1.Best-Kept Secrets for Search Marketing Success Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts

2. Advanced SEO: Part Art, Part Science

Stay tuned for the tools and tactics that most search agencies wont reveal

These tools and tactics will be broken into three major categories

• Technical Optimization

• Content Optimization

• Link Building

3. Technical Optimization 4. Grouped Google Results

Science:

• Finding the true position of an indented result by appending &num=9 to the URL of the Google SERP, then &num=8 etc.

• http://searchengineland.com/070705-123736.php

Art:

• Knocking out your competitors indented second listing

5. This isnt really #3 6. Nope, not yet 7. Gone! Its true position was #9 8. SEO the title of #12 to bump it up to page 1 it will be grouped to #2. Then link to #11 and bump it up to page 1 to knock #4 to page 2 9. Indexation

Science:

• Essential tools: Yahoo Site Explorer, Netconcepts URL Checker, Netconcepts Product Page Checker (www.netconcepts.com/productcheck)

• Set Google preferences to English Only to get a more realistic number, minus pages not crawled

• XML Sitemaps generators

Art:

• Figuring out the main indexation threshold for your level of PageRank/authority

10. 11. 12. Results estimate decreased by 2/3rds 13. Flowing PageRank

Science:

• Using rel=nofollow on low-value internal links

• SEOChat PageRank Search tool

• SEOChat PageRank Lookup tool

• SEO for Firefox tool

Art:

• Knowing which of your pages to nofollow

• Iterative testing

14. 301 Redirects

Science:

• When moving sites

• For canonicalization

• Conditional redirects?

Art:

• When to use 301 and when to use 404 or 302

15. Cloaking

Science:

• Viewed cloaked content with Google Translate and translate it from English to English

• • http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=en&u=URLGOESHERE&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=9&ct=result

Art:

• Good cloaking vs bad cloaking

• • For bots only, drop tracking tags and other superfluous parameters from the URLs of your links

• • Use user agent detection and dont noarchive the pages to obscure what youre doing

• • http://searchengineland.com/070301-065358.php

16. Supplemental Index

Science:

• Figuring out which pages are and are not in Supplemental hell

• • http://www.mapelli.info/tools/supplemental-index-ratio-calculator/

• • site:www.xyz.com -allinurl:www.xyz.com

• Popping pages out of supplemental with robots.txt disallow, rel=nofollow, internal linking, link building

17. Duplicate Content

Science:

• Scanning for duplicate content

• Blocking duplicate content without blackholing the PageRank (i.e. disallowing with rel=nofollow)

• If using tracking parameters in URLs, use 301 redirects or JavaScript

• http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/444/SEO-The-Duplicate-Content-Penalty/

Art:

• Augment and/or revise duplicate content with APIs, unique titles/metadata,

18. CSS

Science:

• Reordering content above navigation

• Image replacement technique

• Progressive enhancement for Flash & AJAX

• http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/251/SEO-Harness-the-Power-of-CSS/

Art:

• Design worthy of CSS Zen Garden

19. Content Optimization 20. Keyword Research

Science:

• Mastering tools such as KeywordDiscovery, Google Suggest, Spyfu,WordTracker, Google Trends, Googspy, SEOSleuth, Yahoosearchranking.com

Art:

• Working in misspellings without looking stupid

• Thinking like a thesaurus - finding related words that machines cant

21. Keyword Density/Prominence

Science:

• Ranks.nl

Art:

• Increasing keyword density and prominence in a way that looks natural to the engines and reads well

22. Thin Slicing

Science:

• Mass edit admin

• Mechanical Turk

Art:

• Separating the wheat from the chaff

23. Link Building 24. Reverse Engineer Competitors

Science:

• Yahoo Site Explorer

• link: on Google & on Google Blog Search

• Backlink Analyzer or Neat-o tool

Art:

• Negotiating links from the same sites

• Outing competitors dodgy link schemes

25. High-Value Link Targets

Science:

• Build spiders to find sites with super high PageRank, 1 click away from Google, .edu or .gov, high Alexa ranked

• Avoiding situations that erode the value (e.g. reciprocal, in footer, site-wide, adjacent to paid links, too many links on page)

• Use tools like SEOMoz Page Strength tool, SEO for Firefox, SEO-Links Firefox extension

Art:

• Identifying sites with a propensity to give link love (e.g. acknowledging patrons/sponsors)

• Crafting approaches & incentives

• Buy them

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. Mining Your Own Links

Science:

• Locating inbound links with poor anchor text with BLA or Neat-o

Art:

• Negotiating with these linkers to change the anchor text. Pull some favors with friends who link to you. It helps to be a blogger when reaching out to other bloggers.

31. 32. Wikipedia

Science:

• Wikiscanner

• Article monitoring (e.g. trackengine, changenotes, urlywarning, changedetect, watch function)

• Building up a long & virtuous contribution history

• Flowing pagerank internally with Disambiguation pages, Redirects, Categories

Art:

• Negotiating with an articles owner

• Making friends who will back you up in AfDs

• Earning Barnstar awards & adminship status

33. Digg

Science:

• Stripping away all commercial links during the initial Digg swarm

• Friendingpopular Diggers

• Timing your presence on the Digg front page for daylight hours

Art:

• Crafting a killer title

• Getting a powerful Digger to submit your story

34. YouTube

Science:

• Proper formatting

• Tagging

• Title and description

• Channels

Art:

• Entertainment value

• Finding that viral hook

35. MySpace

Science:

• Configuration of your profile and page (e.g. profile type)

• Establishing critical mass with #s of Friends by targeting bands

Art:

• Getting your brand in the URL

• Creating a viral MySpace avatar, comment graphic, layout etc.

• Having a profile layout that differentiates you without killing usability

36. Flickr

Science:

• Tagging

• Title and description

• Albums / photosets

• Creative Commons licensing

• Commenting (note: links in comments no longer pass juice)

Art:

• Photo quality

• Viral hook

37. Blogs

Science:

• Knowing which blogs pass PageRank to commenters (e.g. Mark Cubans)

• Decoupling your blogs title tags from the post titles (e.g. SEO Title Tag WordPress plugin)

• Using Sticky posts to improve keyword prominence on your blog

Art:

• Courting bloggers

• Commenting in ways that add to the conversation so they get approved and stay

38. More SEO Tools

For link analysis and PageRank

• TouchGraph

• Live PageRank

• WebmasterEyes

• Google Webmaster Central

• Thumbshots Ranking tool

• SEOpen

39. More SEO Tools

Technical optimization

• User Agent Switcher

• SwitchProxy

• Scrutinizer

• Copyscape

• Poodle Predictor

• Xenu Link Sleuth

• Robot Replay

• CrazyEgg

• Whats That Site Running

• Wayback Machine

40. More SEO Tools

Other reporting

• Alexa

• DigitalPoint Keyword Rankings

• Urltrends

• Hitwise ($$)

List and links at

• www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/368/SEO-Toolkit/

• www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/176/SEO:-Tools-for-Link-Building/

41. Q&A!

For an ebook on Google power searching, SEO checklists & worksheets, and audio recording, executive summary & transcript of an SEO thought leaders teleconference, email seo@netconcepts.com or give me your business card

Any questions come to you later, contact me: stephan@netconcepts.com