Seven Things You MUST Know About SEO - EventRebels€¦ · Search Engine Planning: Mobilegeddon •...
Transcript of Seven Things You MUST Know About SEO - EventRebels€¦ · Search Engine Planning: Mobilegeddon •...
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Kara Stolpinski & Sam Minnis, Nexus Direct
Gary Westermark, TIAA-CREF
Seven Things You MUST Know About
SEO
#Bridge15
Your Presenters
Kara Stolpinski,
Sam Minnis
Gary Westermark
#Bridge15
Seven Things You MUST Know About SEO
1. Content
2. Technical
3. Social
4. SEO & Pay Per Click
5. 2015 Planning
6. Analytics/Tools
7. Mobile SEO
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SEO Definitions
• SEO
• Search Engine – Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
• Keywords
• Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
• Page Rank
• Algorithm / Ranking Signal
• Conversion
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Seven Things You MUST Know About SEO #1
Content:
How does your content speak to everything you do and how is it found?
Content: A Little Search Engine Context
• True as it ever was, “Content is king.” Mission of a search engine: match users to their ideal content — a GREAT user experience
• The SEARCHER is at the focal point, not the advertiser
• Have what the user wants on your site
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Content: Inbound Links
• Inbound links are links pointing to one of your pages from another website.
• Earning a link from a high-quality, relevant website will not only help with your SEO but also with referral traffic, which can lead to more sales and brand exposure.
• Inbound SEO links are still the biggest influence for search engines — even as algorithms have changed
Content: Earning Inbound Links
• Creating desirable, UNIQUE content that people will want to share remains the best way to earn links.
Content: One-upping the Competition
• The Google Panda algorithm negatively targets "thin and duplicate content with little or no added value” — so rather than creating multiple versions of the same content, it’s important to focus on creating a single version of content that is BETTER and more comprehensive than the competition.
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Content: Stale Content
• Problem: content freshness: stale or unchanged content is not likely to rank high, so be sure your content is updated and new content is always being added
• Solution: Tie in social channels for an automated baseline solution
Content: Qualities of Good Content
• Good Content is:• More than articles and blog posts — be
sure to include videos and images
• Supplies a demand
• Is linkable
• Easy to use, navigate, and understand
Content: On-page Factors
• Include important keyword(s) in the HTML Page title as well as in the first 150 words in the body
• Consider outbound links to high authority sites
• MULTIMEDIA! Keywords in HTML “alt” tags
• Aim for longer content posts (especially for competitive keywords) — 1000 or more words
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Seven Things You MUST Know About SEO #2
Technical:
You have great content, but is it indexed correctly as not to confuse search
engines?
Technical: Search Engine Needs
• Remember, great content delivers value to the user.
• When planning around inbound marketing, putting the user’s interests and needs first is paramount.
• What about search engines’ needs? What happens when search engines have trouble finding or understanding your great content?
Technical: Duplicate Content
• Watering down great content – the effects of duplication
• A confused Google “Crawler” bot
• Of all the duplicate versions of this content, which one gets the “SEO” credit (aka the “Link Juice”)?
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Technical: Duplicate Content Solution
• HTML Canonical tag is your friend, tells search engines exactly which page is the original source, which page gets the “Link Juice”
• Place it on in the all versions’ HTML header sections
• Ex: <link href=http://www.example.com/original-source/ rel=“canonical” />
Technical: Duplicate Content Solution Cont.
• Already too late? No worries, 301 redirect to the rescue.
• Redirect the copies back to the original (which now have a canonical tag, right?), Google likes this.
• Remove duplicate links via noindex tags where linked (slow) versus removal via webmaster tools (faster).
Technical: Other Indexing Issues
• Check for crawler errors in Webmaster tools > Crawl > Crawl Errors
• Google solution, fix, repeat
• Ex: 404 pages, 400s, 500s, etc.
Side Note for Google: Mark all errors as “fixed”, check back in a week. Cuts out old / irrelevant errors
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Technical: Other Indexing Issues – Example
• 404 errors (page not found) are very common
• Must determine if the page has been intentionally removed
• Actual recommended method if removal was intentional
Technical: Other Indexing Issues – Example
• Reasonable rule of thumb: If the 404’ed page is linked to elsewhere on the web, either fix the page or set up a 301 redirect. Don’t lose the juice!
• Remember, Google & Bing Webmaster tools are your friend, they will tell you where you have issues and how to fix them.
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Seven Things You MUST Know About SEO #3
Social:
How does your SEO plan fit in with social in 2015?
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Social: How is SEO impacted by Social?
• Muddy waters on social’s ranking signals.
• Not as powerful as inbound links to your website, but may be important still.
• As SEO shifts more to content / inbound, think of social as a primary tool for getting eyes on your content.
Social: How is SEO impacted by Social?
“Content is fire, social media is gasoline”
- Jay Baer, author of Youtility
https://mikegingerich.com/content-content-content-content-marketing-world-top-takeaways/
Social: Sharing
• SEO is primarily about getting links pointed back to your site … social is a way to “cast the net,” get noticed & shared.
• Helps to have followers — build that list!
• For now, social is an indirect tool of SEO for Google. For Bing, it is more direct.
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Social: Maintain a Social Presence
• As of 2010, Twitter handled 19 billion search queries a month.
• In 2012, Facebook said it got around one billion search queries per day.
• As of March 2010, YouTube got roughly 3.7 billion search queries a month.
Social: Takeaways for Your Social Presence
• Google is not the only source for searching, some start on their social network of choice. Don’t miss out!
• Maintain a social presence where your audience may look for you. How do you find this out? Google Analytics data on referrals & demographic information is insightful.
Social: Measurement Reports
• Hard time measuring social? Try the Google Analytics Assisted Conversions Report
• “Assisted Conversions” — one Google report that can give you more detailed metrics on social performance.
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Social: Measurement Reports continued
• Is the [social] channel a better converter or conversion assistant?
• Check out Assisted vs. Last Click Conversion Value.
Social: Assisted Conversion Report
Social: Google Analytics Model Comparison Report
• The “model comparison” report is slightly more advanced.
• Allows for comparison of a last click attribution model to other ready-made models (such as first click) or “house”models.
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Social: Google Analytics Model Comparison Report
Social: Measurement Reports Takeaways
• Social may have conversion value that is not inherently obvious via last click model.
• Use these reports to measure changes to social strategy over time.
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Seven Things You MUST Know About SEO #4
SEO & Pay Per Click:
Combining SEO and PPC. Can they play together to help increase leads and
conversions?
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SEO & PPC: Overview
• SEO and Pay Per Click: different beasts (same fauna)
• SEO: Long-term, difficult to measure, free
• PPC: Short-term, easy to measure, but … not free
SEO & PPC: Pros / Cons of PPC
• Pros: Immediacy, accuracy (targeting various stages of the conversion funnel), foothold for remarketing, ability to measure, & affordable
• Cons: Traffic does not equal conversions, complicated, & you pay-to-play
SEO & PPC: Pros / Cons of SEO
• Pros: FREE (ish), catch those ad ignorers, increased authority, better conversion rate at 14.6% versus 1.7% for print / email
• Cons: Long, on-going process, takes commitment• ROI will take some time, which increases
with competition
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SEO & PPC: Cons of SEO, cont.
• Cons Continued: “get on the first page or else” – 75% of searchers do not progress to past page 1 of the results page• No full control: Google does not reveal its
algorithm, SEOs operate on educated guesses and word-of-mouth
• Potential of costly penalization with future updates
SEO & PPC – Like PB&J
• When a brand name appeared in both organic and paid search results, the brand attracted 92% of total clicks. When the brand was mentioned only in organic, the brand [received] only 60% of clicks.
Source: http://www.didit.com/ppc-and-seo-better-together/
SEO & PPC – Like PB&J cont.
• Overcome the limitations of each by utilizing the other (Fast vs. Slow, cost vs. free, etc.)
• Diversify your channels, your analyst will thank you
• Overlap in keywords
• Brand Keyword Coverage
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SEO & PPC: Organic vs. Ad Clicks
• Keep in mind that organic clicks and ad clicks were not made equal.
• Even still, there will be an overlap in performance.
• Detecting patterns is extremely helpful.
SEO & PPC: Keyword Crossover
• Example: PPC’s conversion rate is roughly (but consistently) 10% below organic
• Helpful in making predictions and testing
SEO & PPC: Keyword Crossover - Performance
• Performance questions to ask:• Which keywords perform better organically?
• Which for PPC?
• Is there overlap?
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SEO & PPC: Keyword Crossover continued
• If a keyword performs well both organically AND for PPC, you can then choose — double down (for competitive keywords) or reallocate PPC budget.
• If PPC outperforms organic or vice versa, are there key learnings that can be applied to the less performant of the two?
SEO & PPC: Better Together
• If the difference in performance between the two is well known and consistent, it opens all kinds of “paid testing” avenues.
• Test landing page layout, copy, meta description, and more without waiting for SEO results to trickle in.
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Seven Things You MUST Know About SEO #5
2015 Planning:
What are Google and Bing planning for the rest of the year?
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What are Google and Bing planning for the rest of 2015?
• Mobile, Mobile, Mobile
• November 2014: Tipping point in mobile search. Mobile searches surpasses desktop search (Google).
• More varied mobile usage results for Bing, but mobile trend still exists. Ignoring this trend can be dangerous!
Search Engine Planning: Mobilegeddon
• 4/21/15: Google rolls out update that boosts results of mobile friendly pages … for searches conducted on mobile
• Check Google’s mobile-friendly test tool to see if your page(s) are up to standard for this boost in mobile traffic.
• https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
Search Engine Planning: Mobilegeddon
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Search Engine Planning: Mobile Friendly Considerations
• More to come in the Mobile SEO section…
Search Engine Planning: On the Horizon
• Bet on search engines to continue the mission of indexing great content while ignoring/penalizing “black hat” tricks.
• Content marketing and SEO will become even more intricately tied.
• Spoken voice queries, Linguistic User Interface (LUI) will present new search patterns, keyword usage.
Search Engine Planning: On the Horizon Cont.
• Personalization – how to deliver a tailored experience without ticking off the search engines
• Bye-bye keyword data, hello landing-page based metrics
• More mobile …
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#Bridge15
Seven Things You MUST Know About SEO #6
Analytics/Tools:
Are you tracking your conversions and do you know your ROI from your SEO
efforts?
Analytics/Tools: Defining & Planning for Success
• What does your ideal user do upon arrival on your website?
• What metrics measure the success of your website?
• How can you plan and strategize without these items specifically defined?
Analytics: Tracking Conversions
• Well-defined goals produce measurable outcomes and it is no different in the Web Analytics world.
• Think of Google Analytics goals / Bing Conversion Tracking as an explicit definition of what success looks like on your site.
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Analytics: Tracking Conversions – Google Analytics Goals
• Google Analytics allows for up to 20 assigned goals.
• Goals can be assigned to one of five predetermined groups or categories. Use this feature if your goals fall neatly into categories (engagement, social, purchase, etc.) — which is helpful for a zoomed out perspective.
Analytics: Tracking Conversions – Google Analytics Goal Types
• Goals can be one of four types: duration, pages per session, event, and destination.
• Duration goals – sessions that exceeded a certain amount of time.
• Pages per session – a user visits at least X number of pages.
• Events – triggers when a predetermined page-level event fires.
Analytics: Tracking Conversions – Google Analytics Destination Goals
• Destination goals represent a URL (page address). When a user successfully navigates to it, Google logs a successful conversion.
• This allows for computation of conversion rate, an essential metric for analysis and strategic decision making.
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Analytics: Tracking Conversions – Google Analytics Destination Goals
Analytics: Tracking Conversions – Destination Goals cont.
• Chances are, the desired actions of your website have corresponding “completion” pages. These usually make great goals.
• Ex: Any “Thank you” page. Thanks for signing up for the newsletter, thanks for purchasing / donating, thanks for sharing on your social network, etc.
Analytics: Tracking Conversions – Goal Value
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Analytics: Tracking Conversions – Goal Value cont.
• Don’t be afraid to get creative with your Google Analytics goal values. In addition to the average value of a lead, feel free to include the average referral value and average lifetime value.
Analytics: Google Analytics Goal Funnel
Analytics: Tracking Conversions
• With all conversion goals set up, your analysis of your analytics data will be that much more detailed.
• Analysis of channel / campaign / segment has richer, more direct data to pull from.
• ROI computations now possible.
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Analytics: Tracking Conversions – E-commerce edition
• If you have products or branded merchandise to sell, consider e-commerce.
• Goals are limited in that they have a single static value — no way to plug in a fluctuating value (such as a donation).
• This is not the case for Bing!
Analytics: Tracking Conversions – E-commerce edition
• E-commerce settings to the rescue!
• The E-commerce setting in GA will allow you to establish a value PER transaction with some account specific Javascript on the goal URL page (translation: Find a Javascript nerd like me).
Analytics: Tracking Conversions – Ecommerce + Goals = Awesome
• In Google Analytics, get the most report bang for your buck by hooking up both e-commerce and goals to a donation or checkout page.
• Some reports are only available for either or — you want all available information for your donation/purchase data.
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Seven Things You MUST Know About SEO #7
Mobile SEO:
Optimizing your mobile device is different from your desktop, and with the increase in mobile devices, this has to be at the
forefront of your strategic plan.
Mobile SEO: The Mobile Search Experience
• Search engines are paying more attention to the mobile experience.
• They have methods for assessing a page’s mobile readiness.
• These methods are (or will be with Bing) available to you for diagnostic purposes.
Mobile SEO: Design Best Practices – Page Speed
• Important for both mobile and desktop.
• Industry standard for page load times suggest a maximum of 2 seconds.
• General rule of thumb is the more you deviate, the higher the bounce rate.
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Mobile SEO: Design Best Practices – Page Speed
• On mobile, this page optimization becomes paramount as users have LESS bandwidth to download page resources.
• Some responsive design practices leave mobile users downloading MORE data, not less – be careful.
Mobile SEO: Design Best Practices – Page Speed
• Take advantage of a few optimization techniques to get your page downloading in under 2 seconds:• Page caching
• Image optimization
• Gzip compression
• Minification
• Non-essential Javascript delaying
Mobile SEO: Design Best Practices
• Links are spaced out, avoiding accidental clicks for those of us who are “fat fingered”
• Font / text is legible, density of text
• Screen layout – no horizontal scrolling, avoid vertical scroll if possible
• No one likes to pinch and zoom
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Questions?
Thank You!!
Sam Minnis’s Contact e-mail: [email protected]
Kara Stolpinski’s Contact e-mail: [email protected]
Gary Westermark’s e-mail:[email protected]