The State of the SEO Industry, Google Penalties & Rankings10/17/2014

www.cleverlyengaged.com1. Founded in February 2014 by Corey Barnett2. Previously at Razorfish Platforms/Publicis (Crown Partners) for 3.5 years.3. Based out of home in Lubbock, TX with remote contractors throughout the U.S.4. Half of clients are 4 agencies, other half are personal clients located in Lubbock,

Dallas, and beyond.5. Cleverly Engaged Marketing enables businesses to get visible online, become an

authority in the industry and drive leads.

Jack of All TradesMaster of None

1. Started business out of frustration2. Developed marketing experience in all areas at prior job: event marketing, print marketing, website migrations, search engine optimization, email marketing, etc.3. Left to work with businesses full time, focus on search engine optimization

1# SEO + Business Owner = Hats

1. Search Engine Optimization simply means to help businesses optimize for search engines in order to rank higher in results, get more revenue, leads, etc.2. SEO requires mastery of multiple marketing disciplines: design, web development, paid advertising, analytics, social media, copywriting, etc.3. Wearing a lot of hats is required of any business owner, especially those involved in SEO.

2# Agencies Are Good1. CEM works with 4 agencies, primarily the top SEO agency in Dallas, known nationwide (Globe Runner)2. One of the few in the SEO industry living in Lubbock, agencies connect me to other SEO experts in Texas3. Agencies also provide security, and access to tools (which cost a lot of money) and are numerous in SEO4. I take on clients both through agencies and without agencies, depends on my workload and the client.

3# SEO Has a Bad Reputation

1. SEO largely has a negative perception2. Early days it was truly search engine manipulation3. Agencies/Consultants still promise first position

results, but, they can no longer guarantee position due to Google penalties

4. Not an exact science, part art + science

4# Black Hat SEO is Dead

Black Hat SEO (Unethical SEO/search engine manipulation) - died 2011

1. Throw money at a consultant, rank higher quickly (hands-off for business owner)

2. Ignore the customer, focus on search engines3. Ignore Customer Experience4. Treat SEO in a Silo (separate from design, dev…)5. Could prove ROI of SEO

White Hat SEO (ethical SEO) - Flourishes Post 2011

1. More money does not equal higher rankings, it involves many offline factors (very hands on)

2. The customer is first, search engines are second3. Customer experience is what Google wants4. SEO is not a marketing channel

a. inbound marketing (social, website, design, email, etc.)

5. SEO is not an investment; it’s a requisite

6# 2011 = Google Penalties1. 2011 is when Google starts to take webspam

seriously (black hat seo)2. Many businesses are impacted, changing the

entire SEO industry and business model3. JCPenney, Expedia.com, many well known brands

are penalized for bad SEO practices4. Can’t use the excuse, “we didn’t know

what our agency was doing”, “we had no idea they were engaged in bad SEO practices”

5. Google doesn’t care, penalizes sites regardless of fault. As the business owner, it’s on you to take ownership of your business online.

6. Penalties fit in two categories: manual and algorithm which are automatic

7# Manual Penalty

1. Manual penalties are the best because:1.1. Google tells you, you have a penalty1.2. Google tells you why, with examples

2. Manual penalties are typically triggered by having an unnatural backlink profile

3. Initiated by an actual Google employee4. Take care of penalty, notify Google, or fix more

issues until you no longer have a penalty

8# Panda: 2012 - ∞Duplicate ContentURL/Site StructureDuplicate & Masked DomainsDuplicate Titles/DescriptionsThin Content, Stolen Content

9# Penguin: 2012 - 2013Buying and selling linksOver optimizationKeyword stuffingUnnatural links:

- Rich anchor text- Paid links- Traded links- Irrelevant links- Links added too quickly- Links added retroactively

10# Google = User Experience

Google’s Mission? Organize the World’s Information… Make that information accessible, make it useful

1. Responsive Site - information is accessible on all devices2. Solve problems, answer questions on everything related to

your business (makes your website useful)3. Content that wants to be read, not a book (make it useful)4. Site that loads quickly (makes it accessible)5. Customers that return, because your brand is an authority

(shows that your site is useful)6. Site that ranks highly, but doesn’t solve the customer’s

problem, causing them to leave quickly and continue to search for a better result? (not useful)

What Do Results Look Like?

What do Penalties Look Like?

Link References1. Webmaster Tools - analyze links pointing to your site, how the site is

indexed in Google, determine manual penalties2. Google Webmaster Guidelines - criteria on what Google wants, what

Google penalizes 3. Webmaster Tools Spam Report - send reports on competitors, whoever

that is obviously manipulating search rankings through paid links, etc.4. Google Analytics - world’s most popular, free website analytics platform5. SEMRush - analyze search traffic estimates for you and your competitors6. Copyscape - determine if your site copy has been stolen, scrapped, etc.7. Cleverlyengaged.com - Agency website8. Globerunner.com - Agency partner website