15 Minutes To Your Fame

Who’s the speaker today?

Duane Forrester

@duaneforrester

Bing Webmaster ToolsSpeaks at shows, runs forums and blog, provides guidance on new WM toolswww.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters

Does he have a clue?12+ years as an inhouse SEO; ran seo at MSN; has helped Disney, GAP, Walmart +http://www.linkedin.com/in/dforrester

And this helps me how?Blogging since 2001; owns 150 domains; actively optimizes and monetizeshttp://twitter.com/DuaneForrester

what does duane do at bing

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• MSN• Keyword research alignment led to a 108% increase in traffic• By simply having Editors write story titles that targeted select keywords, the

relevancy increased and traffic skyrocketed• Our focus: changing old editorial habits to work in the online world

• SEOInhouse.com• Jessica Bowman ran SEO at Enterprise Rent a Car, move to Yahoo to help

with SEO, was laid off within weeks of starting and is now one of the most sought after SEO consultants in the industry

• Her focus: breaking down highly complex work into easily managed projects

• SimplyRecipes.com• Elise Bauer started this after quitting a high finance job• Started recording family recipes• She now employs a part-time chef and sees over 1 million visits a month• Her focus: serving the user, first and foremost

Success Stories

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To Do Today

1. Make sure you have analytics for your site2. Open webmaster tool account & verify it3. Use the keyword research tool to build a

starting list of target topics for content4. Use the SEO Analyzer to see the major SEO

issues I face right now5. Create a “Content Map” – from the keyword

research, build a list of topics you’ll create content for and set dates for creating the content

6. Use the content map to help plan your approach to social media, too

7. Set a baseline in your analytics to track work success moving forward

8. Write out the most influential areas your business faces: social media, online marketing, offline marketing, etc.

9. Rank them in order of importance10. Get started!

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Avoid distractions

Checklist

• Planning• Create a content calendar

• What topics will I write?• When will I write them?• When will I publish them?• How do I feed the cycle?

• Keyword research

• Analytics• Ensure you have access to data you need to

make key business decisions• Open and analytics account somewhere,

install the code and activate it• Seek out social media analytics if you’re

active socially

• Accounts• Bing Webmaster Tools• Google Webmaster Tools• Analytics of your choice• Twitter• Facebook• LinkedIn• Any other social space that matters to your

visitors

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• SEO• Run SEO Analyzer inside Bing WMT to see what

needs work• Create topic target lists by doing keyword

research• Have I covered the basics?

• Unique, keyword relevant title tags on each page

• Unique, relevant meta description on each page

• Filled in ALT tags on images with relevant descriptions

• Is my robots.txt file sorted out? See Robotstxt.org

• Check my sitemap for accuracy and completeness

• Oh my, there’s so much more – see the other slide

• Social• Have accounts where your customers are• Engage with them• Answer questions promptly and honestly• Think of social as a face-to-face conversation• Share with links to useful content beyond your

own

• Importance is relative• Use as a guide – no item is unimportant

Order of Importance

Content Social User Experience Link Building SEO

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6 major investment areas for SEO

• Crawlability– Xml sitemaps– Navigational structure– Rich media cautions– Graceful degradation– URL structure– Robots.txt

• Site Structure– Links– URL structure and keyword usage– Clean URLs – no extraneous parameters (sessions,

tracking, etc.)– HTML & XML sitemaps– Content hierarchy– Global navigation – springs form hierarchy planning +

style of nav (breadcrumb, link lists, etc.)– Rich media – don’t bury links in Javascript/flash

/silverlight/AJAX

• On-Page– Head copy

• Titles – unique, relevant, 60 characters or so long• Descriptions – unique, relevant, grammatically correct, 160 or

fewer characters (Google shows up to 160 characters)

– Body Copy• H1, H2 and other H tag usage• ALT tag importance & usage• Keyword usage within the content/text – see “Perfectly

Optimized Page” image• Anchor text – using target keywords to support other internal

pages

• Content– Build based on keyword research– Down-level experience enhances discoverability– Keep out of rich media and images– 250 words per page or more– Produce new content frequently– Make it unique – don’t reuse content from other

sources– Content management – using 301s to reclaim value

from retiring content/pages– <LINK> canonical to help engines understand which

page should be indexed and have value attributed to it– 404 error page management to help cleanse old pages

from search engine indexes

• Links– Plan for incoming & outgoing link generation– Internal & external link management– Content selection – planning where to link to– Link promotion via social spaces – direct traffic & seo

value– Managing anchor text properly– URL structure can help insert keywords where they are

needed

• Social– Build your community– Interact often– Share useful content– Be consistent and useful– Grow facebook, twitter, etc.

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Why social matters to search

• Signal of topical authority

• Real-time – engines want fresh content, fast

• Integrated social signals influence click actions of searchers

• Social signals remain only a few of thousands of signals for organic ranking

How users click on your results can impact rankings and when we show cues like your Facebook friends with results, click rates can be impacted.

http://www.kyleclouse.com/social-media-marketing/Your data, always fully provided.

More than just traces, a collective convo…

http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/visualizing-friendships/469716398919

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Encourage more Social Sharing

• So you want more shares for your content, do you? Try these ideas.

• Create lists: people love to consume content in list-form. Its quick, easy and simple.

• Use hooks: ego, humor, anger, contrarian – be careful with them, but when used well, they are highly effective.

• Participate in communities: when you are valued member of a community, the community supports you.

• Share others’ information: people love when what they share gets shared itself. Share from trusted sources.

• Ask questions: your followers will love the interaction and it’ll grow your following as others engage.

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Streamlining Content creation

• Moving forward, how to provide value and grow an asset?

• People want relevant information• People have little time to sort &

sift• They want a trusted, reliable

source• Picked a niche; started the plan

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Trusted RSS feeds

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Tools to get the work done

• Useful tools• Bing Webmaster Tools – www.bing.com/webmaster (SEO reporting, link development)• Google Webmaster Tools - http://www.google.com/webmasters/ (not quite as good ;) )• For Twitter• Hootsuite – www.hootsuite.com $9.99/month for PRO (recommended)• Tweetbot - tapbots.com/software/tweetbot/ • Echfon - www.echofon.com/

• For Instagram• Statigram - statigr.am/ (stats for IG)• Instafriends - inst.me/ (manage friends at Instagram)

• For Pinterest• Curalate - www.curalate.com/ (Analytics & Marketing)

• Evernote – www.evernote.com (Data collection point)• IFTTT – www.ifttt.com (connector of dots)• Trackur - www.trackur.com (social media analytics)• Social Management Platforms• Sprinklr - www.sprinklr.com/ (enterprise level gear) • Visible - www.visibletechnologies.com/ (SM monitoring, analytics & engagement)

• Social Mention – www.socialmention.com – cool search engine to see stats on queries• For Windows Phone - mehdoh.com/

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Wrapping up

• Why wrap up?!

• Bing Fund Director James Maiocco and …• Jacob Mullins of Shasta Ventures and … • Betsy Aoki from Bing will be at the mentor lunch!

• Find us at the cocktail & networking event tonight between 6:30 and 7:30 pm, too!

Thanks for your time!Duane Forrester

Sr. Product Manager - Bing

@duaneforrester

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