SEO Table Stakes - Clarity 14

PLAYING TABLE STAKES VS. WINNINGKEITH L. GOODE

SEO TECHNOLOGY LEAD, DELL

@KEITHGOODE+KEITHGOODE WWW.LINKEDIN.COM/IN/KEITHLGOODE

YOUR PRESENTERKeith L. Goode

• 17 years of Online Experience• AMD

• HomeAway

• Builders Digital Experience

• SpareFoot

• Dell (3 years)• SEO Technology Lead, DCSG (formerly eDell)

• Technical SEO Instructor

• Presentations• Clarity ’13 (and ‘14)

• Pubcon Vegas

• Pubcon Austin

• Austin SEO

• Terrible Gambler

Twitter: @keithgoode

www.slideshare.net/AustinOtaku


DISCLAIMER NOTICE

Protection: The ideas and statements in this presentation do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Dell Inc. but are based on my personal experience in the SEO Industry.

Tl;dr: Be kind, and remember that:

Keith

Is

Not

Dell

UPDATE

WHAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE CLARITY ‘13?


ODDBALL COMEDY FESTIVAL


WHAT I LEARNED

• Comedians don’t know SEO

But let’s be honest:

• Neither do most executives

• Neither do most developers


DEMOCRATIZATION OF SEO

• Utopian Vision in which NO

aspects of SEO are seen as

SEO-only responsibilities

and…

• SEO Technical requirements

are not seen as SEO, but as

“the way you run a website”


UNTIL WE GET THERE…

• The role of the Technical SEO

is to…

• Explain the benefits of the

requested site changes

• Prioritize those requests based

on

• Customer Experience

Improvement

• Revenue Benefit

• Complementary Value


THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND

• Executives are not stupid. They’re balancing…

• Budgetary constraints

• OPEX challenges

• A ton of purportedly high-priority items, which are all competing for the same money and resources that you are

• Phrased in a way decision-makers can easily understand, technical challenges will make more sense


TECHNICAL SEO AS TABLE STAKES



• How much you’re willing to

invest will make the

difference between…

• Playing in the high stakes poker

room at the Bellagio, or …



• How much you’re willing to

invest will make the

difference between…

• Playing in the high stakes poker

room at the Bellagio, or …

• Playing “Guest How Many

Fingers I’m Holding Up” at

Cousin Eddie’s favorite casino

SEO TABLE STAKES

LAYING THE FOUNDATION FOR GREATER SUCCESS


SEO TABLE STAKES

• The $5 Table

• Foundational elements related to crawlability of your site

• The $10 Table

• Foundational elements related to the indexability of your site

• The $25 Table

• Foundational elements related to site efficacy in SERP rankings

• The $100 Table

• Supplementary elements to shore up CTR, Positive CE and globalization

$5

$10

$25

$100

THE $5 TABLE

TICKET TO ENTRY


THE $5 TABLE – TABLE STAKES

Crawlable Content

• This should be a no-brainer

• No Flash or Silverlight …

again, we should already

know this

• Use seo-browser.com, Lynx

browser, or Fetch as

Googlebot


THE $5 TABLE – RAISING THE BET

Crawlable Navigation

• Follow Google’s 3-Click Rule

• Flow your link equity down

via navigation

• For extra credit, use

breadcrumbs and contextual

link to flow it back up to the

domain level.

THE $10 TABLE

GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT SEO


THE $10 TABLE - INDEXATION

• GWT/BWT Setup

• Canonicalization of URLs

• XML Sitemap and Robots.txt

• HTML Sitemap

• Canonical Tags

• Robots Meta-Tags


THE $10 TABLE – TABLE STAKES

• Google Webmaster Tools …

and, yes, Bing Webmaster

Tools

• Canonicalize

• Server Setting

• GWT/BWT Preference

THE $10 TABLE – RAISING THE STAKES

• XML Sitemap and Robots.txt

• Tell the bots where they can and

can't go on your site

• HTML Sitemap

• Provide an additional path to the

most important pages on your site


• Canonical Tags

• Stop:

• Competing against yourself

• Dispersing ranking power

• Single cleanest, renderable URLs for

each piece of content

• Automate this functionality

• Most out-of-the-box CMSs do this

already

• Custom CMSs will need to have this

functionality built


• Robots Meta-Tags

• Don’t rely on robots.txt to hide

your private content

• Provide page-level access to

change this tag to your SEOs

• Allows on-the-fly removal of

URLs from the indices


THE $25 TABLE – RANKING EFFICACY

This is where you can begin to

influence your site’s ability to

rank. Elements in this pool

focus on your site’s:

• Architecture

• Adaptability

• Responsiveness


THE $25 TABLE - ANTE UP

• Concise, Friendly URLs

• Proximity of Page Name to

Domain

• DFUs

• Subfolder Usage (over

Subdomain)



• Proper Redirects

• Use 301s and 302s

appropriately – default to 301

• Allow for redirects that are

• 1-to-1

• Many-to-1

• Many-to-many

• Proper Error Reponses



• Open Graph/Twitter Card

• Socially adaptive

• Mobile Responsive

• Adaptive Display

• Mobile Adaptive

• Device-specific adaptation

• Page Speed Optimization


THE $100 TABLE

This is where you gear your

site for:

• Global Domination

• Participation in the coming

marketplace

• Adaptability when something

goes wrong


THE $100 TABLE – ANTE UP

Global Domination

• HREFLANG

• Distinguish which pages should be showing in each region

• Reduces friction of having to select the right country

• ccTLD Strategy

• URL Localization

• Regional variations of head terms

• Localization/localisation of spelling



Participation in the Marketplace

of the Future

• Semantic Markup

• Where did we shop in the

early 20th Century?

• The latter part of the 20th

Century?

• The early 21st Century?



Adaptability to Unexpected

Changes

• Intelligent 404

• Correct for bad links

• Update for old, retired pages

• Use machine-learning to intuit

consumer intent


THE TRUMP CARD


THE TRUMP CARD

• You can make a lot of mistakes

and still rank if you have a great

brand

• Never jeopardize your brand

with grayhat techniques

• Support your Brand team and

train them in proper linking

• Encourage social involvement of

SMEs

THANK YOU!

KEITH L. GOODE

@KEITHGOODE

+KEITHGOODE

WWW.LINKEDIN.COM/IN/KEITHLGOODE

Internet

SEO Table Stakes - Clarity 14