seo for finance and banking sector

@[email protected]

http://ash.nallawalla.comEnterprise SEOThe whole is greater than the sum of its parts

Presented by:

Ash NallawallaDigital Sales Optimisation Consultant (contractor) at NAB until July 2015

@[email protected]

http://ash.nallawalla.com

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Agenda – (40 minute session)

• SEO 2015 trends – new algorithms versus old tactics– Less about top rankings and more about conversions.

• Digital marketing challenges for the finance sector• Organisation charts and the digital team

– Why “Inside-Out SEO” is better than outsourcing– Why PPC (SEM) is the neglected step child– Leveraging social media to help SEO

• Case Study – Exceptional success story• Q&A – 5 minutes

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In the interests of time…

(Please contact me to get the full deck.)

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SEO IN 2015It’s getting harder, but simpler

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SEO is not a commodity skill set

Some misconceptions:• “Everybody knows SEO”• “It’s about meta tags”• “It’s about keywords”• “Buy 500 links for $5”

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Google updates keep us on our toes

Some of the significant updates:• 1998 – 1999 – (SEO heyday)• 2003 “Florida” – keyword stuffing• 2004

– Meta tag stuffing– Google IPO

• 2005– XML Sitemaps

• 2010– Social Signals

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Significant Google updates (contd)

• 2011– “Panda” – thin content (many revisions since then)– Query Encryption – loss of keywords in analytics begins– Query Deserves Freshness (QDF)

• 2012– “Penguin” – Web spam

• 2013– “Hummingbird” – more about query, not keywords

• 2015– Mobile-Friendly

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http://ash.nallawalla.comElements of SEO pre-2014

• More important elements shown at the top

Links

Original, Compelling Content

Accessibility, Usability

Site architecture. HTML <5

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What no longer works in 2015

Check what your agency does:• Contrived links are risky

– Renting links per month - $15,000/mth anyone?– Sitewide links – e.g. sponsor link on every page– Comment spam– Article directory links – “content writing”

• Lots of links using the same linking text (“anchor text”)

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Past use of spammy links may come to haunt some

• Bonus: You also get named and shamed in blogs.

Attribution: LRT blog

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Elements of SEO post-2014

• More important elements at the top

Original, Compelling Content

Links, Social

Site architecture, HTML5, Responsive Design

Accessibility, Usability

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What works in 2015

• SEO is now “Inbound Marketing”– Content = what customers need = price, quality,

engagement, service.– Accessible HTML5 code and tagging

• Mobile-friendly / Responsive design– Analytics– Server performance– Earned media

• Citations (not always a clickable link) in relevant, trusted media outlets and websites

• Social signals that can be detected by search engines

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Mobile-Friendly test tool

• Google provides this tool at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

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What works in 2015 - Negative SEO

• Negative SEO involves “poisoning” a competitor’s rankings. Sometimes, you could do it to yourself using outdated tactics.

• (The site below was removed from the index. It had too many directory submissions using the same description.)

Image credit: Jim Boykin, Internet Marketing Ninjas

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DEEP DIVE – CONTENT ANALYSIS

Insurance keywords research example

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Ranking in a tough niche

(Say you have an insurance broker site.)

• Question: How can a small insurance player compete on Google’s page 1, which is dominated by big insurance companies and comparison sites?

• Answer: Competitor analysis, keyword research, content refresh, links

• Disclaimers (for this exercise):– Over 200 factors influence ranking – content is just one

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Completed spreadsheet

• While many websites have “lots” of ranking pages, we can now see which one is better performing consistently. We can also see how many pages it took to get the rankings. (Steps are in the full deck.)

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What are we not seeing?

• The spreadsheet shows the “winners”, not the “losers”.

• We can see who is using the most searched phrases.

• Some obscure sites have managed to get one or two ranking keywords.

• However, some major players are not featured there at all!

• So what can you do?

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Next steps

• Search for your keyword.• Visit the page/s of the highest

ranking company.• Do a Term Frequency analysis,

along with Inverse Document Frequency analysis (TF-IDF).

• Repeat for the next four top rankers.

• Also check its backlinks and compare with yours.

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TF-IDF

• Term Frequency – how frequently the term appears in a document (incl. stop words)

Or If Raw Term Count > 0, TF = 1+log10(Raw Term Count)If Raw Term Count = 0, TF = 0• Inverse Document Frequency – a measure of the

“rareness” of a term, so we weigh down the stop words and scale up the rare ones.

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TF-IDF example

• Say, a document with 100 words contains the term “cat” 3 times.

• The TF is 3/100or 0.03

• Google has, say, 30 trillion pages and the word “cat” appears in 1.7 billion pages.

• The IDF is log(30,000,000,000,000 /1,700,000,000)or log(730,2.718281828) = 6.593044535

• The TF-IDF weight is the product of:0.03 x 6.593044535 = 0.197791336

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TF-IDF – one worksheet per keyword

• Use TF-IDF to see which keywords the top five ranking sites have (but you don’t have).

Inspired by : http://moz.com/blog/using-term-frequency-analysis-to-measure-content-quality

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TF – close-up

• Get a count of each word or phrase used by the top five pages and by yours; then do the number crunching.

• See which phrases are used by others but not you.• Look for other differences.

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Not forgetting backlinks

• What kinds of topical sites are linking to the top 5? (green = high Topical Trust Flow)e.g. competitor 1 has the best links from Business.

• Use this to decide from where you need to get links.

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Analyse tags – the old way

• Check various data relating to the tagged content.• In this example for the term “health insurance”, four

of the top five pages have used it in exactly 3% of the page content.

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http://ash.nallawalla.comCorrelation does not imply causation

• Keyword density alone isn’t a reliable metric.• Do more checks. TF-IDF offers more clues.

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OTHER CHALLENGESLarge companies have these additional challenges

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Simplified org chart

CEO

Sales EGM

Retail GM Digital GM

Manager

SEO

Manager

Social

etc

Marketing EGM

Marketing GM

Manager

SEM/PPC (agency)

Manager Etc

Other EGMs

Technology GM

Manager

Security Developers

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Standard Operating Environment

• The word “security” stops pesky requests – work with IT Security to resolve.

• Can’t install browser plug-ins• Can’t install SEO software• SOE computers under-powered

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Activities occur in parallel

Digital GM

Sales

SEO

BAU Content

IA UX Accessibility Producers

Projects

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Possible issues with large sites

• Inadequate communication• Not mobile-friendly• Poor information architecture• Content management system not search friendly• Poor usability• Poor accessibility• Server slow or cannot handle heavy load• Lack of SEO (or incorrect SEO)

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Suggested approach

• Communicate better.• Website Staffing

– Appoint a “website quality manager” with a holistic view.– Content Manager. Reduce reliance on agencies for

content creation.– In-house SEO (has other sales optimisation duties as

well).• Use external SEO as a mentor or for significant upgrades

– Encourage staff to attend digital conferences.– Ask Technology developers to sit in Digital team area.– Hold monthly website “value creation” meetings whose

agenda will include content changes/additions/deletions.

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Successful approach – “Inside-out SEO”

• When staff do their existing tasks using search-aware methods, they are doing “inside-out SEO”

• Train teams to use the Google Keyword Planner to get a feel for the most searched terms.

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Other approaches (continued)

• Increase Paid Search Traffic (PPC/SEM)– Hold regular, at least monthly, meetings between

stakeholders to scrutinise PPC campaigns.

• Local Search– Rectify the errors and omissions in Google Maps for Branch

and ATM data.

• Social Media Optimisation (SMO)– Use social media proactively.– Train Customer Care and Corporate Affairs staff to use the

company’s Twitter and Facebook accounts.– Purchase/subscribe to a social media monitoring platform.

• Analytics– Should be easy to use, else it won’t be used

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CASE STUDY - NAB

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Case Study: Predicted and actual growth

• May – July 2010– Perform digital audit – promise 10% increase in organic

traffic over 12 months

• August 2010– Start SEO implementation.

• September 2010 – week 1– 10% monthly uplift in organic traffic.

• November 2010– 100% monthly uplift in organic traffic.

• December 2013– 250% monthly uplift in organic traffic.

• March 2015– Over 300% monthly uplift compared to 2010 benchmark.

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So why did this happen?

• Complete top-down support from management• Executives and staff were digital-savvy• Teams trained to create “value” (inside-out SEO)• Enthusiastic support from all teams!

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Summary

• SEO in 2015 requires more effort than before. Best tip is to offer fantastic offerings, fantastic customer service and you will get your justly earned traffic.

• Stay on top of Google’s algorithms.• Mobile keeps getting more and more relevant.• Old tactics will not work. Do an audit.

Ash Nallawalla• Twitter: @ashnallawalla• Email: [email protected]• Web: http://ash.nallawalla.com

http://ash.nallawalla.com/