Stephan Spencer - SEMPO Atlanta. October 1, 2010. Topic: Advanced SEO

Advanced SEO: An Assortment of Tools, Tips & Tactics

Stephan SpencerFounder, Netconcepts; Co-Author, Art of SEO

2 © 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com

Who Am I?

• Co-author of The Art of SEO• Founded Netconcepts LLC in Madison

WI in 1995. Sold it to Covario in 2010.Founded Netconcepts Ltd in Auckland in 1999.

• Lived in New Zealand for 8 yrs, returned to US in 2007.

• Invented GravityStream, a pay-for-performance SEO technology (now Covario’s Organic Search Optimizer)

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A Blog is an Asset

My daughter,blogger & SEO.$5 - $30 / daypassive income. Started when she was 14.

SEO: So simple even a child can do it!

Making Assumptions about Customer Vocabulary?

• Your customer doesn’t use industry-speak• Just because it makes intuitive sense doesn’t

mean it’s right• Example: home loan vs. mortgage• Example: kitchen electrics• Example: digital camera(s)• Example: hoodie vs hooded sweatshirt

Soovle.comSoovle.com

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Keyword Brainstorming

• Keyword brainstorming should be integral to your content planning. Think laterally!

• Example: Neopets• Example: baby furniture manufacturer• Soovle – autocompletes simultaneously from

from Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia, Amazon, Answers.com

Soovle.comSoovle.com

Soovle.comSoovle.com

Soovle.comSoovle.com

Soovle.comSoovle.com

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Use the Tools Properly

• Log in (to Google Trends, Google AdWords Keyword Tool, etc.)

• Log out (when searching) – turn off personalization

• Broad matching is the default in AdWords Keyword Tool

• Run the right Google queries– Estimated results w/o including omitted results– Use “” or intitle: operator

• white noise vs. “white noise” vs. intitle:“white noise”

Don’t Cannibalize Organic w/ Paid

• The so-called “synergy” of paid search with organic search is often manifested instead as cannibalization

http://searchengineland.com/organic-search-paid-search-are-they-synergistic-or-cannibalistic-36444http://searchengineland.com/organic-search-paid-search-are-they-synergistic-or-cannibalistic-36444

SEO Should Drive Your Social Media Strategy

• It’s not a social media “strategy” if it isn’t driven by SEO needs

• Write “link bait” and seed it into social media like Digg.com

• “Power users” on social media get a lot more mileage out of their submissions

http://searchengineland.com/the-social-media-underground-22030http://searchengineland.com/the-social-media-underground-22030

Watch Out for Duplicate Content• Multiple URLs leading to the same piece of content• Duplicate content triggers Google’s “duplicate content

filter” – all but one gets filtered out• It also results in PageRank dilution• Technical reasons:

– Canonicalization (www.domain.com vs. domain.com)– Session IDs, tracking codes, superfluous parameters

• Indicators of (likely) duplicate content: duplicate title tags, duplicate meta description, duplicate page copy

Canonical Tag Misfires• Example #1: NorthernSafety.com

– Many thousands of non-canonical URLs of northernsafety.com are indexed, despite use of the canonical tag

– For example, click on the listings on http://www.google.com/search?q=site:northernsafety.com/products/+inurl:protective-clothing and compare those URLs to what's listed as the canonical URL in the link tag in the HTML source of these pages

– Canonical tags have been in place for many months– Why did it happen? Hint: it has to do with space characters

• Example #2: Wikipedia– What’s the reason for this one? Hint: absolute vs. relative

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XML Sitemaps

• An easy partial fix. Assists indexation of site.• Provides a canonicalization signal• Industry standards at: www.sitemaps.org• Google vertical specific sitemaps: news, video,

mobile• Can obscure the true problems with your site• If using Sitemaps, use “autodiscovery”• Moving URLs around (e.g. redesign)? Submit all your

old URLs, have 301 redirects to everything

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Robots.txt

• To bar crawlers from...– non-public parts of your website– trying to index scripts, utilities, or other types of code– duplicate content, such as “print” versions of html pages

• For auto-discovery of XML Sitemaps• Syntax:

– User-agent: *– Disallow: /admin/

• Read my primer on robots.txt: http://searchengineland.com/a-deeper-look-at-robotstxt-17573

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Robots.txt

• Done wrong, can block bots fromentire site

• Too often implemented incorrectly,unfortunately

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Tip: This will block all bots from your entire siteUser-agent: *Disallow: /

Are you sure that’s what you want?

Tip: This will block all bots from your entire siteUser-agent: *Disallow: /

Are you sure that’s what you want?

Rewrite Spider-Unfriendly URLs

• 3 approaches:1) Use a “URL rewriting” server module / plugin – such as

mod_rewrite for Apache, or ISAPI_Rewrite for IIS Server2) Recode your scripts to extract variables out of the “path_info”

part of the URL instead of the “query_string”3) Or, if IT department involvement must be minimized, use a

proxy server based solution (e.g. Covario’s Organic Search Optimizer)

– With (1) and (2), replace all occurrences of your old URLs in links on your site with your new search-friendly URLs. 301 redirect the old to new URLs too, so no link juice is lost.

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Eliminate the Low- (or No) Value Activities

• Meta keywords, anyone?– Google never supported this worthless tag– http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/200

9/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

– Free info for your competitors• Guaranteed there are items on your SEO to-do

list that aren’t worth doing• Be outcome-focused, not activity-focused

URL Testing & Iterative Optimization

• URL affectssearcherclickthroughrates

• Short URLsget clicked on2X long URLs

(Source: MarketingSherpa,

used with permission)

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URL Testing & Iterative Optimization

• Further, long URLs appear to act as a deterrent to clicking, drawing attention away from its listing and instead directing it to the listing below it, which then gets clicked 2.5x more frequently. – http://searchengineland.com/080515-084124.php

• Don’t be complacent with search-friendly URLs. Test and optimize.

• Make iterative improvements to URLs, but don’t lose link juice to previous URLs. 301 previous URLs to latest. No chains of 301s.

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URL Testing & Iterative Optimization

• WordPress handles 301s automatically when renaming post slugs

• Mass edit admin for URLs (post slugs) in WordPress – via the “SEO Title Tag” plugin (www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin)

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Tune Your Internal Linking Structure

• Make sure your most important pages (most profitable products etc.) are all linked to from your home page

• Try to keep all pages no more than a couple of clicks away from an external link source

• Move your important internal text links from blocks of "SEO copy” at the bottom of the page or sidebar to more visible parts of the page. – Think in terms of whether the link is likely to get clicked on by a typical

surfer or not (i.e. Google's "reasonable surfer" patent). If it's not likely to get clicked on because of its placement, then it's probably getting discounted by Google

Run SEO Tests• Vary only one thing at a time• With SEO, tests can’t be run in parallel• Try different synonyms, different verb tenses, different word

order• Tighten the keyword focus of the title tag• H1 tags are no longer a strong signal. Don’t take my word for

it, though. Test it for yourself.• Measure the success of tests based on multiple metrics - not

just rankings. E.g. spidering activity, traffic, sales, page yield, keyword yield

An Example Experiment• Question: Is the site-wide home link that is full of keywords

actually helping your home page rank higher in Google? • Hypothesis: It is not. • Run the test: Establish a baseline of rankings for the home

page for the keywords in the anchor text. Then change that link to simply say "Home" and watch for the rankings impact.

• Further confirmation: Then switch it back to the original keyword-rich link. Did it drop then rise again?

SEO Metrics

• Page yield – % of unique pages yielding search engine-delivered traffic in a given month

• Keyword yield – ratio of keywords to pages yielding search traffic

• Brand-to-nonbrand ratio – % of search traffic coming from brand keywords vs. nonbrand keywords

• Unique pages – non-duplicate pages crawled

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Sample KPIs

Page Yield & Keyword Yield

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SEO Metrics

• Visitors per keyword – ratio of search engine delivered visitors to search terms

• Index-to-crawl ratio – ratio of pages indexed to unique crawled pages

• Engine yield – how much traffic the engine delivers for every page it crawls

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Score Your SEO

• On-page factors– e.g. title tag, heading tags, anchor text, keyword

prominence, meta description, etc.• Off-page factors

– e.g. inbound links, trust, authority (harder to change quickly)

• Technologies:– Enterprise level: Covario’s Organic Search Insight– Small business: HubSpot’s WebsiteGrader.com

• See http://searchengineland.com/the-science-of-scoring-your-seo-28769

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CovarioOrganic Search Insight

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Real-Time Feedback

• No need to wait for crawling, indexing and re-ranking to see the likely impact of your content revisions/additions

• Content analysis tools like Scribe, a WordPress plugin, that gives real-time feedback on the SEO of your content

• Content analysis baked into enterprise-level tools like Compendium Blogware or Covario Organic Search Insight

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Scribe forWordPress

Compendium Blogware: analyzes the blog post’s keyword strength on-the-fly

Real-Time Feedback on Content

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Nonperforming Pages• What percentage of your unique crawled pages aren’t driving traffic in a given month?• These are affectionately known as “freeloaders”!• This percentage is larger than you think• Target the most frequently crawled nonperforming pages. This is the “low-hanging fruit”• These pages are likely to have some good PageRank and changes will get picked up

quickly.• If you can’t get them to perform after repeated attempts, consider dumping them from

your site’s link graph (nofollow, noindex etc.)

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Non-performing pages report, sorted by crawler activity

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SEO Metrics

• Top converting/performing page 2 ranked pages• Top converting/performing keywords on one

engine that are non-performing on another• Highest potential keywords you’re getting traffic

for• Highest potential keywords you’re not getting

traffic for, based on potential referrals, revenue, and ROI

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Don’t Buy into SEO Myths

• Myths are created inadvertently, unintentionally– Easy to confuse correlation with causation

• Some myths are perpetuated by snake oil salesmen– e.g. If some SEO consultant starts talking about how

they’ll help you rank by optimizing your meta tags, turn and run!

• Bottom line: SEO is an experimental science

Don’t Buy into SEO Myths• Personalization means nobody’s #1 anymore• Meta tags will boost your rankings• Country sites are “duplicate content”• JavaScripted links will keep the spiders away• Googlebot doesn’t read CSS• You must update your home page daily• Linking out (such as to Google.com) helps rankings• SEO is a one-time activity• Using Flash will tank your SEO• SEO is free• Google penalizes for duplicate content• .edu links get extra weight• etc.

http://searchengineland.com/36-seo-myths-that-wont-die-but-need-to-40076http://searchengineland.com/36-seo-myths-that-wont-die-but-need-to-40076

http://searchengineland.com/36-more-seo-myths-that-wont-die-but-need-to-41999http://searchengineland.com/36-more-seo-myths-that-wont-die-but-need-to-41999

http://searchengineland.com/seo-myths-reloaded-clarifcations-consensus-and-controversy-41816http://searchengineland.com/seo-myths-reloaded-clarifcations-consensus-and-controversy-41816

Let’s apply our knowledge to a real-world scenario...

Here’s a super-important home page (PageRank 9)

What’s up with theweak navigation?

The lack of strong text-based navigation is a real

missed opportunity

Contrast this with the strong text nav on

Yahoo’s home page

Great that these are text links. Bad that these are uber-generic keywords.

What’s the keyword focus?

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternalhttps://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Sort by search volume and switch to exact

match

CTR:~40%

~10%

~9%

~5%

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.comhttp://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com

The SEO power of WordPress.com lies with

their community. Let’s pick one of their blogs...

Everything looks copasetic until you dig

deeper...

Duplicate content & canonicalization issues

Uh oh. The redirect is a 302 instead of a 301, which doesn’t pass

PageRank

Now What?

• What can you do tomorrow that will improve your site’s SEO? Write down 3 things. Get ‘em done!

• Remember: you eat an elephant one bite at a time• To contact me: stephan@stephanspencer.com• For an SEO Best & Worst Practices whitepaper &

checklist, e-mail me