Vivek BhargavaCEO

Benedict HayesVice President, Digital Strategy

Partners in growth through digital innovation

““

About Communicate 2

• A end-to-end digital solution provider.• Highest number of Google certified analysts in India.• The company straddles the onshore and offshore market creating a unique

eco-system that complements and drives improvement across both businesses.

• We deliver the best in global practices and solutions to our domestic clients.• Our client list includes the best names in corporate India as well as leading

agencies in the UK, US and Canada.• 140 professionals with a collective experience of 300+ man-years.• India’s first Google Analytics Certified Partner (GACP).• Partners with Adobe Omniture and Webtrends.• A thought & technology leader in the space, C2 constantly strives to create

practical solutions to key business problems of its clients

The Speakers

Some of our partners in digital

How to leverage Digital

Digital

Community Building / Customer

engagement

Information dissemination

Customer Acquisition

Consumer Insights /

Market trends and product development

Brand Building

Online reputation

management and PR

The content of the day

• Introduction• SEO 101• SEO the next level• The anatomy of content• Optimising

different types of content• Managing Multi-Lingual Sites• Optimising YouTube• Technical SEO

• Search Marketing (SEM)• Getting Started SEM 101• Google Display Network

(GDN)• Retargeting / Remarketing• Analytics• Tools and Campaign

Automation• Cross Leveraging SEO / SEM

SEO 101 – SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

Optimising your site for the natural search results

What is SEO

The factors in SEO

85% Market owned by Google

Over

200 factors affecting results

4 Groups of factors

influencing algorithm

ArchitectureContent

AuthorityEngagement

ARCHITECTURE

Architecture & Accessibility

• Websites should not just be for the user they should be also designed for search engines

• In-accessible content is the number one reason for poor rankings

• If a spider cannot access or read your content you will not rank

• The speed at which you deliver content and the way in which you deliver it are also factors

• So simple site architecture is key!

How a user sees a website (Royal Sundaram)

How the GoogleBot sees the site

Site speed...

• How quickly do you deliver content?– Dirty code– Unnecessary files– No compression– Oversized images– Server speed & pipe

Don’t waste Google’s time!

CONTENT

Content

• Content is king!• Search engines use content to

understand, associate, grade and rank your site

• Content should therefore be... – rich to engage the user “Sticky”– tailored to a search query– structured– unique, timely and relevant.

Ask yourself...

Is my website the number one contextual resource for my products on the web in India?

“”

Types of content

• Text (News, PR, How to guides, Knowledge, Product info)

• Interactive / UGC (User Generated Content)

• Images• Video• Music / Podcasts• Applications• Widgets / Games

Keywords

• Search engines are keyword driven

• Content must have the keywords within it if it is to rank

• Over optimisation and spamming will lead to penalties

• The right keyword mix is needed to purvey the correct message within any given page

Key content components

• Page title <TITLE>• Meta Description• Content title <H1>• Sub headings <H2> <H3>• First block of text• Emphasised text• Number of keyword instances• Content “anchored” links

AUTHORITY

Categories of Authority

Age Votes Buzz

Age – how old is your site?

• Google gives great weight to sites that have been around since day 0

• New sites will find it very hard to compete in mature markets

• Unfortunately there is no way of improving age - we can’t change time!

Votes: website backlinks

A webpage with little or no authority

A webpage with some authority

A webpage with lots of authority

Internal web pages

Externally linked web pages

Buzz – brand sentiment online

ENGAGEMENT

Forms of engagement

• Pre Click

• Post Click

Pre click

• What does the user see in the results?• Is it engaging does it compel me to click?• CTR%• Click – ability• 40-50% SEO increase just from updating meta

content

Post click

• What happens when the user come to your site?– Time on Site– Bounce rates– Action taken– Do they engage?

BIG NEGATIVE: do they click back to Google?

THE ALGORITHM

Overall ranking algorithm

24%

20%15%

15%

11%

10%5% Trust/Authority of the Host Domain

Link Popularity of the Specific Page

Anchor Text of External Links

On-Page Keyword Usage

Traffic and Click-Through Data

Social Graph Metrics

Registration and Hosting Data

Personalised search

Personalised search delivers results based on the things you’ve searched for on Google and the sites you’ve visited.

“

“Google - December 2009

STRATEGY

Research

Deployment of an SEO campaign

EducationResource assessmentPlanningExecution

5 Key phases

Research

• First and foremost you must understand what it is we need to achieve– Metric– Tracking– Keyword selection– Competitor analysis

• Understand the size of the task

Understanding the competition

1

2

3

Research content...

URL www.MYSITE.in www.notmysite.in www.hissite.in www.competitor.in www.bhag.in www.outofreach.in

Google Pagerank 6 0 0 2 5 5

Google index 2,830 3,270 18,900 338 826 367

Google links 37 49 42 14 22 35

Google Cachedate 23-Sep-10 22-Sep-10 23-Sep-10 19-Sep-10 23-Sep-10 17-Sep-10

Google images index 2,230 n/a 1,410 457 39 781

Yahoo index 9,342 576 4,137 621 1,787 1,334

Yahoo links 33,630 12,999 80,257 91,540 91,996 92,044

Yahoo linkdomain 41,923 18,087 84,194 92,369 107,039 92,598

Bing index 1,960 1 460 349 261 407

Alexa rank 12,428 1,097,248 47,041 194,691 88,314 101,043

Webarchive age Mar 29 2007 Nov 02 2007 Feb 06 2006 Jun 12 2008 Dec 04 2007 no matches

Domain IP 124.153.104.157 124.153.111.94 124.153.111.92 124.153.111.69 124.153.111.89 124.153.104.130

/sitemap.xml yes yes yes yes no no

/robots.txt yes yes yes yes no no

Hosting NETMAGIC DATACENTER

AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES

NETMAGIC DATACENTER

NETMAGIC DATACENTER

AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES

NETMAGIC DATACENTER

...and backlinks!

Understanding your resources

• Manpower• Technical skill sets• Link building• Content creation• Execution

Planning

• If you know you need 400 links and to generate 500 pages of content, map the route and method of execution

• This is called this the SEO road map

• Be very wary of any SEO who tells you he will get results without doing this

Cross-pollination of campaigns

• SEO will improve on page quality score:– Reduce CPC

• SEM will test ad copy to find the best for CTR / Time on Site and Sales– These can be implemented to SEO

• Improved SEO or core terms will allow for pausing of SEM keywords / reduction in SEM costs

• One plus one equals three!– Dual demographic targeting on core terms

KEY TAKE HOMES

You cannot build a house in a day...

• SEO takes time in a lot of cases 6-12 months should be given to expect results. In a mature market plan for 2 years

• SEO must be done in line with Google standards

• Never employ black hat solutions!

• If you invest now SEO will deliver long term quality traffic for the future!

SEO THE NEXT LEVEL

Presentation in brief

• GOOGLE• SEO• INFORMATION• ORGANISED• USEFUL• SOCIAL MEDIA VERY USEFUL?• UNIVERSALLY ACCESSIBLE

GOOGLE Google

Google’s Mission

Google’s mission is to organize the world‘s

information and make it universally accessible and useful.

*Source: www.google.com/about/corporate/company/

Google

• Originally developed in 1998• 100s of top PHDs have since spent 14 years to hone,

refine and firewall• 500+ updates a year• Do you think we have intelligence to crack it?

Original Architecture

• Google crawls content• Gives a unique docID to each page as

well as wordID’s• Breaks page into wordID ‘hits’ and stores

in index• Word ‘hits’

– Link anchors– Big font– Plain text– Small font– Title– URL

• Algorithm uses ‘hits’, Pagerank and a

user feedback mechanism to spawn final result

*Source: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

Google today

• Original construct has not changed, the method of ‘hit’ calculation and user feedback mechanism has

• Google has many server clusters globally• Your response is handled locally hence there are

often differences in results dependent on which IP• Localised filters and algos are also overlaid on the

original result set

GoogleBot

• The old Googlebot was very simple• It harvested URLs for indexing if it did not

understand what it was looking at it would give up and go home

• Hence Flash/Javascripts, non w3c standard code would cause a whole host of problems

• Things have changed….

Just how smart are search robots?

• The dawn of headless browsers…• How long has Google been doing this?

*source: www.seomoz.org/blog/just-how-smart-are-search-robots

Eric Schmidt

Whilst addressing the US congress Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) stated that there were 516 algorithmic updates committed live in 2010, what was really scary is that he also said that they tested

13,000Does SEO as we know it have a future?

Some of 2011/12 big updates

• Just launched… Dec 10 pack– Park domains, content ownership & scraper sites, rare

words, fresher results, tablet tweaks• Freshness Update• Expanded sitelinks• Query Encryption• Panda 2.0, 2.1, 2.2…. 3.8 etc…• Pagination Elements

– rel="next" rel="previous"• Schema.org• Farmer (ad to content ratios)• Attribution update• Penguin• Fouzou• Venice• Big Foot

SEO

Which SEO should we use?

Blackbreak Google?

Whitehelp Google?

BLACK: Break Google

• Links, links, links• Content, content, content• Keywords, keywords, keywords• Cloak, manipulate, deceive

• Oh I forgot to say…• Links, links, links

Does it have a future?

In short…

no!

White SEO

Compliment and help Google to achieve it’s mission

The Mission

…to organize the world‘s information, make it

universally accessible and useful.

…so create Information that is:– Organized– Useful– Universally accessible

simple!

INFORMATION

What is information?

Lets ask Google:

Are these forms of content?

How is information disseminated?

• Text• Visuals• Sounds• In code• Through learning or interaction

If we have to take Google seriously we have to think of all of these…

Content is therefore key

• Content is king!

• Forms of content:– Text (News, PR, How to guides, Knowledge, Product

info)– Interactive / UGC (User Generated Content)– Images– Video– Audio / Music / Podcasts– Applications / Widgets / Games

ORGANISED

How do we Organise?

• Site structure• Content structure• Location settings• Sign posting

Site Structure

• Clear text based navigation• Logical organised parent/child

hierarchical structure• Matching URL paths and navigation

breadcrumbs

Breadcrumb Path:Home > News > 2008 > Article name

URL path:mysite.com/news/2008/article-name.html

Use Mircoformats to mark up breadcrumb

Parent

Child

Site Structure

• Clear addressing:– XML sitemaps (news, mobile, video, images, blog etc.)– HTML sitemaps– robots.txt

• Content duplication:– Domain/page canonicalisation (301)– Content canonicalisation (rel="canonical")

• Site search functionality• Use Webmaster Tools!• Error handling (404/500)

Content Structure

• Content must be indexable• Content should be semantically marked up

– <title>, meta="description", <H1>, alt="",title=""• Use microdata, microformats or RDFa:

Location settings

• Consolidate local content:– www.mysite.com/us– us.mysite.com/

• Inform Google through WMT• Submit for local search results, Google places

Sign Posting

• If you want to have your content found you need to sign the way

• Clearly link internally and externally with the context and signposts you wish to be found for:– Pizza in Bandra… more– Find great pizza in Bandra

• Navigational links should follow your content structure as well as carry the context of the content

USEFUL

How to be useful?

• Simple, create content that is useful!• Content is not only text it can be of all types:

– Video, applications, news, reviews, articles, games etc.

• So why limit yourself?• If your users find you useful so will Google!

Intent mapping

• Google is the closest thing to a mind reader

• It is an intent engine that wants to deliver the content that best answers a users intent

• As such you must create content that answers this intent…

Understand the intent of the user

• User could be researching to buy a camera• User may want to know how a camera works• User may be wanting to know the history of cameras• User may want to understand the definition• User may want to know what types of cameras there are• Looking for images or even a video• User may want to know if the camera in McDonalds was actually working…

Will your content answer all of these intents?

Probably not.

Bounce Rates

• A bounce from your content is a strong sign that your webpage did not answer the intent of the user

• Bounce rate is therefore a strong sign that Google can use to understand that your

content is therefore not usable for the user

First Impressions Count

• The first 2 seconds that the user sees your page are the most important. If you do not engage you lose the user and get a bounce

• Google personalizes results so if you didn’t do a good job the first time you won’t get a second chance!

• Web pages therefore must be crafted to be superfast and clearly map a users intent

Superfast

• Search engine needs the content so… cut the crap!– Javascript, css, jquery get it out of the page!

• Reduce server calls– Merge .ccs/.js files – make images css sprites

• Control caching– Expiry headers– Entity tags

• Compress files through gzip• If you got the dough…

– Deploy on a CDN or a super fast server

Page design / Usability

• Show the user what he wants, answer his intent• Do so in the format that he wants where he wants• Give a clear signpost of what you want the user to do

next never assume they know• If they click and engage you have succeeding in some

way to answering user intent• Give all the information and answers in clear logical

fashion that the user can easily navigate• Breadcrumb the path you wish the user to take

Links

• LINKS MUST BE USEFUL!

• Good links:– Should be within context and relevant– They should lead users to related information– Navigate users to a next phase– Should come from good content– Should endorse content– Give value to content– But above all be useful

• If they are not useful the are SPAM (period)

Bit grey but…

• Links should be all of the previous but there is no harm in also being…– Separate unique class-c subnets– Carry PageRank– Be one of few links leaving a page (externally)– Anchored with context that you want to rank for– Not in footers but in body content or navigational

structures

Click ability

• A very good gauge of how useful or not your content is, is if you are being clicked on or not

• If you’re being shown but you are not being clicked… what’s Google going think?

USELESS!

Meta

• Meta content is key to making your content useful– <title><title/>– <meta name="description" content=""/>

• It’s the only tool you have to sell your content• Google has been mapping CTR in Adwords since 2002

don’t think for a second that this does not apply in SEO

• Do not think of keyword spamming think engagement / map intent, write something people will want to click on

SOCIAL MEDIA VERY USEFUL!

Social Media

• Google has been using social media to gauge how useful content is for a long time

• After all you can’t beat human sentiment to understand if something is good or bad

• Social Media gives you this

Social Media

• Social interaction such as like, shares, tweets, +1 are effectively endorsements

• More so reviews with integrated microdata these are extremely good for giving weight and value to content

• After all these are real endorsements of content as opposed to your easily manipulated or contrived links

Twitter

• SEOmoz investigations found that Google used to use twitter and facebook as a direct measure of sentiment… Google denied…

• It was true there was a time you could use twitter to generate instant results in Google… but not anymore

Integration of Social

The principle is simple - what could be better for Google than an actually person endorsing content?

…you own the person!

Welcome to the world of Google+

Integration

Twitter and Facebook would not play with Google

So Google did it alone..

Google+

• Through Google+ Google will deliver 100 times better results

• If they truly know you, your friends, what you like, what you don’t like, they can advertise and personalise information for you and only…

YOU!

How does this effect Personlised Search?

• Simplistically if my friends like it surely I will like it….

How does this effect SEO?

• If you do not begin to build a sentiment graph for your content where influencers share and like your content and link back to you, you will not be the most useful popular guy in town someone else will

Black: Social Spam?

• Not possible… • Google controls

– The people– The content

• They can see – The intricacies of the connections– The IPs of the users the types and places of the

+1s, the frequency and from where

UNIVERSALLY ACCESSIBLE

Universal Accessibility

• Universal Accessibility primarily means your content being access by anyone, anyhow, anywhere

• Google has broadened its reach to mobile, social media it won’t be long before Google TV arrives although you could argue it already has through YouTube

The future

• So we know that Google are going universal

• Mobile is the first step on this ladder– HTC / Motorola

• TV will be next• Before you know it Google will be

on your watch!• Is your content universally

accessible?

Mobile

• For India especially this is a huge growth area• Internet enabled handsets for less than 3,000INR/-• What to do…

Follow the mission

• Create organised, useful, accessible information!• Create sites that function effectively on multiple

platforms• Organise them in much the same way you would

your main site• Optimise the user experience, simplify things and

give the consumers what they want

Tips and tricks

• Design content that is navigable and engages on small screens• Keep it very light… shy away from heavy images• Link mobile content to mobile content• Link directly from your site• HTML5• Use standard naming convention for mobile content:

– m.mysite.com– mobile.mysite.com– www.mysite.com/mobile/

• Build for unique operating platforms• Use redirects for mobile user-agents

– Remember whatever the user sees ensure the googlebot sees!!

Web Presence Optimisation

• Universally accessible could also be construed to all things web

• Can you be found universally?– YouTube– Facebook– Twitter– LinkedIn– Images

• Are you there?

CONCLUSION

If you’re not sure about something ask yourself…

Will this make my information organized, universally available and useful?

If the answer’s yes then do it!

THE ANATOMY OF CONTENTHow to create SEO friendly content

Overview

• Why content?• Intent Mapping• The need for hygiene• Anatomy of keywords• Basic content anatomy:

– Keyword selection– Title– Description– H tags

– ALT/Title tags– Emphasised text

• Interlinking• News/PR page

structuring• Video content creation• Managing images• Dynamic Content• The dark side

Why content?

• Content is King! • Without it you can expect no traffic

from SEO apart from your brand• Development of content moves

brands from Buying or Renting Media to actually Owning Media

• Brands that embrace content creation will have a long a fruitful SEO life and dramatically reduce paid media costs!

Google the mind reader

• Google is now the closest thing to the worlds first mind reader

• It displays content and results in time with users intent

• It does this by mapping the intent of the user against the context of a page

• The art of creating good content is to therefore map content to the intent of users

• Google will then connect the dots...

Intent Mapping

• When a user searches on Google they put their exact intent into the search box

• Google serves results that answers that exact intent• Our content must therefore exactly match with what

it is the user searches for• Therefore simplicity is key

The path to conversion

• Intent Mapping must be upheld through the entire path to conversion

• This is done by first answering the intent but then driving and creating a new intent

• Ad texts and landing pages carry these two roles and must marry accordingly

Zoomin Example:

Answering Intent: “Photo Prints”

Creating new Intent: “Print your photos online at affordable rates”

Mapping IntentAnswering new intent

Case studySearch on “information management”

Page does not connect with the visitors

85%Bounces15%

Bounces

The need for hygiene

• Content should be developed correctly at the first instance

• Retrospective optimisation is a waste of time and resources

• So getting content right at point of inception is critical

• This internally should be considered as ‘hygiene’ and mandated across the business

• Therefore all new content should be SEO compliant

Types of onsite content

• Home page• Product landing pages• Supporting pages• Knowledge pieces• News• ePR• Images• Video• Applications / Widgets

Anatomy of good content

• Titles• Description• Meta• Content• Text types• ALT/Title tags• Sitemap

The Anatomy of content

<Title> Tag<Meta “Description”> Tag

<H1> Tag

<H2> Tag

<H3> Tag

Anchor text

<Strong>

Images - ALT Tag / Naming

Titles• This is categorically the most important component of a page it

absolutely defines what a content is about and is critical to the success of an SEO campaign.

• Should be less than but not restricted to 75 characters in length, including spaces. Remember that in Google Search Results (SERPS), only 65 characters of the title are shown dealers in pre-owned cars sales and service - Mahindra First Choice</title>

• Titles should contain the most important keyword for the page, and should reference it in the left of the title to give the most emphasis

• The more concise the title is the more optimised the page becomes

Description tags

• The second most important contextual element is the description tag.

• Meta description provides the Google ‘snippet’. It should be less than 165 characters.

• It has four main purposes:

1. Capture the initial click and generate CTR

2. To describe the content of the page accurately and succinctly

3. To serve as a short text “advertisement” for your products and services

4. To map the intent of the user through keyword insertion and generate the new intent for the landing page

Meta Tags

Content

• Find the right keywords which map the users intent

• Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your content actually includes those words within it

• Ideally, each page should focus on three keywords

• As a guide 5% of your content should be keywords

• Make the content relevant to the user, and the search engine will follow

Text types• <H1>

– Heading tags– Used in style sheets (CSS)– 1 per page– Content ranked higher than plain text– Must carry the primary keyword

• <H2> to <Hx>– Sub heading tags– Make use of but moderately

• Most important text at the top of the page

• Bold/Italic Text– Ranked higher than normal text– Lower than heading text

• Plain text– Used throughout the rest of the site

Hyperlinks

• Use targeted keywords in hyperlinks to your content, these act as sign posts for users and search engines.

• Always contextual link to the most relevant page associated to the keyword used in the link

• Hyperlinks are used by search engines to understand the context of the linked page

• More quality contextual links = better rankings• Links toward the top of the page carry greater value than links

at the bottom of the page• Place your sitemap hyperlink near to the uppermost point of

the page, this makes it easier for search engines spiders to find and follow all of your site links

Anchor texts

• Good anchors: Links with contextual references

Mahindra First Choice have a large collection of used cars

• Bad anchors: Links with no context

Mahindra First Choice have a wide collection of used cars; click here to find out more

ALT tags

• ‘Alternative text’– Allows spiders to read images– Allows screen readers to understand

images– If linked becomes an anchor text

• Must contain link to give any SEO benefit to site

• Necessary throughout the entire site

• Must be relevant

Content Architecture

• Content held within the same directory or sub directory will be automatically associated together

Home Page

Product

Support Content

News

Article Article Article

http://www.mysite.com/directory-A/directory-B/pagename.html

User sitemap

• Sitemaps hold two purposes:– An easy navigation point for the user– Complete content indexation

• Try to keep to around 100 links / page– Too many links can make a page unusable– Group large sites into contextual hubs, staged

directory based sitemaps

XML Sitemaps

NewsVideoImages

Direct content for the user

• Engage

• Use clean, uncluttered language.

• Share knowledge with the reader

• Select topics carefully

• Write a persuasive headline

• Know your audience

• Write for readers, not robots

• Above all make it useful!

Rich Snippets (Microdata, Microformats & RDFa)

• Google tries to present users with the most useful and informative search results.

• The more information a search result snippet can provide, the easier it is for users to decide whether that page is relevant to their search.

Mark-up types

• Breadcrumbs• Reviews• People• Products• Businesses and organizations• Recipes • Events• Music• Google also recognizes markup for video content • See Schema.org for more supported formats

The dark side of content

• Auto generation

• Badly written

• Duplication

• Aggregation

• Cloaking

• Keyword stuffing

Summary

• Content should be for the user

• It must map user intent, PERIOD!

• Over optimisation is counter productive

• Fresh content is as important as good content

• Mark-up content for greater relevancy and better search results

• Signpost your content everywhere but insure relevance, you wouldn’t have a signpost to London on the Mumbai-Pune Highway

• Content is king!

OPTIMISING DIFFERENT TYPES OF CONTENT FOR SEO

A guide to content templates

NEWS CONTENTPublishing news content to Google News standards

News results

The Key to News Content

• The Sitemap• Page Structure• Newsworthy editorial• Freshness• Uniqueness

News Sitemap

source: http://support.google.com/news/publisher/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=74288

Page Structure1

2

34 5

67

8

9

10

11

1. <Title></Title> The title should be of the article and that is it. It should correspond exactly to the in-page title.

2. The URL should have the title within it. It should also have a unique reference code for the article. You may get the same article name in the future the code distinguishes the article as well as give it a sequential order in time.

3. <H1></H1> This is the title of the piece this should be exactly the same as the Page Title and the URL.

4. The content should have an author and a link to the author’s biog. The author’s biog should link to all of his/her authored content.

5. The article must have a date stamp and a location. This is important for temporal relevancy and will aid localised news results.

6. The article should have an opening gambit ~50 words in length that summarises the article. Bold this content. Never place links in this content

7. The article should carry an image. The image must have a relevant alt text to the article.

8. The article should be more than 200 words in length.9. Social bookmarking should be added10. Relevant and related articles should also be provided and

linked to.11. Allow for user generated content and interaction.12. Submit sitemaps of news content to Google

Page/CMS Structure

• Structure the page and CMS to capture key data points

• This will make sitemap generation far more intuitive and easier to do

BBC

Times of India

VIDEO CONTENTOptimisation of video content to Google standards

Why Video optimisation?

Take ownership of your video content

in Google

Why give content to Google

Key assets to video optimisation

Each video should have... • A unique page/URL• Simple HTML + the video element, no flash navigation or AJAX – if we do use

these we must be able to call an independent URL for each• A FIXED unique identifying number... 567XP56• Unique name:

– <Title></Title>– <H1></H1>

• Unique description:– <meta name=“description”>– <body></body>

• Fully optimised entry in a video sitemap.• 60x80 Thumbnail image• Be grouped by type and cross-linked to associated content

Examples - YouTubeTitle

Author/Grouping

Video Element

User Comments

Related Videos

http links in the HTML

Description

Examples - VimeoTitle

Author/Grouping

Video Element

User Comments

Related Videos

http links in the HTMLDescription

The video sitemap

<urlset xmlns=http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9 xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1"> <url>

<loc>http://www.channelv.in/video?videoid=1</loc><video:video><video:thumbnail_loc>http://www.startv.in/images/thumbnails/208x117/cv_pk07_frozenchocolatecake1.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc><video:title>Frozen Chocolate Cake - Divya</video:title><video:description><![CDATA["VJ Aditya pays a surprise visit to Divya's house and takes a look at how she prepares Frozen Chocolate Cake and decides if its Pakao or Thakao"]]></video:description><video:content_loc>http://www.channelv.in/video?videoid=1</video:content_loc><video:player_loc allow_embed="yes“ autoplay="ap=1">http://www.channelv.in/video?videoid=1</video:player_loc><video:duration>00:04:31</video:duration><video:tag>Divya</video:tag><video:tag>Chocolate</video:tag><video:tag>Cake</video:tag><video:category>Episodes</video:category></video:video>

</url></urlset>

Video Mark-up: Facebook Share

Video Mark-up: Yahoo! Search Monkey

Video Mark-up: Yahoo! Search Monkey

IMAGE CONTENTMarking up images for Google Image results

Image Content

• Images can be categorized and contextually marked up to improve results in the Image Search

• Basic optimisation would be to manipulate the image name and alt data:

<img src="images/subaru-impreza.jpg" alt="A Subaru Impreza">

Image Sitemap

FLASH, AJAX OPTIMISATIONProblems with sites that drive a quality user experience

“Fancy” Dynamic Content

• Sites built with Flash or Ajax can more often than not have challenges with Search engines

• The primary challenge is the content being read and therefore indexed…

HDFC Red

HDFC Red

Challenges

• Page updates without changing the URL• Search engines need to index URLs!• Can’t update PRIMARY SEO elements:

– <Title>– Meta Description– Content

• Normal crawler activity cannot access this content• Headless Browsers potentially could…

Potential Fixes

• Get all text based content coded into the source of the page

• Call the content into the swf file from the actual page source.

• Create HTML based pages that carry <noscript> tags this will show content if your javascript is disabled

• Build an HTML sitemap to reference these pages and submit XML sitemaps

MANAGING MULTI-LINGUAL CONTENT SITES

Configuration

The ways…

• One domain with folders segmenting content

• Multiple top level domains

• Multiple sub-domains with localised content

Logical directory structure:

ContentLanguage / LocationHomepage

www.mahindra.com

En Content

Fr Content

Sp Content

De Content

Po Content

i.e.www.mahindra.com/en/google-2534f2622hg3yy2.txt

Advantages

• All content and value is maintained within the single domain centralizing SEO value

• All content is held on a single server location reducing cost

• Easier development

Requirements:Google must be notified of which folders are for which locations

Unique TLD / Subdomain

www.mahindra.com

content

www.mahindra.fr

Content

www.mahindra.es

Content

www.mahindra.co.uk

Content

www.mahindra.de

Content

us.mahindra.com

content

fr.mahindra.com

Content

es.mahindra.com

Content

uk.mahindra.com

Content

de.mahindra.com

Content

Advantages

• Content can be deployed on a local server IP to the users improving performance and delivery

• Each site can reside on separate servers with unique class-c subnets, this can the be leveraged for crosslinking

• Subdomains are treated the same as TLD’s but will need management in Google WMT to localise

• TLD’s do not need localisation as they are already localised

Content control Google

• Segment the content by language or country• Create sites for each content set in a logical folder

structure• Using webmaster tools tag content sets to localise for

given regions and languagesi.e. Spanish content may be tagged and localised for:

– Google.es; google.com.ar; google.co• By placing meta tags for Spain, Argentina and

Columbia at the directory location:– www.mahindra.com/es/

Controlling users

• If a user from Spain requests English content (i.e. they type www.mahindra.co.in), show them the page of the English content. But using ajax/jquery run a pop-over that asks do you want English or Spanish content

• When the user decides cookie them and then auto-redirect that user in the future based upon the cookie

• Don’t auto-redirect based on IP at the first instance, use IP to initiate user redirection request

Defining Content Location in WMT

eBay - TLD

Apple – Internal Folder

OPTIMISING YOUTUBEImproving video rankings within YouTube

Optimise the Content

• The top YouTube result is more often than not the top video result in Google…

• Think Keywords• Optimise:

– Title, – Description – Tags

• Transcribe the spoken content

Get Viral

• The first 48hrs is critical• Get the video seeded to as many places as you can• Leverage bloggers and site owners• Push your video URL out on social networks• Getting views to the video in a short space of time is

critical• Generating localized popularity is very important• Active comments and consistent likes will also drive

popularity• Use paid media to increase views

SEO Guidelines

Technical considerations

Code considerations

• Absolute W3C compliance• Try to code to WCAG 2.0• Try to keep the body content / H1 as high as possible in the code. Preferably the H1 appears just after the opening

of the <body> tag • Avoid <table>’s as they are slow and clunky, use <div>’s and CSS• Call CSS and JavaScripts from external sources - .js and .css files• Call images through CSS• Only have code that is necessary to the page in the page (use Y!Slow to check)• Utilise caching where possible and minimise CSS and Javascripts if possible - one of each file optimal

– Make as few calls to the server or external servers as possible• Enable eTags (entity tags)• Place Flash and Javascript elements lower down in the code - use CSS for positioning• Main text should be as high up in the code as possible emphasising keywords.• Primary navigation:

– CSS/JavaScript, if all Javascript use <noscript> around the URLs– Textual links using primary keywords (photo books, photo sharing, cameras etc...)– Have links in order of priority, most important first– nofollow all non important links

• Make the HTML sitemap the first link found in the code. Use CSS to control position• Never code a H2 above a H1

Site Speed Considerations

• Make minimal HTTP requests• Use a Content Delivery Network

(CDN)• Avoid empty src or href• Add Expires headers• Compress components with Gzip• Put CSS at top• Put JavaScript at bottom• Avoid CSS expressions• Make JavaScript and CSS external• Reduce DNS lookups• Minify JavaScript and CSS• Avoid URL redirects

• Remove duplicate JavaScript and CSS

• Configure entity tags (ETags)• Make AJAX cacheable• Use GET for AJAX requests• Reduce the number of DOM

elements• Avoid HTTP 404 (Not Found) error• Reduce cookie size• Use cookie-free domains• Avoid AlphaImageLoader filter• Do not scale images in HTML• Make favicon small and cacheable

On page asset considerations

• Every page must have a H1, this is to be coded as high in the <body> tag as possible, use CSS styling to control position and the look and feel

• Use H2’s and 3’s to mark up prominent points of the page

• Mandatory ALT texts on every image

• NEVER use images instead of text, if you absolutely have to use text in image format code using IRT Image Replacement Text use the “Gilder Levin” method

• Every page should have at least a minimum block of 25-50 words of text

• Use intuitive and logical image names (bmw-z3.jpg)

• Based on the Keywords targeted for all the pages, please tweak the content in a way that none of them (KW’s) are missed.

• Provide unique content tailored to user’s intent / searches.

URLs / Site hierarchy

• Use logical hierarchical structure of folders and content:

• Replicate hierarchy with on-page breadcrumb trail

• Every breadcrumb should have a resultant page

• URLs must carry logical informative keywords and not parameters. If this is not a CMS default, use mod-rewrite technologies to manage it.

Content Architecture

• Content held within the same directory or sub directory will be automatically associated together

http://www.mysite.com/directory-A/directory-B/pagename.html

Home Page

Product

Support Content

News

Article Article Article

XML Sitemaps

NewsVideoImages

Rich Snippets (Microdata, Microformats & RDFa)

• Google tries to present users with the most useful and informative search results.

• The more information a search result snippet can provide, the easier it is for users to decide whether that page is relevant to their search.

Mark-up types

• Breadcrumbs• Reviews• People• Products• Businesses and organizations• Recipes • Events• Music• Google also recognizes markup for video content • See Schema.org for more supported formats

CMS Validation

• Validation of new pages:– TITLE– Meta description– H1– ALT texts

• All the above should be editable as well as:– Analytics code– Content– H2 / H3s– Images– Interlinking– Canonicalization– Meta– Robots– <HEAD> content– Text emphasis

Core page elements

• Title <TITLE> (Max 65 Characters)• Meta Description (Max 165 Characters)• Page name (page-name.html)• Content title <H1> (One per page mandatory)• <H#> use to mark up page headings/keywords• Content (inclusive of keywords) – the more the better• Bolding/emphasis of words• Images (image-name.jpg)• Alternative texts on the images• Link anchor texts• Link title="" elements• Share/Social bookmarks / Facebook connect• Cross-linking with keyworded anchor texts

Interlinking

• All internal links that refer to none critical pages should have rel="nofollow" attributed to them

• All link equity will then be focused to core pages• All links that link to 3rd party sites should have the rel="nofollow" as

standard• All related content that is relevant to the page content should be

interlinked and accessible (news, articles, pr, images, videos etc.)• The anchor text of a link passes contextual relevance through the

link to the target page, therefore use words that you TG would search for within Anchor texts

• Always crosslink relevant references wherever possible within a site

Canonicalization

• There should be only one version of the site either:http://www.mysite.com/ (best practice)orhttp://mysite.com/ orhttp://www.mysite.com/index.php not all of them.

• Use 301 redirection to push one to the other, failing that install canonical tags across all pages

• Whenever you refer to the homepage internally through a link ensure that you only link to a single location. Best practice is to refer to the homepage as:http://www.mysite.com/ (with the trailing slash)

Flash / Flex / AJAX

• These technologies are good for engaging users but are poor for search engine indexation of content

• When implementing Flash elements,– Never Build an entire site in flash– Never have the primary navigation developed in Flash, if you do ensure a

secondary HTML based navigation is also present on the page– Never store text based content within a flash file. Code it within the HTML

of the page and call it into the file.• If you use Flash ensure that the elements are coded in line with Adobe

recommendations for SEO• With Flex and AJAX - all URLs are held at the server, coding allowances have to

be provided so that the URLs can be created and called within the browser.– Complete XML sitemaps must then be supplied for Google

• Ensure that all AJAX content is cacheable

Sitemaps

• All basic URLs should be inputted into an XML sitemap

• All video URLs should be inputted into a complete xml video sitemap, inclusive of 60x80 thumbnails

• All images should be placed in an image xml sitemap• All news content should be placed in a

news xml sitemap

HTML Sitemap

• The HTML sitemap is good for users as well and spiders.• It should have a link to every page in the site• No webpage should have more than 100 URLs within it,

Google will not refer back to more than 100 URLs at a time• If you have more than 100 pages, split the HTML sitemap

into logical sections• The most important pages, should be the first links within

the HTML sitemap and must be accessible from the first page

• 100 x 100 allows for 10,000 links within 2 levels of a HTML sitemap

Cross leveraging SEO with SEM

1 - AD COPY TESTING

Ad copy testing

• Changing Meta content can be a laborious task and something you do not want to have to do frequently

• “Click-ability” is critical for a success SEO listing, its one thing to rank its another to get clicked on!

• Use SEM to test creative to improve CTR or even messaging to improve sales.

Ad copy testing

Keyword: "hotels in goa"

Improve CTR?Hotels in Goa – MyGoaHotel.comwww.mygohotel.com > Goa HotelsCompare prices and find the cheapest Hotels in Goa. Book online today at MyGoaHotel.com

Improve Conversions?Goa Hotels – MyGoaHotel.comwww.mygohotel.com > Goa HotelsGreat rates on all hotels in Goa. Book now. It’s fast, secure and easy at MyGoaHotel.com!

2 - PAGE OPTIMIZATION & QUALITY SCORE

Page optimization & quality score

• Quality score is a major contributing factor for click price. Quality score is determined by:

Quality Score

1. The historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on the Google domain.

2. Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account

3. The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group4. The quality of your landing page5. The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group6. The relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search

query7. Your account's performance in the geographical region where the

ad will be shown8. Other relevance factors

Quality of landing page

• Feature relevant and original content• Be easy to navigate• Page speed

Turn to Google's Webmaster Guidelines for more recommendations, which will improve your site's performance in Google's search results as well….

source: http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=46675

Is that not just SEO?

3 – CO-OPTIMISATION

Co-optimization

1. If I am ranking #1 do I need to buy the traffic?

2. Why am I spending so much on Paid perhaps I can get it “free”?

3. Are there more opportunities with my SEM campaign?

4. Is there room to improve my creative?

5. Can I manage my marketing budgets more efficiently?

1. If I am ranking #1 do I need to buy the traffic?

If you rank number one in SEO and rank number one in SEM. What

happens when you switch off SEM? Do you get more value through organic, or

is there a 1 + 1 = 3 effect?

2. Why am I spending so much on Paid perhaps I can get it “free”?

The CPA in paid is high or there is no CPA and we don’t rank anywhere!

Would the money not be better spent getting the rankings?

3. Are there more opportunities with my SEM campaign?

SEO is delivering value but we are nowhere to be seen on Paid, surely

there is an opportunity?

4. Is there room to improve my creative?

We see far better conversion rates from SEO than SEM for the same word, is there something wrong with my paid

creative?

5. Can I manage my marketing budgets more efficiently?

Where should my marketing rupees be spent? Which channel is actually more

cost effective?

4 – MULTI-MESSAGING

Multi-Messaging

• You rank #1 in paid and #1 in non-paid what happens when you mix up the messaging?

Cheap Goa Hotels – MyGoaHotel.comwww.mygohotel.com > Goa HotelsGoa Hotels on a budget. Compare prices and find the cheapest hotels in Goa at MyGoaHotel.com.

SEO

Luxury Goa HotelsChoose from the most luxurious, quality hotels in Goa at MyGoaHotelwww.MyGoaHotel.com/5-Star-Goa

SEM

Keyword: Goa Hotels

* Simple messaging changes will target two VERY different target audiences – Price conscience and Quality conscience.

QUESTIONS