© Jellyfish Online Marketing Ltd 2011

Jellyfish POV BrightonSEO Key Learnings, 2012 17/04 | 2011

Jellyfish POV Brighton SEO Key Learnings, 2012

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Background BrightonSEO has become one of the most popular and respected natural search conferences in the UK. The most recent event was held on April 13th 2012, and was attended by over 1,000 of the UK‟s finest search marketers at the Brighton Dome. Jellyfish were both present and presenting at the conference, and this summary has been created to provide our clients with key learnings and takeouts.

Panel Session – Ask the Search Engines

First session was a live Q&A, featuring Pierre Far from Google, Dave Coplin from Bing and Rishi Lakhani, specialist SEM consultant. After a short burst of predictable „is SEO dead?‟ questions (short answer – no!), four points to consider:

Google and Bing were quizzed on an exact definition of a

„bad‟ link; aside from the highly simplistic standard Google explanation, little insight was gained. Good questions from the floor e.g. „how can we create good links if you can‟t tell us what is bad‟. Clear hints from Google that the next algorithm update will (as predicted by Jellyfish) prune links in a much more vigorous manner than seen before.

Search signals: Google confirmed that over 200 signals are considered, but also that „SEO is not a check list‟; great content and user-experience is what counts (that must sound familiar by now<)

Significantly, an explicit statement from Bing that being „good at social‟ will be a key ranking factor. What does being good mean? Well, it‟s not about volume of social activity (although this will clearly help). Rather, social quality was equated to sharing fluidity, in other words, how effectively content is shared, liked and commented on within relevant / influential audiences.

And in the most heated segment of the session („why are you screwing us by not showing SEO keyword data‟), the panel took a beating (well, Google anyway) about the impact of SSL natural search encryption, and higher proportions of „not provided‟ keyword data. Google argued that keyword level

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data is accessible via Google Webmaster Tools (GWT); audience countered that GWT data is „pure fantasy‟ and is no substitute for analytics data. Google stated that SSL was necessary as search queries become more „personal‟. Audience view – it‟s a push to drive greater investment into PPC, where keyword level data is fully visible (see our previous POV<.). This one is going to run and run.

Pick of the Presentations

Rather than a blow-by-blow of each presentation, we‟ve created a topic based analysis to provide a singular summary as follows: Technical focus – what do search bots actually do? During a beguiling (to some) / bewildering (to others!) session, Roland Dunn‟s presentation on what do search bots actually do was a real eye opener. For example, his deep analysis concluded that:

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The technical SEO implications (especially for larger site owners) are significant, indicating that very careful consideration should be given to better monitoring of GoogleBot via log files, and then to working out how best to „direct‟ bots to the pages that matter most to users (for example, by increasingly granular configuration of robots.txt files). After all, there would be little or no point in optimising a whole bunch of pages if they‟re never going to be indexed and rarely re-crawled. This is especially relevant to site owners / publishers pursuing a long-tail strategy, or who promote using fresh, news-type content. Rich snippets; the information and authorship layer Quick reminder<<what is a rich snippet? See below:

In our previous POV (Google Webmaster EDU Seminar March 2012), we reported that: „Google is keen to promote the use of rich snippets. Their view is that an improved user experience is delivered by investing data (Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS)) with knowledge (rich snippets). Cynical view: Google is extracting more content from your landing pages, encouraging users to spend more time looking at the SERPs (and eye-balling Google PPC ads). Positive view: SERPs becomes a better place to make an informed decision, consumers have more intent when they click through, everyone is happy!‟

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Three sessions during Brighton SEO confirmed this, and provided a range of technical views on how best to implement rich snippets, ranging from discussions on the various formats available (e.g. microdfata, rdf, rdfa), to conjecture regarding the potential ranking „power‟ of authors, and use of rel=author / rel=me tags as next-step „trustrank‟ SEO tools:

So, if / when trustrank comes to fruition, the ranking potential of competing content (e.g. hints and tips content, or advice guides) would be influenced by: • Whether the content is correctly „linked‟ to an author • How influential the competing authors are; logically, an author

with better / more relevant social connections would improve the visibility of their content

Jellyfish have been providing advice and guidance on the use of rich snippets during 2012, so it‟s good to see this issue gaining wide coverage and acknowledgement. Strategic view – the next algorithm change Fact - a significant change in the Google algorithm is on its way („Google‟s Matt Cutts announced that Google is working on a search ranking penalty for sites that are “over-optimized” or “overly SEO‟ed.”‟). Recurring event theme: how can brands and publishers be prepared, or (as one presenter commented), behave like turkey farmers, not turkeys?

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Our thoughts are: • Traditional authority signals will decrease in importance • „Ye olde‟ link building will become less effective • Google will increasingly look at more personal, social signals to

determine authority • Search Plus Your World (SPYW) is a clear indication of this trend • As the „mix‟ of signals required to succeed in SEO becomes

more complex, understanding the effectiveness of specific tactics will become more difficult

• Site accessibility / perceived content quality via technical fixes have traditionally been de-prioritised in favour of off-site authority optimisation – this needs to change!

• SEO and social activity needs to be better integrated to promote visibility of and engagement with high quality content

In other words, now is the time to ensure that your SEO efforts are aligned to this increasingly complex blend of signals, and to also be aware that as newer signals become more important, older signals (e.g. links) will be de-emphasised (i.e. will become less effective). Jellyfish Presentation Our contribution to the event was created by Tim Ireland, Jellyfish SEO and Social strategist. Entitled „SEO { PPC Working Together in Harmony', Tim‟s presentation focused on: • The importance of understanding user journeys (searchers are

people) • How user journeys alter depending on the nature and intent of

people‟s motivations, needs and wants • The unique signature generated by different kinds of journeys • Mapping / co-ordinating SEO, PPC<.and ideally all

communications tools to these evident signatures

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The full presentation from Brighton SEO is here: http://vimeo.com/40288073 Final thoughts – joining it up… Key themes from Brighton SEO have been highlighted by Jellyfish in previous POVs, but a number of fresh insights should remain on your radar for 2012 and beyond: • The use of better structured page mark up (or rich snippets, at a

tactical level) is clearly a hot topic and should be near the top of your SEO to do list for 2012.

• Related to this, and as we suspected, the link between who you are (author) and what you publish (content) will become significant, both to better assist user journeys, and likely as a new and powerful ranking factor (trustrank, which also makes total sense in a social search context)

• The algorithm will change soon and Google will look to an increasingly complex blend of content / people / social signals

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to determine the authority and hence ranking potential of your pages

Summary & Next Steps If you‟d like more information on any of these subjects, do get in touch, we‟d be happy to help. And in the meantime, a selection of our POVs is available to view and download from here: http://www.slideshare.net/JellyfishOnlineMarketing