Make Web Not War 2010

INTERACTIVE STRATEGY - 55 AV. MONT-ROYAL W., SUITE 999, MONTREAL (QC) H2T 2S6 T 514.524.7149 NVISOLUTIONS.COM MakeWebNotWar SEO for Dynamic Websites

AGENDA - SEARCH > FORBES STUDY ON SEO > SEO WHAT? 3 CORE PRINCIPLES > GOOGLE.CA / BING / QC.YAHOO.COM SHARES IN QUEBEC > WHY SEO IS GOOD FOR WEB DEVELOPERS > INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE > LINKJUICE, CODER CHEAT SHEETS, TOOLS & DO / DON’T > CANONICALIZATION ISSUES > ROADBLOCKS 101 > SPEED UP YOUR SITE INTERACTIVE STRATEGY – NVISOLUTIONS.COM

SEO VS PPC SHOWDOWN Source: Forbes

SEO WHAT? CORE 3 PRINCIPLES INDEXATION > Opting for a technological solution respecting SEO best practices > Site architecture mapped in accordance with semantic verticals > Archiving system that preserves the proper integration & interlinking of site content forever RELEVANCE > Optimization of keywords into silos > I nternal linking strategy to equitably and intelligently distribute SEO page ranking value POPULARITY > Quantity / Quality / Age / Regularity of links obtained > The semantic aspect of incoming links obtained (anchor text) > Diversification of entry points for links towards your site (hub pages) INTERACTIVE STRATEGY – NVISOLUTIONS.COM

GOOGLE IN QUEBEC > Educated guess monthly searches: ~80-82% with 600-650 million searches INTERACTIVE STRATEGY – NVISOLUTIONS.COM Major Strengths Major Weaknesses Quebec and France sites are well divided More likely to get spammed Easiest to setup / most traffic Content network quality is below average Best ratio between time spent / ROI Confusion of Google.ca and Google.com in English

BING.CA IN QUEBEC > Our estimate on monthly searches: ~8-12% with 80-100 million searches INTERACTIVE STRATEGY – NVISOLUTIONS.COM Major Strengths Major Weaknesses Traffic quality Relevance is sometimes inaccurate Not a lot of advertisers (lower CPC!) Finally a decent branded name for Canada Time consuming platform and not a lot of traffic

QC.YAHOO.COM > Our estimate on monthly searches: ~3-5% with 30-40 million searches INTERACTIVE STRATEGY – NVISOLUTIONS.COM STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES Best traffic quality / ROI Small (for some verticals?) French content network Great Quebec French portal Generates lower traffic volume than Google/Bing Great Canadian account managers network Weaker in Quebec than in the rest of Canada (FR vs EN)

WHY SEO IS GOOD FOR WEB DEVELOPERS? > SEO people always recommend to develop more sites / widgets / apps > SEO needs ongoing web development monitoring to preserve momentum > SEO revenues can crash & burn after a poorly executed site revamp (thus stressing how important developers are in monitoring the process) > SEO = #1 strategy to grow audience & more audience = more dev work > SEO people are dependant on web developers brain juice & knowledge (that they don’t have) to create their best tools & tricks > SEO always want the same things over and over (they are easy to please) > SEO people hate outsourcing stuff in India or working with a 3rd party on top of the client so they love to work with agile in-house teams! INTERACTIVE STRATEGY – NVISOLUTIONS.COM

SERIOUS STUFF NOW! (for your dynamic sites) INTERACTIVE STRATEGY – NVISOLUTIONS.COM

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE Creating an “SEO Smart” hierarchy is just a logical thing to do considering that more than half of the World’s traffic went through some kind of keyword query

It’s crucial that most internal interlinking emphasis is done within the same keyword theme/silo, but it’s also important to link to other silos INTERLINKING

KEYWORDS HIERARCHY The higher within the hierarchy, the shorter / more competitive the targeted keywords become, thus needing more power from the long tail

Long tail usually has 5 to 10 times the searches of it’s root keyword exact match searches. Ex: Flights vs Flights + *.* keyword LONG TAIL CONCEPT

LINKJUICE 101 IMPLIES… That search engines ‘crawl’ sites by following HTML and other links That the quality and quantity of links pointing to a page = Link Popularity Pages Need Link Popularity (or juice) to get indexed and rank YOU get to control which pages on your site get indexed , and which ones get linkjuice . A page being indexed by search engines is separate from that page’s ability to accumulate or pass on link juice. INTERACTIVE STRATEGY – NVISOLUTIONS.COM

LINKJUICE DISTRIBUTION CHEAT SHEET INTERACTIVE STRATEGY – NVISOLUTIONS.COM Tag/Command Indexation Link Juice Robots.txt (file in root of site) EG: Disallow: /news/pdf-copies/ Stops pages or directories from appearing in Search Engine indexes Pages ‘blocked’ by robots.txt can still accumulate and pass linkjuice Block what you don’t want indexed: Session IDs / dupe URLs: Disallow: *partner=* Entire directories: Disallow: /news/pdf-copies/ Internal SERPs: Disallow: *car-search-query=* External affiliate links: Disallow: *GO.cgi* If excluded pages have external links, expect 'URL-only' listings: No title, snippet, size or cache. For no listing at all, allow bots & use Meta noindex On-Page Meta No-Index (<head> of page) EG: <meta name=“robots” content=“noindex”> Stops the page from appearing in Search Engine indexes entirely The page can still accumulate and pass linkjuice You may want to use Meta Noindex if: you can’t alter your robots.txt, or if robots.txt standard is not flexible enough, or if you don’t want URL listings

LINKJUICE DISTRIBUTION CHEAT SHEET Rel=nofollow (in an <a href> link) EG: <a href=“http://non-trusted-site.com” rel=“nofollow”> Stops spiders from following a specific link. They don’t crawl or discover through nofollow links. Stops Linkjuice from flowing through a specific link Lots of controversy recently on its use within a domain to ‘sculpt PR flow’ and if that is still enforced by Google. For pre-established or efforts already in place, consider switching nofollowed links to javascript links to ensure a similar effect. 301 Redirection (many types of implementation) EG: redirect /old/page.php /new_page.php [301, permanent] Spiders follow redirect and discover new pages Search Engines transfer linkjuice from old pages to new pages If any URLs change, this is the best way to shift linkjuice from old to new. 301s are the only way to transfer linkjuice from one domain to another. Tag/Command Indexation Link Juice On-Page Meta No-follow (<head> of page) EG: <meta name=“robots” content=“nofollow”> Stops spiders from following the links on the page (which may still get indexed via other links) The pages can still accumulate linkjuice (and rank), but can’t pass it on You may wish to nofollow an entire page like a list of paid sponsors.

LINKJUICE DISTRIBUTION CHEAT SHEET INTERACTIVE STRATEGY – NVISOLUTIONS.COM Tag/Command Indexation Link Juice Canonicalization tag (<head> of page) EG: <canonical = “/proper/product/page.php“> Spiders go to referred page like a 301 redirect . Does not work across domains. Search Engines transfer linkjuice from variation pages to real page A new approach to both indexation control and linkjuice control Supported by The Big Three: Google, Yahoo, MSN May be cheaper than redoing your entire site from scratch, for now May see faster results than redoing your entire site May become a maintenance nightmare Can turn out to be as or more complex than doing it right from scratch Javascript Link EG: <div onclick="document.location.href='http://www.domain.com/'"> Google tries to crawl and index if URL is easily to access – in onclick or href If crawlable, Google will try to pass linkjuice Before rel=nofollow, many SEOs used uncrawlable JS links for sculpting. This is starting to get popular again. May not carry as much weight, and should not be used as main navigation

FREE TOOL #1: Google Webmaster Tools > Identify Crawl problems (spider data over time!) > Find duplicate titles and meta descriptions > Quickly identify 404 issues > List your pages by internal or external links > Manage and find errors in sitemaps > Test your robots.txt file against specific URLs > Basic domain canonicalization (www to non-www) INTERACTIVE STRATEGY – NVISOLUTIONS.COM

FREE TOOL #2: Xenu Link Sleuth > Find broken links (sort by status) > Find duplicate title tags (sort by title) > Find heavy pages (sort by size) > Find pages too many clicks from home (sort by level) > Find pages with too few internal links (sort by In links) > Find images without ALT text (sort by type, scan title field) > Test non-canonical URLs (from a text file) and view status > Find outgoing links to broken pages or expired content > Find bot traps (like open ended calendars) INTERACTIVE STRATEGY – NVISOLUTIONS.COM

INTERACTIVE STRATEGY – NVISOLUTIONS.COM

PLEASE: > Define your IA and determine canonical URLs for hub pages across all major categories, with expansion ability > Use breadcrumb style navigation – Put all new content in it! (EG: Home > Kitchen > Major Appliances > Stoves ) > Include relevant category-specific navigation at each level > Make interlinking mandatory! I nclude in-content links to similar pages around the site, and give links from other pages > Keep updated HTML and XML sitemaps for all new content > Learn all the (new) ways to control indexation and link uice flow INTERACTIVE STRATEGY – NVISOLUTIONS.COM

PLEASE DON’T: > Let the same content appear on more than one URL > Just throw content up without linking to it, or linking from it > Spread your linkjuice thin over pages don’t have unique content > Leave open ended page scripts like calendars > Archive poorly (or not at all) without respect to your IA > Return server headers other than 404 for error pages > Think you can fix linkjuice distribution issues with robots.txt INTERACTIVE STRATEGY – NVISOLUTIONS.COM

CANONICALIZATION ISSUES > Domain.com VS www.domain.com VS www.domain.com/ VS www.domain.com/index.php > …/product.php?category=clothing&sub-category=pants&gender=mens … /product.php?gender=mens&category=clothing&sub-category=pants … /product.php?category=clothing&sub-category=pants&gender=mens&color=blue QUICK CHECKLIST > No Capital letters, special characters, or spaces (use dashes instead) > Parameters in URLs are fine but only if variable order / useless variables are taken care of – try to also limit to up to 5 parameters > Use standard HTML tags (<H1>, <ul>, <a>) > Session ID variables should likely use the canonical tag > Avoid code-bloating affecting SEO by placing visible content higher in the code INTERACTIVE STRATEGY – NVISOLUTIONS.COM

ROADBLOCKS 101 > Visit your homepage using LiveHTTP Headers to ensure you’re not 301 or 302’ed > In the Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox , turn off javascript and Meta Refresh. Visit your homepage again. Ensure you get the same page and not a blank one. > Leave javascript turned off and click around your site. If navigation is fluid, fine. If you are not able to navigate for your main pages, fix it so search engine spiders will smile. > Ensure that there is no content that can only be reached after filling a form or xyz signup. If the 1 st page of your site is asking for a postal code and has no other available link, you got the perfect storm! > Make sure your www.yourdomain.com/robots.txt file doesn’t block all visiting spiders. This is the most deadly and most common mistake when a website relaunch occurs. > Ensure you have installed Google and Bing webmaster tools and that both of them run without any major crawling issue. Fix everything! INTERACTIVE STRATEGY – NVISOLUTIONS.COM

SPEED UP YOUR SITE > Page speed matters (now). So improve it, and benchmark yourself against leaders. In a way, that’s fun, you can create “Page speed contests” now. Maybe next year at MWNW? > To do so, install Google Page Speed and Yahoo’s YSlow > Run them on your home page and at least a few random internal pages > Follow every recommendations for: image optimization, gzip compression, javascript “ minification”, CSS “minification” > Once this is done, look at subtler speed improvements they recommend. > Moving to a stable Cloud environment isn’t a bad idea either INTERACTIVE STRATEGY – NVISOLUTIONS.COM

GET IN TOUCH! > EMAIL [email_address] > NVI SITE NVISOLUTIONS.COM > NVI BLOG (EN) NVISOLUTIONS.COM/BLOG > NVI BLOG (FR) GO-REFERENCEMENT.ORG Find us on twitter @NVI @GuillaumeSEO or on Facebook INTERACTIVE STRATEGY – NVISOLUTIONS.COM

Make Web Not War 2010

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