Upload
barry-adams
View
1.520
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
Slides for a guest lecture I delivered for the University of Ulster's Digital Media Communication post-graduate programme.
Citation preview
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
University of UlsterDigital Media Communication
A case study in technical SEO
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
Bedeck
• Seller of luxury bed linens
• Own brand as well as third party brands
• Ecommerce website: www.bedeckhome.com
• Re-launched site in October 2011
� Strong visibility on branded search terms
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
� Strong visibility on branded search terms
� Zero visibility on generic search terms
Bedeck SEO project
• Targeted keywords:
bedding sets
designer bed linen
designer bedding
duvet sets
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
duvet sets
goose feather pillows
hotel luxury bedding
hotel luxury bedlinen
luxury bed linen
luxury bedding
quality bed linen
Basic On-Site SEO
• Title tags:
• Meta descriptions:
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
• Content.
Special Challenges
Special challenges with large ecommerce websites:
• Large amount of pages:
� Homepage
� Category pages
� Subcategory pages
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
� Subcategory pages
� Product pages
� Supporting information (delivery, T&Cs, stores, etc)
� Blog/News pages
• Getting product pages in Google’s index
• Potential duplicate content issues
Advanced On-Site SEO
• Indexing
� XML sitemaps
� Duplicate content
• Structured data
� Schema.org
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
� Schema.org
• Load speed
� Faster = better
Indexing
• Has Google indexed all pages?
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
This used to be a very
inaccurate ‘guesstimate’
Indexing
• Google Webmaster Tools – Index Status report(Since July 2012)
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
Indexing
• Google Webmaster Tools – Index Status report
What
happened?
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
happened?
Index Status advanced report
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
Is this a good thing?
A lot of
pages not
included
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
Huge
gap
Yes, that’s a good thing
• Bedeckhome.com uses ‘faceted navigation’(a.k.a. ‘layered navigation’ or‘additive filters’)
• This almost always causes duplicate content issues:
� Page after page after page of product lists
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
� Page after page after page of product lists
� Google not sure which to include
Ensuring Google indexes the right pages
• ‘Index sculpting’
� “noindex, follow” meta robots tag
� Robots.txt blocking
� JavaScript-generated faceted links
� Rel=nofollow links
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
� Rel=nofollow links
• Google Webmaster Tools
� URL Parameters configuration
URL Parameters in GWT
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
XML Sitemaps
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
Structured data / microdata
“On-page markup enables search engines to understand the information on web pages and provide richer search results in order to make it easier for users to find relevant information on the web. Markup can also enable new tools and applications that make use of the structure.”
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
applications that make use of the structure.”
Quoted from schema.org
Structured data
hProduct structured data
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
What does it do?
In theory, it turns this:
…in to this:
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
…in to this:
(In practice, Google wants you to pay them first.)
It does do this (for free):
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
hReview structured data
Load Speed
• Quicker = better
• Users don’t like to wait
• Search engines don’t like to wait
� Crawl Budget: how much time Google spends crawling your site until it goes ’screw this, I’m
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
site until it goes ’screw this, I’m outta here’.
How to improve load speed
• Faster hosting environment
• Tidy HTML code
• Minimal JavaScript
• Minimal external calls
� Facebook & Twitter integrations
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
� Facebook & Twitter integrations
� Third party functions (ex. booking forms)
• Small image filesize
Bedeckhome.com’s load speed
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
Just about OK
Did it work?
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
Google.co.uk keyword rankings
Keyword Oct-11 Sep-12 Change
bedding sets (outside top 100) 9 +91
designer bed linen 9 5 +4
designer bedding 4 3 +1
duvet sets (outside top 100) 16 +84
goose feather pillows 25 9 +16
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
goose feather pillows 25 9 +16
hotel luxury bedding 91 2 +89
hotel luxury bedlinen 35 4 +31
luxury bed linen 68 5 +63
luxury bedding 17 5 +12
quality bed linen 5 6 -1
Generic search growth Oct 11 – Sept 12
8000
10000
12000
Visits from Generic Search
£6,000.00
£7,000.00
£8,000.00
£9,000.00
Revenue from Generic Search
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
0
2000
4000
6000
£0.00
£1,000.00
£2,000.00
£3,000.00
£4,000.00
£5,000.00
Year on year comparison
60,000
80,000
100,000
120,000
Growth:
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
0
20,000
40,000
Oct 2010 - Sept 2011 Oct 2011 - Sept 2012
Generic Search traffic Generic Search revenue
Growth:
Branded Search traffic 31%
Generic Search traffic 117%
Generic Search revenue 151%
Questions?
Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012Copyright. All Rights Reserved Pierce Communications. 2012
Questions?
[email protected]://twitter.com/badamshttp://www.piercecommunications.co.uk