SAScon 2012 Presentation By: Amy Harris, Oliver Ortiz And Ian Wright
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SAScon 2012
Presentation By: Amy Harris,
Oliver Ortiz And Ian Wright
Key Points • Creating a brand is vital
• Mobile is growing rapidly
• Quality content is more important than ever
• PRs and SEOs are increasingly operating in
the same arena
• Exact match anchor text and over optimised
on-page content are on the way out
• We’re all Blackhats now
Big Brand Perspective • We may now finally be in the year of the mobile
• Mobile causes problems for site design (app v. site)
• Social is much easier for some brands - Seatwave v.
Moneysupermarket
• Focus on consumer benefits, provide value or a
gimmick
• Goal for all brands is to turn users into ‘Brand
Evangelists’
• Build on top of Social rather just building for Social
• Google updates mean more natural looking pages
and link profiles – use a softer touch
• Brand traffic ultimate goal, which also helps PPC
• API traffic can also be huge - Expedia
Stat-o-Rama: An Industry in
Numbers • How many visits to search engines per month in the
UK?
• What month is the most popular for people to buy
contact lenses? Why?
• People are becoming wary of social media
• Focus on terms in your industry luxury v. designer
jewellery
• Llloyds TSB – Facebook and Olympics 65% Social
Media – 8% left to visit another page on Llloyds site –
50% of whom had never been on their site before
• 1 in 5 minutes online is spent on Facebook
• Non-PC share of internet growing quickly - 10% now
• Characters key financial site branding – Meerkats
Running a European Search
Campaign
• Every country needs a different approach
• Understand the market and do research
• “About Us” page is important
• Site needs to have a flavour of localization
• Localize templates: Structure > Physical layout >
Navigation
• Local Domains are by far the safest
• Send Google signals that eg. Google.fr is the
local Search Engine
• Landing page > always in preferred
language
• Use languages within the country, eg.
Catalan
• Newly translated Domain > at least 10
pages
• Colours play a role
• Education website for MBA, targeting
Scandinavia and India.
• In Scandinavia > Young people doing
research (English)
• In India > Parents doing research
(Translate)
• Main Factors to consider:
• Design
• Language
• Colour
• Their Own Payment Systems
Social Commerce
• Evolving from something that already
exists
• “Social Giving”
• Seal of approval from a friend > inspiration
and discovery
• Important to get key influencers to
purchase
• It is key to get someone who is engaged in
the product they purchase
Are PRs from Venus and SEOs
from Mars
• SEOs and PRs increasingly operate in the
same arena but approach things differently
• PRs most concerned with revenue not other
KPIs
• PRs measure influence and brand rather than
links and rankings – Brand links rather than
anchor
• Launch new things in January as everyone
wants to write about the next new thing
• Writing press releases try to think what we
want to get out of it
Breaking Free of Panda
Google Updates?
• Google Panda (Feb 2011) • Google Venice (Feb 2012) • Google Panda (April 2012) •Google Penguin (May 2012)
According to Google's official blog post when Panda launched...
“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites – sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites- sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”
What do these updates mean?
• Google is clamping down on sites that have:
(a) a large quantity of low quality links
(b) over-optimised keyword anchor text
• Not tolerating black hat tactics
• The changes lower the rank of low-quality sites and put higher quality sites near the top of search results
Impact in Numbers
• 60% of sites – no effect on rankings
• 30% of sites – drops on specific keywords but other keywords are still ranking high
How to break the cycle?
• Not all content is good content
• Push for quality
• Utilise a varied link profile to promote your site
Final Tips
• Get your link profile brand friendly –
over reliance on non brand anchors = slippery slope
• If possible - tie into Google Authorship Programme
• Brand anchor text to protect yourself + good quality sites + building authority
• Create a website with the user in mind
Search And Social – The Legal
Perspective • UK companies can’t own twitter followers even if the
account is branded as long as only one person is
using it.
• Issues of social media use off hours
• Normally companies own what’s produced by
employees during work hours – but freelancers are
separate
• Headlines can be copyrighted
• Linking, in theory, can get your in legal trouble (TBT)
• Hate sites can operate as long as they don’t profit
• EU cookie law comes into effect today
• Testimonials need clear trail – can’t be made up
How to Create an Online Brand
through Search
• Used the quote:
“The consumer is not a moron; she is your wife”
• Understand your customer and what they are
interested in
• Important not to look down on them!
• Originality
• Learn by copying then start deploying your own
style
• Buy a Product > “Does”
• Buy a Brand > “Says”
• Stories are key to brands
• We don’t like to think > Rely on shared knowledge
• Meta description > Benefits instead of a feature
• Create something of social meaning
• Good way to understand a brand is by knowing
what it stands against
• He organises #BrightonSEO.
• A free SEO event in September.
• Tickets to the last event sold out in less
than 13 minutes
• http://www.brightonseo.com/
Building An In-House SEO
Team • Companies that do well with SEO employ PPC like
ROI expectations and invest accordingly (with risk
discount)
• Branding is good for defensive SEO
• Small experiments before big ones
• Monthly contracts for agencies
• PR key to success for many online brands (e.g.
MoneySupermarket)
• Need short, medium, long terms content/link
strategies
Social Media Meets PR
• “Social Media is still PR”
• Just a different channel
• Social is about relationships
• Crucial: Fans and metrics
Reputation Management in a Digital Age
A brand isn't what you think it is – it's what your customers think
(and say it is)
• Good examples
- BP oil spill
- Primark and ethical trading
• Bad examples
- Interflora on Valentine's Day – didn't deal with tweets about missed deliveries
Reward the Positive
• Acknowledge positive feedback
• Keep a record of who they are
• Dedicate a member of your team to 'network' with the
followers
• Respond to any questions they have
• Engage with followers
Dealing with the Negative
• Uncover and respond to all mentions
• Respond publicly so others can see
• Never respond posing as a happy customer
• Don't ignore negative press (it won't go away)
Brand Monitoring Tools • BrandsEye
• Brandwatch
• Trackur
• Sprout Social
• Free tools? Tweet Deck, Google Alerts, HootSuite, Social Mention
Brand Monitoring Dashboard
http://kooz.ai/brand-monitoring-dash
Is There a Place For Blackhat SEO
In Modern Day SEO Campaigns?
• We’re all Blackhats now: “While SEOs can
provide clients with valuable services,
some unethical SEOs have given the
industry a black eye through their overly
aggressive marketing efforts and their
attempts to manipulate search engine
results in unfair ways.”
Social, Mobile and Twitter
• Interstices: It means the gap between things
• If you want to understand mobile you need to really
mind about the gaps
• The potency of gaps between things (now
often filled with social media)
• Bring those moments (like reading media)
to a space that didn’t exist
• Exploit Interstices, 3 Rules:
1. Truly Mobile
2. Simple
3. Easy to Action
Anyone recognise this in
themselves?
• Development of the web is accelerating –
not slowing
• Two lessons of what is changing:
1. It is mobile first
2) What used to be the gaps are now
becoming the main event
1. We are using our phones to bring
connectivity in every conceivable space.
• Anyone feel like they cram more into their
life now than they ever did before?
• Anyone always use their phone while they
are waiting for a coffee?
• Anyone routinely find themselves walking
down the street on their phone?
• By putting mobile phones in people’s
hands we have changed what people are
able to fill their time with
Interstices 3 Rules:
1) Truly Mobile
• Design web for mobile too
• Be genuinely and uniquely mobile
• Massive shift towards mobile
2) Simple
• Text is Much quicker than email. Email > 2 days, Text > 4 minutes
• The potency of simplicity
• Text is > Mobile, Simple and Easy Action
3) Easy to Action
• Ease of transaction > Most important
• Glances
• People look at mobile an average of 150 times a day
Seize the opportunity in the interstices
General Twitter
• Twitter Ads
• Discovery Tab: Surfacing things that are adjacent to your
interests
• Mobile is point of Sale.
• Create a hashtag (#) for a campaign/program - eg. Nike
#makeitcount, X-Factor
• It directs people to the program
• Incredibly strong for holding a conversation together. eg.
#prayformuamba
• Journalists use Twitter handle
• 60% of audience tweet and create content, 40% of people
don’t
• David Guetta
• Twitter is now Open to advertising
How Social Media & The Internet
Are Changing The Media
• Technology is changing rapidly – we don’t
know the winner yet
• Personal/Professional dilemmas exist for
many people in the media
• We don’t have a lot of control over social
media, but no one else does either
Increasing Site Engagement
What is engagement and what works?
· Things to keep people interested, content that sparks curiosity, encourages them to stay on your site
· Levels and nature of engagement on your site need to be determined by KPIs and objectives
· Engagement is only a metric: with this measure you cannot gauge the level of engagement or quality of user experience
Good Site Engagement Example
LINGsCARS.com
· looks like a cluttered and off-putting site
· offers a unique brand experience – engagement comes from the personality of the brand
Link Building 1/3 • Scalable link building very tough in post-
Penguin/Panda world
• Buying links no longer a good idea
• Creating massive content still a good idea
• Know your and competitor’s link profiles
• Outreach key
• Label links as retractable
• Build to what Google wants two years from now
• Providing education materials one way to get links
• PR increasingly key to media mentions/good quality
links
Link Building 2/3
• Debate about if Google is correlating anchor text
with PPC value
• Google may be monitoring those who’ve sold links
• If you get a warning screenshot e-mails, but don’t
send
• Negative SEO can work – outsource to India or do a
campaign badly (xrumer spam may be too obvious)
• WHOIS fake link requests are happening
• Links as part of partner contracts
• Less than 20% of all links using exact match anchor
text
• Citation (Brand mention) even without links has
value
Link Building 3/3
• Variation key in link building – heavy on brand terms
• Incentivise users/customers to build links for you
• Ranking content based on 7 day likes/tweets/+1s
• Competitions still work
• Rel=author should be used
• We have to think more like PRs
• LSI keywords next to brand link can still be powerful
Marketing across Multiple
Platforms
• 1.2 billion Mobile web users
• Don’t forget TV, non-digital space
• Tablets > content consumption not creation
• A form of business communication
• Tablet KPI is focussed around engagement
• PC/Desktop KPI is focussed around engagement
and response
• Smartphone KPI is focussed around response
• Tailor message to device
• Smart TVs, connective TVs > Not current from a
commercial perspective
People will be accessing devices at different
times
Delivering Insights from Social Media
Social Media Tips?
· Use “their language” to help build “our language”
· Social cannot stand alone and needs to be part of the entire marketing strategy
How to Measure Social Media?
(1) Outreach
(propensity to share and engage)
- Klout: http://klout.com/home
(2) Influence
Psychology in Search
• Psychological factors:
• We trust the opinion of authorities
• We like to spread the word
• We want what others have
• We are open to peer pressure > want to
belong to the group
• We can’t resist our kids
• Google > Own background > Making it
personal
• Google + is an identification management
tool
• http://google.com/s2/search/social
• Google are making connections
• Targeting and the way people think > Then
make it personal
• People do click on personalized
results/rich snippet results
• Jesus was the first social marketer. “He
had 12 followers, and one unfollowed him”
• Target a “Talker” > Shares content
• Clients are not going to trust you if you
say you’re good, but will do if others do
• Target people to influence each other by
getting them talking
• Target people based on trust
Creating Effective Search
Campaigns • Expectations, measure results, report, refine, start
again
• Make sure data is not just in one person’s head –
have a back-up
• Links are still about relationships
• Use connectors to launch new campaign – special
Press Release, pictures, go live URL, advance
warning
• Outsourcing works so long as there is a project
manager
• Peer review for dev. teams
Understanding the Role of Social in Search
Will link building die as a result of social signals in search?
· It won't die but will decline
· It is easy to manipulate search results using links, but doing the same with the social graph is much harder to do
· “If you have social signals and no links, then it will look as unnatural as links with no social”
Key Points • Creating a brand is vital
• Mobile is growing rapidly
• Quality content is more important than ever
• PRs and SEOs are increasingly operating in
the same arena
• Exact match anchor text and over optimised
on-page content are on the way out
• We’re all Blackhats now
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