1. SEO – HIGH TRAFFIC ROUTING
Global Information Internship
Program from BUDNET
www.budnetdesign.com
2. Today’s Agenda
What is SEO?
The Seven Steps to Higher Rankings
Get Your Site Fully Indexed
Get Your Pages Visible
Build Links & PageRank
Leverage Your PageRank
Encourage Clickthrough
Track the Right Metrics
Avoid Worst Practices
5. Search Engine Optimization
6 times more effective than a banner ad
Delivers qualified leads
80% of Internet user sessions begin at the
search engines (Source: Internetstats.com)
55% of online purchases are made on sites
found through search engine listings
(Source: Internetstats.com)
6. SEO is NOT Paid Advertising
SEO – “Search Engine Optimization” – seeks to
influence rankings in the “natural” (a.k.a.
“organic”, a.k.a. “algorithmic”) search results
PPC – paid search advertising on a pay-per-click
basis. The more you pay, the higher your
placement. Stop paying = stop receiving traffic.
SEM – encompasses both SEO and PPC
8. Google Listings – Your Virtual
Sales Force making 6-7 figures a month from
Savvy retailers
natural listings
Savvy MFA (Made for AdSense) site owners
making 5-6 figures per month
Most sites are not SE-friendly
Google friendliness = friendly to other engines
First calculate your missed opportunities
9. Not doing SEO? You’re Leaving
Money on the Table
Calculate the missed opportunity cost of not ranking well
for products and services that you offer?
# of people engine share expected click- average average
searching for (Google = through rate conversion rate transaction
your keywords x 60%) x x x amount
E.g.10,000/day x 60% x 10% x 5% x $100 = $3,000/day
12. What Are Searchers Looking
For?
Keyword Research
“Target the wrong keywords and all your efforts will
be in vain.”
The “right” keywords are…
relevant to your business
popular with searchers
13. Keyword Research
Tools to check popularity of keyword
searches
WordTracker.com
Trellian’s KeywordDiscovery.com
Google’s Keyword Tool
Google Trends
Google Suggest
14. WordTracker.com
Pros
Based on last 60 days worth of searches
Singular vs plural, misspellings, verb tenses all separated out
Advanced functionality: keyword “projects”, import data into
Excel, synonyms, …
Cons
Requires subscription fee ($260/year)
Data is from a small sample of Internet searches (from the minor search
engines Dogpile and MetaCrawler)
Contains bogus data from automated searches
No historical archives
16. Trellian’s
KeywordDiscovery.com
Pros
Full year of historical archives
Data is from a large sample of Internet searches (9 billion searches
compiled from 37 engines)
Singular vs plural, misspellings, verb tenses all separated out
Can segment by country
Advanced functionality: keyword “projects”, import data into Excel,
synonyms, …
Cons
Access to the historical data requires subscription fee (~$30/month)
Contains bogus data from automated searches
18. Google AdWords Keyword Tool
Pros
Free! (Must have an AdWords account though)
Data is from a large sample of Internet searches (from Google)
Singular vs plural, misspellings, verb tenses all separated out
Can segment by country
Synonyms
Cons
No hard numbers
Augment this tool with other free Google tools:
Google Suggest (labs.google.com/suggest)
Google Trends (www.google.com/trends)
23. Keyword Research
Competition for that keyword should also be
considered
Calculate KEI Score (Keyword Effectiveness
Indicator) = ratio of searches over number of
pages in search results
The higher the KEI Score, the more attractive the
keyword is to target (assuming it’s relevant to
your business)
24. SEO. A Moving Target.
A lot is changing…
Personalization & customization
Vertical search services (Images, Video, News, Maps, etc.)
“Blended Search” – aka “Universal Search”
Fortunately, the tried-and-true tactics still work…
Topically relevant links from important sites
Anchor text
Keyword-rich title tags
Keyword-rich content
Internal hierarchical linking structure
The whole is greater than the sum of the parts
25. The Search Engines Are Your
Friend
Sitemaps.org
Webmaster tools (e.g. Google Webmaster Central, Live
Search Webmaster Center, Yahoo Site Explorer)
Rel=“nofollow” tag
Meta NOODP tag
Speaking at search engine conferences
Publishing blogs dedicated to helping webmasters
Participating on SEO forums
“Weather reports”
26. SEO Can Dramatically Improve
Traffic/Sales
Non-optimal site with Optimized site with many
few pages indexed pages indexed
=$
Few visits/sales per day Many visits/sales per day!
28. Begin The 7 Steps
1) Get Your Site Fully Indexed
2) Get Your Pages Visible
3) Build Links & PageRank
4) Leverage Your PageRank
4) Encourage Clickthrough
6) Track the Right Metrics
7) Avoid Worst Practices
29. 1) Get Your Site Fully
Indexed
Search engines are wary of “dynamic” pages - they fear “spider traps”
Avoid stop characters (?, &, =) ‘cgi-bin’, session IDs and unnecessary
variables in your URLs; frames; redirects; pop-ups; navigation in
Flash/Java/Javascript/pulldown boxes
If not feasible due to platform constraints, can be easily handled
through proxy technology (e.g. GravityStream)
The better your PageRank, the deeper and more often your site will be
spidered
30. Common Barriers to Spidering:
! Lack of links down into all
content pages; navigation;
Non-textlink sitewide
• Search-form-only;
• Javascript/Java-only (ie: dynamic menus);
• Flash apps / Splash pages;
Non-optimal URL formats of pages;
http://www.example.com/app.jsp?sid=abc123xyz
URL Framed Content
31. 1) Get Your Site Fully Indexed
(cont’d)
Page # estimates are wildly inaccurate, and include non-indexed
pages (e.g. ones with no title or snippet)
Misconfigurations (in robots.txt, in the type of redirects used,
requiring cookies, etc.) can kill indexation
Keep your error pages out of the index by returning 404 status code
Keep duplicate pages out of the index by standardizing your URLs,
eliminating unnecessary variables, using 301 redirects when needed
33. Example of Non-Optimal Site Design:
PR 8 site has META refresh redirect on homepage – spiders not
redirected to destination page:
Also, indexed “shell” page doesn’t contain any text content!
34. 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=h
ttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.bananarepublic.com%2Fbrowse%2Fhome
.do&CookieSet=Set --> 302 Moved Temporarily
GET http://www.bananarepublic.com/cookieFailure.do --> 200
OK
35. 2) Get Your Pages Visible
100+ “signals” that influence ranking
“Title tag” is the most important copy on the page
Home page is the most important page of a site
Every page of your site has a “song” (keyword theme)
Incorporate keywords into title tags, hyperlink text, headings
(H1 & H2 tags), alt tags, and high up in the page (where
they’re given more “weight”)
Eliminate extraneous HTML code
“Meta tags” are not a magic bullet
Have text for navigation, not graphics
46. 3) Build Links and PageRank
“Link popularity” affects search engine rankings
PageRank™ - Links from “important” sites have more impact on
your Google rankings (weighted link popularity)
Google offers a window into your PageRank
PageRank meter in the Google Toolbar (toolbar.google.com)
Google Directory (directory.google.com) category pages
3rd party tools like SEOChat.com’s “PageRank Lookup” & “PageRank
Search”
Scores range from 0-10 on a logarithmic scale
Live Search and Yahoo have similar measures to PageRank™
50. 4) Leverage Your PageRank
Your home page’s PageRank gets distributed
to your deep pages by virtue of your
hierarchical internal linking structure (e.g.
breadcrumb nav)
Pay attention to the text used within the
hyperlink (“Google bombing”)
Don’t hoard your PageRank
Don’t link to “bad neighborhoods”
51. Ideal internal site linking
hierarchies:
Homepages often will be Good link trees inform
highest-ranking site search engines about
pages since they which site pages are
typically have most most important.
inbound links.
*Sitemaps can also be used to tell SEs about pages, & to define
relative priority.
52. 4) Leverage Your PageRank
Avoid PageRank dilution
Canonicalization (www.domain.com vs. domain.com)
Duplicate pages: (session IDs, tracking codes,
superfluous parameters)
In general, search engines are cautious of dynamic
URLs (with ?, &, and = characters) because of “spider
traps”
Rewrite your URLs (using a server module/plug-in) or use
a hosted proxy service (e.g. GravityStream)
See
http://catalogagemag.com/mag/marketing_right_page_
web/
57. 5) Encourage Clickthrough
Zipf’s Law applies - you need to be at the top of page 1 of the
search results. It’s an implied endorsement.
Synergistic effect of being at the top of the natural results &
paid results
Entice the user with a compelling call-to-action and value
proposition in your descriptions
Your title tag is critical
Snippet gets built automatically, but you CAN influence
what’s displayed here
60. 6) Track the Right Metrics
Indexation: # of pages indexed, % of site indexed, % of
product inventory indexed, # of “fresh pages”
Link popularity: # of links, PageRank score (0 - 10)
Rankings: by keyword, “filtered” (penalized) rankings
Keyword popularity: # of searches, competition, KEI (Keyword
Effectiveness Indicator) scores
Cost/ROI: sales by keyword & by engine, cost per lead
65. Avoid Worst Practices
Target relevant keywords
Don’t stuff keywords or replicate pages
Create deep, useful content
Don't conceal, manipulate, or over-optimize
content
Links should be relevant (no scheming!)
Observe copyright/trademark law & Google’s
guidelines
66. Spamming in Its Many Forms…
Hidden or small text
Keyword stuffing
Targeted to obviously irrelevant keywords
Automated submitting, resubmitting, deep
submitting
Competitor names in meta tags
Duplicate pages with minimal or no changes
Spamglish
Machine generated content
67. Spamming in Its Many Forms…
Pagejacking
Doorway pages
Cloaking
Submitting to FFA (“Free For All”) sites & link farms
Buying up expired domains with high PageRanks
Scraping
Splogging (spam blogging)
70. Not Spam, But Bad for
Rankings content-less home page, Flash intros
Splash pages,
Title tags the same across the site
Error pages in the search results (eg “Session expired”)
"Click here" links
Superfluous text like “Welcome to” at beginning of titles
Spreading site across multiple domains (usually for load
balancing)
Content too many levels deep
71. What Next? Conduct an SEO
Audit!
Is your site fully indexed?
Are your pages fully optimized?
Could you be acquiring more PageRank?
Are you spending your PageRank wisely?
Are you maximizing your clickthrough rates?
Are you measuring the right things?
Are you applying “best practices” in SEO and
avoiding all the “worst practices”?
75. Case Study: Homestead.com
What worked
Comprehensive SEO & usability audit
Intensive on-site training sessions with their IT
and marketing teams
6 months of support
What didn’t work
No significant changes to the look of the home
page were allowed for political reasons,
significantly reducing the options available
76. Case Study: Homestead.com
Results
Within 8 weeks of launch of some preliminary
optimization work, on page 1 for “website
hosting” in Google
With our audit as a blueprint, later that year
launched an internally built site redesign which
landed them the #1 Google position for “website
hosting”
Consistently held #1 position for 2 years
77.
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81. In Summary
Focus on the right keywords
Have great keyword-rich content
Build links, and thus your PageRank™
Spend that PageRank™ wisely within your site
Measure the right things
Continually monitor and benchmark
83. Q&A!
Special White Papers Available:
Image Search Optimization
Local Search Optimization Tactics
New Link Building Paradigms
Online Marketing Tips for Universities
Tips & Tricks for Local Search Ads