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SEO 101presented by Stephan Spencer,Founder, President & CEONetconcepts 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
First Off. Who Am I? Founded Netconcepts LLC in Madison WI in 1995.Founded Netconcepts Ltd in Auckland in 1999. Lived in New Zealand for 8 yrs, returned to US in 2007. Inventor of GravityStream, a pay-for-performance SEOtechnology An author of The Art of SEO, published by O’Reilly. My coauthors are Rand Fishkin, Eric Enge & Jessie Stricchiola.2 2009 Stephan M oncepts.com2009 StephanM SpencerNetconcepts www.netconcepts.comsspencer@netconcepts.com
3 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Search Engine Marketing SEO – influence rankings inthe “natural” (a.k.a. “organic”,a.k.a. “algorithmic”) searchresults. PPC – paid search advertisingon a pay-per-click basis. Themore you pay, the higher yourplacement. Stop paying stopreceiving ent(PPC/PPA)PaidInclusion (PI) 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
SEO is NOT Paid Advertising Highly competitive Can’t buy your way in earn it Requires an investment– Time– Education– ResourcesRead: “SEO Is Not Free” - www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page 3629756 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Search Engine Optimization 86% of clicks on Google are from organic search, 14% frompaid search. (Source: beussery.com, 2/1/2008) Delivers qualified leads– Fundamentally different than traditional marketing / advertising– Searchers are looking for you– More & more offline sales carry an online element 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Natural vs. PaidPaidPaidNatural7 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Google Listings – Your Virtual SalesForce Savvy retailers making 6-7 figures a month from naturallistings. Savvy MFA (Made for AdSense) site owners making 5-6figures per month. Most sites are not SE-friendly Google friendliness friendly to other engines First calculate your missed opportunities 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Not doing SEO? You’re Leaving Moneyon the Table Calculate the missed opportunity cost of not ranking well forproducts & services that you offer?# of peopleengineaverageexpected averagesearching for x sharex click- x conversion x transactionyour(Google amountthroughratekeywords70%)rate E.g.10,000/day x 70% x 10% x 5% x 100 3,500/day 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Most Important Search Engines Google – 74%Yahoo! – 16%Bing (formerly Live Search, formerly MSN) – 5%Ask – 3%– Data from Hitwise (4 wks ending July 27, 2009) By search volume, actually #2is YouTube, not Yahoo10 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
What Are Searchers Looking For? Keyword Research– “Target the wrong keywords & all your efforts will be in vain.” The “right” keywords are – Relevant to your business– Popular with searchers 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Keyword Research Tools for brainstorming a seed list– Quintura– Google Suggest (now integrated into Google search)– Yahoo Assist Tools to check popularity of keyword searches–––––WordtrackerTrellian’s Keyword DiscoveryGoogle’s Keyword Suggestion ToolGoogle TrendsGoogle Insights for Search 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Wordtracker Enter in keywords & searchphrases to be expound upon. Build out a project withrelevant terms. Use for brainstorming as wellas drilling down into specificphrases. Obtain quantifiable searchnumbers.Free version: freekeywords.wordtracker.com 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Wordtracker Pros– Based on last 130 days worth of searches– Singular vs. plural, misspellings, verb tenses all separated out– Advanced functionality: keyword “projects”, import data into Excel,synonyms, Cons– Requires subscription fee ( 59/month or 329/year)– Data is from a small sample of Internet searches (from the minor searchengines Dogpile and MetaCrawler).– Contains bogus data from automated searches– No historical archives 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Keyword Discovery Similar featuresas Wordtracker. Trend graphsprovide a visualthat goesbeyond totalsearches. Various settingsto refine data. Note: pluralsetting onlypluralizes thelast word.Free version: www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Keyword Discovery Pros–––––Full year of historical archivesData is from a larger sample of Internet searchesSingular vs. plural, misspellings, verb tenses all separated outCan segment by countryAdvanced functionality: keyword “projects”, import data into Excel,synonyms, Cons– Access to the historical data requires subscription fee ( 69.95/month or 599.40/year).– Contains bogus data from automated searches 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Google AdWords Keyword Tool Enter in lists ofterms. Pull terms from aweb page. Search volume– Switch to Exact match– Show Search VolumeTrends column.Free version: adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Google AdWords Keyword Tool Pros–––––––Free!Accessing within Google AdWords yields more featuresData is from a large sample of Internet searches (from Google)Singular vs. plural, misspellings, verb tensesCan segment by country (within AdWords)SynonymsMonthly & average search volumes Cons– Numbers are approximations 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Google Trends Provides agraphical,relative searchvolumecomparison. Enter in up to 5search terms. Shows relatednews. Sign-in to getrelative ranking.www.google.com/trends 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Google Trends Pros–––––––Free!Signing into Google account provides additional detail & featuresData is from a large sample of Internet searches (from Google)Shows related news searchesCan segment by region or subregionFilter by time frameCan run against websites as well Cons––––Numbers are purely relational to the query setNo way to exportOnly preset data filteringLimited to broad, popular search phrases 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Google Insightsfor Search Similar to Google Trends Additional unique features– Compare against a category– Geographic search volume maps– Provides a relative index measureagainst all searches performed onGoogle over time.www.google.com/insights/search/ 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Google Insights for Search Pros–––––––––Free!Signing into Google account provides additional detail & featuresData is from a large sample of Internet searches (from Google)Shows related news searchesShows top searchesShow rising search phrasesCan segment by region & subregionFilter by time frame, even custom date rangesExport as CSV Cons– Numbers are a normalized index– Limited to broad, popular search phrases 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Seven Steps to High Rankings1) Get Your Site Fully Indexed2) Get Your Pages Visible3) Build Links & PageRank4) Leverage Your PageRank4) Encourage Clickthrough6) Track the Right Metrics7) Follow Best Practices 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
1) Get Your Site Fully Indexed Pages can’t rank if they aren’t indexed The better your PageRank, the deeper & more often yoursite will be crawled by Google. Indexation challenges typically stem from:––––Overly-complex URLsContent duplicationCannibalizationNon-canonicalization (www vs. non-www) Indexation too much, or not enough? 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Control What Should & Shouldn’t Be Page # estimates are wildly inaccurate, & include non-indexedpages (e.g. ones with no title or snippet). Misconfigurations (in robots.txt, in the type of redirects used,requiring cookies, etc.) can kill indexation. Utilize XML sitemaps to help indexation & overcome crawlinghurdles. Make sure your “404 File Not Found” page returns a hard 404header status code. Keep duplicate pages out of the index by standardizing yourURLs, eliminating unnecessary variables, using 301 redirectswhen needed, & CSS styling for printer friendly. 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Complexities Can Kill the Crawl Search engines are wary of “dynamic” pages - theyfear “spider traps.” Avoid:– stop characters (?, &, ), ‘cgi-bin’– session IDs or long numerical strings that might appearlike a session ID.– unnecessary variables in your URLs, trackingparameters.– frames– redirects– pop-ups– navigation in Flash/Java/JavaScript/pulldown boxes– If not feasible due to platform constraints, can be easilyhandled through proxy technology (e.g., Netconcepts’GravityStream).Tips:-Pass parameters via cookies-Append tracking parameters as anamed anchor using “#” instead of“?” E.g., rather than tracking like ?nav footer use #nav footer.-Use CSS & HTML for dropdownmenus, only relying on JavaScript forthe interactivity.- Use hyphens to separate wordsinstead of underscores. 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Avoid Complex URLs May inhibit or even preventcrawling. Watch PageRank, checkcache & indexation of URLsto determine where issuesmay lie.One click in and cached: www.cdw.com/shop/search/hub.aspx?wclss CTwo clicks, not cached:www.cdw.com/shop/search/hub.aspx?wclss C3&cm re HubPA- -Computers- -notebook computers hub 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Canonicalization One source – one destination At its simplest, refers to thehomepage. Example:– qvc.com– www.qvc.com Relates to any contentduplication. “Canonical” tag can help 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Robots.txt Protocol for blocking bots–––––Keep them out of specific sectionsHelp avoid duplicate contentAuto-discovery of XML sitemapDone wrong, can block bots from entire siteUnfortunately, too often, implemented incorrectlyTip: This will block all bots from your entire siteUser-agent: *Disallow: /Are you sure that’s what you want? 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Infinite URL Bloat Infinite URLcombinations due to:––––PaginationSortingFilteringDisplay Vs/sem/rpsm/catOid/-12869/N/20012866 20012867 20012869 4589 40001426/link/ref/Ns/accm num unts sld 869/N/20012866 20012867 20012869 40001426 4589/link/ref/Ns/accm num unts sld 1/link/ref/rpem/ccd/categorylist.do 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
XML Sitemaps Inform the search engines ofyour pages.– Auto-discovery throughrobots.txt.– Google Webmaster Central– Yahoo Site Explorer– Bing Webmaster Center Not a solution for bad URLs Google’s reporting of indexedURLs compared to totalURLs submitted may be anindicator of URL or contentquality. 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
2) Get Your Pages Visible 100 “signals” that influence ranking“Title tag” is the most important copy “on the page”Home page is the most important page of a siteEvery page of a site has a “song” (keyword theme)Incorporate keywords into title tags, hyperlink text, headings (H1 &H2 tags), alt attributes, & high up in the page (where they’re givenmore “weight”).Eliminate extraneous HTML code“Meta tags” are not a magic bulletHave text for navigation, not graphicsDon’t let whizz-bang, oh-ah bring you down 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Meaningful Titles Keyword-rich, withoutbeing spammy. Lead with most importantkeywords. Looks good to humans &bots.Digital Camera Reviews and News: DigitalPhotography Review: Forums, Glossary, FAQ DPReview.com– #1 for: digital camera– #1 for: digital cameras– Page-1 in Google for allphrase variations within title. 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Not So Meaningful Titles Not changingtitles is a wastedopportunity. Check your ownsite for this costlymistake.site:www.domain.com intitle:“Untitled Document” 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Duplicate Title Tags Check for duplication– Use special queries withGoogle to find duplication.– Over 9,000 duplicates of thistitle alone what does it sayto Google? Purely duplicate titles Canonicalization Parameters & URL bloatsite:www.officedepot.com intitle:"Office Supplies: Office Products and Office Furniture: Office Depot" 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Visually Appealing to Humans Textual body copy Textual navigation &links. Doesn’t mean a sitecan’t be visuallyappealing. 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Textually Appealing to Bots (& humans) Check for text vs.images:– Select individual text– Ctrl-A to select all– View “text only”version in Googlecache. 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Meta Tags No Magic Bullet Meta descriptionsare somewhatimportant, but onlyfor clickthrough. Meta keywords –ignored by Google& Bing, nodiscernable valuein Yahoo or Ask. 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Code Bloat – More Code Than Copy Tables-basedlayouts vs. tableless & CSS. Inline & embeddedCSS vs. external. EmbeddedJavaScript vs.external. 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Beware the Whizz Bang Further you move from pureHTML, the greater the risks ofstopping the bots, or eventurning away the humans.– JavaScript powered dropdownnavigations.– AJAX interactivity– Flash Progressive enhancement –start with the lowest commondenominator, then layer onthe effects.This Nokia page may still be loading I couldn’t stand waiting to find out. 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
3) Build Links & PageRank “Link popularity” affects search engine rankings PageRank – Links from “important” sites have more impacton your Google rankings (weighted link popularity). Google offers a window into your PageRank– PageRank meter in the Google Toolbar (toolbar.google.com)– Google Directory (directory.google.com) category pages– 3rd party tools like SEOChat.com’s “PageRank Lookup” &“PageRank Search.” Bing and Yahoo have similar measures to PageRank 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
10 GooglePageRank 101Sampling of HomepagePageRank Ratings Logarithmic scale from 0 to 10 Assigned to web pages, notsites Based on inbound links topages Heavily weighted on link quality Passed through internal &external links. Higher PageRank may leadGooglebot to:– Crawl more frequently– Crawl faster– Crawl deeper8012EebayF76543Amazon9FORTRelative number of pages with PR rating 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com re
Google Toolbar View PageRankof current page,once turned on. Available for:– Firefox– InternetExplorer 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Building High Quality Links Develop great contentSubmit to authoritative, topical, & local directoriesWork with your business partnersLink baitTap into social mediaBloggingPress releasesSyndicate through RSS 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
4) Leverage Your PageRank Your homepage’s PageRank gets distributed to your deeppages by virtue of your hierarchical internal linking structure(e.g. breadcrumb navigation). Pay attention to the text used within the hyperlink (“Googlebombing”). Utilize rel “nofollow” internally, but with care Don’t hoard your PageRank Don’t link to “bad neighborhoods” 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Avoid PageRank Dilution Many of the structural issues that impact indexation, canimpact PageRank.– Canonicalization (www.domain.com vs. domain.com)– Duplicate pages: (session IDs, tracking codes, superfluousparameters).– In general, search engines are cautious of dynamic URLs (with ?,&, and characters) because of “spider traps.” Rewrite your URLs (using a server module/plug-in) or use a hosted proxyservice (e.g., GravityStream).Read: catalogagemag.com/mag/marketing right page web/ 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Even You Know Who Struggles 1 product 5 different URLs––––Diluting PageRankDuplicated contentSelf-competing, cannibalizingDiluted crawl equity 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
5) Encourage Clickthrough Being on top of search results commands attention. It’s animplied endorsement. Synergistic effect of being at the top of the natural results &paid results. Entice the user with a compelling call-to-action & valueproposition in your descriptions. Your title tag is critical Snippet gets built automatically, but you CAN influencewhat’s displayed here. 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Power of Position Where do searchers look?– Enquiro, Did-it Eyetoolsstudy.– Golden Triangle or “F” shape Focus on– Natural search vs. Paid– Above the fold– Reinforcement based onsearch term presence. 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Do You Sing in Search? Getting there is onlyhalf the battle.– Do titles captivate?– Does thedescriptionreinforce the searchterms?– Does thedescription call thesearcher to action,leading toclickthrough? 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
6) Track the Right Metrics Indexation: # of pages indexed, % of site indexed, % ofproduct inventory indexed, # of “fresh pages.” Link popularity: # of links, PageRank score (0 - 10) Rankings: by keyword, “filtered” (penalized) rankings Keyword popularity: # of searches, competition, KEI(Keyword Effectiveness Indicator) scores. Cost/ROI: sales by keyword & by engine, cost per lead 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
SEO Metrics Go beyond rankings, referrals, conversions, and revenue.Also beyond indexation, link popularity, keyword popularity,KEI, PageRank (mozRank & mozTrust!) Go beyond your “web analytics” platform to “searchanalytics”– Cameraphone vs. digital SLR camera – which would theprofessional photographer use? 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
SEO Metrics Page yield – % of unique pages yielding search enginedelivered traffic in a given month Keyword yield – ratio of keywords to pages yielding searchtraffic Brand-to-nonbrand ratio – % of search traffic coming frombrand keywords vs. nonbrand keywords Unique pages – non-duplicate pages crawled 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
SEO Metrics Visitors per keyword – ratio of search engine deliveredvisitors to search terms Index-to-crawl ratio – ratio of pages indexed to uniquecrawled pages Engine yield – how much traffic the engine delivers forevery page it crawls More on these at -Metrics-That-Matter/ 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
SEO Metrics From Enquisite.– Top converting/performing page 2 ranked pages– Top converting/performing keywords on one engine that are nonperforming on another– Highest potential keywords you’re getting traffic for– Highest potential keywords you’re not getting traffic for, based onpotential referrals, revenue, and ROI 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Enquisite 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Enquisite 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
7) Follow Best Practices Target relevant keywordsDon’t stuff keywords or replicate pagesCreate useful contentDon't conceal, manipulate, or over-optimize contentLinks should be relevant (no scheming!)Observe copyright/trademark law & Google’s guidelinesAnd sometimes the best practices are just avoiding theworst practices 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Spamming in Its Many Forms Hidden or small textKeyword stuffingTargeted to obviously irrelevant keywordsAutomated submitting, resubmitting, deep submittingCompetitor names in meta tagsDuplicate pages with minimal or no changesSpamglishMachine generated content 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Spamming in Its Darker Forms PagejackingDoorway pagesCloakingSubmitting to FFA (“Free For All”) sites & link farmsBuying up expired domains with high PageRanksScrapingSplogging (spam blogging) 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Doorway Page Example BMW.de hosted manydoorway pages like this one,with lots of keyword stuffedtext for search enginespiders 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Doorway Page Example Which used a sneakyredirect to send humansearchers to this page. 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Not Spam, But Bad for RankingsSplash pages, content-less home page, Flash introsTitle tags the same across the siteError pages in the search results (e.g., “Session expired”)"Click here" linksSuperfluous text like “Welcome to” at beginning of titlesSpreading site across multiple domains (usually for loadbalancing). Content too many levels deep 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
In SummaryFocus on the right keywordsFocus on site architectureHave great keyword-rich contentBuild links (particularly through link baiting & social media),and thus your PageRank Spend that PageRank wisely within your site Measure the right things Continually monitor, benchmark, & don’t be afraid to test 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Now What? What can you do tomorrow that will improve your site’sSEO? Write down 3 things. Get ‘em done! Remember: you eat an elephant one bite at a time For an ebook on Google power searching, SEO checklists& worksheets, and audio recording, executive summary &transcript of an SEO thought leaders teleconference, e-mailyour request to seo@netconcepts.com To contact me: stephan@netconcepts.com 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Paid Inclusion (PI) Paid Placement (PPC/PPA) SEO – influence rankings in the “natural” (a.k.a. “organic”, a.k.a. “algorithmic”) search results. PPC – paid search advertising on a pay-per-click basis. The more you pay, the hig
