big site seo strategies

David Naylorwww.davidnaylor.co.uk

29th April 2009

Big Site SEO Strategiesfor A4UExpo 2009

About Me• Owner of Bronco Ltd www.bronco.co.uk

• Leading UK Search Marketing & Web Development agency

• Service local, national and international clients• Industry leader in SEO for 12 years• Regular speaker at leading search conferences

What is a Big Site?• Is a Big site one with 100,000+ ?

• Same principles can be applied to any large inventory / content site

• SEO very important for big sites who don’t have a brand name

SEO – It’s Not Easy• Successful SEO involves a long term strategy,

it is not quick, easy or cheap!Or....• You could just pull some feeds together on a

website, buy loads links to it, but guess what...

You’ll get banned!

Choosing Your Affiliate Products• Avoid saturated markets– Makes SEO more difficult– Hard to differentiate between yourself and other

affiliates

• Choose niche markets– Makes SEO sustainable – it pays for the high cost– Less competing affiliates

CONSTRUCTING YOUR SITEDavid Naylor – Big Site SEO Strategies

Choosing your domain name• Good SEO starts with a Good site• Ranking is more important than your brand

name• Domain to include biggest keyword - costly• Try to pickup a clean dropped domain• Alternatively a domain with keyword and

brand in - cheaper

Seeding your domain nameExpired domains - • Ensure your domain is in Google

If domain is brand new –• Get relevant content on it • Get it seeded in Google• Start link building to domain while main site

being developed

Constructing the Site• Get the structure & template right– Use CSS to get the content at the top– H1’s in the right place– All good on page attributes

• Ensure title tags are unique• URL structure to be keyword rich and

canonical

Site Structure• All pages to be reached via the home page• Avoid orphan pages• Good internal linkage with good anchor text• Try to even out the structure – like a tree• Breadcrumbs to organise the site structure• Include Blog / News for additional content

Invest time in a Product Feed• Make it not look like a product feed• Add value to secure long term profits• Product pages need unique description and

UGC• Import XML feed into your own database and

add to it (developer required)

Disguising Product Feeds• Add uniqueness to product page and site• Differentiate yourself• Hire content writers for info pages• Content Spinning for product descriptions

Writing for Content Spinning{DaveN’s Big Sites SEO, a Review|

Review of Dave Naylor’s a4u expo presentation on SEO| David Naylor’s talk on SEO at the a4u expo – my views}

• All these titles mean the same thing, but are all unique. Can use similar techniques for re-writing title tags/product descriptions

Advanced Content Spinning• Can embed “ors” within “ors”

e.g. {{DaveN|Dave Naylor} delivered a {informative|boring} speech on SEO at a4u|At a4u, {DaveN|David Naylor} gave an {excellent|long} {talk|rant} on Big Sites SEO}

• Can go one step further and incorporate product names – this makes it more uniquee.g. {Review of the $product|$product reviewed|

My $product review}

Content Spinning Software• Fairly simple to create yourself or free

software• Don’t rely on ones that automatically replace

words• Ideally you want 3 word strings to be unique• Write software that integrates with your site

Pretend NOT to be an Affiliate Site• Search engines prefer original content over

affiliates’ content• Important to not appear like an affiliate site:– 301 redirect to the affiliate link on the site– Bounce the user through while still getting affiliate

revenue– Re-write descriptions– Re-write categories– Add your own content (general content on site too)

MANAGING YOUR SITEDavid Naylor – Big Site SEO Strategies

Managing Product Feeds• Good system for updating the feed + site • Avoid overwriting product descriptions• Don’t discard old pages• 301 discontinued products to relevant new

product

Tracking Visitors• Track user’s clicks and “conversions”• Use Google Analytics to see traffic, keywords

and analyse the funnels• Set up advanced segments to improve site• Entry pages, bounce rates, exit pages• Usability and Conversion Rates

SITE OPTIMISATIONDavid Naylor – Big Site SEO Strategies

Manage your site in SERPS• Build a tool to track spiders accessing your site• Are all your pages being spidered?• Use Webmaster tools to keep an eye on 404’s

Sitemaps• Breakdown your sitemaps into smaller ones • Use a sitemap index file• Ensure all pages in the site can be reached

Know your Rankings• Check traffic driving terms• Check rankings – be careful• Target keyterms• Aim for long tail – large volume, targeted

traffic, lower risk

External Links• 1st wave to homepage for the domain name

from authoritative websites• 2nd wave Page Rank links to home & internal• 3rd wave deep links, keyword rich anchor text

to many internal categories and pages

Long Tail Ranking• Long tail is about the millions of keyphrases

out there that will bring you a few visitors• Bring in most of your traffic• Easier to rank for long tail keywords than it is

for 1 or 2 word keywords • Based on product titles and helped by unique

content on the page.

Make the most of SEO• Make sure you convert a high % of traffic• Split test landing pages• Test sales messages and calls to action

Any Questions?David Naylor – Bronco Ltd.

Blog: www.davidnaylor.co.uk

Follow me on Twitter: @davenaylor