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SEO – The Long Game & Beyond

SMX London 2014

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Deck for SMX London in May 2014 where we talked about SEO for the long term. 5 major areas were covered, with some future ideas to think about as well. Covered: Content, Usability Social, Link Building and SEO.

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Page 1: SMX London 2014

SEO – The Long Game & Beyond

Page 2: SMX London 2014

Who’s the speaker today?

Duane Forrester

@duaneforrester

Bing Webmaster ToolsSpeaks at shows, runs community and blog, provides guidance on WMTswww.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters

Does he have a clue?15+ years as an inhouse SEO; ran seo at MSN; has helped Disney, GAP, Walmart, GM +http://www.linkedin.com/in/dforrester

And this helps me how?Blogging since 2001; owns 150 domains; runs his own websiteshttp://twitter.com/DuaneForrester

what does duane do at bing

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• Don’t try to extrapolate from this graph• Importance is relative• Use as a guide – no item is unimportant

Where does SEO fit in?

Content Social User Experience Link Building SEO

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Content

• Searchers seek content

• Not after “the best optimized site”

• They have a question, you supply the answer

• We watch to see how people interact with content

• This will always be #1 to us

• Wins - Quality, deep, authoritative, unique

• Loses – Duplicate, thin, low quality

There are no shortcuts – quality content requires investment

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Social

• Use “hooks” and track reactions

• Signal of topical authority

• Real-time – engines want fresh content, fast

• Integrated social signals influence click actions of searchers

• Social signals remain only a few of thousands of signals for organic ranking

Social = You influencing people who in turn influence us.

http://www.kyleclouse.com/social-media-marketing/

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UX

• Not sexy, but a wise investment

• Usability impresses visitors

• Invest in your platform and design

• Happy visitors are repeat visitors who share with friends

• Usability is a dedicated field – you can’t bluff your way through

I’d put money into UX before SEO, as it supports SEO

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Link Building

• Build links for traffic

• Don’t buy links

• Links will always have some value – though maybe not what you think

• Don’t overlook internal link building

• If you nail Content, UX and Social, this is covered

What would you do if links had no value in the algo?

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SEO

• Still valuable

• Technical SEO can make a difference

• Foundational work – no doing it? Get left behind

• Used in combination w/other tactics, you can be successful

SEO is the process of improving your website for searchers and crawlers

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More SEO• Crawlability

– Xml sitemaps– Navigational structure– Rich media cautions– Graceful degradation– URL structure– Robots.txt

• Site Structure– Links– URL structure and keyword usage– Clean URLs – no extraneous parameters (sessions,

tracking, etc.)– HTML & XML sitemaps– Content hierarchy– Global navigation – springs form hierarchy planning +

style of nav (breadcrumb, link lists, etc.)– Rich media – don’t bury links in Javascript/flash

/silverlight/AJAX

• On-Page– Head copy

• Titles – unique, relevant, 60 characters or so long• Descriptions – unique, relevant, grammatically correct, 160 or

fewer characters (Google shows up to 160 characters)

– Body Copy• H1, H2 and other H tag usage• ALT tag importance & usage• Keyword usage within the content/text – see “Perfectly

Optimized Page” image• Anchor text – using target keywords to support other internal

pages

• Content– Build based on keyword research– Down-level experience enhances discoverability– Keep out of rich media and images– 250 words per page or more– Produce new content frequently– Make it unique – don’t reuse content from other

sources– Content management – using 301s to reclaim value

from retiring content/pages– <LINK> canonical to help engines understand which

page should be indexed and have value attributed to it– 404 error page management to help cleanse old pages

from search engine indexes

• Links– Plan for incoming & outgoing link generation– Internal & external link management– Content selection – planning where to link to– Link promotion via social spaces – direct traffic & seo

value– Managing anchor text properly– URL structure can help insert keywords where they are

needed

• Social– Build your community– Interact often– Share useful content– Be consistent and useful– Grow facebook, twitter, etc.

Webmaster Guidelines: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/webmaster-guidelines-30fba23a

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& Beyond…

• Next generation of local

• Mobile everywhere

• New technologies

• New marketing opportunities

• Evolve to succeed

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© 2014 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries.The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

@duaneforrester