SEO AuditingPost Panda and Best Practices

Fionn DownhillCEO, Elixir Interactive@fionnd

6/16/2011

What Happened?

Back to Basics

What makes a page successful?

On-Site Improvements

Keyword Research

HTML Title Tag

• Most important optimization element• First thing users see• Should be unique for each page

Meta Description

• Provides search engines with context• Used in results page listings• Should be unique for each page

Meta Keywords

• Mostly deprecated tag• No more than 3 per page

Header Tag - <H1>

• Reinforces theme of page• Provides additional context• Use keyword variations here

ALT Text

• Be descriptive and accurate of the image • Do not keyword stuff• Assists visually impaired users• Can provide additional context to the spiders

Copy

• Be concise and use proper grammar/spelling• Break up large chunks with lists• “Sprinkle” targeted keywords – no stuffing• Incorporate relevant links

Site Auditing

Auditing Basics

• Robots.txt• XML Site Maps• CSS & JS• Meta Tags• HTML Syntax• SEO Optimization• Usability• Programming Issues• On Site Linking

SEO Tools

Google WMT

Google WMT

Google WMT

Bing -Tools for Webmasters

• adCenter Keyword research tool• Plugin for Excel 2010• Video tutorials

• Bing’s Webmaster Tools• Inbound links tracking

• Integrated into Webmaster Tools account• Up to 20,000 inbounds/URL tracked• Shows external links to your site• Export all data

• Bing Index Explorer• See what URLs we have in our index from your website• See Page Details

• Discovery and crawl dates• Header responses• Number of external links pointing to page• Keywords and traffic to page• Average rank of page in SERPs• Recrawl URL request• Block cache and/or URL function• Export all data

• Submit URL tool• Crawl Management

• Manage query string parameter handling

• IIS SEO Toolkit – integrated with IIS for Windows servers • Crawls your site, tells you what needs attention

• Submit sitemaps directly to Bing via your account• Webmaster Tools and Features request forum

• Tell us what you want and what we should revise

• Paid Search Tools• Keyword research

Microsoft Advertising Intelligence is a keyword research and optimization tool that operates seamlessly in Microsoft Office Excel 2010. It provides keyword expansion, research, pricing, KPI data and more

• Desktop bid management

Save time by managing your Microsoft adCenter campaigns in an easy-to-use desktop application. Work faster, edit and create campaigns with ease, get performance alerts and research new keywords

• Bid management

Atlas Search is a web-based tool that allows you to manage your pay-per-click bids and listings in the top-tier search engines and shopping portal sites, all in one place, with measurable results

Bing-SEO Documentation

This five part series walks you through a detailed approach to performing an SEO review for any site.

Bing Webmaster Center FAQs

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

This four part series helps you understand how to approach optimizing a large website.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Guide to Using Bing Webmaster Tools

Link Building Overview

Keyword Research Guide

SEO Links and Guidance

Bing Webmaster Tools also offers deep content coverage on the following important topics and information related to our data.• Using Bing Webmaster Tools – overview• Webmaster Tools Data: Dashboard • Webmaster Tools Data: Crawl• Webmaster Tools Data: Index • Webmaster Tools Data: Traffic• Link Building• Removing or blocking a page from our index• Blocking content from Bing (robots.txt)• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) guidance• Tell us how to handle URL parameters• Rich Snippets (www.schema.org)• Tell Bing your Site's locale• Managing Canonicalization (duplicate content)• Using the <rel="nofollow"> tag • AJAX management for Webmasters• Managing redirects• 404 page management• Rich Media and Search • …and much more…

Linking Tools

Were you “Pandalized”

If you think you were fine before and you are not now, you have done something wrong or in Google’s view you have breached their guidelines. Get over it and start auditing.

Panda-Case Study

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/2657-SEO-Case-Study-One-Store-s-Struggle-with-Google-Updates

• Content on product pages pulled from publishers description

• Traffic dropped 38%

• Pages with pulled content all dropped

• This was okay before not now

Other Spam Signals

Check for:

• Duplicate content from pages in your own site.

• Oversaturating for keywords.

• Excessive grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors.

• Missing meta titles and descriptions.

• Duplicate content from off-site (including checking whether off-site pages have duplicated your pages).

• Poor user performance (time on site, bounce rate, etc.).

• An excessively high “ad to content” ratio.

•

Read more: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-panda-2-2-why-the-pandobsession-has-to-stop/30480/#ixzz1PBdIugvV

Key Take Away….

1. Before you worry about Panda you must audit your site first.

2. On Site SEO is vital to success

3. Do not forget Bing now 30% of traffic

4. Broaden your reach with digital assets

5. Google is great until it goes away, follow their rules or perish in their updates

6. Panda is an ongoing iteration of the Google algorithm to improve quality

Thank You

SEO Auditing

Fionn DownhillCEO, Elixir Interactive

fionn@elixirinteractive.com(602) 494-6326@fionndwww.linkedin.com/in/fionndownhill

SEO Auditing