7/13/2015 1 Kara Stolpinski & Sam Minnis, Nexus Direct Gary Westermark, TIAA-CREF Seven Things You MUST Know About SEO #Bridge15 Your Presenters Kara Stolpinski, [email protected]Sam Minnis [email protected]Gary Westermark [email protected]#Bridge15 Seven Things You MUST Know About SEO 1. Content 2. Technical 3. Social 4. SEO & Pay Per Click 5. 2015 Planning 6. Analytics/Tools 7. Mobile SEO
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How does your content speak to everything you do and how is it found?
Content: A Little Search Engine Context
• True as it ever was, “Content is king.” Mission of a search engine: match users to their ideal content — a GREAT user experience
• The SEARCHER is at the focal point, not the advertiser
• Have what the user wants on your site
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Content: Inbound Links
• Inbound links are links pointing to one of your pages from another website.
• Earning a link from a high-quality, relevant website will not only help with your SEO but also with referral traffic, which can lead to more sales and brand exposure.
• Inbound SEO links are still the biggest influence for search engines — even as algorithms have changed
Content: Earning Inbound Links
• Creating desirable, UNIQUE content that people will want to share remains the best way to earn links.
Content: One-upping the Competition
• The Google Panda algorithm negatively targets "thin and duplicate content with little or no added value” — so rather than creating multiple versions of the same content, it’s important to focus on creating a single version of content that is BETTER and more comprehensive than the competition.
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Content: Stale Content
• Problem: content freshness: stale or unchanged content is not likely to rank high, so be sure your content is updated and new content is always being added
• Solution: Tie in social channels for an automated baseline solution
Content: Qualities of Good Content
• Good Content is:• More than articles and blog posts — be
sure to include videos and images
• Supplies a demand
• Is linkable
• Easy to use, navigate, and understand
Content: On-page Factors
• Include important keyword(s) in the HTML Page title as well as in the first 150 words in the body
• Consider outbound links to high authority sites
• MULTIMEDIA! Keywords in HTML “alt” tags
• Aim for longer content posts (especially for competitive keywords) — 1000 or more words
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#Bridge15
Seven Things You MUST Know About SEO #2
Technical:
You have great content, but is it indexed correctly as not to confuse search
engines?
Technical: Search Engine Needs
• Remember, great content delivers value to the user.
• When planning around inbound marketing, putting the user’s interests and needs first is paramount.
• What about search engines’ needs? What happens when search engines have trouble finding or understanding your great content?
Technical: Duplicate Content
• Watering down great content – the effects of duplication
• A confused Google “Crawler” bot
• Of all the duplicate versions of this content, which one gets the “SEO” credit (aka the “Link Juice”)?
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Technical: Duplicate Content Solution
• HTML Canonical tag is your friend, tells search engines exactly which page is the original source, which page gets the “Link Juice”
• Place it on in the all versions’ HTML header sections
• SEO is primarily about getting links pointed back to your site … social is a way to “cast the net,” get noticed & shared.
• Helps to have followers — build that list!
• For now, social is an indirect tool of SEO for Google. For Bing, it is more direct.
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Social: Maintain a Social Presence
• As of 2010, Twitter handled 19 billion search queries a month.
• In 2012, Facebook said it got around one billion search queries per day.
• As of March 2010, YouTube got roughly 3.7 billion search queries a month.
Social: Takeaways for Your Social Presence
• Google is not the only source for searching, some start on their social network of choice. Don’t miss out!
• Maintain a social presence where your audience may look for you. How do you find this out? Google Analytics data on referrals & demographic information is insightful.
Social: Measurement Reports
• Hard time measuring social? Try the Google Analytics Assisted Conversions Report
• “Assisted Conversions” — one Google report that can give you more detailed metrics on social performance.
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Social: Measurement Reports continued
• Is the [social] channel a better converter or conversion assistant?
• Check out Assisted vs. Last Click Conversion Value.
Social: Assisted Conversion Report
Social: Google Analytics Model Comparison Report
• The “model comparison” report is slightly more advanced.
• Allows for comparison of a last click attribution model to other ready-made models (such as first click) or “house”models.
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Social: Google Analytics Model Comparison Report
Social: Measurement Reports Takeaways
• Social may have conversion value that is not inherently obvious via last click model.
• Use these reports to measure changes to social strategy over time.
#Bridge15
Seven Things You MUST Know About SEO #4
SEO & Pay Per Click:
Combining SEO and PPC. Can they play together to help increase leads and
conversions?
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SEO & PPC: Overview
• SEO and Pay Per Click: different beasts (same fauna)
• SEO: Long-term, difficult to measure, free
• PPC: Short-term, easy to measure, but … not free
SEO & PPC: Pros / Cons of PPC
• Pros: Immediacy, accuracy (targeting various stages of the conversion funnel), foothold for remarketing, ability to measure, & affordable
• Cons: Traffic does not equal conversions, complicated, & you pay-to-play
SEO & PPC: Pros / Cons of SEO
• Pros: FREE (ish), catch those ad ignorers, increased authority, better conversion rate at 14.6% versus 1.7% for print / email
• Cons: Long, on-going process, takes commitment• ROI will take some time, which increases
with competition
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SEO & PPC: Cons of SEO, cont.
• Cons Continued: “get on the first page or else” – 75% of searchers do not progress to past page 1 of the results page• No full control: Google does not reveal its
algorithm, SEOs operate on educated guesses and word-of-mouth
• Potential of costly penalization with future updates
SEO & PPC – Like PB&J
• When a brand name appeared in both organic and paid search results, the brand attracted 92% of total clicks. When the brand was mentioned only in organic, the brand [received] only 60% of clicks.
Search Engine Planning: Mobile Friendly Considerations
• More to come in the Mobile SEO section…
Search Engine Planning: On the Horizon
• Bet on search engines to continue the mission of indexing great content while ignoring/penalizing “black hat” tricks.
• Content marketing and SEO will become even more intricately tied.
• Spoken voice queries, Linguistic User Interface (LUI) will present new search patterns, keyword usage.
Search Engine Planning: On the Horizon Cont.
• Personalization – how to deliver a tailored experience without ticking off the search engines
• Bye-bye keyword data, hello landing-page based metrics
• More mobile …
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#Bridge15
Seven Things You MUST Know About SEO #6
Analytics/Tools:
Are you tracking your conversions and do you know your ROI from your SEO
efforts?
Analytics/Tools: Defining & Planning for Success
• What does your ideal user do upon arrival on your website?
• What metrics measure the success of your website?
• How can you plan and strategize without these items specifically defined?
Analytics: Tracking Conversions
• Well-defined goals produce measurable outcomes and it is no different in the Web Analytics world.
• Think of Google Analytics goals / Bing Conversion Tracking as an explicit definition of what success looks like on your site.
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Analytics: Tracking Conversions – Google Analytics Goals
• Google Analytics allows for up to 20 assigned goals.
• Goals can be assigned to one of five predetermined groups or categories. Use this feature if your goals fall neatly into categories (engagement, social, purchase, etc.) — which is helpful for a zoomed out perspective.
Analytics: Tracking Conversions – Google Analytics Goal Types
• Goals can be one of four types: duration, pages per session, event, and destination.
• Duration goals – sessions that exceeded a certain amount of time.
• Pages per session – a user visits at least X number of pages.
• Events – triggers when a predetermined page-level event fires.
Analytics: Tracking Conversions – Google Analytics Destination Goals
• Destination goals represent a URL (page address). When a user successfully navigates to it, Google logs a successful conversion.
• This allows for computation of conversion rate, an essential metric for analysis and strategic decision making.
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Analytics: Tracking Conversions – Google Analytics Destination Goals
• Chances are, the desired actions of your website have corresponding “completion” pages. These usually make great goals.
• Ex: Any “Thank you” page. Thanks for signing up for the newsletter, thanks for purchasing / donating, thanks for sharing on your social network, etc.
Analytics: Tracking Conversions – Goal Value
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Analytics: Tracking Conversions – Goal Value cont.
• Don’t be afraid to get creative with your Google Analytics goal values. In addition to the average value of a lead, feel free to include the average referral value and average lifetime value.
Analytics: Google Analytics Goal Funnel
Analytics: Tracking Conversions
• With all conversion goals set up, your analysis of your analytics data will be that much more detailed.
• Analysis of channel / campaign / segment has richer, more direct data to pull from.
• The E-commerce setting in GA will allow you to establish a value PER transaction with some account specific Javascript on the goal URL page (translation: Find a Javascript nerd like me).