SEO STRATEGY IN 2012 – STAYING VISIBLE, COMPETITIVE AND PROFITABLE Richard Baxter, Founder, SEOgadget Come and say hi at the Travel SEO Site Clinic, RANELAGH 13:00 – 15:00
May 18, 2015
SEO STRATEGY IN 2012 – STAYING
VISIBLE, COMPETITIVE AND
PROFITABLE
Richard Baxter, Founder, SEOgadget
Come and say hi at the Travel SEO Site Clinic, RANELAGH 13:00 – 15:00
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If you want to stay profitable:
Understand how search has changed.
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A typical “QDF” query (Query Deserves Freshness) and image results
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“Lion King” yields ratings from Google shopping in PPC ads, video thumbnails, IMDB’s review snippets
via Schema.org…
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FRESHNESS UPDATE
This is what a fresh result looks like – spot the “21 hours ago” text in the snippet
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Blended organic and local listings for “car hire E3”
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AND THEN THERE’S SOCIAL!
Extreme levels of
social bias for high demand terms.
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THERE’S OPPORTUNITY IN HERE
You can be super competitive in this space with video, images, rich snippets and by taking advantage of
the freshness update
Think….
Video? Image?
Rich Snippets? Freshness?
Social?
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The best, most definitive content
on a topic.
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That was not
the best, most definitive content
on a topic.
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I’m going to invest my time, but
does this stuff actually make a difference?
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Yes: “Best pizza in Chicago” - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/eyetracking-google-serps via
http://mirametrix.com/
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YES: “Pizza” - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/eyetracking-google-serps via http://mirametrix.com/
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YES: “How to make a pizza” - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/eyetracking-google-serps via
http://mirametrix.com/
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YES: “Pizza Cutters” - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/eyetracking-google-serps via http://mirametrix.com/
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15 Tips To Help You
Stay Visible, Competitive and Profitable
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Sort out your local pages (Venice)
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Get good agile at video
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That’s not the video! It’s the post image…
Even placing a video on a post can create a video thumbnail, just make
sure you’re using images, too.
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Also check out: (www.doink.com – create animations), (www.voki.com –
create avatars), (goanimate.com, more animations)
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Also check out: (www.doink.com – create animations), (www.voki.com –
create avatars), (goanimate.com, more animations)
Making a video from a script is easy!
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Make it Embeddable
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This drives me crazy…. So difficult to use their data.
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Totaljobs make the same mistake
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An example of embeddable – simple HTML code via
http://www.creditdonkey.com/history-of-money.html
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Understand how your best competitors are
attracting links.
Your best, not your highest ranking.
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HOW HAVE AIRBNB ATTRACTED LINKS?
How have your best competitors (not your highest ranking) been
attracting links
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HOW DID THEY DO IT?
• Links from large volumes of money saving and frugal tips blogs
• Reader offers dedicated to a specific publication , for example: “Roomorama offers TNW Readers 25%”
• AirBNB host regular meet-ups and events for home owners and holiday makers
• Use of PR, for example: “AirBNB’s 1 millionth night booked"
• Partnerships: places to stay for sporting events and conferences
• The ability to create content focusing on packages / inspiration
• AirBNB have a blog, a technology blog , a ceo ‘s blog and an entrepreneur's blog
• Hundreds of top lists for students, places to stay near universities, sports team tours, academics, disabled travel guides
• Festivals - "finding accommodation for Glastonbury"
• Partnering with events sites, conferences and hack days
• Tours content - art, history, museums, - where to stay, when and what to see
Made by scrolling through the results from Open Site Explorer.
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Test with Rich Snippets
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This is hCalendar – simple events markup, highlighting event name, date,
time and location.
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hReview can be included in the body copy of a simple blog post to
generate a valid rich snippet (hreview)
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Get on top of Image Search
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EVERYBODY GETS IMAGE SEARCH?
Queen-Elizabeth.jpg alt=“Queen Elizabeth”
title=“Queen Elizabeth”
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Visually similar? You’re not going to rank then, are you?
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Optimise your snippets for query intent
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0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
Total
ONE PAGE CAN YIELD MANY QUERY TYPES
Generic Location Price Speed
Time!
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CAN WE OPTIMISE THE SEARCH RESULTS FOR MANY?
Generic
“Wordpress hosting”
“Wordpress hosts”
Longer tail
“best Wordpress hosting UK”
“best Wordpress host 2011”
<meta name='description' content='Check out the best Wordpress hosting packages - we
researched the top Wordpress hosts for security, uptime and site speed. Looking for
the best Wordpress hosting in the UK? Our 2011 reviews include 123 REG, Webfaction,
TsoHost, Clook & LunarPages.'/>
This test wasn’t perfect but it works – check out this post on SharkSEO:
http://sharkseo.com/whitehat/meta-descriptions/
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Create Wonderful, Panda Proof Landing Pages.
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Via Gianluca Fiorelli – go to vistitnorway.com, it’s a beautiful website.
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Technical – Sweat the Small Things
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LINKED TO 404 AND 302’S
BA could Reclaim the link juice from 1000+ root domain links, not including the 302 on their
homepage
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IIS SEO TOOLKIT / SEOMOZ / SCREAMING FROG
Internal broken links, duplicate content, unnecessary redirects are all items that can be
cleaned up on an on-going basis
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Produce Something of Value.
Then, Give it Away.
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Free! Took a week to develop – 6,400 downloads, 184 links so far.
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We created great content and gave it away. It spread well, we smiled.
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Translate the Good Content and Place it
Overseas
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Our Mandarin and German translations – remarkably easy to find a good translator,
inexpensive and both contacts made in English.
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Be Cool on Google+
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Whiteboard+ content for Google+ only
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Look at that real estate! Some much Search Result reserved for Aleyda’s post!
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Scale Your Outreach / Guest Posting
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TAKE LINK BUILDING LESSONS FROM SWISS TONI
Check out Jon Quinton’s “Link Building Lessons from Swiss Toni” http://bit.ly/yeLukQ
Find Combine Filter
Competitor Analysis
Scraping
My Blog Guest
Excel
BuzzStream
Domain Metrics
Links
Social Metrics
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Get (excellent) content for your blog and / or build quality links. Blogger link up is well worth
testing, and use Boomerang / Followerwonk to manage and find contacts.
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Clean up after yourself.
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Brilliant content spreads naturally. Our infographic generated mentions on “GeekOSystem”, “GeeksAreSexy”,
“Makeuseof” and Guy Kawasaki’s “Alltop”, amongst many others. They all link to us!
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Brilliant content spreads naturally. Our infographic generated mentions on “GeekOSystem”, “GeeksAreSexy”,
“Makeuseof” and Guy Kawasaki’s “Alltop”, amongst many others. They all link to our client.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
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Make awesome product pages.
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Embedded how to video AND: QA section below
http://www.espares.co.uk/
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QA IN PRODUCT PAGES
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MAKE COMPARISONS AND VISUALISE DATA
This product page is amazing! http://www.goapr.com/products/stage3_b7_rs4.html
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Increase your conversion.
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This is a single page test for one of our clients in Google Website Optimiser. We increased overall conversion on
this page by 78% - CRO maximises your ROI and carries no risk of failure.
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Make (Inexpensive) viral / great content
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How much of your favourite energy drink, soda, or caffeinated food would it take to kill you? 509 root
domain links: http://www.energyfiend.com/death-by-caffeine
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This is a single page test for one of our clients in Google Website Optimiser. We increased overall conversion on
this page by 78% - CRO maximises your ROI and carries no risk of failure.
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Photo fake out - http://www.oyster.com/hotels/photo-fakeouts/ linked to by the NY Times, amongst the thousands
of others.
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http://www.marca.com/deporte/futbol/mundial/sudafrica-2010/calendario-english.html 19k tweets,
218k likes, 915 linking root domain links
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Want to stay profitable?
Watch for the changes and understand your inputs.
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Studies report decay of up to 15% of the web
Algorithmic update
Panda penalty
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DO I HAVE NEW OR LOST LINKS?
Check out ahrefs, linkdex, SEOmoz, MajesticSEO
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CHECK FOR LINK DECAY AND QUALITY
For the Excel minded: https://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-find-lost-links/
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WHAT % OF MY SEARCH RESULTS ARE UNIVERSAL?
Strongly recommend: searchmetrics – shows organic rankings including image, video, news, shopping in
your local market vs competitors
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UNDERSTAND THE INPUTS
Use SEOmoz’s keyword difficulty tool – it’s very powerful for unpicking what you might need to achieve to
improve your rankings: http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty/
Wait, what?
Richard Baxter, Founder, SEOgadget
Twitter: @richardbaxter
Blog: seogadget.co.uk
Email: [email protected]
THANK YOU