Going through SEO practices to discern what still works and what does not. Also, many other disciplines are having an impact on results and how SEOs need to alter their approach to adjust

1. SEO Isn’t Just SEO
Anymore

2. Agenda
• Introductions and Overview
• Define Traditional SEO
• What Still Works And What Doesn’t
• New Disciplines Affecting SEO
• Trends
• Questions

3. Introductions
Justin Kerley
SEO Department Manager
www.linkedin.com/in/kerleyj
@KerleyJ

4. A Brief Introduction to
Top Floor

5. Top Floor
• Website Design &
Development
• Search Engine
Marketing
• Web Analytics &
Conversion
Improvement
• Marketing & Branding
Strategy
Maximizing Online Marketing Results for Hundreds of
Businesses Since 1999

6. Getting the Most From
Today’s Workshop
Write down 2-3 learning points
that you will begin putting into
action within the next two weeks.
Then – follow through.

7. Traditional SEO

8. All About Traffic

9. Target Audience = Search Engines

10. Traditional SEO - Shortcomings
• Little thought to the users
• Keyword Rankings are king
• Quantity of backlinks takes precedence over
quality of backlinks

11. Manipulating Search Engines
• Ranking factors, once known, would be exploited.
• Site quality deteriorated
• Monetized sites would marginalize the user’s
experience to improve revenues

12. Keyword Stuffing

13. Thin/Duplicated Content
• Automatically generated content
• Thin affiliated pages
• Content from other sources

14. Link Manipulation

15. Search Engines Get Smarter
• Search Engines want to see what users see
• Need to protect their users to maintain loyalty
• Want to provide their customers (searchers) with the
best results and crackdown on “black-hat” tactics
• Algorithm updates and manual penalties

16. Panda Update

17. Penguin Update

18. Hummingbird Algorithm

19. Manual Penalties
• Google Spam team manually reviews a site
• Implements a penalty independent of their algorithm
• Webmaster must take steps to address the issue at
hand
• Site must be submitted for review
• Lather, rinse, repeat

20. What Works and What
Doesn’t?

21. On-Site Optimization
• Search Engines still need you to tell them what your
website is all about
• Certain on-site elements hold more weight than
others
• Need to find the balance between writing for a user
and for search engines

22. Keyword Research (Still Works)

23. Keyword Research (Still Works)
• Understand what your potential users are looking for
and how they would search for it
• Search volume isn’t everything
• The key is relevance

24. Keyword Relevance

25. Optimizing the Search Engine Result (Still Works)
• Title Tag, Meta Description and URL Alias
• Work keywords into these three elements
• Have the largest impact on rankings and CTR
• Write for users and search engines

26. Optimizing the Search Engine Result (Still Works)

27. Optimizing the Search Engine Result (Still Works)

28. Optimizing the Search Engine Result (Still Works)

29. Optimizing the Search Engine Result (Still Works)

30. Optimizing the Search Engine Result (Still Works)

31. Provide Context (Still Works)
• Search Engines are trying to better understand user intent
• Providing context gives Search Engines and users more information about
the purpose of the site
• E-commerce: “Buy Now”, “Add To Cart”, related products, shipping
• Review Site: “User Reviews”, Consumer Reports, links to company site
• The primary elements for page context have long been ranking factors
• Should be used for more than just keywords now

32. Heading Tags
• H-tag structure organizes your
content for users and SE
• H1 – most important, should
only have one*
• Lose importance as the
number gets higher (H2 > H3
> H4 etc…)
• Use these tags to highlight
information your users need
• NOTE: Often used for styling*HTML5 allows for multiple H1s, though best practice is 1

33. Alt Image Text
• Alt image text describes images to screen readers and
Search Engine bots
• Should describe the image and not just the target keyword

34. Internal Links
• Internal linking structure ensures that all pages are found
and easy to navigate to
• Provides context to users and search engines by linking to
relevant content and resources

35. Internal Links
• Text used within the link is an indicator to users and Search
Engines as to the content of the destination
• Avoid generic anchor text (“click here”, “learn more” etc…)
• Try to avoid using the exact same anchor text for links to a
specific page – could be seen as manipulation

36. Keyword Density/Stuffing (Doesn’t Work)
• Forcing a particular keyword into the content
• Often described as “writing for SEO”

37. Keyword Density/Stuffing (Doesn’t Work)
• Search engines do look for occurrences of words/phrases
• Diminishing returns
• Potential penalties
• Write for your users first and foremost, THEN consider how a search engine
may interpret it

38. Thin/Duplicated/Spun Content (Doesn’t Work)
• Gives the illusion of a great quantity of content
• Often used to capture exact match or long tail keyword traffic
• “used trucks” vs. “used pickups” vs. “used pickup trucks” vs. “pre-owned
trucks” etc…
• Add no value for the user
• Targeted by the Panda algorithm update

39. Off-Site Optimization
• Google pioneered this
ranking methodology with
PageRank
• Judges sites by how others
perceive them
• Traditionally based on
external domains/pages
linking back to a given site.

40. Directory Submissions (Somewhat Works)
• Like keywords, relevance
is key.
• Mass submitting does
not work, could get you
penalized
• Niche/industry specific
directories can be
beneficial

41. Directory Submissions (Somewhat Works)
• Local directories provide name, address and phone numbers for users and
Search Engines
• Think if your target audience would use this directory, if so, pursue a
link/listing

42. Mass Article Submissions (Doesn’t Work)
• Places one article (or many versions
of the same content) across a
network of repositories for no other
purpose than to gain links back
• Provides users with little to no value
• Not to be confused with submitting
an article to a trusted publication
• Does the article serve a specific user
audience? Will it only exist in one
location?

43. Buying Links (Really Doesn’t Work)
• Used to be commonplace to receive offers of thousands of links for a
nominal fee
• Some even offered “keyword rich” anchor text
• This violates webmaster guidelines and could result in a manual action
• Gray area: buying advertising space on a site relevant to your audience
• Link should be “nofollow”
• Clearly marked as an ad.

44. Guest Blogging (Does/Doesn’t Work)
• Two things to differentiate good from bad
• Relevance
• Does it scale?
• Traditionally this would involve one blog post being spammed to any
webmaster that has a “submit blog post” link on their site
• Article would be filled with keyword-laden anchor text
• Solely for links
• What works: providing a blog post (that a webmaster has requested or
consented to beforehand) that will be valuable to their audience and
increase exposure to the author and their brand.
• SEO post for Smashing Magazine

45. New Disciplines
Affecting SEO

46. Social Media
• Social Signals are having a greater impact on SEO performance, however
they do not do so in a direct, quantifiable manner.
• Factoring Likes, Retweets, and +1s into an algorithm would be too
difficult to quantify and organize
• Too easy to manipulate
• Google has attempted, but always scraps it

47. Social Media – How does it impact SEO?

48. Social Media – How does it impact SEO?

49. Social Media – How does it impact SEO?
• Brand Awareness
• Link potential
• Interacting with Influencers

50. Social Media – Best Practices
• Claim social properties and brand them consistently across all
platforms
• Post consistently
• There is no “magic” number
• Provide quality content/links
• Share posts from others in your/related industry
• Interact with Influencers/followers

51. Social Media – Best Practices

52. Social Media – Best Practices

53. Social Media – Best Practices

54. User Experience
• As Search Engines continue to evolve around providing users
with the best experience, your website’s user experience
becomes increasingly important
• Think about what your user is trying to accomplish
• Find more information
• Purchase a product
• Request a quote
• Make it easy for them to do so

55. User Experience – Dwell Time
• Search Engines state that they do not monitor your site’s
specific engagement metrics, but they do track the
performance of SERPs
• Dwell time is defined as the amount of time a user spends on
a site after they client through to result before returning to
the SERP
• Can be an indicator of the quality of the result

56. User Experience – “Ping-Ponging”
• Described as a user that bounces back and forth between the SERP and
different results, like a Ping-Pong ball.
• Shows the user did not get what they were looking for yet stayed with
their initial search query

57. User Experience – Mobile Friendly
• Users are using tablets and mobile devices at a rapidly increasing rate
• Mobile search queries will exceed desktop queries very soon – perhaps
already doing so in 2014

58. User Experience – Mobile Friendly

59. User Experience – Best Practices
• Make sure your site is easy to use, navigate and understand
• Don’t make users think
• Provide direct, actionable information relevant to your user’s needs
• Understand what your users want
• Make it obvious and easy for them to get it
• Professionally designed and mobile-friendly
• Site should inspire confidence
• Content adapts to the resolution of the device (responsive design) or
has a mobile specific counterpart (mobile site)

60. Conversion Rate Optimization
• SEO used to just be responsible for getting traffic to the site.
Then it was up to the site to make users convert.
• With an increased focus on the user and their intent, driving
the right traffic is now the goal.
• At the end of the day, your site’s goal is to generate more
business. An increase in traffic is nice, but an increase in
traffic paired with an improved conversion rate drives notable
results.

61. Conversion Rate Optimization – Impact On SEO
• Changes the approach to keyword research
• Increased focus on engagement metrics
• Converted visitors could lead to
referrals/endorsements

62. Conversion Rate Optimization – Best Practices
• Limit friction points on the user’s path from visitor to customer

63. Conversion Rate Optimization – Best Practices
• Limit friction points on the user’s path from visitor to customer

64. Conversion Rate Optimization – Best Practices
• Descriptive, appropriate
text
• Should be a button, not a
text link
• Color that stands out

65. Trends

66. Secured Internet Protocol
• Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure adds a layer of encryption
protecting a user’s interactions with a site – prominent in
online transactions
• The increased emphasis on personal privacy and secured
Internet interactions has brought HTTPS to the fore front
• Google has officially announced that use of HTTPS is part of
their ranking algorithm, albeit a small factor.

67. Secured Internet Protocol – SEO Considerations
• Should be a consideration to move to HTTPS in 2015
• Update links on site
• Prepare/update 301 redirects
• Monitor old and new “sites” in Webmaster Tools

68. Mobile First
• Mobile First is a design concept that puts building websites for mobile
devices at the forefront and then expand on design elements with
increased screen size

69. Mobile First
• Google has been a vocal
proponent of this movement –
adding mobile oriented
reporting and tools.
• Recently sent out webmaster
notifications warning of mobile
usability issues – sign of mobile
specific algorithm

70. Mobile First – SEO Considerations
• Responsive design is the preferred method of building a site that’s mobile
friendly.
• One location for content
• Changes layout based on user’s device
• Mobile sites can be effective but pose challenges
• Duplicated content
• Two separate sites to maintain
• Communicate the alternative links with meta data
• Mobile devices have fewer pixels – make messaging concise without
sacrificing all of your content

71. Google’s Ever-Changing SERP
• Google’s customers are AdWords users and searchers
• They do not owe websites traffic
• Their goal is to improve the user’s experience in search results
and keep them active within Google’s properties
• Recent changes to the SERPs demonstrate that

72. Google’s Ever-Changing SERP

73. Google’s Ever-Changing SERP

74. Google’s Ever-Changing SERP

75. Google’s Ever-Changing SERP
• Personalization can alter results based on browsing history
• Google+ posts can appear in the results from your circles

76. Google’s Ever-Changing SERP

77. Google’s Ever-Changing SERP

78. Google’s Ever-Changing SERP

79. Google’s SERP – SEO Considerations
• Ensure local listing data is accurate and consistent – NAP consistency
• Provide location based data where applicable
• Actively post and build your audience on Google+
• Add social follow buttons to your site
• Monitor search results for target keywords, if knowledge graph is
available, identify additional opportunities for content creation.
• Leverage other channels to secure a steady stream of traffic

80. Advanced Markup and HTML5
• The goal of both is to improve on context and information provided to
both users and search engines
• Schema markup allows webmasters to add data to the HTML that clearly
identifies a piece of content’s purpose (address, price, review, phone
number etc…)
• HTML5 allows you to communicate how your content is parsed for users
• Navigation
• Aside
• Footer
• Advanced h-tagging structure

81. Advanced Markup and HTML5

82. Advanced Markup and HTML5

83. Advanced Markup and HTML5 – SEO Considerations
• Visit schema.org to identify markup that applies to your business
• Address
• Hours
• Company information
• When developing a new site, look into the use of HTML5 – this is not
essential to implement immediately

84. Questions?

85. Upcoming Seminars
Taking Your Website
Global
March 10 – Crowne Plaza
Promo Code: EXPORTWI
Mobile Advertising - How
to Succeed in a Multi-
Screen World
March 18 – Top Floor
Promo Code: MobilePPC100

86. Thank You.