SEO IN 2012GAEL BRETONCO-FOUNDER HIGHERCLICK.COM@GAELBRETON

It seems that now google’s down working on their logo, they decided to start focusing on improving search again since 2011

GOOGLE’S STRATEGY

The panda update was rolled out on feb 23 2011 aiming to weed out low quality sites from the top search results by applying a sitewide penalty to them.

STEP 1 – PANDA ATTACK

Name: PandaType: OnpagePenalty: yes site wideTarget: thin, low quality, ads filed sitesMetrics: user engagementRefresh: monthly% of results changed: over 12%

Rethink your site content and UX,is it something people truly want? How can you make it better?

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF PANDA• Big keyword’s top results have been

wiped out, opening opportunities for high quality sites.

• Clean up your website or noindex the thin content

• Redesign your user experience to improve bounce rate/time on page…

• Work on user generated content

• Use social as a benchmark (if it works on social the UX is great)

Rethink your site content and UX,is it something people truly want? How can you make it better?

PANDA TOOLS AND TIPS• Replicate the panda questionaire and

use Mturk to crowdsource answers : seomoz blog post

• Crawl your site for duplicate content and make it unique : copyscape and screaming frog

Google’s result pages went from a list of 10 blue links to media rich pages where you get a much better idea of the content you’re going to find once you click through.

RICH SNIPETS: SCHEMA.ORG

More info presented on serps

• Ratings• Authorship• Flight times• Item prices• Video preview• Cooking ingredients• …

For the full list, go on schema.org and see what uses of micro data you can make to drive more traffic to your site right now.

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF SCHEMA

For the full list, go on schema.org and see what uses of micro data you can make to drive more traffic to your site right now.

SCHEMA TIPS AND TOOLS

• Google rich snippets tool

• Google guidelines on rich snippets

• Rich snippets examples blog post

It may look like a ghost town now but it’s the fastest growing social network ever

GOOGLE +1 AND GOOGLE PLUS

And Google is biased to change my results heavily based on it.

GOOGLE +1 AND GOOGLE PLUS

Increased user demographic and psychographic knowledge to serve more relevant content and ads in search and therefore make more $$$.

G+ WHAT GOOGLE WANTS OFF IT

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF G+

1- create your g+ page and make it cool

1. Create your business page and make it look good

2. Embed the +1 button and circle box on your site

3. Share exclusive content on your page

4. Organize hangouts with customers giving them tips, rebates, and encouraging them to interact with your google plus page

5. Promote your google plus page from facebook and twitter if you have powerful accounts

6. Use findpeopleonplus.com to connect with people that may be part of your community

Increased user demographic and psychographic knowledge to serve more relevant content and ads in search and therefore make more $$$.

G+ TIPS AND TOOLS

• Create your google+ page

• Add the +1 button to your pages

• Embedable badge for visitors to circle your company

• Tactics for early G+ adopters

• Higher Click’s Google+ Page

THE REAL OF (NOT PROVIDED)

Google to “protect” its users installing https by default on every domain and encrypting the data of logged in users (but only for organic..)

• Dismisses content optimization attempts

• Prevents CRO to work together with SEO

• Prevents traffic analysis

• Hated by SEOs

(NOT PROVIDED) LANDING PAGE ANALYSIS

Breaking down your not provided traffic per page will give you a decent idea of the keywords the traffic is coming from and conversion likelihood.

(NOT PROVIDED) TIPS AND TOOLS

• Understanding your (not provided) traffic

• Notprovided.com tips

• Advanced segments to slice your data more efficiently

FRESHNESS UPDATE• Aims to give more time

relevant information for generic queries

• Impacted 35% of search results

• Big boost for sites with an ongoing content strategy

Users don’t just want information, they want time relevant information. Businesses that do that get rewarded by Google.

FRESHNESS UPDATE

New sites overtake huge authorities due to content freshness. You can now outrank massive newspaper if their info are not up to date.

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF FRESHNESS

New sites overtake huge authorities due to content freshness. You can now outrank massive newspaper if their info are not up to date.

1. Identify keywords with aging content ranking on top in your industry

2. Create a great up to date piece of content for your website

3. Find people linking to the older pieces of content with ahrefs or opensiteexplorer

4. Outreach to them telling them you’re going to release something more accurate and have them commit to redirect their link to your new piece and share it on social

5. Enjoy the rankings and traffic ;)

TIPS AND TOOLS FOR FRESHNESS

New sites overtake huge authorities due to content freshness. You can now outrank massive newspaper if their info are not up to date.

• Opensiteexplorer and ahrefs for backlink analysis

• Inboundwriter for LSI optimisation

• Your brain and creativity for awesome content ;)

PAGE LAYOUT ALGORITHM

Google decided they’d be the only ones allowed to fill your screen with ads when you open a page ;).

• Penalizing websites with too many ads above the fold

• Can mistarget websites with large headers

• Has no notification in webmasters tools.

• Is very suggestive

VENICE UPDATE

The Venice update aims to show local results for broad keywords based on your ip and location. Local businesses are the winners of this update.

• Aims to localize results for broad keywords

• Is different from google places

• Allows local businesses to gain more visibility and traffic

• Allows more people to rank for high traffic keyword

• Maintains national/international authorities to the top

VENICE UPDATE

The top results remain the same nationally while the lower end of page 1 shows very local results for a broad keyword such as “SEO”

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF VENICE

You can now start to aim for broader 1 word keyword in your area and show up for them despite the competition

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF VENICE

Making your link profile local is also a great way to indicate google you should rank in your area.

VENICE TOOLS AND TRICKS

Hcard creator

Geo sitemap generator

OVEROPTIMISATION & LINK NETWORKS ENDED

Google decided to crack down on “Grey” SEO in the past few weeks

• Link networks have been massively deindexed

• Overoptimized pages receive a -10 to -50 penalty

• Not enough anchor variation or links from bad neighbourhoods are likely to get your site flagged

• It is strongly advised to remove any kind of “dodgy” links you may have to your site before that happens.

THAT’S ALL FOLKS

GAEL BRETONCO-FOUNDER HIGHERCLICK.COM@GAELBRETON