Local Search in 2023 - Must-Know and Must-Do Tactics
Advanced SEO Training & Workshop in NYC at Webgrrls
1. Advanced SEO
Foundation & Deep Dive Techniques
Etela Ivkovic, GM, DragonSearch - @Etela, +Etela
Josepf Haslam, Biz Dev, DragonSearch - @Josepf
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2. Background on SEO
What/Why
• Context of SEO: looking at
it’s influence and history
and tying it all together
with
“How to grow your
business online” infograph
Resource
• The Complete Walk-Through to Grow Your
Business Online #Infographic
• The DragonSearch Online Marketing Manual
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3. Context Slide from infographics
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4. 97%
of online consumers research products & services
online before buying
Source: BIA/Kelsey Group, User View Wave VII, May 2010
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8. 0. Self Published Indexes/Directories
1. Human Published SERPs (Yahoo)
2. Counting Words on a Page (AltaVista/Lycos)
3. Counting Words & External Links (Google)
4. PageRank and “Voting” with Links (Google/Bing)
5. Social Voting, Site Authority, Awesome Content,
Citations, Connectedness, Author Citations/Rank
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11. What is SEO
• We take a deeper dive into the technical side of SEO
• Explaining how it has morphed from a three legged
stool to four legs and then turn to our learning
objectives
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12. What is SEO?
• Search Engine Optimization is the Art &
Science of helping your site be crawled,
indexed and be found in Organic/Natural
(nonpaid) Search Results.
• SEO is a process & a mindset
• Expands into site architecture, coding
performance, usability, content quality, user
interaction, sharing and conversion
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13. Optimization
The 3 legged stool of SEO just got another leg
1. Site Content
2. Site Code, Structure &
Performance
3. External Backlinks
4. Social Signals
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14. Learning Objectives
• We will clear the major elements of SEO in this
order:
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15. Learning Objectives
• The importance of and how to conduct advanced keyword research
• Advanced on-page optimization with cross linking strategy
• Advanced off-site factors including link building and maintenance
• How to evaluate the health of your back-link portfolio
• How to assess the strength of your competitor back-links and where their
visitors come from
• Discover how to identify the demographics of your top competitor sites
• What is Google Panda & Penguin updates and how to use them to your
advantage
• How to overcome common problems associated with CMS driven sites such
as duplicate content, spider traps
• SEO & Social Media
• Understand Google’s vision for the future of search to gain a competitive
advantage
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16. But first, the Goal
• “Start with the end in mind” Dr. Stephen Covey
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17. What’s The End Objective
THE MONEY!
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18. Be Found Online, Drive Results!
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19. How Do I Get More (and Better)
Organic Traffic?
• Understand keywords (search phrases) that
are important to you
• Understand how Google determines relevance
• Build and optimize your site based on keyword
research for all 4 elements of SEO (later)
• Get citations / shares / back-links to improve
positions over time
• Measure, tweak and test based on Analytics
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20. Take a Deep Breath
• A website is posted, linked to, or updates its
content
• Search engine “spider” or “bot” crawls the page
• Skims URL, page titles, meta data, text, images,
etc.
• Follow links, counts in/out
• Indexes keywords, SEMANTICS, notes frequency
• “Weighs” the page relative to others as well as
based on user behavior for topical relevance &
quality
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21. Advanced Keyword Research
• It all starts here, you have to understand what
people are searching for and how that is related to
your business.
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22. Advanced Keyword Research
• It starts with your own Analytics
• Track your internal site search
• Google Suggest
• AdWords Keyword Tool
• Google Trends
• YouTube Keyword Tool
• Keyword Spy
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24. What is Google Analytics?
• Free, easy-to-use web analytics tool
• Provides reports showing how visitors found your website, and
what they did when they got there
• Measures the effectiveness of your online and offline marketing
campaigns
• You STILL may need to build a Marketing ROI Dashboard to
integrate offline channels!!!
www.google.com/analytics
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25. What Answers Can Google Analytics
Provide?
Where are visitors
coming from?
What keywords did
they use?
Am I creating
effective content?
Where are visitors
abandoning my
shopping cart?
How can I improve
site interaction?
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26
27. Multi Channel Funnels –
Tracking the Marketing Mix
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28. Using AdWords for Keywords
• How does Google make 98% of its revenue?
– PPC
• Google’s AdWords will show you how Google
evaluates your site for Paid Advertising
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30. Research
– Body Text here
– Body Text here
– This is a test
– 123
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31.
32. Focus
Rumplestiltskin
Big Bad Wolf
Cinderella Sleeping Beauty
Mother Goose
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33. Google Trends for Search
View what the world is searching for and gain insights for your business
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34. Applying Trends to Predict Product Sales
• Compare interest between states or regions:
o What type of jeans should a Wyoming retailer stock?
o What about Oklahoma?
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35. Google Suggest
What people are searching for on Google
• Drops down a list of suggestions as you type
• People are asking Google..
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36. How to Use Google Suggest
• Type s-l-o-w-l-y, pay attention, be creative
• Keep typing letter by letter and the suggestions will change
• Try it signed out
o Google pulls from your history (if signed in) and other users, indexed sites and
ads.
• Great way to get ideas to expand your topical relevance, attract new
relevant traffic and consider paid ads
• Write down the ideas and run them through the Google AdWords keyword
research tool
o Experiment by checking “Don’t show ideas for new keywords”
o Compare the results, take them to Google Trends
o Watch Suggest for reputation management purposes
Resources
• How Google’s “Search Suggest” Works Video
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37. Short Head – Long Tail
Beast
Mythical Beast
Mythical New York Beast
Mythical New York Subway Beast
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40. Recap of Keyword Research
• Start with your site’s analytics
• Study your internal site search
• Play with Google Suggest
• Get search volume and competition data from
AdWords
• Check and compare key phrase performance over time
in Google Trends
• Map out your site and document your keyword
strategy
• Use the long tail
• Pay close attention to related terms and synonyms
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41. Advanced On-page Optimization (1)
• Search engines rank pages also factoring
o usability,
o social signals,
o site authority,
o user interaction with the site,
o speed, etc.
• Google factors in UX (User Experience)
o Running a CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) program will help focus on UX
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42. Advanced On-page Optimization (2)
• Research, benchmark, compare to competitors,
plan goals, prioritize
• Continue on-page optimization best practices!
• Use semantically related words and synonyms
• Get UGC (user generated content) like reviews,
comments, etc.
• Enable and encourage social sharing
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43. Advanced on-page optimization (3)
• Use Schema (more on this later)
• Pay attention to your entire site’s theme
• Create and publish awesome content on a regular
basis
• Make sure your site is structured well around your
audience’s needs and your important pages
• Use CRO to improve site performance and UX
• Ensure your site was built with clean code, is fast,
accessible, content is indexable
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44. Doing Things the Right Way
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45. Spiders read the HTML
<HTML>
</HTML>
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46. Organized HTML is Important!
<HTML>
<head>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</HTML>
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47. Dual view of code/SERP
<HTML>
<head>
<Title> My Title </Title>
<Meta Name=“Description” Content=“This is my page”>
<Meta Name=“Keywords” Content=“this, that, other”>
</head>
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48. <h1>My Top Header</h1>
<p>A bunch of paragraph text</p>
<h2>A Secondary Header</h2>
<p>And a lot more paragraph text</p>
<h3>A Tertiary Header</h3>
<p>And perhaps some more text</p>
<p>A List:</p>
<ul>
<li>A list item</li>
<li>Another list item</li>
<li>Yet another list item</li>
</ul>
<p>And this is a <a
href="http://mylink.com">LINK </a></p>
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49. Schema.org
• Structured data
o Helps search engines understand data & provide better search results
• Major search engines need and support it
• Enhanced search display – stand out
• Sites are already benefiting from it
• Events, products, recipes, reviews, videos, etc.
• Go through the list and use what applies to your site
• Tag your data
• Test your code, preview your snippet
Resources
• Schema.org - Full Hierarchy
• Schema.org's FAQ and blog
• Structured Data Testing Tool
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50. Recap of On-page Optimization
• Research, benchmark, plan
• Make sure your site is accessible to spiders, loads fast, is well
structured and coded
• Keep your site’s theme focused
• Follow traditional on-page optimization best practices: title,
description, headers, copy, images, link out to high authority
relevant sites, cross linking, URLs, call to action, etc.
• Do not over-optimize pages, links
• Use natural language: synonyms, related, relevant terms, stemming
variations, singular/plural, etc.
• Use Schema
• Get UGC
• Get social
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51. Resources & Tools
Tools
• Webmaster Tools
• Google Analytics
• Google AdWords Keyword Tool
• YouTube Keyword Tool
Blogs
• DragonSearch Marketology Blog
• SEOmoz – Blog and community
• Matt Cutts – Head of Google’s Webspam team
• Search Engine Land – News, insights
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52. Advanced Off-site Factors
• If you build it they will not come
• Unless you are the only one in the world with
your unique content
• We turn to off-site factors in SEO in this next
section
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53. Advanced Off-site Factors
• Off-site begins with “real”, great content
• Get your great content in front of the target
audience
• Where are they?
• Do real life stuff
o Get involved with on and offline communities, sponsor,
donate, help, etc.
• Be a guest author
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54. The Back Link Portfolio
Link building changed but is still very important
High
Special Sites
Easy Difficult
Low
Directories
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55. Not All Links are Equal
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56. Why Links Are Important
• Links to your pages confer authority and
relevancy to that page
• The more important the page linking to you, the
more beneficial for you
• The more relevant the page linking
to you is, the better
• The more relevant the wording
that people use to link to your
site, the better
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57. Why Links Are Important To Google
• Links tell Google what a website is about
• What keywords are relevant to your site
• How important your site is
• Where your site is
• What content niche the site occupies – what the
context of your site is
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58. Old School vs. New School SEO
OLD SCHOOL
NEW SCHOOL
SHORT HAND OPTIMIZATION BROADER LONG TAIL
Fueled
BACKLINKS
Reciprocal Linking RELATIONSHIPS by
Social
RELEVANT CONNECTIONS Media
RELEVANT CONNECTIONS
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60. How to Evaluate the Health of Your
Backlink Portfolio
• Walk-through SEOMOZ’s OpenSitExplorer.org
• A tool to evaluate your own site and your competition
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65. How to Assess the Strength of Your
Competitor Backlinks
• We continue our walk-through SEOMOZ’s Open Sit
Explorer to take a closer look at competitive back-
links
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66. Review Linking Domains & Anchor Text
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67. Local
• On-page
o Local signals - Address, local phone, geographical relevance, etc.
o Traditional SEO best practices – geo-modified
• Off-site
o Local links, listings, maps, proper categories, etc.
o NAP – name, address, phone number consistency
o Google+ - verification, accurate category, local address and phone number
o Who is ranking for your terms?
o What are they doing?
o How can you be on their site?
• Reviews
• Ratings
• Citations
• Social mentions
Resources
• 2012 Local Search Ranking Factors
• Glossary of Local Search Terms and Definitions
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68. Google Panda & Penguin
• We focus on the big two named changes, but, Google has
fundamentally changed how they index the web. Wake up
and pay attention!
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69. Google Panda Updates
• First released February 23, 2011
• Panda #24 released January 22, 2013
• Target:
thin content, content
farms, sites with high
ad-to-content ratios, quality,
authority, trust, integrates user
signals
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70. Panda – What Do I Do?
• Vision for your company and content. Differentiate yourself.
• Create awesome, unique content. Good content is not good
enough.
• Remove duplicate content
• Remove low quality pages
• Improve or merge shallow content into high-quality content
• Low quality content will affect the high quality pages and the entire
site’s rankings
• Strategic cross linking strategy
• Stop chasing the algorithm & focus on the user and
long term business development
– do #RCS: real company stuff
Resources:
• Google’s guidance on building high-quality sites
• Panda Update News
• Google Panda Update, One Year Later, Infographic
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71. Google Penguin Updates
• First released April 24, 2012
• Penguin #3 released October 5, 2012
• Target:
webspam, link schemes, over
optimized anchor text, keyword
stuffing, cloaking, low quality
content
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72. Penguin – What Do I Do?
• Did your traffic drop right after 4/24/12? Hit.
• Did your traffic increase? Benefited.
• Clean up on-page spam
• Remove spammy links – also check for WordPress
plug-ins that may insert hidden links
• Don’t stuff keywords in your anchor text for both
internal and external links
• Only use the Disavow Tool if you have to
• Diversify and build high-quality, relevant links
• Get social media love
Resources
• Report errors if you think you were penalized by mistake
• Google’s Disavow Links Tool – To Use or Not to Use?
• Link Building Strategies of Yosemite Sam Meet Google’s Disavow Tool
• Penguin Recovery During Panda Update Case Study
• Post-Penguin Anchor Text Case Study
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73. Do Not Do This! Please!
Resources
• Google’s Link Schemes Guidelines
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74. Panda <3 Penguin
Why I think they got
married
• Target spam, link
scheme
• Low quality content,
keyword stuffing
• Low quality links
• Authority, trust
• Social signals
• Moving towards
quality, unique
content & authorship
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75. Other Updates
• June 2010 - Caffeine rollout
o Index freshness: nearly real time
crawling and indexing
o Set the stage for Panda and Penguin
• May 2010 – Mayday; returning quality results for long-tail queries
• February 2011 – Panda
• April 2012 – Penguin
• May 2012 - Knowledge Graph
• August 2012— 7-Result SERPs
• September 2012 – Exact Match Domain Update
Resources
• Keyword Rich Domain Names – Should You Invest?
• 7 Is The New 10? Google Showing Fewer Results & More From Same Domain
• Search quality highlights: 65 changes for August and September
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76. How Do I Deal with Constant Updates?
• They are here to stay and more is coming
• Panda/Penguin changed the way many businesses approach
online marketing
• Understand your niche and audience; set yourself apart
• Focus on doing real business development = be update proof
• Google will crush algorithm manipulation efforts
• Have a multi pronged approach
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77. Overcoming CMS Problems
• Wordpress example using an SEO Plug-in as a
best practice
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82.
83. Not All CMS’s are Created Equal
• Open Source platforms like WordPress typically
have a wider variety of options
• SEO is critical to your website being found and
therefore your business results
• You may want to consider a platform move
before investing a lot of time into site
optimization…
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84. SEO & Social Media
• “The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind, the
answer is blowing in the wind.” Bob Dylan
• SEO & Social are merging in ways no-one can
accurately predict, however…
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85. Evidence of Social Influence
• 71% to 83% of people Social Influence on Purchasing
use “Reviews” to
influence purchase 17%
decisions Does not use
Uses Online Reviews
83%
• 80% will change a
decision based on
negative reviews
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86. Why Does Social Add so Much Value?
Revenue per Order % Difference
Social/Others $ 280.00 107%
Social Primary $ 249.08 84%
Paid/Org $ 230.07 70%
Display $ 206.00 52%
Organic $ 135.37
• A study of 56 billion impressions, 2.7 billion
clicks and $13 billion in revenue concludes that
inclusion of Social Media increases revenue 84%
over natural search alone.
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94. How Do I Measure Success?
• Install Google Analytics
• Set up goals
• Set up Google and Bing Webmaster Tools
• Your goal is not to RANK!
• Increase in visitors to the site
• Bounce rate
• Visit length
• Number of pages visited
• Engagement and sharing
• Comments, reviews, social sharing and mentions
• Conversions
• Sales, form submissions, leads, phone calls, etc.
• Measure, tweak, test
Resources
• Website Search Engine Rankings Got You Down? Stop the Insanity!
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96. The Future
• Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and
make it universally accessible and useful
• What Google believes:
o #1: Focus on the user and all else will follow.
o Knowledge Graph - "the semantic web", the system that has
understanding as well as data
o Moving from an information engine to a knowledge engine
• The only constant is change
• Information will come to you
• Personalization, studying user behavior
• Adapt early
• Diversify your marketing efforts; don’t rely on Google only
• … It may not be Google
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97. Q & A!
Any and all questions entertained!
Josepf Haslam, Etela Ivkovic |
DragonSearch.net/blog
Josepf@dragonsearch.net |
Twitter: @Josepf
Etela@dragonsearch.net |
Twitter: @Etela
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98. Appendix - Useful Links and Resources
• DragonSearch’s blog
• Josepf’s Scoop.it and Josepf’s Pinterest
• Keyword Rich Domain Names – Should You Invest?
• 7 Is The New 10? Google Showing Fewer Results & More From Same Domain
• Search quality highlights: 65 changes for August and September
• Report errors if you think you were penalized by mistake
• Google’s Disavow Links Tool – To Use or Not to Use?
• Link Building Strategies of Yosemite Sam Meet Google’s Disavow Tool
• Penguin Recovery During Panda Update Case Study
• Post-Penguin Anchor Text Case Study
• Google’s Link Schemes Guidelines
• Website Search Engine Rankings Got You Down? Stop the Insanity!
• Google’s guidance on building high-quality sites
• Panda Update News
• Google Panda Update, One Year Later, Infographic
• Schema.org - Full Hierarchy
• Schema.org's FAQ and blog
• Structured Data Testing Tool
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99. More Resources & Tools
Tools
• Webmaster Tools
• Google Analytics
• Google AdWords Keyword Tool
• YouTube Keyword Tool
Blogs
• DragonSearch Marketology Blog
• SEOmoz – Blog and community
• Matt Cutts – Head of Google’s Webspam team
• Search Engine Land – News, insights
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100.
101.
102. Thank You!
Social Marketology book
Available on Amazon!
Josepf Haslam, Etela Ivkovic | DragonSearch.net/blog
Josepf@dragonsearch.net | Twitter: @Josepf, Google+: +Josepf
Etela@dragonsearch.net | Twitter: @Etela, Google+: +Etela
Get these presentations here: http://drsr.ch/webgrrls
2/19/2013 DRAGONSEARCH MARKETING I February 2013 102
Notas del editor
Search engines aren’t just a tool to help us find news articles or guacamole recipes. Search engines are running a business—a business whose success relies on providing you legitimate, relevant results.
Evolution of Search
Transition to Spiders, Bots, Math Hash, Neo trying to bring the human back into it
What we really want, personal timely reviews from trusted sources
E
E
To begin to understand why some visitors aren’t converting on your website, you need to understand what they did on your website. This is called website analytics data -- and you can use it to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of your website. This helps you get into your customer’s mind set. ** stress that point.Google provides a free, hosted analytics solution called Google Analytics, GA for short.GA may be free, but it’s powerful. Some of the largest brands and websites in the world have opted to use this solution, and hundreds of thousands of websites now rely on GA for web analytics.With more than 80 highly customizable reports, GA helps answer questions about the effectiveness of your website’s content, how engaged your users are with the site, where they abandon your shopping cart and much more.Using this data, you can make smart decisions and make sure that the money spent on AdWords is delivering the results you want.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz4yHOKE5j8
Let’s look at what it means to do research.
5:18 ||
E
E
Clay Shirkey, Chris Anderson…Vilfredo Pareto – recognized by Joseph M. Juran – Quality consultant to the Japanese auto makers:Google: “20 to 25% of the queries we see today, we have never seen before”