seo best practices after panda

HOW I THINK ABOUT SEO

Richard Baxter

SEOgadget.co.uk

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This is how search used to look

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It’s changed. A lot!

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Know your ecosystem. Organic search covers less than 25% of the visible search result – understanding the makeup of the search results you’re targeting will help you win.

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SOCIAL ANNOTATIONS

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Yoast has a great piece for those using Wordpress here: http://yoast.com/wordpress-rel-author-rel-me/ and this one’s good too:

http://anthonyvbrunetti.com/marketing/google-rel-author-infographic-how-to-implement/

Potential impact on CTR?

REL=AUTHOR

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GOOGLE+ A PRIMARY SEARCH CONNECTOR?

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FRESHNESS UPDATE

This is what a fresh result looks like – here’s how to find quick wins for freshness:

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IS FRESHNESS IN MY SERPS?

What are the rising searches in Google Insights? Are there fresh results for those queries?

SEOgadget.co.uk

SEARCH ENGINE RANKING FACTORS

...............................................................................................................................................................................................LARGE # OF INBOUND LINKS FROM EXTERNAL SOURCES

The more diverse the sources of inbound links, the greater the correlation with higher rankings.

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HOW CAN I MEASURE THAT?!

Opensiteexplorer.org is a great tool to find out who is linking to you!

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PAGE LEVEL FACTORS

Document title

Social media activity?

Relevant body copy

Image filename and alt attribute

“Classic” page level ranking factors, such as document title, <title> element in the meta code and relevant body copy are still strong ranking factors – but there’s a new guy in

town…

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SOCIAL SIGNALS IN RANKINGS

Bing and Google have said publicly they use Twitter and Facebook for rankings: and SEOmoz’s correlation data suggests they’re telling the truth. Track your social activity with PostRank analytics, learn what works

in your social networks.

http://sharedcount.com/

http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/facebook-twitters-influence-google-search-rankings

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/facebook-twitters-influence-google-search-rankings

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HOW CAN I MEASURE THAT?

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TOPSY’S SOCIAL ANALYTICS

Check out http://analytics.topsy.com/?q=bowel%20cancer – compare upto 3 queries

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OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE ALGORITHM 2011

132 SEO professionals were invited to take part in the 2011 SEOmoz Search Engine Ranking Factors survey. Check out the report at this URL.

http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

Panda: an algorithm change to help assess the quality of a site

Site Quality

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THE MINDSET OF A GOOGLE IR SPECIALIST

Google released more guidance on building high quality sites on May 6th

. The post contained 20+ questions you might ask yourself about a site to “get into the mind-set of a

Google engineer”

Amit Singhal

Google Fellow

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html

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INNOCENT BYSTANDERS WERE HURT

• High % of duplicate content

• Very thin / boiler plate content

• Large volumes of very similar content

• Many “redundant” pages

• Advertising in visible area

Q: Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics

with slightly different keyword variations?

Use this custom search engine to search from a list of known sites to have been impacted in the US Panda update – what traits do they share?

http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=008172789018542968974:gqrtqmnqgfw

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WOULD YOU TRUST THIS WEBSITE AS AN EXPERT SOURCE OF INFORMATION?

YESNO

A simple mechanical Turk test… Check out: http://seogadget.co.uk/high-quality-web-sites-the-new-google-ranking-factor/ also check out 5 second test:

http://fivesecondtest.com/

“I won't trust this website as an expert source of information because it doesn't seem like a genuine and professional e-

commerce site, dealing with electronic as well as other products. The site looks pretty ordinary and the content quality is

average.”

After going through the website I feel that this website is a trusted one. More over it has over 27,000 Facebook likes and

has presence in six countries. I would definitely trust this website as an expert source of information.

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CTR (CLICK THROUGH RATE) IN SEARCH

“….using click and visit data to rank results is a very reasonable and logical thing to do,

and ignoring the data would have been silly.”

Edmond Lau, former Google Engineer

Google have never admitted they use CTR as a ranking signal, but they do factor site speed into their algorithm. Bing confirmed they use CTR at “Ask the search engines, SMX

East”

http://searchengineland.com/bing-uses-click-through-rate-in-ranking-algorithm-52386

SEOgadget.co.uk

SEO BEST PRACTICES

Photo by: Gregg Knapp

http://www.flickr.com/photos/g4egk/

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POOR INTERNAL LINK STRUCTUREPage Rank

1/10

1/100

1/1000

1/10000

1/100000

Homepage

Too many “levels” between the homepage and your deepest layer of content is not good for long tail SEO. Your deepest pages get starved of PageRank, and may not appear visibly

for search engine queries.

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INCREASE THE # OF LINKS PER PAGE

0

1

2

3

By increasing the number of links on each page (in a meaningful, usable way), you can reduce the number of levels between the homepage and your deepest content. This can

positively influence your long tail SEO traffic

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INTERNAL LINK STRUCTURE

Improving your internal link structure can be great for users, too. Think about what they might be looking for when they hit your page. What are the most popular routes users take

from your page, where do they click? Search engines love internal links

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CRUK INTERNAL REDIRECTS

The platform relies on internal “ssNODElink” redirects. These redirects “decay” the flow of internal PageRank making pages less likely to rank well.

Some PageRank Decay

A lot of PageRank Decay

301

http://cancerhelp.cancerresearchuk.org/type/bowel-cancer/ssLINK/the-bowel

http://cancerhelp.cancerresearchuk.org/type/bowel-cancer/about/the-bowel

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EXCESSIVE DUPLICATION OF CONTENT PRINT PAGES, ACCESSIBILITY AND SEARCH RESULTS

Check out this pagination guide: Best Practices for SEO & User Experience (SEOmoz), be careful with rel=“canonical” and use noindex, avoid robots.txt if you

can

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/pagination-best-practices-for-seo-user-experience

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THIN INTERNAL PAGES / NO CONTENT / BOILERPLATE CONTENT

Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?

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LEGACY DOMAIN MIGRATION MOP-UP

Restricted By Robots

Not Found HTTP Unreachable0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

35000

40000

45000

50000

Total Errors – cancerhelp.org.uk

Series1

Legacy Site

Redirects

New Site

Some redirect errors exist from the legacy site migration. This is easy to mop up and will benefit SEO as a result.

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THE OUTPUT

We’ve issued technical recommendations ready for the digital and IS team to implement

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Link worthy content

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GREAT CONTENT FOR SOCIAL AND LINKS

10,800 mentions in 24 hours, 201 links to the client, mentions in high authority tech blogs all over the world. Tweets from smashing magazine, 1000’s of RT’s and

1000’s of likes.

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GREAT CONTENT FOR LINKS

695 links, 1000+ tweets, 1000+ Facebook Shares

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Highly authoritative content

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What’s the very best resource I can create for my visitors?

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Satisfies basic requirements

Written by a human – not auto generated

More than 150 words

Very few or no spelling errors

Remarkable, insightful content that adds a unique

viewpoint

Produced by extraordinary writers/designers/producers

May leverage video, audio, graphics & photos to convey

a unique, shareable experience

Detailed, rich and oft linked to

UNDERSTAND POOR VS GREAT CONTENT

Great content is a key principle of inbound marketing. This article: Inbound Marketing & the Next Phase of Marketing on the Web is a must read.

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/4416/Inbound-Marketing-the-Next-Phase-of-Marketing-on-the-Web.aspx



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APPROPRIATE SOCIAL INTEGRATION

twitter.

com

stumbleu

pon.com

news.y

combinato

r.com

faceb

ook.com

sphinn.co

m

delicio

us.com

linke

din.com

answ

ers.ya

hoo.com

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

Visits

Learning where your traffic comes from via top referrers in Google Analytics is an important first step towards understanding how best to use social network sites submit / share

buttons.

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OpportunityGreat search engine optimisation strategy starts with an

understanding of how users search. Let’s prioritise opportunity.

Meet 4.6 million searchers per year:

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breast ca

ncer

prostate ca

ncer

bowel cance

r sym

ptoms

lung cance

r

leukemia

prostate ca

ncer s

ymptoms

melanoma

breast ca

ncer s

ymptoms

brain tumour

liver c

ancer

bone cance

r

symptoms o

f cervi

cal c

ancer

symptoms o

f bowel c

ancer

skin ca

ncer s

ymptoms

malignant m

elanoma

symptoms o

f brain tu

mour

symptoms o

f bowel c

ancer in

women

bowel cance

r sym

ptoms in w

omen

symptoms o

f a brain tu

mour

cervi

cal c

ancer ja

b

womb cance

r

hodgkins l

ymphoma

non hodgkins l

ymphoma

leukemia re

search

signs o

f bowel c

ancer

womb cance

r sym

ptoms0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

35000 1

6

11

16

21

26

Sum of Local Monthly Searches

Sum of Entries

Sum of ranking

This chart represents 50 highly searched for disease and symptom terms in the UK. “Local monthly searches” were conducted in August 2011. Rankings were taken on 19/09/2011.

50%

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GOOGLE KEYWORD TOOL

Richard Baxter, Founder, SEOgadget

Twitter: @richardbaxter

Blog: seogadget.co.uk

Email: [email protected]

THANK YOU

seo best practices after panda

Business

search engine ranking

organic search

visible search result

strong ranking factors

primary search connector

search results youre

social activity

fresh results