Power Hour: 50 Actionable SEO Tips & Tricks

1

#C3NY

POWER HOUR:50 ACTIONABLE SEO TIPS &

TRICKSPatrick Reinhart, Prime Visibility

Michael Tirone, R2IntegratedJoe Taylor, Conductor

2

#C3NY

DON’T TAKE YOURSELF TOO SERIOUSLY

Accept and learn from failing. You don’t know everything and that’s OK.

3

#C3NY

HIRE AN AGENCY WITH THE BEST TRACK RECORD, NOT THE BEST PRICE.

Legitimate agencies are looking for partners, not clients, and you'll get so much more out of these types of relationships. I hear Prime Visibility is pretty good.

4

#C3NY

CREATE CONTENT FOR EVERY STAGE OF THE BUYER’S JOURNEY

The search starts long before the checkout button. Brands who build their content around this principal will win more customers.

5

#C3NY

REVIEW YOUR ROBOTS.TXT

Often times they become outdated, tampered with, not excluding the right pages or linking to the appropriate sitemap

6

#C3NY

YOUR BRAND SHOULD ALWAYS COMES FIRST, EXCEPT IN YOUR TITLE TAGS.

Unless you have a manual penalty assessed against your site, chances are you are going to rank for your brand name. Let the keyword(s) shine in your title tags and put your brand at the end.

7

#C3NY

REPURPOSE OLD MARKETING CONTENT

Most brands have marketing assets from years of non-digital marketing. Open up the archives and see what can be reused.

8

#C3NY

MANUALLY SCHEDULE EMAILS OF GOOGLE ANALYTICS MONTHLY REPORTS

Create your own database by scheduling monthly reports from GWMT which you will be able to bank as an alternate data source of top pages, impressions, keywords, clicks and CTR

9

#C3NY

ADD REL=CANONICAL TAGS TO FIX SITE-WIDE DUPLICATION ISSUES.

You may have a duplicate content issue and not know it. Look for duplicate pages that may have been dynamically created.

i.e. PrimeVisibility.com/home vs. PrimeVisibility.com/Home

10

#C3NY

MAP CONTENT TO BUYER PERSONAS

Different content speaks to different types of buyers; make sure you’re covered where it’s most important for your brand to be covered

11

#C3NY

WITHIN ADWORDS LINK YOUR GWMT ACCOUNT

Doing so will provide you with a great depth of knowledge and data to support your work on the paid and organic fronts

12

#C3NY

NORMALIZE YOUR NAP INFORMATION FOR LOCAL SEARCH.

Name, Address & Phone Number. If your information is different across multiple sites, then people and search engines will be confused as to who and where you actually are.

13

#C3NY

BUILD COMPETITIVE STRATEGY BASED ON YOUR SEO COMPETITORS AND NOT YOUR TRADITIONAL BUSINESS COMPETITORS

Brands often think their competitors are the same competitors they’ve battled for years. In search, this is often not the case.

14

#C3NY

CHECK RATIO OF INDEXED PAGES IN SEARCH ENGINES WITH YOUR XML SITEMAP

By finding the total number of pages you have indexed via Google/Bing WMTs (or via site: search) you can compare against the total pages in your sitemap. Indexed > sitemap = good | indexed < sitemap = you’re doing it wrong!

15

#C3NY

WHEN DIAGNOSING A LINK PROFILE, NEVER RELY ON ONE PLATFORM TO TELL YOU THE WHOLE PICTURE.

I'm looking at you, Google Webmaster Tools. Export data from multiple tools and manually investigate links before classifying them as healthy or deadly.

16

#C3NY

MEASURE PERFORMANCE BASED ON CONTENT SEGMENTATION

Highlights are great, but make sure you are grouping products and sections of the site in a way that allows for direct comparison to understand strengths and weaknesses

17

#C3NY

MARKUP YOUR SITE. RINSE. REPEAT.

Structured data with Schema.org vocabulary is always expanding and it is the future of search engines identifying “entities”

18

#C3NY

TRUST YOUR SEO EXPERT.

You hired this person and (hopefully) vetted them out from a group of others. If you are handing them the keys, let them drive.

19

#C3NY

CREATE “BRAND EXPERIENCE” CONTENT

It doesn’t have to always be related directly to the product. Create content that brings the “type” of people you want to your site.

20

#C3NY

SEARCH LIKE A HUMAN, NOT A ROBOT

Actually do search queries rather than stare at graphs & numbersAsk yourself “if I was… how would I try to search for it…” Sometimes we overcomplicate things

21

#C3NY

WHEN THINKING OF ENGAGING IN INTERNATIONAL SEO CAMPAIGNS, YOU NEED TO HAVE A STRATEGY FIRST.

Don't just buy a country code domain, throw up a bunch of pages, and duplicate the site. A meta description that promises free shipping in the U.S. doesn’t help anyone in Canada.

22

#C3NY

DON’T OBSESS OVER DAILY—OVER EVEN WEEKLY—DATA POINTS

Long term consistency trumps short term intensity. Stop constantly hitting refresh or checking data points incessantly. Measure in the context of an entire initiative, not just a single push.

23

#C3NY

USE DASHES NOT PIPES

- vs. | in page titles

24

#C3NY

SPEAKING OF INTERNATIONAL SEO, DO NOT USE AUTO TRANSLATION.

The quality isn't there and the message isn't targeted. If you are going to target other languages, make sure that you invest time and money in the effort. It will pay off with your potential customers.

25

#C3NY

DON’T OVERSATURATE YOUR CONTENT

Pick one or two goals. Pick one or two keywords. Execute on those specifically.

26

#C3NY

BE UNIQUE. AT ALL TIMES

Within your page titles, site copy, landing pages, big ideas

27

#C3NY

SITES HOSTED ON SERVERS IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY WILL RANK BETTER.

For example: If you have a .CA, then that site should be hosted on a server that exists in Canada.

28

#C3NY

USE NATURAL LANGUAGE URLS

Exceptions exist, but try to adhere to this gold standard

29

#C3NY

OPTIMIZE WITH YOUR MOUTH, NOT FINGERTIPS

More and more searches are going to be conducted through Voice Search, adjust to more conversational content

30

#C3NY

USE LATENT SEMANTIC INDEXING (LSI) KEYWORDS

This will increase the relevancy around the theme of a page, rather than targeting the exact phrase over and over.

31

#C3NY

PREVIEW CONTENT AS A DIFFERENT USER AGENT

This will allow you to see what the content looks like on different devices

32

#C3NY

THINK PROGRESSIVE & PERSONAL

Google Now, hyper-predictive & hyper-personal

33

#C3NY

AUTHORSHIP IS DEAD, BUT AUTHOR RANK IS ALIVE AND WELL. GIVE YOURSELF CREDIT.

Make sure people know you authored your content by ensuring there are bylines giving you the credit.

34

#C3NY

UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENT WAYS USERS SEARCH ON DIFFERENT TYPES OF SEARCH ENGINES

Tools like Soovle allow you to see popular ways of searching a topic on different search engines

35

#C3NY

USE CATEGORY MARKET SHARE REPORT (SHARE OF VOICE REPORTING) TO HELP YOU FIND DISPLAY OPPORTUNITIES

36

#C3NY

FIND NEW AND CURRENT KEYWORD IDEAS USING A REDDIT OR SUBREDDIT SEARCH.

Look for threads with recurring themes and gauge volume to create relevant content.

37

#C3NY

FIND AND FIX “CLICK HERE” LINKS

Identify these low hanging fruit opportunities to improve the quality of your link profile

38

#C3NY

USE SCREAMINGFROG OR XENU TO AVOID SPOT CHECKING

39

#C3NY

OPTIMIZE YOUR VIDEO ASSETS.

Leverage the description on YouTube or transcribe it onto your site. This will essentially turn it into a smaller blog post and help it rank for long-tail keywords.

40

#C3NY

IDENTIFY THE STRONGEST TLDS TO PARTNER WITH FOR YOUR BRAND

Focus here for your high leverage linking opportunities

41

#C3NY

USE THE DATA HIGHLIGHTER

42

#C3NY

INTERNALLY LINK HIGHER AUTHORITY PAGES WITHIN YOUR OWN SITE TO BOOST CONTENT ON PAGE 2.

Sharing equity between pages isn’t a bad thing, just don’t overdo it. Everything can work when used in moderation.

43

#C3NY

SEARCH FOR DUPLICATE PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS

See where other sites are cannibalizing your opportunities by copying your product descriptions

44

#C3NY

THE METRICS COMING FROM THE TOOL HAVE NO BUSINESS SUCCESS RELATION

There could be plenty wrong. it's not a picture of success

45

#C3NY

LOOK FOR DEAD LINKS ON WIKIPEDIA TO USE IN YOUR FAVOR.

Wikipedia has an area that reports on dead links on the site. Creating a piece of content and submitting to the site will help round out your link profile, and creates opportunity to obtain existing equity.

46

#C3NY

IDENTIFY THE HIGHEST PRIORITY KEYWORDS AND DEVELOP BETTER DATA SHARING WITH PAID TEAM

Start small, select a few key metrics for each channel, and share on a weekly basis, preferably using an automated system

47

#C3NY

THINK ABOUT BRANDED SEARCH AND HOW DO YOU WANT TO MANAGE YOUR PRESENCE

Do you want to show paid ads. How much does it cost? What’s the opportunity cost?

48

#C3NY

SEO IS A MARATHON, NOT A SPRINT. YOU HAVE TO BE PATIENT.

This stuff takes time people, and nothing will kill an SEO campaign faster than impatience. Take the time to educate yourself, you and your site will be better for it.

49

#C3NY

USE A WEB PRESENCE MANAGEMENT PLATFORM

I hear Searchlight is pretty good.

50

#C3NY

MAKE GOOD USE OF THE REL=ALTERNATE WHEN YOU HAVE MOBILE OR LANGUAGES

51

#C3NY

DON’T TRUST ANYONE NAMED SETH.

Especially organizations with multiple occurrences.

Manager, SEO Services,Prime Visibility

Pat Reinhart

Strategic Customer Success Manager,Conductor

Joe Taylor

Digital Marketing Search Strategist,R2Integrated

Mike Tirone