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© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
SEO 101
presented by Chris Silver Smith,
Lead Strategist, Netconcepts
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Today’s Agenda
What is SEO? The Seven Steps to Higher Rankings
– Get Your Site Fully Indexed
– Get Your Pages Visible
– Build Links & PageRank
– Leverage Your PageRank
– Encourage Clickthrough
– Track the Right Metrics
– Avoid Worst Practices
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Part 1: What Is SEO?
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Everything Revolves Around Search
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Search Engine Optimization
6 times more effective than a banner ad Delivers qualified leads 80% of Internet user sessions begin at the
search engines (Source: Internetstats.com)
55% of online purchases are made on sites found through search engine listings (Source: Internetstats.com)
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
SEO is NOT Paid Advertising
SEO – “Search Engine Optimization” – seeks to 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 higher your placement. Stop paying = stop receiving traffic.
SEM – encompasses both SEO and PPC
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Google Listings – Your Virtual Sales Force
Savvy retailers making 6-7 figures a month from natural listings
Savvy MFA (Made for AdSense) site owners making 5-6 figures per month
Most sites are not SE-friendly Google friendliness = friendly to other engines First calculate your missed opportunities
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Not doing SEO? You’re Leaving Money on the Table
Calculate the missed opportunity cost of not ranking well for products and services that you offer?
# of people searching for your keywords
x
engine share (Google = 60%)
xexpected click-through rate
average conversion rate
average transaction amount
x x
E.g.10,000/day x 60% x 10% x 5% x $100 = $3,000/day
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Most Important Search Engines
Google (also powers AOL Search, Netscape.com, iWon, etc.) – 60.29% market share (Source: Hitwise)
Yahoo! (also powers Alltheweb, AltaVista, Hotbot, Lycos, CNN, A9) – 22.58%
Live Search (formerly MSN Search) – 11.56% Ask – 3.63%
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
People Are Googling… Are You There?
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
What Are Searchers Looking For?
Keyword Research– “Target the wrong keywords and all your efforts
will be in vain.”
The “right” keywords are…– relevant to your business– popular with searchers
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Keyword Research
Tools to check popularity of keyword searches– WordTracker.com– Trellian’s KeywordDiscovery.com– Google’s Keyword Tool– Google Trends– Google Suggest
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
WordTracker.com Pros
– Based on last 60 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 ($260/year)– Data is from a small sample of Internet searches (from the minor
search engines Dogpile and MetaCrawler)– Contains bogus data from automated searches– No historical archives
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Keyword Popularity –According to WordTracker
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Trellian’s KeywordDiscovery.com Pros
– Full year of historical archives– Data is from a large sample of Internet searches (9 billion searches
compiled from 37 engines)– Singular vs plural, misspellings, verb tenses all separated out– Can segment by country– Advanced functionality: keyword “projects”, import data into Excel,
synonyms, … Cons
– Access to the historical data requires subscription fee (~$30/month)– Contains bogus data from automated searches
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Keyword Popularity –According to KeywordDiscovery
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Google AdWords Keyword Tool Pros
– Free! (Must have an AdWords account though)– Data is from a large sample of Internet searches (from Google)– Singular vs plural, misspellings, verb tenses all separated out– Can segment by country– Synonyms
Cons– No hard numbers
Augment this tool with other free Google tools: – Google Suggest (labs.google.com/suggest) – Google Trends (www.google.com/trends)
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Keyword Popularity –According to
Google AdWords
Keyword Tool
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Keyword Popularity –According to
Google AdWords
Keyword Tool
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Keyword Popularity –According to
Google Trends
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Keyword Popularity –According to Google Suggest
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Keyword Research
Competition for that keyword should also be considered– Calculate KEI Score (Keyword Effectiveness
Indicator) = ratio of searches over number of pages in search results
– The higher the KEI Score, the more attractive the keyword is to target (assuming it’s relevant to your business)
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
SEO. A Moving Target. A lot is changing…
– Personalization & customization– Vertical search services (Images, Video, News, Maps, etc.)– “Blended Search” – aka “Universal Search”
Fortunately, the tried-and-true tactics still work…– Topically relevant links from important sites– Anchor text– Keyword-rich title tags– Keyword-rich content– Internal hierarchical linking structure– The whole is greater than the sum of the parts
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
The Search Engines Are Your Friend Sitemaps.org Webmaster tools (e.g. Google Webmaster Central,
Live Search Webmaster Center, Yahoo Site Explorer) Rel=“nofollow” tag Meta NOODP tag Speaking at search engine conferences Publishing blogs dedicated to helping webmasters Participating on SEO forums “Weather reports”
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
SEO Can Dramatically Improve Traffic/Sales
Non-optimal site with few pages indexed
Optimized site with many pages indexed
Few visits/sales per day Many visits/sales per day!
$=
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Part 2: Seven Steps to High Rankings
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Begin The 7 Steps
1) Get Your Site Fully Indexed
2) Get Your Pages Visible
3) Build Links & PageRank
4) Leverage Your PageRank
4) Encourage Clickthrough
6) Track the Right Metrics
7) Avoid Worst Practices
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
1) Get Your Site Fully Indexed Search engines are wary of “dynamic” pages - they fear “spider
traps”
Avoid stop characters (?, &, =) ‘cgi-bin’, session IDs and unnecessary variables in your URLs; frames; redirects; pop-ups; navigation in Flash/Java/Javascript/pulldown boxes – If not feasible due to platform constraints, can be easily
handled through proxy technology (e.g. GravityStream)
The better your PageRank, the deeper and more often your site will be spidered
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Lack of links down into all content pages;
Common Barriers to Spidering:
!Non-textlink sitewide navigation;• Search-form-only;
• Javascript/Java-only (ie: dynamic menus);
• Flash apps / Splash pages;
Non-optimal URL formats of pages;
http://www.example.com/app.jsp?sid=abc123xyz
URL Framed Content
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
1) Get Your Site Fully Indexed (cont’d) Page # estimates are wildly inaccurate, and include non-
indexed pages (e.g. ones with no title or snippet) Misconfigurations (in robots.txt, in the type of redirects used,
requiring cookies, etc.) can kill indexation Keep your error pages out of the index by returning 404 status
code Keep duplicate pages out of the index by standardizing your
URLs, eliminating unnecessary variables, using 301 redirects when needed
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Results in “Supplemental Hell”
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Example of Non-Optimal Site Design:
PR 8 site has META refresh redirect on homepage – spiders not redirected to destination page:
Also, indexed “shell” page doesn’t contain any text content!
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Not Spider-Friendly
GET http://www.bananarepublic.com --> 302 Moved Temporarily
GET http://www.bananarepublic.com/browse/home.do --> 302 Moved Temporarily
GET http://www.bananarepublic.com/browse/home.do?targetURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bananarepublic.com%2Fbrowse%2Fhome.do&CookieSet=Set --> 302 Moved Temporarily
GET http://www.bananarepublic.com/cookieFailure.do --> 200 OK
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@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 site Every page of your site has a “song” (keyword theme) Incorporate keywords into title tags, hyperlink text,
headings (H1 & H2 tags), alt tags, and high up in the page (where they’re given more “weight”)
Eliminate extraneous HTML code “Meta tags” are not a magic bullet Have text for navigation, not graphics
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Not so good title – where’s the phrase “credit card”?
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Dynamic Site Leaves Session IDs in URLs:
Titles not specific to page (“jewelry”)
Main text on page just nav labels –Little text/keyword content
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Good link text and body copy
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Good link text and body copy
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
No link text or body copy
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
No link text or body copy
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Take a peek under the hood
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Unnecessarily bloated HTML
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
3) Build Links and PageRank “Link popularity” affects search engine rankings PageRank™ - Links from “important” sites have more impact
on 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”
Scores range from 0-10 on a logarithmic scale Live Search and Yahoo have similar measures to
PageRank™
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Google’s Toolbar – with handy PageRank Meter
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Google Directory – listings are organized by PageRank
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Conduct any Google query and get results organized by PageRank
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
4) Leverage Your PageRank
Your home page’s PageRank gets distributed to your deep pages by virtue of your hierarchical internal linking structure (e.g. breadcrumb nav)
Pay attention to the text used within the hyperlink (“Google bombing”)
Don’t hoard your PageRank Don’t link to “bad neighborhoods”
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Ideal internal site linking hierarchies:
Homepages often will be highest-ranking site pages since they typically have
most inbound links.
Good link trees inform search engines about which
site pages are most important.
*Sitemaps can also be used to tell SEs about pages, & to define relative priority.
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
4) Leverage Your PageRank
Avoid PageRank dilution– Canonicalization (www.domain.com vs. domain.com)– Duplicate pages: (session IDs, tracking codes,
superfluous parameters)– 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 proxy service (e.g. GravityStream)
• See http://catalogagemag.com/mag/marketing_right_page_web/
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Googlebot got caught in a “spider trap”
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Search engine spiders turn their noses up at such URLs
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Thus, important content doesn’t make it into the search engine indices
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Zipf’s Law applies - you need to be at the top of page 1 of the search results. It’s an implied endorsement.
Synergistic effect of being at the top of the natural results & paid results
Entice the user with a compelling call-to-action and value proposition in your descriptions
Your title tag is critical Snippet gets built automatically, but you CAN influence
what’s displayed here
5) Encourage Clickthrough
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Where do searchers look? (Enquiro, Did-it, Eyetools Study)
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Search listings – 1 good,1 lousy
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
6) Track the Right Metrics
Indexation: # of pages indexed, % of site indexed, % of product 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
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Indexation tool –www.netconcepts.com/urlcheck
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Link popularity tool –www.netconcepts.com/linkcheck
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Avoid Worst Practices Target relevant keywords Don’t stuff keywords or replicate pages Create deep, useful content Don't conceal, manipulate, or over-optimize
content Links should be relevant (no scheming!) Observe copyright/trademark law & Google’s
guidelines
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Spamming in Its Many Forms… Hidden or small text Keyword stuffing Targeted to obviously irrelevant keywords Automated submitting, resubmitting, deep
submitting Competitor names in meta tags Duplicate pages with minimal or no changes Spamglish Machine generated content
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Spamming in Its Many Forms…
Pagejacking Doorway pages Cloaking Submitting to FFA (“Free For All”) sites & link farms Buying up expired domains with high PageRanks Scraping Splogging (spam blogging)
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
BMW.de hosted many
“doorway pages” like
this one
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
“Sneaky redirect” sent searchers to
this page
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Not Spam, But Bad for Rankings Splash pages, content-less home page, Flash intros Title tags the same across the site Error pages in the search results (eg “Session expired”) "Click here" links Superfluous text like “Welcome to” at beginning of titles Spreading site across multiple domains (usually for load
balancing) Content too many levels deep
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
What Next? Conduct an SEO Audit!
Is your site fully indexed? Are your pages fully optimized? Could you be acquiring more PageRank? Are you spending your PageRank wisely? Are you maximizing your clickthrough rates? Are you measuring the right things? Are you applying “best practices” in SEO and
avoiding all the “worst practices”?
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Review Errors/Messages in Webmaster Tools
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Content Opt Opportunities via Webmaster Tools
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Check Robots.txt Exclusions in Webmaster Tools
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Case Study: Homestead.com
What worked– Comprehensive SEO & usability audit – Intensive on-site training sessions with their IT and
marketing teams– 6 months of support
What didn’t work– No significant changes to the look of the home
page were allowed for political reasons, significantly reducing the options available
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Case Study: Homestead.com
Results– Within 8 weeks of launch of some preliminary
optimization work, on page 1 for “website hosting” in Google
– With our audit as a blueprint, later that year launched an internally built site redesign which landed them the #1 Google position for “website hosting”
– Consistently held #1 position for 2 years
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
In Summary Focus on the right keywords Have great keyword-rich content Build links, and thus your PageRank™ Spend that PageRank™ wisely within your site Measure the right things Continually monitor and benchmark
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Further Reading blogs.cnet.com/seosearchlight google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769 www.google.com/webmasters/ www.mattcutts.com/blog googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com blog.outer-court.com www.searchengineland.com www.seroundtable.com www.naturalsearchblog.com www.stephanspencer.com
© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com chris@netconcepts.com
Q&A!
Special White Papers Available:
Image Search Optimization
Local Search Optimization Tactics
New Link Building Paradigms
Online Marketing Tips for Universities
Tips & Tricks for Local Search Ads
Email: chris@netconcepts.com
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