Top Banner
SEO Masterclass Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz Webit, Sofia October 2010
166

SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Jan 20, 2015

Download

Technology

All 166 slides on advanced SEO and social media master class from Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, at Webit 2010 in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Welcome message from author
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
Page 1: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

SEO Masterclass

Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz

Webit, Sofia October 2010

Page 2: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Topics for the Masterclass

• Correlation analysis of search results• Changes from Google Instant• Information architecture & navigation structure• Overcoming Twitter’s cannibalization of the link graph• Making Analytics Actionable• New Research: Topic Modeling in the Search Results

Page 3: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Use Statistical Analysis to Answer

Important SEO Questions

Page 4: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Correlation ≠ Causation

The more I wear suits, the more I speak on panels.

Therefore: wearing suits causes me to speak on panels.

Page 5: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Understanding Correlation Significance

No Correlation

Exact Match Domain

Perfect Correlation

Most of our data for search rankings falls in this region(which we’d expect given algorithms w/ 200+ ranking factors)

Page 6: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Question #1:

How to Best “Optimize” a Site for

Search Engine Rankings

Page 7: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Methodology

• 11,351 SERPs via Google AdWords Suggest

• 1st Page Only (usually ~10 results per page)

• Correlations are w/ Higher Position on Page 1

• Controlled for SERPs Where All (or None) of the

Results Matched the Metric

Page 8: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Methodology

Looking for elements that higher ranking

pages have that lower ones do not

NOT looking at raw counts of how many

pages featured a given element

Page 9: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Contains All Query Terms in Domain Name

Exact Match Hyphenated

Domain

Exact Match Domain

Highest Stderr = 0.0241804

Page 10: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Our Interpretation

• Exact match domains remain powerful in both

engines (anchor text could be a factor, too)

• Hyphenated versions are less powerful, though

more frequent in Bing (G: 271 vs. B: 890)

• Just having keywords in the domain name has

substantial positive correlation

Page 11: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Highest Stderr = 0.00350211

KWs in Body

KWs in Alt Attribute

KWs in H1 Tag

KWs in URL

KWs in Title

Page 12: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Our Interpretation

• The Alt attribute of images is interesting

• Putting KWs in URLs is likely a best practice

• Everyone optimizes titles (G: 11,115 vs. B: 11,143).

Differentiating here is hard.

• (Simplistic) on-page optimization isn’t a huge factor

Page 13: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Highest Stderr = 0.0269818

.gov

.edu

.info

.net

.org

.com

Page 14: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Our Interpretation

• More reasons to believe Google when they

say .gov, .info and .edu are not special cased

• The .org TLD extension is surprising – do they earn

more links? Less spam? More non-commercial?

• Don’t forget about branding/user behavior - .com is

still probably a very good thing (at least own it)

Page 15: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Highest Stderr = 0.0033353

Content Length (tokes in body)

URL Length(chars.)

Domain Name Length (chars.)

Page 16: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Our Interpretation

• Shorter URLs are likely a good best practice

(especially on Bing)

• Long domains may not be ideal, but aren’t awful

• Raw content length seems marginal in correlation

Page 17: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Question #2:

What Kind of Links Matter & How

Should We Evaluate Links?

Page 18: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Highest Stderr = 0.00335677

# of Linking Root Domains to URL

# of Links to URL

Page 19: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Our Interpretation

• Links are likely still a major part of the algorithms

• Bing may be slightly more naïve in their usage of

link data than Google, but better than before

• Diversity of link sources remains more important

than raw link quantity

Page 20: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Highest Stderr = 0.00415058

# of Links w/ exact match anchor text

# of linking root domains w/

exact match anchor text

Page 21: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Our Interpretation

• Many anchor text links from the same domain likely

don’t add much value

• Anchor text links from diverse domains, however,

appears highly correlated

• Bing and Google are relatively similar in evaluating

these metrics

Page 22: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Correlation of Page-Level Link Valuation Metrics

Page 23: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Our Interpretation

• PageRank (and similar algorithms) are not particularly

representative of rankings (but are somewhat correlated)

• Linking domains are likely a better metric than raw links

• Page Authority is reasonably good, but has a way to go

Page 24: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Correlation of Domain-Level Link Valuation Metrics

Page 25: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Our Interpretation

• No single domain valuation metric is especially well

correlated with rankings

• Rankings of individual pages may be more

disparate we typical think re: “domain authority”

• Overall, we’re still very naïve when it comes to

understanding how links influence search rankings

Page 26: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Question #3:

How Does Google Instant Change

Keyword Demand / SEO?

Page 27: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/report_google_search_box_in_firefox_accounts_for_9.php

Are Most Users Seeing/Using Google Instant?

Page 28: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Methodology: Keyword Referral Search Data

• Look at keyword sending traffic via analytics

• Distribute into groups by word-length

• Analyze shifts in demand by keywords that

brought visits to the site

• Compare from period prior to Google Instant

and directly after

Page 29: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

http://www.mecmanchester.co.uk/blog/google-instant-data-after-12-days.html

Via MEC Manchester (UK)5 Sites, 4 Verticals, 10K+ Keywords

Page 30: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Via Distilled Consulting (UK)11 Sites, Various Sizes (3.5K – 75K weekly visits), 75K+ Keywords

http://www.distilled.co.uk/blog/seo/impact-of-google-instant/

Page 31: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Via ConductorMultiple sites, 880K visits, 10Ks of keywords

http://blog.conductor.com/2010/09/what%E2%80%99s-been-the-impact-of-google-instant-on-searcher-behavior-so-far-not-much/

Page 32: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Interesting Takeaways

• Google Instant seems not to have shifted keyword

demand by much (if at all)

• Google “suggest” has been out for a long time

already; users are likely accustomed to this feature

• The “long tail” may get longer/shorter over time, but

Instant seems less responsible than other factors

Page 33: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Goals of Successful Information

Architecture

Page 34: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Semantically Logical Structure

Page 35: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Minimize Click-Depth

Page 36: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Maximize Usability of Navigation

Page 37: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Tips for Semantically Useful

Navigation

Page 38: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Initially Design without Keyword Research

Page 39: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Add in Keyword Research Based Modifications

Page 40: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Validate Architecture/Path with Non-SEOs

Page 41: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Tips for Minimal Click-Depth

Page 42: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Imitate the Ideal Nav Pyramid

Page 43: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Broad Linking at Top Levels

Page 44: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Editorial Categorization > User-Defined

Page 45: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Editorial Categorization > User-Defined

Page 46: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

HACK: Multi-Level HTML Sitemap

Page 47: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Tips for Usable Navigation

Page 48: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Obvious Navigation Elements

Page 49: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Naming Conventions that Match Intent

Page 50: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

User & Usability Testing

Page 51: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Avoiding Common “Big Site”

Problems

Page 52: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Duplicate Content Issues

Page 53: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Rel Canonical Tags

Page 54: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Google Webmaster Tools

Page 55: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

SEOmoz Web App

Page 56: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Scraping & Re-Publishing

Page 57: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Employ Absolute URLs

Absolute: <a href=“http://www.seomoz.org/blog”> anchor </a>

Relative: <a href=“../blog”> anchor </a>

Page 58: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

C&D vs. Large, Credible Orgs that Scrape

Page 59: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Don’t Go Overboard w/ Bot Blocking

Page 60: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Incomplete Indexation

Page 61: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Track Referrals, not Site: Commands

Page 62: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Check Page “Types” that Don’t Receive Traffic

Page 63: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

XML Sitemaps

Page 64: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Content Syndication

Page 65: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

RSS Feeds

Page 66: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Twitter for Indexation

Page 67: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

“Search Results” in the SERPs

Page 68: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Create Category “Landing” Pages

Page 69: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Remove Obvious Traces of “Search” on Landing Pages

Page 70: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Thin Content Issues

Page 71: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Bolster w/ UGC

Page 72: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Employ Scalable Content Production

Page 73: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Keep “Thin” Pages Out of the SERPs

Page 74: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Faceted Navigation

Page 75: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Rel Canonical Can Help

Page 76: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Use AJAX to Reload Pages

Page 77: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Watch Out for Google Crawling Javascript

Page 78: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Offer Facets Only to Logged-In / Cookied Users

Logged-In = 345 / Googlebot = 141

Page 79: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Overcoming Twitter’s

Cannibalization of the Link Graph

Page 80: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Way Back in 2007

Interesting content, blog posts & linkbait earned LOTS of links

Page 81: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Fast Forward to 2010

Not so many links (in comparison)

Page 82: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Fast Forward to 2010

But tons of social sharing (and tweets)

Page 83: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Are Pages Linking Out Less?

Via Linkscape’s web index

Page 84: SEO Master Class Webit 2010
Page 85: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

How Do We Earn Traditional Web

Links (the kind search engines love)?

Page 86: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Tactic #1:

Embeddable Content

Page 87: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Infographics

http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/24/google-facts-and-figures-massive-infographic/

+1,085 links from

356 root domains

Page 88: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Badges

http://www.zillow.com/webtools/badges/

Page 89: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Value-Add Widgets

Page 90: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Tactic #2:

Reference Material

Page 91: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Research & Data

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2014332,00.html

Page 92: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Awards + Rankings

http://www.moneycrashers.com/top-personal-finance-blogs/

Page 93: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Citation-Worthy Explanations

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-algorithm-pretty-charts-math-stuff

Page 94: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Tactic #3:

Syndicated Content

Page 95: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Niches where content is low-supply/high-demand

http://perfectmarket.com/vault_index_summer_2010_infographic

Page 96: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

ID sites that already syndicate

from someone else

Page 97: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Tactic #4:

Stick to Niches w/o Twitter Adoption

Page 98: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Find sectors where traditional

blogs/forums dominate conversation

http://www.eng-tips.com/

Page 99: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Many of these “old-school” sites have

followed external links (but don’t abuse these)

Note the nofollow

highlighting

Page 100: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Some “Web 2.0” Ones, Too

Impressive domain and

page level metrics

Page 101: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Tactic #5:

Friends, Partners, Customers &

Vendors

Page 102: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Friends + Family

Page 103: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Partners

Page 104: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Customers

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/headsmacking-tip-1-link-requests-in-order-confirmation-emails

Page 105: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Vendors

http://burton.kontain.com/evogear/

Page 106: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Tactic #6:

Twitter May Take Your Tweets, But

They’ll Never Take Your Content!

Page 107: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Turn Your Tweets Into Content

http://twournal.com/home

Page 108: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Turn Tweets from industry leaders into

content, too (this entices them to share)

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/bing-vs-google-prominence-of-ranking-elements

Page 109: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Tactic #7:

Can’t Beat ‘em? Join ‘em!

Page 110: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Twitter is (almost certainly) influencing (at least some) rankings

Lots of tweets, virtually no links,

but remarkable rankings

Page 111: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Twitter can send lots of direct traffic

Page 112: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

You need to target the right Tweeters

http://twitaholic.com/top100/followers/

Page 113: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

The Ones Who Send Real Traffic

http://mashable.com/2009/07/07/twitter-clickthrough-rate/

Page 114: SEO Master Class Webit 2010
Page 115: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Use the “Rank”Not the “Grade”

http://twittergrader.com

Page 116: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Takeaways

• # of Followers DEFINITELY isn’t everything

• Tweeting heavily may not necessarily hurt the attention

people pay to your tweets

• Klout score probably isn’t great for predicting the reach of

an individual’s tweets/messages

• TwitterGrader Rank may be useful for predicting the

traffic you’d get from a tweeter

• Avg. CTR across 254 shared links = 1.17% (don’t feel

bad if only 1/100 followers clicks a link)

Page 117: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Making Analytics Actionable

Page 118: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

To Make Analytics Actionable Always Ask:#1 - “Why am I measuring this?”

#2 – “What would I do if results were different?”

Page 119: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

# of Visits Per Search Engine Over Time

Page 120: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Action: Measure against search engine market shares & volume to determine whether you’re making positive strides

Page 121: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

# Pages Getting Search Referrals Over Time

Measure this number on a weekly/monthly basis

Page 122: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Action: Discover if indexation is an issue worth effort

This number sucks. Learn more about why at:www.seomoz.org/blog/indexation-for-seo-real-numbers-in-5-easy-steps

Page 123: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

# of Keywords Sending Traffic from aSearch Engine over Time

Page 124: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Action: Determine if content additions are accretive and what drives growth/shrinkage in search traffic

Did rankings fall? Or is demand down?

Page 125: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Search Referral Analytics

Page 126: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

# of Visits per Keyword

Page 127: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Action: Analyze top traffic drivers from a value perspective, check rankings for potential easy wins & get answers if traffic dips

“SEO Tools” is a big win and we could rank higher

Page 128: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

First-Time vs. Returning Visits per Keyword

The keyword “SEO” leans toward first-time visits

Page 129: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Action: Determine value of reaching new visitors vs. converting branded users (focus efforts on the more valuable one)

This metric speaks to business strategy about converting existing fans vs. reaching new customer segments

Page 130: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Distribution of Keyword Referrals

Page 131: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Action: Discover strengths vs. opportunities (60-70% of traffic is typically in the long tail and it converts better)

Page 132: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Keyword Rankings

www.seomoz.org/rank-tracker

Page 133: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Action: Know if traffic spikes/dropoffs are from rankings, indexation or search demand shifts

Rankings and Traffic both Dropped

Page 134: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Page Two Rankings

Referrals from Page 2

Page 135: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Action: Identify low hanging fruit that can be optimized quickly

Could totally 301 this to www.opensiteexplorer.org

Page 136: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Engagement Analytics

Page 137: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Time on Site

Page 138: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Action: Compare to ROI metrics; if they correlate, improve on keywords/landing pages with low time on site

Average “upgrade to PRO” visitor spent a whopping 44 minutes on SEOmoz!

Page 139: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

# of Page Views

Page 140: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Action: Depending on your metrics, a “sweet spot” of pages browsed often dictates a conversion event – optimize towards it

Average “upgrade to PRO” visitor visits 12X the pages of an average visitor

Page 141: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Repeat Visit Ratio

Page 142: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Action: Find what content/activities/referrers send engaged traffic and copy those while improving subpar pages

Page 143: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Sharing/Linking Activity

“Sharing Activity” Conversions

Page 144: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Action: Find patterns/sources that predict sharing activities (both content and CTAs) and make them testable conversion events

GA allows you to set custom actions as “goals” then filter, monitor and improve on these metrics

Page 145: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Latent Conversion Tracking

Page 146: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Removing Last-Click Attribution

Page 147: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Full Path Analysis

Page 148: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Initial Referrer

www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-get-past-last-touch-attribution-with-google-analytics

Page 149: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

ROI Analytics

Page 150: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Lifetime Customer Value

Page 151: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Cost of Acquisition

Page 152: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Return on Investment

ROI = CLTV - CAC

No. No. No.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Page 153: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Always Be Asking “What’s the ROI?”

Get the ROI for every category (and subset)

Page 154: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

New Research: Topic Modeling in the

Search Results

Page 155: SEO Master Class Webit 2010
Page 156: SEO Master Class Webit 2010
Page 157: SEO Master Class Webit 2010
Page 158: SEO Master Class Webit 2010
Page 159: SEO Master Class Webit 2010
Page 160: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Methodology: LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation)

• Build an LDA model based on the English

language Wikipedia dataset (8mil+ pages)

• Generate scores for top 10 rankings across

several thousand search results

• Look at correlation of search rankings with

scores (in process)

Page 161: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Chance of word is because of a topic=

(Number of times the document already uses that topic a lot)X

(Number of times that word has been in that topic)

Simplified LDA Formula

Page 162: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Tool to Test it Out

http://www.seomoz.org/labs/lda

Page 163: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Tool to Test it Out

http://www.seomoz.org/labs/lda

Page 164: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Tool to Test it Out

We might need to work the “relevance”

of our content

http://www.seomoz.org/labs/lda

Page 165: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Interesting Takeaways

• There may be more to “on-page” optimization then

just using target keywords in the right places / ways

• Search engines keep saying “make relevant content”

– perhaps we can get more scientific and precise about

what “relevant” means

• Our LDA topic modeling work is still in its infancy.

Expect more data, correlations, etc. in weeks to come.

Page 166: SEO Master Class Webit 2010

Q+A

Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder, SEOmoz

• Twitter: @randfish

• Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog

• Email: [email protected]