site from authoritative and trustworthy sites are the most influential factors in determining search engine rank Quantity and quality of page links, including internal links are second most influential Page level keyword and content relevance are also major key factors in search engine rank

Factors That Will Be Influential in the Future

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From the same MOZ SEO survey: ranking influence for future SEO 1. Site/page

value to users (quality content)

2. Google+ and Google Authorship

The Importance of Link Building

• Links from high quality websites will boost your rankings and get you more site traffic

• Even if a link doesn’t get clicked, if it exists on a high profile site you still receive “link juice” meaning it’s a factor in your search engine ranking

• A “backlink” from a high quality, content-rich site signals to Google that your website is relevant and trustworthy; boosting your rank

• Internal site link building from keyword to content pages makes it easier for Google to crawl your page for relevant keywords. Sites that are easy to navigate from a user perspective generally get higher rankings

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How Does Google Rank Quality Sites

• Sites with high PageRank tells Google that the site linking to you is popular and valuable

• Sites that link to you with relevant content tells Google that your site is authoritative as well

• Sites that are trusted due to its quality content that link to you tells Google that your site is a trusted resource as well

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• Sites that are popular, authoritative, and trustworthy in your niche increase chances of higher search ranking.

PageRank; What’s That?

PageRank

• PageRank is Google’s formula for ranking popular websites (1-10). If you get a link from a high PageRank site, that link becomes a factor in determining search engine rank for your site.

• The more “votes” a site has from other high PageRank sites, the higher your own PageRank

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The PageRank Scale

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0: Your site is not listed in the Google PageRank list 1: Your site is listed but you have minimal content 2: You’re starting to move up – keep working at it 3: Average. You’re providing good content and most websites fall in this range 4: Above average. Your site is separating itself and becoming authoritative 5: Good. Your site will usually show up on the first page of some searches. 6: Very good. Your content is being found and shared. 7. Great. Your site is among the leaders in its niche 8: Your site is doing fantastic; you’re a nationally known brand 9: You’re nearly at the top; like YouTube, Yahoo, Facebook, Apple, Amazon. 10: You’ve reached the pinnacle of PageRank

Many Browser Extensions Exist To Measure Website Rank

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Click Through Rate by Organic Rank: Top

3 Positions Dominate Share of Clicks

Slingshot SEO Study Bruce Clay SEO Study

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More Research on First Page and

Position Top 3 Positions Dominate Clicks

First Page Gets 91.5% of Traffic

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More click and traffic research from Chitika, 2013

Choosing the right keywords that target your prospect’s needs and providing the foundation for increased site traffic

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OK, I’m sold on the importance of SEO for driving leads and visibility- so now what keywords should I be ranked for?

Keyword Strategy

• Keywords are the foundation of SEO. The properly chosen keywords are based on what prospects look for and what business solutions they are looking for. That means if your website content is written with “marketing speak” or “technical jargon” but not with the prospect language in mind, your site won’t rank as well

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The Goals of Keyword Research

• The goal is to find the ideal mix of keywords and then implement those keywords into your website to increase your search ranking and generate increased traffic

• Ranking for keywords that are frequently used by your prospects to find what you do can significantly increase traffic and leads

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Choosing Keywords to Optimize For

• Start with a baseline. Look at your current analytics data and get an idea of what keywords are working now in generating traffic

• Brainstorm keywords that your prospects may use to find your firm or solutions. Think like a buyer; what do they need, and does your website have content that solves those needs?

• Look at competitor websites. What keywords are they optimized for? Read their content, meta tags, and URLs.

• Use keyword research tools to track keyword search volume and competition level. The best keywords to rank for have moderate or high search volumes at low to moderate competition

• Consider long tail terms (3 or more words); generally are less competitive and bring more quality traffic to your site

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Keywords Through the Buying Cycle;

Target Terms Throughout the Funnel

• Interest: Broader terms; target

people who are generally browsing for research. (i.e. Process Machinery)

• Research: More specific. Prospect is now refining his search in order to become an informed buyer (i.e. Process Machinery Options; Process Machinery Vendors)

• Purchase: The prospect’s query is now very specific as he is now ready to buy. The terms are very “long tail” (3 or more terms in query) and could name your specific product or brand.

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Long Tail Terms: Less Competition

Higher Conversion

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Keyword Tools Assist in Research

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Google’s Own Search Engine Features

Also Help In Keyword Determination

Google Suggest

Related Searches

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Keep Track of Research on Templates

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Content template ebook available on NuSpark Marketing website, www.nusparkmarketing.com

Keyword Mapping: Assign Keywords to

Pages

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Mapping keywords provides clarity for each page of content, and can help organize an internal linking and site map strategy

Performing an audit to optimize the indexing of your website

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OK, so now you’re going to show me some of the technical things you do to make sure my site is optimized for search engine crawling

Sign Up for Webmaster Tools

• Get warnings about the health if your site (i.e. Malware)

• Find out how many pages are being indexed

• Find out how many links are pointing to your website

• Troubleshoot crawler and indexing issues

• Discover search queries that lead people to your site

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A Variety of Diagnostics and Site Reports Available on Webmaster Tools

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Track What Organic Position Your Site

or Blog Appeared for Specific Queries

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Report will give us clues on which keywords we need to focus on as we compare query traffic with average position

Dig into Specific Keywords and Track Changes in

Impressions, Clicks, and Position, by landing page

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Review Search Results of Top Pages; Pages with

low position but high CTR opportunity to build

links for that page

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Results of Author Rank: This Report Measures

Search Results of Blogs/Pages That Included

Google Authorship; On site and Guest Sites

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Submitting XML Site Map; so Crawlers

Can Find Your Pages • Proper format and protocol

• Submit to webmaster tool accounts

• Make sure up to date with current pages

• Pages not appearing in the site crawl need to be included if necessary

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Site Speed; Website Should Load Fast

• Tools analyze load speed of site

• Then will give you list or recommendations for performance optimization

• Coding issues, unnecessary javascript, and other reasons for bottlenecks can affect speed, and page speed affects rankings

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Robot.txt: Stop Google from Indexing Certain

Pages • Used to block certain pages, confidential or private, from being indexed

• Script as added to those specific pages so that they are not indexed (noindex) and removed from search results

• Remove the code when the page is ready to be indexed

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HTTP Status Codes Can Impact SEO

• Use the 301 redirect when directing URLS from an old site to a new site so that the old site’s ranking history is transferred to the new site

• Any 404 (file not found pages) that have good content from previous site pages should be transferred to the 301

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URL Structure

• User friendly; less than 115 characters

• Include a relevant keyword in the page name

• Subfolders over subdomains

• Avoidance of excessive parameters

• Hyphens used to separate words

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Avoid Duplicate Content

• Duplicate content is when the same content appears on multiple URLs

• When this occurs, search engines find it difficult to rank the best

• Search engines prefer to results the original version, unless a site with more authority uses your content

• Therefore a site that uses dupe content will suffer traffic losses and lose ranktion? Write original content

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We Use Copyscape to Identify Dupe

Content

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Domain Structure • Domains are the internal addresses of websites, with extensions like.com and .net

• Domains should be short and easy to remember

• Words in domains separated by hyphens

• For optimal site architecture, domain structure should be subfolder format (www.me.com/blog) and not subdomain (www.blog.me.com)

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Check the Proper Syntax of Your Website

• Most of websites are written in HTML or (X)HTML language. Just like any language, sometimes there are coding, spelling, or language errors.

• The Markup Validator checks the syntax of web documents, and gives developers and programmers places to update code so that browsers can display web pages properly

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Title Tags; What Are Pages are About

• Title tag is the text that describes what the particular page is about; second most-important SEO on page element after content

• Keyword-rich; max length 70 characters

• Most important keywords at front of tag

• Readable-impactful message (it’s a first impression)

• Unique for each page of site

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ALT (Image) Tags and Header Tags;

Two More Places for Keyword Inclusion

ALT Tags Header Tags

• ALT Tags are short descriptions of images on your website. Crawler’s can’t read images. ALT tags tell users what the images are when they hover those images with their mouse, and is a good place to include keywords that describe the image for search engine crawlers

• Header, or H Tags, are page headlines and sub-headlines that organize your page content. The most important is the 1st tag (H1) . Keywords within these tags again assist search engines with page relevancy and rank

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Meta Descriptions; Now Generate Clicks

• Consider meta descriptions as

“ad” copy. Once you are ranked, you still have to persuade prospects to click.

• Should be persuasive, include important keywords, and no longer than 160 character

• Not an SEO ranking factor, but a traffic generation factor

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Anchor Text/Internal Linking • Anchor Text is a visible clickable link with in your

website that links to other relevant pages within the site (or referencing content outside your site). Outside sites can also use anchor text to link to your page

• For a technical definition, Anchor text is the text used to describe a link when turning it into a hyperlink using HTML or XHTML coding.

• Anchor text should be an important keyword; letting search engines know that the keyword and the link has relevancy. Therefore- limit the use of anchor text for “learn more” or “read more” phrases, unless it’s read more about lead generation, where “lead generation” becomes the anchor text link

• Internal links in general increase site usability; they help prospects navigate to relevant pages

• An optimal internal link system (site architecture) helps crawlers easily index your website, and thus is a contributor to higher search engine rank

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Hyperlink Formatting

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Canonical Tags

• Many times you might have pages that link to the same content:

▫ www.company.com

▫ www.company.com/index

▫ Company.com

• A canconical tag on your site tells Google which page has the original content so the duplicates are not indexed. This way, only one page gets SEO credit, and the better rankings you get

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Use these tags when: •Multiple versions of home page (as at the left) •Ecommerce pages that show the same content when you show multiple views •Mobile websites on subdomains or directories that have same content

See Your Website How a Search Engine

Sees It

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We use Browseo to assess how search engines see your website, which helps us optimize content and tags to insure keywords are being utilized properly and indexed.

Our Favorite On-Site Audit Tool, Screaming Frog, ; Gives

Us Detailed Site Info So We Can Fix Technical Issues

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View Website Crawl History

• The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is a searchable collection of websites dating back to 1996. By tracking crawl history you can see if any time there were crawl or indexing issues for your domain

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We Stay Abreast of Latest Google

Indexing News

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Optimizing your website, blog, video and other content so maximize your search engine visibility

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So you SEO folk can help me with my blog and content? Nice. Oh, might be time for a simple Google Authorship explanation and how social media fits into this process

Website Writing Strategy

• Write for the prospect’s needs; your content should address business challenges and how you contribute to solving them, in their language- not yours

• Your content must include primary and secondary keywords; but if you go overboard with too many keyword inclusions, Google will red flag the “keyword stuffing”

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SEO Content Best Practices

• Page length: average about 300 words per page although no strict guidelines

• Keywords should appear within first or first few paragraphs • Write for skimmers and scanners; short paragraphs- short

sentences-bullet points • Write clear and persuasive with the prospect in mind. Don’t

impress by using complicated business jargon, which can distract the busy reader

• Strategically use the chosen long-tail keywords; remember the longer-tail will have higher conversion rate

• Blog Posts, PDFs, Guides, and Videos all need to be optimized with keywords and descriptions as well

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The Benefits of Blogging for SEO

• Helps engage prospects by communicating your niche and persuading those prospects to dig deeper by reading other posts and page content

• When promoting blogs on social media, email, and syndication sites, traffic increases to your site

• Adding pages to your site increases the depth of your overall website content; a contributing factor to rank

• Website freshness with new quality content is a signal to search engines of an active website, another rank factor

• Quality content attracts inbound links • Blogs are written in clean code with original content;

search engines prefer formats like blogs

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Blog Writing for SEO

• Choose keyword rich topics • Lead with your keywords early

in your blog title • Posts with numbers attract more

engaged readers (“5 types of…”) • Targeted keywords in your blog

should first appear in first sentence or two, and sprinkled tactfully within the post, without overdoing it.

• Follow page title and meta description best practices, and promote via social networks and other communication tactics

• Use internal linking strategy and link other keywords in the post to key content pages on your website

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Google Authorship

• Google Authorship is how Google ties in Google+ user profiles with content ownership across the user’s blogs and articles contributed to websites. When you’re identified as the content’s owner, your search visibility increases (photo inclusion)

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Google Authorship Benefits

• Higher Click through rate on search listings, because your Google+ profile picture appears with your content, making your post stand out

• Because Google authorship recognizes authority, your content is more trusted; and that generates increased site traffic as well

• By adding the “rel=author” tag to your biography on your website or blog, Google sees that, and your posts are indexed faster

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“How to” Alert: Google Authorship as a Guest Blogger NuSpark Marketing

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• Set up Google+ Profile

• When you send a bio along with an article to a blog that accepts guests, they need to link your name in your bio with a rel=author tag. Below example of tag:

• <a title=”Author: Your Name on Google+”

href=”https://plus.google.com/profilenumber?rel=author”rel=”author“>Google+</a>

• Link the blog to the contributor section of your Google+ profile

• Verify the connection with Google’s rich snippet testing tool http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

So Now There Is Author Rank

• So now there is Author Rank, which is a measure for Google to understand which author is more popular, influential and trust-worthy, and whose content can be given more importance (and higher rank).

• Author Rank is a Google

algorithm combining factors such as Google+ engagement, Google+ social activity, sites you have contributed content to, number of Google+ circles you are in, # of comments per post, and more

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Generating More Traffic with Author

Rank • Write high quality content that your readers will want to share • Do keyword research and make sure your article titles

answers what your prospects are looking for • Increase social activity across channels such as Twitter,

Facebook, and YouTube • Engage with people on Google+. Share content, comment on

content, +1, etc. Use Google+ consistently • Add influential audiences to circles and engage with them • Take part in communities; encourage sharing • Engage and respond to comments on your blog posts • Increase guest blogging with quality content on quality

websites

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Rich Snippets

• Rich Snippets are additional lines of information that appear within a Google search result. Rich snippets help users discover sites relevant to their searches.

• Because rich snippets make listings stand out, click through rate increases (up to 30%!)

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Types of Rich Snippets

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How Do Rich Snippets Get There? (Tech

Alert) • Check these resources

• https://support.google.com/webmaste

rs/answer/99170

• http://raventools.com/blog/an-seos-guide-to-schema-org/

• http://blog.hubspot.com/how-to-use-google-rich-snippets

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Optimize PDFs for Search

• PDFs are indexed also. Make sure texts within PDFs are plain text, not in the form of images

• Under File-Document-Properties within a PDF the File name, Title, Subject, and Description should follow SEO best practices, containing keywords

• Links within the PDF may go to other relevant pages on your website

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Optimize Presentations; All Google

Indexed PowerPoint

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Add keyword-rich titles and text within Document Properties

Same thing on Slideshare for each presentation; keyword-rich titles, description, and keyword tags.

Optimize YouTube Videos • Pick a keyword phrase (or max 2)

and target that phrase to a particular video, then put that phrase in your video title, description, and file name. The description should also include a website link and call to action. As usual, no keyword stuffing, but give audiences value

• Use keyword tags to increase searchability

• Create a video transcript and or YouTube captions for further video engagement and Google indexing

• Try to use a compelling video thumbnail that will attract audiences to the video content

• Share videos on social media and blogs to generate increased views and shares

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Embed Videos and Generate Video Site

Maps • Have a video content page on

your website and embed your videos on the page, which should also include text that describes the video

• Embedded YouTube videos can improve YouTube rank as number of video views contributes to video rank

• Creating a video site map via Google Webmaster Tools makes it easier for Google to find and index your videos.

• Tech alert: Use Schema.org markup language to better optimize the video indexing.

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Google+ & SEO Together

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Personalized search is a default on Google; A prospect’s search results, provided he is logged into Google, is affected by posts that are engaged with and shared by audiences in his Google+ social circles.

Google+ and Google authorship (results with photos) consistently rank high in search results if the topic is relevant to a user’s query.

How Social Affects Search • Tweeting content cuts

indexing time; Google bots and crawlers find your content quicker

• Content that is shared tells Google your content is fresh, giving you a temporary increase in ranking

• A high level of social engagement and social mentions tells search engines that your content is authentic and valuable to readers; a ranking signal as well

• Quality content with links on social sites generates backlinks

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Social Media/SEO Tactics • Add Google+ and sharing

buttons to your blog and most important content pages

• Share content on a Google+ company page

• Build Google+ c0mmunity and encourage folks to +1 content

• Promote original content on Twitter and Facebook, and encourage links to your website/blog

• Optimize your social media profile pages with important keywords within your “About” sections

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Social Bookmarking for SEO

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• A social bookmark is a link that people post to social sites for others to see because they find your content valuable. Your content is thus saved on these social bookmarking sites where it can easily be shared.

• Bookmarking sites generally have high PageRank, so you get quality backlinks, and increase your own PageRank

• Content on bookmarking sites can increase your website traffic as well as obtaining new readers and prospects

• Pinterest and Twitter can be considered social bookmarking sites. Most popular are Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Delicious.

• Social bookmarking is free; tactic is to promote valuable non-promotional content

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Executive’s Use of Mobile Rising

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B2B Executives are Comfortable Doing

Business on a Mobile Device

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Mobile Traffic Continues to Grow

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Three Types of Mobile Sites

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Mobile SEO Best Practices

• Google prefers one-URL responsive design websites, or, sites that work across all device types ▫ Page load time needs to be speedy, however, for good user

experience ▫ Responsive sites are easier to develop, and you only have to

manage content on one website only ▫ Since there is one URL, SEO link juice and page authority is

preserved • Separate URL for mobile only makes sense if you wish a

different mobile experience than desktops. This is where mobile redirects need to be set up correctly

• Use meta data within source code to ensure that mobile pages are mapped and optimized for mobile search. More tech info here: http://searchengineland.com/the-definitive-guide-to-mobile-technical- seo-166066

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Google’s search engine ranking algorithms that are constantly being updated to weed out bad seo practices and ensure that only the best, most relevant results show for user queries

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I’ve heard of these Google animal terms- please explain

Panda and Penguin Defined

Panda Penguin

• Google Panda is the algorithm changes focused on filtering out websites with low-quality content in search results. The most notably affected sites were article networks and submission sites that hosted lots of ads next to poor article content.

• Google Penguin is the algorithm changes focused on filtering out websites who have implemented tactics against Google Webmaster Guidelines to boost their ranking in search. This includes sites that have over-optimized both on-site and off-site SEO. Keyword stuffing, link buying, overuse of keyword-based anchor text, are just a few of many red flags and indicators to Google that a website has attempted to manipulate search rankings.

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Has Your Site Been Affected?

We Use This Tool from Barracuda

Digital UK

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Avoiding the Panda/Penguin Penalties • Update your website content

consistently. Remove any low quality content. Create quality content

• Avoid any duplicate content within your site as well as for link building

• Don’t be “aggressive” with keyword inclusions in your site; write naturally

• Evaluate and optimize website user experience (a la browser compatible, site speed)

• Vary link building strategy across many kinds of quality sites; avoid fixed patterns

• Vary anchor text and interior links within your website content; avoid one keyword-one page strategy

• Using a backlink tool or webmaster tools, review and remove any links from low quality sites, link farms, or spammy pages

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Strategies to generate quality links to your website; meaning reputation enhancement, higher rankings, and increased online visibility

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So much of your time is with link building. Explain what you SEO guys are really doing to increase my rankings and website traffic

Benefits of Link Building • Quality links boost your search

engine rankings • Quality links brings new

prospects to your site • Quality links establish you and

your firm as leaders in its field • Links from guest articles may be

shared via social, bringing even more quality links

• Quality links build value over time; your credibility and trust increases

• Link building creates relationships with influential though leaders which could lead to potential referrals

• Quality links increase your website Pagerank over time

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A link obtained from an external website or blog is called a Backlink

Link Opportunities

• Guest blog posts or guest contributions such as industry blogs and news sites; Commonly called Blogger Outreach, the concept of developing relationships with bloggers to offer them something of value is the hardest but most effective method of generating authoritative backlinks

• Blog comments, forum discussions, industry social

networking sites • Editorial mentions within industry articles • Listing inclusions in online general business and

niche vertical industry directories

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Finding Backlink Opportunities;

Start Researching & Compiling Potential Lists

• Top 30-50 bloggers in your industry

• Niche bloggers covering specific or related industry topics

• Online trade websites- names of editors and contributors

• Industry associations

• Links obtained from competitors (using link research tools-next page)

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Sample Tools We Use for

Competitive Link Research

Ahrefs.com Open Site Explorer

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Research & Find Blogs with Online

Tools

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Prospecting Guest Blog Sites with Google • Type the following options into Google

and review results

▫ Keyword or industry phrase with “guest blog” or “guest contributor” in query

▫ Keyword or industry phrase with intitle:guest post or contributor, where intitle means there’s a keyword in title tag, a la “guest post”

▫ Keyword or industry phrase with inurl:guest post or contributor, where inurl means there’s a keyword in the URL, a la “contributor”

▫ Also, try Google Alerts for keywords you want to rank for; scan blog search results

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Alexa Ranking: The Popularity of A Site • Alexa provides traffic

data and global ranking for thousands of sites

• Each website is ranked- From 1 to billions- lower the better

• You can measure your site vs. competitors

• It doesn’t really affect search rankings, but does provide another guide in choosing sites to obtain backlinks from

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Identifying High Quality Link Opportunities from

Potential Blog Sites and Your Initial Research • Page Rank of URL (higher the better)

• Traffic estimates from Alexa.com or Compete.com

• Study the overall content and see if the ideal readership for the topics is similar to your target audience

• Social Media Activity (high followers and high engagement)

• Inbound links to the site or blog (using the link research tools)

• Targeted keywords within target URL, page title, and text

• Quality and relevance of the website’s content

• Robust blog commenting on site

• Are the articles/posts updated frequently

• Site owners and other contributors listed within site look reputable

• Well structured look/feel with no spammy outbound links

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By ranking your potential targets based on the criteria above, your outcome should be a short list of potential sites to communicate with

Blogger Outreach Communication

• Do research; review the kinds of topics that exist on the targeted blogger’s site so you may cite them in your outreach

• Follow the blogger site on social media and subscribe to RSS feeds; mention the blogger in your own posts; share content via social

• Email the blog owner with an outreach letter; personalize it, promise to deliver value, keep it concise, show that you’ve read their blog, and have clear contact information

• Use an outreach email subject line that answers “why should I read” or “why is my topic relevant”

• Keep track: bloggers who respond, bloggers who publish, links received, comments, shares and traffic received from your published posts

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Two Outreach Templates

Introduction Email Guest Article Publish Request Subject Line: Guest Blog Intro; We Have Great Content for Your Readers

Dear Blog Owner

Introductory Paragraph

• Flattery statement: I enjoy your articles and do share them, or I am an avid reader of your blog

• Who I am (or who I represent)

• Why your readers would be interested in me (or my client)

• Why my content would be ideal for your blog (or his/her content)

Second Paragraph

• Partnership choices

▫ Feature me in a Q&A format with one of your bloggers or yourself

▫ Allow me to be an ongoing guest blogger because of my credentials

▫ Suggest you can also be a guest blogger on my blog; a win-win for both of us

▫ At some point, I’d like to be quoted within one of your blogs, especially if you write about…

Final Paragraph

• Action statement

▫ I’ll reach out to you in next couple of weeks with a an article for your review

• Contact info for any questions or ideas

Regards,

Paul Mosenson

For Mr. Blogger

Subject Line: Article Idea or Your Blog; Topic

Dear Blog Owner

First Paragraph

• Restate Flattery statement: I enjoy your articles and do share them, or I am an avid reader of your blog

• Reminder who I am

• Introduce attached article

• Why the article is ideal for readers

• Request it be published nicely

Second Paragraph

• Thank blogger for the consideration

• Remind that the attached includes a Bio, and a couple of links (that are embedded or marked)

• Also include in the attached is a Google authorship (REL-author) tag for the link to my name

• Ask to be updated on publishing date, so I can share via my social channels

Regards,

Paul Mosenson

For Mr. Blogger

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Broken Link Building

• Broken link building is the process of finding a competitor’s broken link (or 404 page) on a website resource or directory page, and asking the webmaster or site owner to link to your site instead.

• Website owners do not like broken links, so SEO does them a favor by finding the broken link, and at the same time, suggesting a new link instead; to your website.

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Using Google to Find Potential Pages

That May Have Broken Links • In query, choose an industry

broad but relevant category keyword, and match with a prospecting phrase in order to find potential directory pages- example “SEO resources” and “SEO links”

• To the right are example queries that would accompany the phrase “SEO resources” in the Google search box

• Intitle:sites

• Intitle:resources

• Intitle:links

• Inurl:sites

• Inurl:resources

• Inurl:links

• Phrase match terms that are before the terms Links, Resources, Sites: ▫ Recommended

▫ Useful

▫ Favorite

▫ Related

▫ Suggested or

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Use Tools to Find Broken Links on Sites

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Bulk Link Analysis Tools

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A number of online tools exist for bulk uploading of URLS and determining PageRank, Domain Authority, and Link Checkers. These help us choose the sites to target for link building (guest blog and broken link building)

Broken Link Building Summary

• Find Directory/Resource Pages on high quality websites using Google search parameters as shown earlier

• Use broken link tools to find those broken links, and see if those broken links are your competitors

• After finding pages with broken links, determine if the page is worth the effort by reviewing its content and PageRank and Authority

• Find the site owner’s email and contact them with a helpful note: ▫ Explain what you found that was broken, whether it’s within a listing or

some content, and why it needs to be replaced ▫ Suggest a replacement, your link or your content, in replace of the older

content ▫ Keep track and follow up

• Detailed Resources ▫ http://moz.com/blog/broken-link-building-guide-from-noob-to-novice

and ▫ http://moz.com/blog/the-broken-link-building-bible

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Other Link Building Tactics

• Good quality’ non-spammy press releases that provide relevant information; submit via online PR networks like PRWeb and PitchEngine

• Major online website directories like DMOZ and YAHOO’s site index

• Association, and industry directory sections of high quality content sites

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Key metrics to track to gauge success of search engine optimization efforts, using Google Analytics

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Yes, show me some ways you are measuring your results, especially for a B2B site. Prove your value!

Some Important Metrics to Track

• Unique Visitors: A unique visitor visits your website once, and thus is a more accurate measure of website visitors so that repeat visitors don’t skew your traffic data.

• Bounce Rates: Measures the number of website visitors who view a single page on your website then exits. Poor bounce rates (over 40%) signal that your website is poorly designed, the content is low quality, or the message doesn’t relate to the visitor.

• Conversion Rates: Measures the number of visitors that perform a defined action on your website. High conversion rates mean we are driving targeted traffic, and the content and design of your site are effective to drive leads or sales.

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Track How Many Pages are Being

Indexed

by Google

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Track the number of pages you have indexed monthly. The more pages your site has indexed, the better chance the site will rank for multiple keywords. To track this, either go to Google and enter “site:yourwebsite” or measure indexed pages in your Google Webmaster account.

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A showcase of custom report templates that produce reports that measure SEO trends

Non-Branded New Visitor Traffic

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Track new visitor and conversion growth for keywords that do NOT include your company name This custom report measures website engagement and conversions for organic keywords, and with filters, excludes any query that includes a branded (company) name, and the “not provided” keyword

Referral Site Traffic (minus Social)

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Track growth of website visits from referring sites (3rd party websites)

Exclude social media sites to get a truer picture of what blogs and websites that feature your content or listings generated clicks to your site. Exclude Regular Expression and include all social media sites separated by pipes Likewise you can include just a group of specific sites you targeted for backlinks, again separate with pipes in the custom report filter section

Landing Page Organic Traffic

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This report shows you how many pages are generating organic traffic from search engines, and how engaging those entrance pages are. Track the number, and track bounce rates to determine if certain pages need to be optimized (content and design) for better engagement

Keyword Conversions

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This report measures the growth and amount of keywords that drive website visits and conversions Utilize filters here as well to weed out branded terms and {not provided) if so desired

Affect of Organic Clicks That Assist Conversions from

Other Traffic Sources

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GA’s Multi-channel funnel report can measure the affect organic search has on a future organic search that becomes a conversion or has on a conversion from another source GA conversions are based on last click metrics, but this report measures the “assisted” conversions, again those sources that contributed to another site visit that converted

Conversion Attribution Model;

Estimating Total Organic Conversions • Determine attribution model, or, what percent credit you

give an assisted conversion that lead to a last click conversion. For this example, we use 25%

• Using the multi-funnel conversion report, compile a time period’s last-click conversions from organic traffic with assisted conversions from organic traffic (that lead to a last click conversion via another source). Weight the results:

• Example: ▫ Last click organic conversions: 100; worth 100%, or 100 ▫ Assisted organic conversions: 60; worth 25%, or 15 ▫ Therefore, total conversions generated via organic traffic is

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A Model of SEO ROI for B2B Sites

• First, let’s gather data, with example metrics below. OK to estimate.

▫ Website organic conversions from SEO start to

minimum 6 months later (again, last click plus assisted conversions)

▫ Website Inquiries to Marketing Qualified Lead: 50% ▫ Marketing Qualified Lead to Sales Opportunities: 33% ▫ Sales Opportunities to Closes: 50% ▫ Average Sale Value: $10,000 ▫ Margin: 40%

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Formula Based on Example Metrics

• Organic conversions before SEO; last 6 month average: 600

• Organic conversions in 6 months: 900 • Incremental organic conversions: 300 • MQL: 150 • Sales Opportunities: 50 • Closes: 25 • Revenue generated: $250,000 • Margin: 40% • Profit: $150,000

• ROI: (Profit-SEO Cost)/SEO Cost • SEO Cost = Sum of all activity in labor as well as content

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Other Measurement Considerations

• Keyword rankings ; valuable if those keywords are driving quality traffic and conversions; otherwise we would reassess those keywords or evaluate the content of your website

• PageRank. Is your website increasing over time? • Lifetime Value and Branding Affects. The

previous ROI calculation was based on hard numbers. The long term affect of content marketing and thought leadership builds brand and incremental conversions over time

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Our Values

• We fully immense ourselves with your marketing goals, target audiences, and culture so that we truly understand your business

• We focus on 24/7 customer service. We treat every client the same; no pecking order. No matter how large or small, every single relationship is equal in our view

• We spend your budget like its our own; our goal is to maximize investment-seek the best deals, the best promotions, the best added-value. We strive to drive results like no other firm

• We will continually optimize and audit to make sure you’re getting the absolute best value

• We pride ourselves on win-win relationships. By creating professional one-to-one relationships with vendors, we typically get increased value and that means increased ROI for you

Questions? • Contact Paul Mosenson of NuSpark

Marketing

• pmosenson@nusparkmarketing.com

• 610-812-2725

• www.nusparkmarketing.com

Acknowledgements

• MOZ

• Search Engine Land

• Matt Bailey, SiteLogic

• Website Magazine

• Bruce Clay

• Lunametrics

• Kissmetrics

• Content Marketing Institute

• Baldy Dog

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