The Death (and Rebirth) of SEORand Fishkin, Bend Webcam 2011

When I Started in SEO…

2001: A Crazy Search Landscape

Via Bruce Clay’s classic search engine relationship chart: http://www.bruceclay.com/serc_histogram/histogram.htm

The Algorithm:

(Keyword Use + Anchor Text)

X

PageRank

Simpler times. Spammier times, too.

SERPs All Looked Like This:

Via Google’s 10th Birthday post: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-time-machine-web-in-2001.html

SEO Meant a Few Fundamentals

Make good content, make it accessible, target the right keywords… That was pretty much it!

And a Lot of Link Building

Links were pretty much everything once you got a crawlable, keyword-targeted page set up.

Or, More Often, Link Spamming

Even I bought some of these back in the day…

Fast Forward 7 Years

Google celebrated the year with a TCP/IP protocol reference: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-01-01-n53.html

Google’s Dominating

Via http://searchengineland.com/comscore-new-google-high-new-yahoo-microsoft-lows-though-both-rise-in-raw-searches-13784

Local/Maps is on the Rise

Matt McGee charted the astounding rise of Google Maps/Local starting in 2008: http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/charting-the-undeniable-growth-of-google-maps/1046/

There’s a Few New Protocols

The Sitemaps.org homepage literally hasn’t changed since February of 2008!

But Not Much Else Has Changed

In early 2009, I wrote a post about the shift in importance of algorithmic factors at Google: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-googles-rankings-algorithm-has-changed-over-time-

Jump Ahead… to 2011

It’s a Whole New World

Image via http://gizmodo.com/5478787/the-most-accurate-highest-resolution-earth-view-to-date (which is pretty cool, BTW)

SERPs Rarely Look Like This Anymore

It took me serious time to find a query this sparse

They Look Like This:

Google’s instant answers are getting more detailed and sophisticated, as illustrated by http://www.google.com/search?q=nfl+schedule+2011

Or This:

News results, shopping results and video snippets + the new, shrunken sitelinks for the top result

Or This:

Awesome!

Or This:

Personalization and social sharing dominate the page because I’m logged in.

There’s Rich Snippets & Schema.org

There’s a good post by Rich Baxter on Schema here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/schemaorg-a-new-approach-to-structured-data-for-seo

Rel=Author

Good advice on how to get it set up here: http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/how-to-implement-rel-author

Video Results

Google on how to create video XML sitemaps and appear in these results: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=80472

And Social Annotations

Not only are the results annotated with the share / social data; they also outrank the top result

SERPs Are Almost Always Personalized

Search history, social networks, previous clicks and more impact personalization + rankings

And Geographically Biased, Too

Geography impacts both search result ordering and search suggestions/instant

Search Barely Requires Typing

BTW – I tried this same search from Portland vs. Yoder, and “Fox News” is not a top suggestion, but “Firefox “and “Fred Meyer” both are

Misspellings are a Thing of the Past

A few years back, there would be entire sessions at conferences on SEO for misspellings

Instant Answers are Everywhere

Google even offered instant answers as to the sexual orientation of celebrities: http://gawker.com/5844769/google-will-now-tell-you-which-celebrities-are-gay (but the feature appears to have been removed)

The Algorithm Has Changed, Too

Check out Dr. Pete’s Algorithm History guide: http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change

We Had Vince

Aaron Wall did some excellent analysis on Vince here: http://www.seobook.com/google-branding

And May Day

Barry Schwartz summarized the impact as described by Matt here: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/022293.html

And, of Course, Panda

Some good analysis from Cyrus Shephard here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/beat-google-panda

Brands Can Now Dominate Entire Pages

Nothing but Apple.com from top to bottom

Some are Dominated by Google Itself

http://www.seobook.com/google-eats-their-organic-search-results

Social is on the Rise Like Never Before

Via http://searchengineland.com/top-internet-activities-search-email-once-again-88964

In Social, Fragmentation Appears Certain

This growth is a big reason why I’ve changed my tune on social media marketing and now strongly endorse it for almost every business: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/everyone-should-hire-social-media-experts

Users: 50mm 750mm 200mm 120mm 10mm

Users: 14mm Millions 14mm 6.5mm

What’s More…

Search No Longer Works in a Vacuum

Earning a click in the SERPs is merely one step in a greater process.

It Lives in the Broader Inbound Funnel

Eloqua’s content grid does a great job exploring where content sits in the marketing funnel: http://media.eloqua.com/images/The-Content-Grid-v2.jpg

But is Nearly Useless By Itself

Via http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tracking-the-roi-of-social-media

SEO from 2001-2008

Make the Site Search-Engine Friendly

Via http://www.seomoz.org/blog/4-essential-seo-infographics

Target Keywords

Via http://www.seomoz.org/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization

Build Links

Via http://opensiteexplorer.org

Good Enough

Yep; it really used to work.

That SEOis Dead.

You Might Rank

Before you even do that, make sure you’re choosing the right goals: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-6-goals-of-seo-choosing-the-right-ones-for-your-business

You Probably Won’t Convert Well

Unless the rest of the funnel rocks, SEO is in a rough spot: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/winning-the-seo-battle-at-every-step-of-the-purchase-path

You’ll Probably Lose to Better Armed Opponents

A great post on brand building: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/09/minimum-viable-personality.html

Winning in 2011 and Beyond

(Old School) SEO Can’t Be Our Only Strength

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-responsibilities-of-seo-have-been-upgraded

SEO Cannot be Purely Tactical

We need a strategy

SEO Can’t Win the Web Marketing Battle Alone

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-checklist-to-choose-which-internet-marketing-channel-is-right-for-your-business

SEO Today Encompasses

Everything We Do on the Web

5 Questions for Modern SEOs

Are You Working w/ An Organization that Believes and Invests in Inbound Marketing?

Poor Fox Mulder. He just never believed in video recording or photography.

Where Does Search Live in Your Funnel?

Via http://www.bigpictureweb.com/blog/2011/8/29/ten-ways-to-show-inbound-marketing-roi-with-multi-channel-fu.html

Where Does SEO Live in Your Process?

A few representational org charts via http://www.bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts/

What are Your Competitive Marketing Advantages?

The day I got the NES advantage joystick was the day I beat Contra. Because auto-fire on the “B” button was essential to winning that game.

#1: Product

http://thinkgeek.com ‘s positioning and product selection naturally intersect with a sharing-heavy demographic, creating a virtuous cycle of inbound marketing.

#2: Community

At http://etsy.com the community powers the marketing of the brand, including the linking and sharing critical to great SEO + social media reach.

#3: Content

The http://blog.okcupid.com blog does a fantastic job sharing useful and interesting content – that’s helped them earn #1 rankings for incredibly tough terms like “online dating.”

#4: Distribution

By aggregating jobs from across the web and powering thousands of job boards, http://simplyhired.com has built a remarkable presence web-wide.

Where Does SEO Live in Your Process?

If SEO isn’t part of the process, you’ll always be playing catch-up and begging for resources to fix problems rather than executing as you develop and innovating.

How Will You Measure and Improve?

Via http://www.conversationmarketing.com/2011/09/automated-seosocial-reporting-using-google-spreadsheets-an-example.htm

10 Actionable Tactics w/ Examples

#1: Data as Content Marketing

Tons of great examples via Kelly Ford’s blog post: http://kellynford.com/2011/09/27/marketing-your-startup-with-a-steady-drumbeat-of-data/

#1: Data as Content Marketing

While Kelly shows lots of good ways to use your growth/financial/metrics data, I also love using user/habit/trend data like http://blog.last.fm/2010/12/16/the-data-behind-best-of-2010

#2: Video Content + SERP Visuals

For a brief time, SEOmoz held the top 3 spots for “learn seo,” and the video result in position #3 actually earned more traffic/clicks than the top 2 combined.

#2: Video Content + SERP Visuals

Getting a video snippet simply requires embedding a video on the page (though standard YOUTube embeds don’t work) and submitting a video XML sitemap file. We use http://wistia.com which is awesome for this.

#3: Thought Leadership + Rel=Author

Who needs to rank #1 when you can earn better traffic than the top ranking sites w/ a photo?!

#4: Social Networks for Personalized Rankings

Last year, Google used Facebook, Friendfeed, Twitter, Quora and several other social networks to show connected content. Today, it’s nearly impossible to find something socially annotated that’s not through Google+

#4: Social Networks for Personalized Rankings

More on this: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/social-annotations-in-search-now-your-social-network-rankings You can see your socially connected data via http://www.google.com/s2/search/social?hl=en#socialcontent

#4: Social Networks for Personalized Rankings

Growing your social network and sharing socially creates a virtuous cycle of marketing/influence.

Create Share-Worthy Content

Share Socially

Earn Rankings Boost

Get Natural Links through Visibility

Earn More Social Followers

Network Amplification Grows Reach

More Searchers Biased to Seeing Your Stuff

Win the Internet

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlTactic via Wil Reynolds of SEER Interactive: http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/using-twitter-and-backlinks-to-build-links/2011/07/28/

#5: Link Building w/ Your Social Followers

#5: Link Building w/ Your Social Followers

You can use Klout or Followerwonk scores (or just follower counts) to order the results

#5: Link Building w/ Your Social Followers

How to: http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/getting-started-with-the-free-linkscape-api/

Use vLookup in Excel with the Linkscape API to see if they’re linking

to you yet

#5: Link Building w/ Your Social Followers

This tactic can also be applied to blog commenters, email list subscribers and any social network where you can export a list of your friends/followers

Engage w/ or reach out to sites you want links from

#6: Long Tail SEO via Gamification

http://quora.com has been highly effective with this, as have http://stackexchange.com, http://dribbble.com, and even Moz’s own http://www.seomoz.org/q

#7: PR through Social Outreach

Starting a relationship over social media is easy and it leads to great press coverage surprisingly fast. Recent example from Moz: http://www.geekwire.com/2011/postit-wars-part-space-invaders-attack-pine-street

#8: Viral-Worthy Content via Q+A Research

Places like http://answers.yahoo.com, http://quora.com, http://answers.com, virtually any web forum (http://boardreader.com is a good way to find them) and even Google Suggest are good for this.

#9: Influence Search Suggest through Branding

You can see the original experiment here: https://plus.google.com/111294201325870406922/posts/BJJyt6rZ5Ku

#10: Leverage Thought Leaders to Build Content

Via http://blog.folyo.me/post/10723370923/how-much-does-a-website-cost The concept is simple; identify leading influencers in your space, recruit them to contrbute something small, perhaps just a few survey answers, then aggregate and share the data. They’ll help it spread.

SEO is Bigger than SEO

SEO is Bigger than SEO

And We Have the Skills, Knowledge, Experience and Adaptability to Win.

SEO: Reborn

Find this Presentation Online:

http://bit.ly/seoreborn