Searching for Users: SEO as an Engine for Customer Acquisition (Stephan Spencer, Startonomics SF 2008)
•Download as PPT, PDF•
16 likes•26,382 views
The document discusses search engine optimization (SEO) fundamentals and strategies. It identifies the four key pillars of SEO as keywords, content, links, and site structure. Various SEO tactics are described, including optimizing titles, meta descriptions, internal linking structures, and acquiring both internal and external links through blogging, link baiting, and requesting links from other sites. The importance of the "long tail" of unbranded keywords is also emphasized.
Report
Share
Searching for Users: SEO as an Engine for Customer Acquisition (Stephan Spencer, Startonomics SF 2008)
- 1. Searching for Users: SEO as an Engine for Customer Acquisition By Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts
- 2. The 4 Big Keys to SEO Keywords – Target the words that your target market uses. Content – It’s got to be great, unique, linkworthy, fresh, keyword-focused content. Links – No links? No rankings. Site structure – It’s essential you get the technical details right (redirects, HTML templates, URLs, internal linking structure)
- 3. SEO Fundamentals Tried-and-true SEO tactics 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 Synergistic effect of natural + paid search
- 4. SEO Fundamentals Links (internal and inbound, along with the anchor text) beat out content Link building, link baiting, blogging, SMO are crucial SEO activities SMO (Social Media Optimization) = infiltrating Digg.com, del.icio.us popular, Netscape.com, reddit, StumbleUpon, Wikipedia,… “ A rising tide lifts all boats”
- 5. Light on content, but on page 1 in Google for “silver earrings”
- 6. Their CEO’s blog accounts for over 13% of online sales
- 7. SEO Fundamentals Rewrite your URLs Avoid ? & = characters, minimize directories, include keywords, hyphens preferred over underscores Rejig your hierarchical internal linking structure Optimize your HTML templates and CSS Reduce code bloat, separate out “presentation layer” from “content layer”, image replacement, optimized elements like H1
- 8. SEO Strategies for Your “Head” Terms Focus a page on no more than 3 keyword themes – place targeted term in the title tag, H1 tag, & high up in the body copy Build link gain (PageRank) to that page through internal links & inlinks Consistent keyword-rich anchor text from internal links For deep inlinks, vary the anchor text a bit
- 9. SEO Strategies for “The Long Tail” Focus on unbranded search markets Leverage website scale and brand strength Employ testable strategies that scale Treat consumers as co-creators Measure against a new set of KPIs Grow your long tail of search
- 10. The “Freeloaders” on Your Payroll Most merchants have 80%+ of their pages driving no search traffic Most don't even know this, or why it is a problem (no javascript based analytics package will tell them this either) It’s a red light that they lack a long tail of unbranded keyword traffic The # of searches for unbranded keywords is nearly 40x as great as searches for the brand name (put another way, 97x the # of pages onsite) Tapping that opportunity means leveraging the size of the website and the brand strength to convert unbranded searches into clicks How to achieve this tail?
- 11. Scalable Long Tail SEO Strategies Mass optimization: Single techniques capable of creating cascading effects throughout large websites – template pages for instance Rewriting URLs: Simple and static have profound impact on PageRank™ and traffic “ Thin Slicing”: Touching key elements across thousands of pages quickly, monitoring, and expanding based on results
- 12. Scalable Long Tail Strategies - Web 2.0 User generated content (e.g., wikipedia) Freely append searcher vocabulary into your website Tagging and social bookmarking (e.g., Flickr, del.icio.us) Listen and create feedback loops – using search terms Use cloud taxonomy to flatten your structure using good link text RSS and Blogging Long tail is driven by efficient distribution of pages Create link bait rather than soliciting link targets Provide lists of most searched keywords Long tail optimization means outsourcing … to your users
- 13. Gone Off the Rails Misfires, mistakes, etc. often occur because your developers, sysadmins, or marketers “didn’t know what they didn’t know” Examples…
- 14. 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
- 15. Not so good title – where’s the phrase “credit card”?
- 16. No link text or body copy
- 17. No link text or body copy
- 18. Duplicate pages
- 19. Still feeling good about being at the bottom of page 1?
- 20. Search listings – 1 good, 1 lousy
- 21. Title tags the same
- 22. Spider unfriendly URL structures
- 23. Yikes! Sears.com home page PageRank score looks abysmal
- 24. Phew! – Sears.com true home page PageRank score
- 25. BMW.de hosted many “doorway pages” like this one
- 26. “ Sneaky redirect” sent searchers to this page
- 27. Hidden link – in the “All” of “All Rights Reserved” – leads to a hallway page
- 28. Hallway page – not meant for human consumption – Let’s start scrolling…
- 29. Everything still looks copasetic, until…
- 31. Screenfuls and screenfuls of it!
- 32. Find Link Targets Review links of competitive sites, sites in your keyword market Use tools like the ones just mentioned Check sites with high rankings for relevant keywords The fewer the number of links on their page, the better Review links to your site; look for opportunities to get the link text revised
- 33. Request Links NOT: “ Hi, Let’s swap links!” “ I’ve already linked to you.” “ Great site!” “ You already link to our competitor XYZ.com and we offer a better product.” “ Please use the following text in your link…” Maybe? ” Hi, found a broken link on _____. btw, you might want to add xyz.com as a link.” What then?…
- 34. Hi Lois, My name is Eric Ward, and I am working with StormwaterAuthority.org to help them announce the launch of their new web site located at http://www.stormwaterauthority.org I am hoping you will consider mentioning or linking to the StormwaterAuthority.org site on your Water and Wastewater Engineering page at http://www.library.umaine.edu/science/waterresources.htm I have included a brief overview of the site below, and should you need anything at all I am a real person and actually reply to email. You can also contact me by phone. Thank you for your time and consideration. Regards, Eric Ward (On behalf of StormwaterAuthority.org) eric@ericward.com voice 865.637.2438 ------------------------------------------------------ Overview of StormwaterAuthority.org Source: Eric Ward
- 35. More on Links... Some links get “discounted” Anchor text opportunities Linking best & worst practices Blogging for links “ Baiting” for links
- 36. Watch Out For… Types of links that are likely to get discounted: Reciprocal links Affiliated sites (on the same IP range or hostname) Footer links (at the bottom of the page) Site-wide links Links contained on a page called links.htm / links.asp Links with the exact same anchor text Remember: the more links on the linking page, the less PageRank you’ll get
- 37. Update Link Text Link text (anchor text) is critical for SEO Review your existing links and link text SEOBook’s Back Link Analyzer tool Are the keywords you are targeting in the link text? Contact webmasters, particularly those who you have a relationship with & those with the most valuable links
- 39. Best Practices: Linking Offer link-worthy content. Keep it fresh. Try to get good keywords in the link text Make it easily shareable (RSS feeds, Email to a friend, Submit to Digg/delicious/etc.) Simple keyword-rich urls encourage deep linking When you redesign your site, keep your old URLs or 301 redirect them to the new URLs “ Nofollow” any links you don’t want to spend PageRank on <a href=“/privacy-policy.htm” rel=“nofollow”>
- 40. Worst Practices: Linking Participating in “link farms” or FFA (“Free For All”) sites Hallmarks of a link farm = more urls per page & less organization Splogging, comment spamming, guestbook spamming Linking to “bad neighborhoods” Hiding links Hoarding all your PageRank Unnatural link structures Too much symmetry, link text never varies, or otherwise “engineered” Acquiring links from sites all on the same IP block Acquiring links only from the same TLD (.com, .org, .edu, etc)
- 41. Blogs Search engines – and Google in particular – love blogs Inherently link-rich “ Hat tips” – part of blog etiquette Blogrolls RSS feeds Trackbacks Comments The dark side of the blogosphere: Blog comment spam Splogs (spam blogs)
- 42. Blog SEO Don’t leave title tags to be auto-generated. Use the “SEO Title Tag” WordPress plugin Don’t squander your “crawl equity” by letting pages get indexed that don’t deserve to be (“Email this page” etc.) Having multiple “homes” for your blog Utilize “Optional Excerpt” to minimize duplicate content Use rel=nofollow to direct PageRank flow (e.g. date-based archives)
- 43. Blog SEO Intro copy on category & tag pages with sticky posts Optimal URLs (short, not too many directories) Multiple RSS feeds, optimized Hosting blog/feed URLs on a domain you don’t own Use optimal anchor text when linking internally
- 44. Link Bait Offer a niche-specific blogroll, tool, How-To, or compilation of news stories Post a scoop Expose a story as flawed or a fraud Be a contrarian about a story, product, or prominent blogger’s opinion Be humorous. Good topics include a bizzare pic of your subject, “10 things I hate about…”, and “You know you’re a when…” Source: Performancing
- 45. Link Bait Publish or commission some original research Creative-Commons-license photos you made of an event you’re blogging about Make available for free a theme, plugin or piece of software Start a meme that others can replicate and that links back to you (e.g. buttons/stickers/tools for bloggers/webmasters to post on their sites, contests, quizzes, surveys, etc.)
- 46. Get Creative Give awards / recognition Badges with link text underneath Allow webmasters to republish your articles Require a link in your byline Publish unique content Podcasts (e.g. SteveSpangler.com) Screencasts (use TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio) Wikis (e.g. SEOGlossary.com)
- 47. Get Creative Offer useful tools for webmasters, such as… Hit counters E.g. NOT like 123counters.com Weather stickers E.g. Wunderground.com, SuperPages.com RSS feeds Lottery winning numbers from SuperPages.com
- 48. Get Creative Start a blog Give testimonials E.g. www.wordpress.org/about/testimonials E.g. www.keyworddiscovery.com/testimonials.html Sponsor a nonprofit E.g. Kohl’s supports the Eastern Pennsylvania Youth Soccer Association Leverage your affiliates Get a straight link (e.g. from Legal Notices page) 301 redirect
- 49. The 4 Big Keys to SEO Keywords – Target the words that your target market uses. Content – It’s got to be great, unique, linkworthy, fresh, keyword-focused content. Links – No links? No rankings. Site structure – It’s essential you get the technical details right (redirects, HTML templates, URLs, internal linking structure)
- 50. Q&A! For an ebook on Google power searching, SEO checklists & worksheets, an audio recording of an interview with Matt Cutts of Google, and an audio recording, executive summary & transcript of an SEO thought leaders teleconference, e-mail your request to [email_address] To contact Stephan, email stephan@netconcepts.com