Data Analytics and SEO to grow your

International Business

Enterprise Ireland eMarketing Event

Using the Internet to Compete in International Markets John Caldwell

john@creatorseo.com061 513267/ 01 5313061

086 2410295

Introduction

• Data Analytics

• SEO

• Direct Marketing Direct Sales

• SEO

• PPC

• Social Media

• Videos

• Website ……

Internet marketing

It All Starts With Strategy

SEO is a set of processes that can be used to optimise the natural ranking of a website or web page in order to achieve a defined Search / Marketing Strategy

The strategy can include:• Targeting a particular market• Which country or countries• Focussing on a region• Emphasising particular products• Etc…

Reach Act Convert Engage

Digital strategy:

Customer analysis

Competitor benchmarking

On-line partner analysis

SWOT

Marker-place analysis:

Vision and mission

Goal setting AnalyticsManaging digital

marketing

Goals and KPI’s:

Segmentation and targeting

Brand position and value proposition

Engagement and content strategy

Integrated communication

strategy

Strategy:

Data Analytics

Analytics to understand customers and to drive marketing!

7

General Sources of Internet related data

• Webtrends, Google Analytics or other analytics program

• Database logs/reports

• Search engines

• Collected data (user login data, feedback forms, newsletters, third party systems / services, surveys, etc.)

• Environmental information – industry bodies, government, blogs, etc.

Google Analytics – measurement tool for your website

• Understand how people engage with you• Improve site content and design• Turn more visitors into customers• Social

Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools

Mysiteperformance and Google keyword checker

• Test your site on - www.mysiteperformance.com

Google Alerts & Google News & Google Publisher

Google Trends

Selected digital analytics point solutions

Function/Feature Vendor

Attribution C3 MetricsEbay Enterprise (Formerly ClearSaleing)ConvertroVisual IQ

Benchmarking AlexaCompeteDoubleclick Ad PlannerGoogle Trends

Clickstream analysis Bing Webmaster ToolsGoogle Webmaster ToolsPiwikSite MeterStatCounter

Selected digital analytics point solutions contd.

Function/Feature Vendor

Real-time analytics AbsolutdataAnametrixChartbeatGoSquaredWoopra

Tag management BrightTagEnsightenSiteTaggerTagManTealiumiQ

Testing (A/B and multivariate) AdWords Campaign ExperimentsMaxymiserOptimizelySiteSpectWingify

Selected digital analytics point solutions contd.

Function/Feature Vendor

Voice of customer iPerceptionsConcept FeedbackForeseeLoop11.comOpinionLabUserTesting.com

Source: Third Door Media

• Data is a strategic asset

• Can be a key differentiator for sustained growth, efficiency and compliance

• Most data models tend to are siloed, outdated and too narrow

Knowledge

Information / Understanding

Data / Facts

Most businesses are

Data rich and Knowledge poor

Data rich and Knowledge poor

Look at the past Use data to drive Understand signals tochanges shape the future

Hindsight Insight Foresight

• And there are many more

I have lots of Data ..... so what?

Things you need to look at.....

• Identify the metrics that matter

• Use metrics that are actionable – that lead to making a change

• Proper configuration – accurate data on numbers that matter

• Act on what you find

• Internet objectives, customer experience, engagement.

• How good is the acquisition strategy?

• What is the visitor loyalty & recency?

• What is not working or broken?

• What is working?....Top Landing Pages

• Are you making money or noise?

• What content makes us most profit?

• How sophisticated is the search strategy?

• What are your goals and targets?

• Can the marketing Campaign conversions/outcomes be optimised?.

• Are you helping the already convinced buyers?

• What are the competition doing?

Knowledge RichData Rich

Best Practices

Develop a baseline and plan

Identify data champions

Get executive buy-in

What data is available

Time is critical!

Align your data planwith strategic and knowledge priorities

Identify important data and fix data gaps

Turn data into useful information €’s

Process or a set of processes

Get a champion

Carry out a review/audit

Identify information need Website user experience Website reach Website conversion …………….

Develop plan and document baseline

Implement changes

Analyse (data information) – GROWTH HACKING

Marketing incl. SEO

CustomerNeeds

Data

Growth Hacking

Marketing incl. SEO

CustomerNeeds

Data

Growth Hacking Analytics

Baseline

Create a dashboard

Perform AB Testing

Create interventions

Make changes

One Metric That Matters?

Talk to customers

Make more changes

Marketing incl. SEO

CustomerNeeds

Data

Growth Hacking Analytics

Baseline

Create a dashboard

Perform AB Testing

Create interventions

Make changes

One Metric That Matters?

Talk to customers

Make more changes

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Some of our customers ........

… some Irish success stories using data to drive business

Sample 1

Used Goal Funnels to optimise the mix of digital marketing channels that drove a 44% increase in website sales

Sample 2

60% increase in customer checkout through understanding analytics data

Sample 3

With insights from Google Analytics, we increased sales by 35 percent

Sample 4

Used data-driven attribution to fine tune spend for SEO keywords driving a 19% increase in attributed conversions

Sample 5

Data analytics was used to gain an increase in sales and a 32% growth in ROI

Sample 6

We better understand our conversion funnel abandonment. Our conversion rates are up to 65%

Your challenge is to become:

Data rich and Knowledge rich!

Search engines – How they work?

How Do Search Engines Work?

Spider “crawls” the web to find new documents (web pages, other documents) typically by following hyperlinks from websites already in their database

Search engines indexes the content (text, code) in these documents by adding it to their databases and then periodically updates this content

Search engines search their own databases when a user enters in a search to find related documents (not searching web pages in real-time)

Search engines rank the resulting documents using an algorithm (mathematical formula) by assigning various weights and ranking factors

Spiders read text and nothing else

What a Search Engine Sees

Understanding the Search Page

Paid adverts (PPC)

Paid adverts (PPC)

Natural or Organic Search (SEO)

News

Hummingbird and Carousel

The Golden triangle

Which? - search engines!

Be found on the internet

• Ranking – its just a formula….

= 2a+0.7b+12c+9d+2(a-b+d)-1.5e+2f …………..

• … but Google has more than 250 items in its algorithm

• … and growing

1 Search terms in the HTML title tag2 Search terms in the HTML body copy3 Search terms in bold typeface4 Search terms in header tags5 Search term in anchor text in links to a page6 PageRank of a page (the actual PageRank, not the toolbar PageRank)7 The PageRank of the entire domain8 Quality of link partners9 Type of backlinks that bring anchor text juice for search terms10 The speed of the web site11. Search terms in the URL - main URL and page URLs 12. Search term density through body copy (About 3 - 5%?) 13. Fresh content 14. Good internal linking structure 15. Age of the domain 16. Links from good directories 17. Image names 18. Image ALTs 19. Reputable hosting company 20. Diversity of link partners too21. Geo located search results22. Rate of new inbound links to your site 23. Relevance of inbound links24. 301s, 404s, 414s etc 25. Duplicate title/meta tags 26. Participation in link schemes27. Quantity of backlinks 28. Quantity of linking root domains 29. Quality of linking root domains 30. Link distance from higher authority sites 31. Outgoing followed links from back linked pages

It is usually enough to focus on the main Search Engines

• Ranking

= 2a+0.7b+12c+9d+2(a-b+d)-1.5e+2f …………..

… and let’s not forget

World-Wide Search Engine Market Share

Search Pyramid

Social

Link Building

Keyword Research & Targeting

Accessible Quality Content

You have to get these right first

Before you get these right

The search demand curve

Source: SEOMoz

1 2 3-4 4+

Internationalisation

Google.ie, Google.co.uk, Google.de, Google.fr……

Main aspects

• Multilingual sites• URL structure

• Language selection

• Auto-translation

• Character encoding

• Meta tags and rel-alternate-hreflang links

• Geotargeting• URL structure (ccTLD)

• Server location

• Webmaster tools

• Meta tags

• Use “rel-canonical” and “rel-alternate-hreflang”

Trading internationally

• Common situations:• one country, several languages

• one language, several countries

Trading internationally

• What can be done?• domains by country?

• main domain and subdirectories per language?

• sub domains?

• Geo targeting on Google

Trading internationally

• Best option domains by country• creatorseo.com

• creatorseo.fr

• creatorseo.de

• but • complicated to manage and coordinate

• one CMS for all or one per domain?

Trading internationally

• Sub-domains or Domain name alias• us.creatorseo.com

• fr.creatorseo.com

• de.creatorseo.com

• Directories by country/language• creatorseo.com/us/

• creatorseo.com/fr/

• creatorseo.com/de/

• One language, several countries• creatorseo.com/es/

• mycompany.com/es-pu/ (Peru)

• mycompany.com/es-mx/ (Mexico)

Trading internationally

• Directories by country/language• Cheaper

• Less technical resources required

• Easier to manage and coordinate

• Directories contribute to increase the general relevancy of a domain

Trading internationally

• Subdomains by country• Search Engines consider subdomains almost a completely different

entity than their domain

• they don’t inherit most of the domain's relevancy

• Example of a sub domain• http://spanish.creatorseo.com

• … but are a more integrated approach than having a number of unrelated domain names

X

Competition, Audience and Content

Competition

• On-line competition may not be your traditional competition

• Different competitors in different regions

SEO is about beating your competition in the targeted geographies

Audience

• Know your audience

• Cultural• In Mediterranean counties

- Internet use is driven more by social factors rather than anything else,

• where Nordic countries rely on the internet for more pragmatic, functional purposes.

• Language

Strategy needs to consider Technology

Desktop

Mobile

Browser

Operating System

Local content

• Use local addresses and contact information

• Add local case studies/ testimonials • with names and images

• Customise content for each country or market • More relevant, increases local link building opportunities, and decreases duplicate content

• Currency

Design and usability

Basic requirements for any website

A web site is a bit like an advert!

• Clear purpose

• Easy to use / intuitive

• High impact- you have only 4 seconds to impress!

• Optimised for visitors

• Target audience

• Easily found by the target audience

• Content must be dynamic and interesting

Design and usability

• Different countries prefer different design aesthetics

• Recreating your website in a different language may not be enough

• Get feedback on your site from locals in your target country

Be local

• Register each site with Google Places, Bing Business Portalfor example.

Google Rules - Google Algorithm Updates

Major Google Updates

• Panda 4.0 — May 2014

• Hummingbird — August 2013

• Penguin 2 — May 2013

• Penguin — April 2012

• Panda 3 — November 2011

• Panda 2 — April 2011

• Panda/Farmer — February 2011

• Caffeine (Rollout) — June 2010

Major Google Updates

• Panda 4.0 — May 2014Even more focus on the quality of the content

• Hummingbird — August 2013 (Fast and precise)Completely new algorithm release – focus on semantic search and includes Google Knowledge Graph and geo-locating

• Penguin — April 2012Tighter focus on implementation of Google Webmaster Guidelines and crack-down on black-hat SEO (less bad-links)

• Panda — February 2011Crack-down on low quality sites and duplicate content. More focus on authority and trustworthiness

• Caffeine (Rollout) — June 2010Google web index update – improved search speed and user experience

Panda 4.0 – It’s mainly about quality,

• Conclusion I. “Content Based Topical Authority Sites” are given more SERP Visibility compared to sites that only cover the topic briefly.(even if the site covering the topic briefly has a lot of generic authority). More articles written on the same topic increase the chances for the site to be treated as a “Topical Authority Content Site” on that specific topic.

• Conclusion II. Sites with High User Interaction measured by shares and comments got a boost.

• Conclusion III. Thin Content and Automatic content is deranked, even if it is relevant.

• Conclusion IV. Sites with clear navigational structure and unique content got boosted.

Matt Cutts

Google guidance

Guidance

• Create useful page titles

• Use informative URLs

• Provide relevant page descriptions

• Add your business to Google Places

• Manage your site links

Guidance

• Create useful page titles

• Use informative URLs

• Provide relevant page descriptions

• Add your business to Google Places

• Manage your site links

• Value proposition

• Call to action

• Relevance

• User experience

• Relevant and unique content

Some Final Tips

• Get a local mailing address

• Send website visitors to the right domain

• Speed

• Use a translator!

• Use Data to gain information and knowledge

Thank you

John Caldwell

john@creatorseo.com061 513267/ 01 5313061

086 2410295