Fresh from eTail West 2012! Here are five specific ways for businesses to grow their enterprise SEO traffic and sales, complete with actionable takeaways.
You'll learn what moves the meter -- and what doesn't -- when it comes to organic search. See examples of real SEO work at REI and the results it produced. Find out what to measure in order to track your progress and understand how SEO data can feed into your larger cross-channel customer experience.
You can learn more about Jonathon Colman at http://www.jonathoncolman.org/
4. CREATE ORIGINAL CONTENT
FOCUS: Increase rankings and portfolio diversity
for traffic-driving keywords
• Original, relevant product information that
adds value and solidifies your brand
• <title>s, <meta> descriptions, on-page copy
• Landing pages for categories, brands, and
search results
• New value-added content your customers
can use to enjoy the products you sell
5. Let’s look at a standard REI
product page…
Source: Vibram FiveFingers Bikila Running Shoes at http://www.rei.com/product/798241/vibram-fivefingers-bikila-running-shoes-mens on www.REI.com
6. That’s nearly 250 words of
branded, original, unique,
relevant content – what
search engines need!
Source: Vibram FiveFingers Bikila Running Shoes at http://www.rei.com/product/798241/vibram-fivefingers-bikila-running-shoes-mens on www.REI.com
7. This article on our site
draws qualified traffic
from over 1,800 individual
keyphrases every week.
Source: How to Choose Barefoot / Minimalist Running Shoes at http://www.rei.com/expertadvice/articles/running+shoes.html on www.REI.com
9. MINIMIZE DUPLICATION
FOCUS: Rank higher and increase traffic
• Duplicate content = the same content at two
different URLs
• A likely warning signal for Panda algorithm
• You have enough competition without
competing with yourself!
• Solutions: rel=canonical, rel=prev/next, 301
redirects, setting default domain, selective
blocking of crawlers, and more…
10. Duplicate content waters down your
rankings for competitive keywords,
reducing your traffic and conversion.
Source: Google Webmaster Tools reporting
11. 4 TOOLS FOR DUPLICATE CONTENT
• Use rel=canonical to point from a
duplicate back to the authoritative version
of the content – used for exact duplicates
• Use rel=prev/next to handle paginated
content, such as a large search result set
• 301 redirect from deprecated content or
near duplicates to authoritative versions
• Set your preferred domain to avoid
duplication at the domain level
12. Using these tactics, we reduced duplicate
content on REI.com by 96% Y/Y, driving
increased traffic to authoritative content.
Source: Google Webmaster Tools reporting
14. GO FAST OR GO HOME
FOCUS: Increase your conversion
• Google uses speed as a search ranking
factor for the most competitive queries
• This can drive more traffic and associated
sales, but site speed has a much larger
impact than just SEO…
Source: Google, Matt Cutts [via Search Engine Land]
15. Customers expect your web site to
load in 2 seconds or less.
Source: Forrester/Akamai [via GetElastic]
16. 40% of customers will abandon
any site that takes longer than
3 seconds to load.
Source: Forrester/Akamai [via GetElastic]
17. The average Fortune 500 company
web site takes 7 seconds to load.
Source: Andrew Davies, Web Performance: A Whistlestop Tour…
18. For every 1 second of load time,
conversion drops by 7%.
Source: Strangeloop
19. For every 1 second of load time,
user satisfaction drops by 16%.
Source: Strangeloop
20. A faster site reduces the costs of
infrastructure and releases
by 50% or more.
Source: Shopzilla [via O’Reilly]
21. REI’S RESULTS:
A 50% decrease in the time it took
for Google to crawl an average page
Source: Google Webmaster Tools reporting
22. REI’S RESULTS:
A 100% increase in the amount of
total pages Google crawled per day
Source: Google Webmaster Tools reporting
23. REI’S RESULTS:
In 2011, we saved customers 22 years
of time by speeding up REI.com
Source: Google Webmaster Tools reporting
24. TOOLS TO SPEED UP YOUR SITE
• Yahoo and Google best practices
• Google Webmaster Tools speed report
• Site speed data in Google Analytics
• Google’s Page Speed Online tool
• Yahoo’s YSlow browser tool
• WebPageTest, Pingdom test suites
26. BE META, NOT JUST <META>
FOCUS: Increase traffic and conversion
• Structure product search results into
faceted navigation to allow for filtering
• Structure product, store, event, author,
video, recipe, and other data for Rich
Snippets in search engine results
• Increase findability and interoperability at
the same time
27. Use product metadata to
structure search results for
your categories into
faceted navigation.
Source: Sleeping Bags at http://www.rei.com/category/4500001_Sleeping+Bags on www.REI.com
28. Facets help users narrow
down their searches and
provide niche results for
search engine crawlers.
Source: Sleeping Bags at http://www.rei.com/category/4500001_Sleeping+Bags on www.REI.com
29. WHICH WOULD YOU CLICK ON?
RESULTS:
Rich Snippets can drive up to+30%
more clicks over standard search results
31. TOOLS FOR RICH SNIPPETS
• Google’s guide to Rich Snippets
• Microdata: Schema.org standard used by
Google, Bing, and Yahoo
• Microformats: hProduct for products,
hCard for people and locations, and
hCalendar for events
• RDFa: GoodRelations vocabulary
• Google Merchant Center feeds
33. LINK IT ALL TOGETHER
FOCUS: Increase rankings and traffic
• Don’t buy links – any purchasing scheme
goes against Webmaster Guidelines and is
“Black Hat” SEO
• Earn links to your site by providing great
content, products, services, and features
• Be social to listen to and engage with your
customer base and attract new followers
34. Don’t let this happen to you.
Do not buy links. Ever.
Source: Paid Links (via Google Webmaster Tools)
35. EARN LINKS FOR DISCOVERY
Search engines index the Web by following links to
page after page of content. But most of the time,
they can’t find content without following a link to it.
Strongly interlinked site New pages without links are
with numerous inbound links isolated from search engines
36. EARN LINKS FOR TRUST
For a search engine, links from one site to
another are like a vote of confidence and trust,
similar to a citation in a scientific paper. This is
the original basis behind Google’s PageRank.
Page on Page on
Site A Site B
“I trust you!”
Link
37. EARN LINKS FOR AUTHORITY
If all else is equal, pages with more links can be
said to be more authoritative because more
individual sites trust and cite their content. This
often translates into higher rankings.
Page on Page on
Site A Site B
Five inbound links Ten inbound links
from external sites = more authority
38. HOW CAN YOU EARN LINKS?
• Create useful content that fulfills a
customer need – especially tacit needs
• Be original, funny, engaging, or amazing
• Hold a contest or giveaway
• Be timely or relevant to a current event
that your customers care about
• Feature your customers and their efforts –
make them feel special.
39. Source: S’mores at http://findout.rei.com/blog_detail/?contentid=5496892009878913438 on www.REI.com
41. A customer-created video for one of our
products went viral, driving awareness,
links, traffic, and ranking increases.
Source: REI Match Test video by dalemclmm at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8BY6AbHL9w
42. We rank #3 for a broad
search term that doesn’t
use our brand or even the
category. What if this was
a high-margin product?
44. 5 KEY, ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS
1. Create original content that meets your
audience’s explicit and tacit needs
2. Reduce duplicate content to stop
competing with yourself
3. Speed up your site to drive conversion
4. Structure your content with metadata to
make it more findable and easier to use
5. Earn links by building great content or have
customers build it for you
45. MANY THANKS!
Jonathon Colman
In-House SEO for REI
Home: about.me/jcolman
Twitter: @jcolman
E-mail: jcolman@rei.com