Searching for Users: SEO as an Engine for Customer Acquisition (Stephan Spencer, Startonomics SF 2008)

Searching for Users: SEO as an Engine for Customer Acquisition

By Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts

The 4 Big Keys to SEO Keywords – Target the words that your target market

uses. Content – It’s got to be great, unique, linkworthy, fresh,

keyword-focused content. Links – No links? No rankings. Site structure – It’s essential you get the technical

details right (redirects, HTML templates, URLs, internal linking structure)

SEO Fundamentals Tried-and-true SEO tactics

– 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 Synergistic effect of natural + paid search

SEO Fundamentals Links (internal and inbound, along with the anchor text)

beat out content Link building, link baiting, blogging, SMO are crucial

SEO activities– SMO (Social Media Optimization) = infiltrating Digg.com,

del.icio.us popular, Netscape.com, reddit, StumbleUpon, Wikipedia,…

– “A rising tide lifts all boats”

Light on content, but on page 1 in

Google for “silver earrings”

Their CEO’s blog accounts for over

13% of online sales

SEO Fundamentals Rewrite your URLs

– Avoid ? & = characters, minimize directories, include keywords, hyphens preferred over underscores

Rejig your hierarchical internal linking structure Optimize your HTML templates and CSS

– Reduce code bloat, separate out “presentation layer” from “content layer”, image replacement, optimized elements like H1

SEO Strategies for Your “Head” Terms Focus a page on no more than 3 keyword themes –

place targeted term in the title tag, H1 tag, & high up in the body copy

Build link gain (PageRank) to that page through internal links & inlinks

Consistent keyword-rich anchor text from internal links For deep inlinks, vary the anchor text a bit

SEO Strategies for “The Long Tail” Focus on unbranded search markets Leverage website scale and brand strength Employ testable strategies that scale Treat consumers as co-creators Measure against a new set of KPIs Grow your long tail of search

The “Freeloaders” on Your Payroll Most merchants have 80%+ of their pages driving no search traffic Most don't even know this, or why it is a problem (no javascript

based analytics package will tell them this either) It’s a red light that they lack a long tail of unbranded keyword traffic The # of searches for unbranded keywords is nearly 40x as great

as searches for the brand name (put another way, 97x the # of pages onsite)

Tapping that opportunity means leveraging the size of the website and the brand strength to convert unbranded searches into clicks

How to achieve this tail?

Scalable Long Tail SEO Strategies Mass optimization:

– Single techniques capable of creating cascading effects throughout large websites – template pages for instance

Rewriting URLs:– Simple and static have profound impact on PageRank™ and

traffic “Thin Slicing”:

– Touching key elements across thousands of pages quickly, monitoring, and expanding based on results

Scalable Long Tail Strategies - Web 2.0 User generated content (e.g., wikipedia)

– Freely append searcher vocabulary into your website Tagging and social bookmarking (e.g., Flickr, del.icio.us)

– Listen and create feedback loops – using search terms– Use cloud taxonomy to flatten your structure using good link text

RSS and Blogging – Long tail is driven by efficient distribution of pages

Create link bait rather than soliciting link targets Provide lists of most searched keywords Long tail optimization means outsourcing … to your users

Gone Off the Rails Misfires, mistakes, etc. often occur because your

developers, sysadmins, or marketers “didn’t know what they didn’t know”

Examples…

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

Not so good title – where’s the phrase “credit card”?

No link text or body copy

Duplicate pages

Still feeling good about being at the bottom of page 1?

Search listings – 1 good,1 lousy

Title tags the same

Spider unfriendly URL structures

Yikes! Sears.com home page PageRank score looks abysmal

Phew! – Sears.com true home page PageRank score

BMW.de hosted many

“doorway pages” like

this one

“Sneaky redirect” sent searchers to

this page

Hidden link – in the “All” of

leads to a hallway page

Hallway page – not meant for

human consumption –

Let’s start scrolling…

Everything still looks copasetic,

until…

A-ha, spider food

Screenfuls and

screenfuls of it!

Find Link Targets Review links of competitive sites, sites in your keyword

market– Use tools like the ones just mentioned– Check sites with high rankings for relevant keywords– The fewer the number of links on their page, the better

Review links to your site; look for opportunities to get the link text revised

Request Links NOT:

– “Hi, Let’s swap links!”– “I’ve already linked to you.”– “Great site!”– “You already link to our competitor XYZ.com and we offer a better

product.”– “Please use the following text in your link…”

Maybe?– ”Hi, found a broken link on _____. btw, you might want to add xyz.com as

a link.” What then?…

Hi Lois,

My name is Eric Ward, and I am working with StormwaterAuthority.org to help them announce the launch of their new web site located at http://www.stormwaterauthority.org

I am hoping you will consider mentioning or linking to the StormwaterAuthority.org site on your Water and Wastewater Engineering page at http://www.library.umaine.edu/science/waterresources.htm

I have included a brief overview of the site below, and should you need anything at all I am a real person and actually reply to email. You can also contact me by phone.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Regards,

Eric Ward(On behalf of StormwaterAuthority.org)eric@ericward.com voice 865.637.2438

------------------------------------------------------Overview of StormwaterAuthority.org

Source: Eric Ward

More on Links... Some links get “discounted” Anchor text opportunities Linking best & worst practices Blogging for links “Baiting” for links

Watch Out For… Types of links that are likely to get discounted:

– Reciprocal links– Affiliated sites (on the same IP range or hostname)– Footer links (at the bottom of the page)– Site-wide links– Links contained on a page called links.htm / links.asp – Links with the exact same anchor text– Remember: the more links on the linking page, the less

PageRank you’ll get

Update Link Text Link text (anchor text) is critical for SEO Review your existing links and link text

– SEOBook’s Back Link Analyzer tool Are the keywords you are targeting in the link text? Contact webmasters, particularly those who you have a

relationship with & those with the most valuable links

SEOBook’s Backlink Analyzer

Best Practices: Linking Offer link-worthy content. Keep it fresh. Try to get good keywords in the link text Make it easily shareable (RSS feeds, Email to a friend, Submit to

Digg/delicious/etc.) Simple keyword-rich urls encourage deep linking When you redesign your site, keep your old URLs or 301 redirect

them to the new URLs “Nofollow” any links you don’t want to spend PageRank on

– <a href=“/privacy-policy.htm” rel=“nofollow”>

Worst Practices: Linking Participating in “link farms” or FFA (“Free For All”) sites

– Hallmarks of a link farm = more urls per page & less organization Splogging, comment spamming, guestbook spamming Linking to “bad neighborhoods” Hiding links Hoarding all your PageRank Unnatural link structures

– Too much symmetry, link text never varies, or otherwise “engineered” Acquiring links from sites all on the same IP block Acquiring links only from the same TLD (.com, .org, .edu, etc)

Blogs Search engines – and Google in particular – love blogs Inherently link-rich

– “Hat tips” – part of blog etiquette– Blogrolls– RSS feeds– Trackbacks– Comments

The dark side of the blogosphere:– Blog comment spam– Splogs (spam blogs)

Blog SEO Don’t leave title tags to be auto-generated. Use the

“SEO Title Tag” WordPress plugin Don’t squander your “crawl equity” by letting pages get

indexed that don’t deserve to be (“Email this page” etc.) Having multiple “homes” for your blog Utilize “Optional Excerpt” to minimize duplicate content Use rel=nofollow to direct PageRank flow (e.g. date-

based archives)

Blog SEO Intro copy on category & tag pages with sticky posts Optimal URLs (short, not too many directories) Multiple RSS feeds, optimized Hosting blog/feed URLs on a domain you don’t own Use optimal anchor text when linking internally

Link Bait Offer a niche-specific blogroll, tool, How-To, or

compilation of news stories Post a scoop Expose a story as flawed or a fraud Be a contrarian about a story, product, or prominent

blogger’s opinion Be humorous. Good topics include a bizzare pic of your

subject, “10 things I hate about…”, and “You know you’re a when…”

Source: Performancing

Link Bait Publish or commission some original research Creative-Commons-license photos you made of an

event you’re blogging about Make available for free a theme, plugin or piece of

software Start a meme that others can replicate and that links

back to you (e.g. buttons/stickers/tools for bloggers/webmasters to post on their sites, contests, quizzes, surveys, etc.)

Get Creative Give awards / recognition

– Badges with link text underneath Allow webmasters to republish your articles

– Require a link in your byline Publish unique content

– Podcasts (e.g. SteveSpangler.com)– Screencasts (use TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio)– Wikis (e.g. SEOGlossary.com)

Get Creative Offer useful tools for webmasters, such as…

– Hit counters• E.g. NOT like 123counters.com

– Weather stickers• E.g. Wunderground.com, SuperPages.com

– RSS feeds• Lottery winning numbers from SuperPages.com

Get Creative Start a blog Give testimonials

– E.g. www.wordpress.org/about/testimonials– E.g. www.keyworddiscovery.com/testimonials.html

Sponsor a nonprofit– E.g. Kohl’s supports the Eastern Pennsylvania Youth Soccer Association

Leverage your affiliates– Get a straight link (e.g. from Legal Notices page)– 301 redirect

The 4 Big Keys to SEO Keywords – Target the words that your target market

uses. Content – It’s got to be great, unique, linkworthy, fresh,

keyword-focused content. Links – No links? No rankings. Site structure – It’s essential you get the technical

details right (redirects, HTML templates, URLs, internal linking structure)

Q&A! For an ebook on Google power searching, SEO

checklists & worksheets, an audio recording of an interview with Matt Cutts of Google, and an audio recording, executive summary & transcript of an SEO thought leaders teleconference, e-mail your request to seo@netconcepts.com

To contact Stephan, email stephan@netconcepts.com

Searching for Users: SEO as an Engine for Customer Acquisition (Stephan Spencer, Startonomics SF 2008)

seo keywords

internal linking

anchor text

long tail

target market

link text

html templates

technical

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