techstars startup incubator seo & social deck
TRANSCRIPT
TechStars SEO & Social
Who’s the speaker today?
Duane Forrester
@duaneforrester
Bing Webmaster ToolsSpeaks at shows, runs forums and blog, provides guidance on new WM toolswww.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters
Does he have a clue?12+ years as an inhouse SEO; ran seo at MSN; has helped Disney, GAP, Walmart +http://www.linkedin.com/in/dforrester
And this helps me how?Blogging since 2001; owns 150 domains; actively optimizes and monetizeshttp://twitter.com/DuaneForrester
what does duane do at bing
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A Changing Web of Your Objects
Schema.org can help
Mark up your content
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Mobile
The ultimate “PC”
Not just phones
9B today
25B by 2021
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Search continues to evolve
New devices demand different search experiences other than links
The ability for these devices to feed in real time signals help us handle intent better and therefore can provide a more tailored experience
Its not just mobile phones or tablets and its not just text entry. Anything could be a search – voice, a picture, a gesture, sound – anything. We are building the universal interface for search.
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Why social matters to search
• Signal of topical authority
• Real-time – engines want fresh content, fast
• Integrated social signals influence click actions of searchers
• Social signals remain only a few of thousands of signals for organic ranking
How users click on your results can impact rankings and when we show cues like your Facebook friends with results, click rates can be impacted.
http://www.kyleclouse.com/social-media-marketing/Your data, always fully provided.
Social Graph and PatternsSocial Graph
Focus
PatternsNatural
Unnatural
Quality TrustPopularityTimeliness
You:FollowersFollowsLikesReplies
Retweets/Likes (by whom)
Follows (Twitter)
Followers (Twitter)
Who else Posts/Shares (reputation)
Fans (Facebook)
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• Don’t try to extrapolate from this graph• Importance is relative• Use as a guide – no item is unimportant
Where does SEO fit in?
Content Social User Experience Link Building SEO
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6 major investment areas for SEO
• Crawlability– Xml sitemaps– Navigational structure– Rich media cautions– Graceful degradation– URL structure– Robots.txt
• Site Structure– Links– URL structure and keyword usage– Clean URLs – no extraneous parameters (sessions,
tracking, etc.)– HTML & XML sitemaps– Content hierarchy– Global navigation – springs form hierarchy planning +
style of nav (breadcrumb, link lists, etc.)– Rich media – don’t bury links in Javascript/flash
/silverlight/AJAX
• On-Page– Head copy
• Titles – unique, relevant, 60 characters or so long• Descriptions – unique, relevant, grammatically correct, 160 or
fewer characters (Google shows up to 160 characters)
– Body Copy• H1, H2 and other H tag usage• ALT tag importance & usage• Keyword usage within the content/text – see “Perfectly
Optimized Page” image• Anchor text – using target keywords to support other internal
pages
• Content– Build based on keyword research– Down-level experience enhances discoverability– Keep out of rich media and images– 250 words per page or more– Produce new content frequently– Make it unique – don’t reuse content from other
sources– Content management – using 301s to reclaim value
from retiring content/pages– <LINK> canonical to help engines understand which
page should be indexed and have value attributed to it– 404 error page management to help cleanse old pages
from search engine indexes
• Links– Plan for incoming & outgoing link generation– Internal & external link management– Content selection – planning where to link to– Link promotion via social spaces – direct traffic & seo
value– Managing anchor text properly– URL structure can help insert keywords where they are
needed
• Social– Build your community– Interact often– Share useful content– Be consistent and useful– Grow facebook, twitter, etc.
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A Fresh approach to Targeting Optimization
• Every area of your site has a value - $, PV, Emails, etc.
• Determine what the value is
• Sort your site by value to see what really matters
• Organize work around high-value areas first
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Content Development
• The engines respond to unique, useful content
• How do you define “content”?
• Match content to your audience
• Different mediums for different jobs (video, text, images, etc.)
• Don’t take shortcuts – limit syndicated content
image credit: http://mashable.com/2011/01/10/social-content-strategy/Your data, always fully provided.
Keyword Research
• It will always begin here
• Match data from external sources against your own data
• Develop “Share of Voice” reporting to explain success
• Back to sessions – create keyword campaigns around topics
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Move from “Query” to “Session”
• Query is a single action
• Session is a collection of related actions over time
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dog • Monday• dog beds• dog accessories• dog toys• vet near me• dog friendly hotels• organic dog food• doggy day care
• Tuesday• dog sweaters• dog collars• dog leashes• puppy training• dog park• dog allergies• pictures of dogs
SessionQuery
Encourage more Sharing
• So you want more shares for your content, do you? Try these ideas.
• Create lists: people love to consume content in list-form. Its quick, easy and simple.
• Use hooks: ego, humor, anger, contrarian – be careful with them, but when used well, they are highly effective.
• Participate in communities: when you are valued member of a community, the community supports you.
• Share others’ information: people love when what they share gets shared itself. Share from trusted sources.
• Ask questions: your followers will love the interaction and it’ll grow your following as others engage.
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Building Efficiencies
• Look for ways to streamline your time
• Identify a customer need and fill in the blanks
• Look to identify patterns so you can leverage efficiency efforts
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Trusted RSS feeds
new
slett
er
Copy & Paste
AUTOMATED
AU
TO
MATED
MANUAL
Conversion optimization
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• Different sources must be handled differently
• Organic traffic is building trust
• Paid traffic is ready to open their wallets
• Email traffic is ready to buy…now
• Ensure your conversion path is short and sweet
• Off the shelf carts can usually be tweaked to gain improvements in conversions.
Tools should enable doing
Found @ Google WMT Found @ Bing WMT
crawl data
crawl rate configure
sitemap submissions
parameter handling
link data for your site
traffic stats
keyword data
messaging
block URLs
fetch as bot
crawl data
crawl rate configure
sitemap submissions
parameter handling
link data for your sitetraffic stats
keyword data
messaging
block URLs
fetch as bot
organic keyword researchrank stats
index stats
index tracker
canonical alerts
SEO reports
SEO analyzer
link explorer
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Wrapping up
• Content is the reason• Keyword research is a beacon• Quality is your watch word• Authority is your goal• Niche is your starting point• User Experience is your religion
…and use the tools provided.
Thanks for your time!Duane Forrester
Sr. Product Manager - Bing
@duaneforrester
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