Can SEO help Startups? Get ten elemantary hints how to get your site ranked. Lecture held on the 16th Berlin Lean Startup Conference, January 2013 in Berlin.

1. 16th Berlin Lean Startup
YOU IS NOW Immobilienscout 24
Andreasstr. 10, Berlin
31.01.2013 19:30
Searchmetrics GmbH
How SEO can help Startups
® Searchmetrics GmbH 2012

2. Holger Etzel
• Franconian in Prussia
• trained Marketing Manager and Social Scientist
• since 1994 „something with Interwebs“
(Researcher, Webdesigner; Ad Agency,
(Online) Marketing Manager, Head of Marketing)
• in many different industries
• since 05/12 Consultant at Searchmetrics
• since 09/12 Director Consulting
Follow me
• Twitter: twitter.com/holgeretzel
• Xing: www.xing.com/profile/Holger_Etzel
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=40435085
• Google+: plus.google.com/u/0/106218397139892498498
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3. Searchmetrics
• Founded 2007
• Leading Provider of Search Analytics Software
• Developer of Searchmetrics Suite und Searchmetrics Essentials
• Largest aggregated database for SEO, SEM and Social Media Data
• For any given Google-Country (and other searchengines)
• 100 full-time employees located in Germany, US, UK and France
• Partner-Network with 100++ SEO- and SEA-Agencies worldwide
• Own services-department, providing SEO-Consulting.
Follow us and stay updated
• Twitter: twitter.com/searchmetrics
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/Searchmetrics
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4. Can SEO help YOU?
…depends on your business model.
• Most, like zalando, need SEO like a fish needs water.
photo: exploitme, flickr.com
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5. Can SEO help YOU?
• but to be honest: some have other sources than organic SE-traffic
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6. Can SEO help YOU?
• and some businesses are successfull in spite of google-success:
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7. What does SEO?
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Market Shares of
transmits traffic into turnover. Searchengines in Germany
• SEO starts with the antizipation of 0,9% (March 2012)
2,1%
relevant searchqueries 1,1% Google*
(in relevant searchengines)
Bing
Yahoo!
95,9%
Andere
Keyword
Visibility Traffic Turnover
Quelle: Comscore, März 2012 | * Google-Anteil exkl. Integration auf T-Online, Web.de, etc.
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8. How searchengines work
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9. Once more: Can SEO help you?
YES, it can!
if there already is any form of demand yet
• to identify, which needles you should put into the haystack.
(keyword and market research)
• to place your needles most prominent
(onpage optimization)
• to structure the haystack so well, that your needle can be found
easiliy
(technical SEO and site architecture)
• to get many, strong threads in the eye of your needle, so you can
find it easier
(offpage optimization)
• to get the crowd talking about your needle
(social media optimization)
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10. What SEO can not do
SEO cannot defend business
models against google:
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11. 10 elementary SEO Tipps
photo: sam_churchill, flickr.com
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12. 1. Know your Audience, your Product and Google
• is there demand?
• who is your target group and how/what do they
search?
• is Google already in the arena?
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13. 2. Get Your Keywords
Ask yourself:
• How do customers or users search for products and services?
• Which keywords are the most relevant for the company?
• Which keywords have the highest potential?
Navigational Search Informational Transactional Search
• Using Google for Search • Search for a specific
 navigation no easy recipe to „generate“ keywords that experiences or
There is • Search for information, product / fit.
• Search for specific sites howto‘s and guide reviews with buying
interest
• Just looking for search
 (Brand Search)are keywords, that are used by your very special
But there
• Potential for your very special product.
results • Highest search intensity
audience for and attention
optimazation: low • Potential for
optimazation: high • Potential for
 To succeed, you must find them out and use them.
optimazation: high
B2B-Model Traffic-model B2C-model
10 % of all 80 % of all 10 % of all
queries queries queries
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14. 2. Keyword-Research: Take Google!
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15. 2. Keyword Research: Take the Adwords Keywords-Tool:
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16. 2. Keyword Research: Take the Adwords Keywords-Tool:
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17. 2. Keyword Research: ubersuggest.org
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18. 2. Keyword Research: ubersuggest.org
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19. 3. Take your Chances
• you already got some pages in good positions?
• Great! Then start working with the next bunch:
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20. 3. Track your rankings
…and work with those lists!
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21. 4. Provide the best Content
Matt says:
Provide the best content and do not
worry about SEO.
photo: jolieodell, flickr.com
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22. 4. Provide the best Content
I say:
Aye, Matt. Almost right! The best
content is the basis of everything
and for god‘s sake those thin SEO-
scrape-crap-spam do not work
anymore.
But some extra SEO-skills should help
even the best content to get listed
where it belongs to.
photo Martin Mißfeldt
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23. 5. Structure it
Now, you got REALLY good content, provided for your very own
audience.
• Then help the Searchengines to understand what you are pointing at:
<Head> <Body>
• <Title>  <H1>
• Description  <H2>, 3, …
 <p>
 <strong> <em>
 <li> <ul> und <li> <ol>
 images
 anchors
CSS and images are NO WAY to structure texts. A Headline is only a
Headline when you call it <h1>Headline</h1>.
…and forget about „Meta Keywords“!
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24. 5. You think structure is kindergarten?
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25. 5. Structure it
Like any other machine Googles bot in fact is a nothing but a dumb text-
cruncher.
• The only thing it really can do is counting, filtering
and weighting texts it finds.
• Help him by structuring your content, giving hints
what is important and what to weigh higher
• But please never try to game him.
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26. 6. Be accessible
… a propos help and guidance:
Take care that your website (or at least the parts you want to be
indexed) is accessible for the bot.
There are many many ways to deny access to
searchengines. Some barriers are set willingly,
some are unwanted desasters.
The Flop 5 getting your Site not indexed are:
1. The usage of Flash, JavaScript and Frames
(especially in the navigation)
2. Too big pages with heavy loading time
3. Too deep site structures
4. Denying indexation of single pages
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>
5. Denying access to the whole page
robots.txt User-Agent: * Disallow: /
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27. 6. Be accessible
The Flop 5 getting your Site not indexed are:
1. The usage of Flash, JavaScript and Frames
(especially in the navigation)
2. Too big pages with heavy loading time
3. Too deep site structures
4. Denying indexation of single pages
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>
5. Denying access to the whole page
robots.txt User-Agent: * Disallow: /
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28. 7. Get linked
That‘s what made the difference between Google and all the other SEs
in the late 90s:
Google not only weighted the similarity (or some may say „relevance“)
between query and document, but was the first to combine this with
importance as a new factor.
The „PageRank“ was the new thing:
All pages passed „linkjuice“. The pages
that managed to collect most of that juice
seemed to be the most important ones.
This means for you:
You MUST get linked!
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29. 8. Get liked
Linking is relatively easy to game and Google does lots of effort to get
„unnatural“ linked sites – others call it spam – out of the index.
So after onpage and offpage signals SEs found a new arena to decide
whether a page is important for your very specific query:
Social Signals
Ranking Factors Germany 2013:
Spearmen‘s r correlation between Top 30 results and ranking factors
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30. 9. Become a Brand
Don‘t trust on occasional traffic, become a brand.
• Gain higher search volume
• Gain better click-through-rates
• Improve the time on site and the bounce rates
• Become trusted!
“The Internet is in danger of becoming
a cesspool of disinformation. Brands
are the solution, not the problem.
Brands are how you sort out the
cesspool.“
Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO in 2008
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31. 10. ALWAYS be reasonable
• Do not try to game google,
• do not try cheap onpage tricks like stuffing keywords,
• do not try to get links in an obviously unnatural way,
• do not copy good (or even bad) content,
• do nothing that would annoy you as a a consumer of your site.
• Optimize, but in a reasonable way.
• If you overdo, Google.. might clear up.
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32. 10 elementary SEO Tipps
1. Know your audience
2. Know your Keys
3. Take your chances
4. Provide the best content for your audience
5. Structure your content
6. Make it accessible
7. Get Links
8. Get liked (and tweeted and plussed and…)
9. Become a brand
10.BE REASONABLE
photo: sam_churchill, flickr.com
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