6. COMMON SEO MYTHS
1. SEO is dead
2. SEO is easy
3. SEO is hard
4. SEO is snake oil/fairy
dust/magic
5. Content is king!!!!
6. Rankings = business
7. There’s one right answer
13. DUPLICATE CONTENT
• The presence of duplicate content on your site is
problematic for a couple of different reasons:
1. Duplicate content forces search engines to “choose”
what version of the content to serve in results.
2. It may appear to the search engines that your site is
attempting to manipulate the results pages by ranking
several different URLs for the same search term.
21. DEALING WITH DUPLICATE CONTENT
http://www.threedeepmarketing.com/blog/what-the-font-should-i-
care/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organictweets
22. DEALING WITH DUPLICATE CONTENT
• Prevent a page from appearing in
or remove a page from search
results by including a meta noindex
tag
• This tells Google and other visiting
search engines to remove/exclude
the page from search results
• It’s important to note that this is
useful in specific situations
23. DEALING WITH DUPLICATE CONTENT
• Use robots.txt file to prevent
certain pages from being crawled
24. DEALING WITH DUPLICATE CONTENT
• http://www.example.com
• http://www.example.com/
• http://example.com
• http://example.com/
• https://www.example.com
• https://www.example.com/
• https://example.com
• https://example.com/
GOOGLE SEES THESE AS INDIVIDUAL PAGES!
Choose your preferred protocol, host, and trailing slash consistency.
26. TOOLS FOR SUCCESS – SEO TOOLS
• Screaming Frog
• Excel
• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console
• SEM Rush
• Google Keyword Planner
• Webpagetest.org
• Pexels
27. TOOLS FOR SUCCESS – BROWSER PLUGINS
• Ayima redirect path
• META SEO Inspector
• MozBar
• User-Agent Switcher
• Web Developer
• SeeRobots
• Scraper
• TinEye
29. LOCAL SEO RANKING FACTORS
1. Google My Business signals
2. Link signals
3. On-page signals
4. External location signals
5. Review signals
6. Behavioral signals
7. Personalization signals
8. Social signals
Source: https://moz.com/blog/local-search-ranking-factors-survey-results-2017
30. SETTING UP GOOGLE MY BUSINESS (GMB)
• https://www.google.com/business/
• Choose the most accurate category
• https://moz.com/local/categories
• COMPLETE YOUR PROFILE TO 100%
• Choose a custom URL
• Choose wisely, this cannot be changed later…
31. REVIEW ACQUISITION
“Google review count and score are factored into local search ranking:
more reviews and positive ratings will probably improve a business's
local ranking.”
Probably a good idea to have a strategy in place.
35. NAP INCONSISTENCY
The #1 issue that I see is
inconsistency across citations in
• Name
• Address
• Phone Number
Getting this right takes time.
www.brightlocal.com
36. WRONG GMB CATEGORIES
• Use as few categories as possible to describe your overall core business from the provided list.
• Choose categories that are as specific as possible, but representative of your main business.
• Do not use categories solely as keywords or to describe attributes of your business.
• Do not use categories that pertain to other businesses that are nearby or related, such as a
business physically contained within your business or an entity that contains your business.
37. TOO MANY GMB PROFILES
https://moz.com/ugc/local-seo-case-study-the-diary-of-an-address-change
38. KEYWORD STUFFED FOOTER
‘…loading a webpage with irrelevant keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site’s rankings
“results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site's ranking.”’
40. MONEY KEYWORD ANCHOR TEXT
• Google values sites that are
built for users, not search
engines.
• So, build your site for your
user.
• You’re better off optimizing
the on page elements than
creating a whole bunch of
these types of internal links.
45. WHY INVEST IN LINK BUILDING?
A technically sound site will only get you so far.
Without links, it simply will not have the equity or
authority to be visible in search engines.
47. PASSIVE LINK BUILDING
Brand monitoring:
• Google Alerts
• SEM Rush
• Mention.net
• Buzzsumo
Embed links:
• Data Visualization
• Not “Widget Links”
48. ACTIVE LINK BUILDING
1. Content creation
2. Guest posting
3. Prospecting
4. Local links
5. Directories
6. Events
7. Broken Link Building
8. Image Link Reclamation
50. 122,827
152,547
157,449
152,314 155,216
158,605 156,027
102,983
126,075 126,110 124,216 122,195
116,386
126,290
0
20,000
40,000
60,000
80,000
100,000
120,000
140,000
160,000
180,000
February March April May June July August
monthly organic session data
2014
2015
WHEN IT GOES WRONG…
SEO work
starts
3 months
before impact
realizedSite launch in
Jan. panic
starts
3 sites into one migration
51. WHEN IT GOES WRONG…
THEN, RIGHT
B2B ecommerce site
• A web redesign caused their organic traffic to tumble by 50% and
impacted revenue
• Engaged Three Deep to identified issues, develop priorities and
implement SEO improvements
• Rebuilt organic traffic, surpassed original goal and continues to grow
52. HOW CAN YOU AVOID DISASTER?
1. Plan your site structure
2. Understand your current digital ecosystem
a) Paid traffic?
b) Legacy sites?
3. Map out 301 redirects
a) Pull any legacy redirects
b) Map out redirects for any 404s currently reported in
GSC or captured in crawl
c) Pull link data from GSC, OSE, Majestic, and Ahrefs –
map any additional redirects
4. Monitor, QA, Test, Fix, Repeat.
59. WHAT IS INTERNATIONAL SEO?
International SEO is the process of enabling of your
website(s) to become visible in search engines for
the languages and countries in which you do
business.
Or, to put it more plainly, get the right version of your
website in front of your customers regardless of what
country they live in, language they speak, or search
engine they use.
63. CHOOSING THE RIGHT URL STRUCTURE
• ccTLD – Country Code Top Level Domain
• Choose this if you are targeting a specific country
• Subfolders – example.com/en-us/page
• Choose this if you are targeting language and country
• Subdomains – de.example.com
• Choose this if it is the only option you have
65. <HREFLANG>
The <hreflang> tag tells
search engines what
language and
geographic location
each page on your site
is targeting.
66. <HREFLANG>
<link rel=“alternate” hreflang=“en-us” href=http://www.example.com/ />
<link rel=“alternate” hreflang=“en-gb” href=http://www.example.co.uk/ />
<link rel=“alternate” hreflang=“es-es” href=http://www.example.es/ />
1. Hey, Google in the US, please serve this page to English speakers
2. Hey, Google in the UK, please serve this page to English speakers
3. Hola, Google in Spain, please serve this page to Spanish speakers
69. BUILDING A CRAWLABLE WEBSITE
• All web content can be accessed at unique pages with readable URLs
• No Javascript in navigation
• Logical content bucketing
• No flat structure
• All pages linked to internally
71. WHAT IS AMP?
The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project was
initiated by Google to help speed up the mobile web.
It is open source – non-
Google developers are
continuously improving.
Although not a direct
ranking signal, it improves
user experience.
73. WHAT IS SCHEMA?
Schema is microdata – the information about the information on your
pages.
74. WHAT IS SCHEMA?
Schema helps search engines
determine entities and classify
information.
It helps them understand
relational connections to
provide information to
searchers that is likely relevant.
79. REVIEW
• Check your site regularly
• Duplicate content = BAD
• Local SEO = Visibility
• Build Links
• Don’t do bad things
• Mobile!
• Schema is important!
80. WRAP UP
• SEO is just marketing!
• It’s understanding your customer and your goals
• (Strategy and Planning)
• Understanding where and how they consume content
• (Market Research, Technical SEO)
• Identifying their pain points
• (Keyword Research)
• Crafting a compelling, relevant message that resonates
• (Content Strategy)
• Making your message accessible within the proper channels
• (Technical SEO, Backlinks, Schema, Mobile-Friendly, Content Marketing)
For a long time there was a belief that adding city or zip code keywords into the footer would help a site rank well for location-based search queries in those areas. Sometimes this actually worked. However, the powers that be at Google eventually figured this out and created algorithm updates that penalized sites that displayed this type of seemingly manipulative behavior.
Go into bright local and show them around.
For a long time there was a belief that adding city or zip code keywords into the footer would help a site rank well for location-based search queries in those areas. Sometimes this actually worked. However, the powers that be at Google eventually figured this out and created algorithm updates that penalized sites that displayed this type of seemingly manipulative behavior.
Make sure that your page is created at your actual, real-world location.
Use the precise address for the business rather than broad city names or cross-streets. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations.
Suite numbers, floors, building numbers, etc. may also be included. Information like cross-streets and nearby landmarks should only be included in regions where the official street address doesn’t accurately pinpoint the business's location.
If you need to specify a mailbox or suite number within your physical location, please list your physical address in Address Line 1, and put your mailbox or suite number in Address Line 2.
If your business rents a temporary, "virtual" office at a different address from your primary business, do not create a page for that location unless it is staffed during your normal business hours.
Do not include information in address lines that does not pertain to your business’s physical location (e.g. URLs or keywords).
Do not create more than one page for each location of your business, either in a single account or multiple accounts.
Salespeople at the citation company are usually the culprits here
A shady link may be one that looks completely unnatural or comes from a totally unrelated site
Search engines have filters that take the quality of links into account and tend to serve up pages with a trusted backlink profile
Too many shady links can result in a penalty from Google so it’s best to just build links organically from providing the best content
.
Content creation – Egobait: creating something that strokes the ego of an influencer and getting them to help promote.
Interviews
Awards
Best Lists
Crowd Sourced Posts - http://brandcitations.com/33-seo-experts-opinions-about-using-brand-marketing-on-white-hat-seo/
Citation Labs Link prospector
Local Links – BBB, Chamber of commerce
Study conducted by Conductor in 2014
Why you should care:
History of when Google announces this type of thing
Your user wants to access your information
Although its not a direct ranking signal, it indirectly affects other engagement metrics