Joe Haddock's slide presentation from ASBPE's Sept. 24, 2009, webinar tells how best to use search engine optimization to drive traffic to your web site.
Hi, I’m Joe Haddock and I’m the Director of eMedia Business Development at Summit Business Media. And I’m not and editor, my roots are in development. I have been working with traditional B2B print publishing firms (primarily in the insurance, investment and professional services markets) for the last 12 years. Showing them how to move their products online and monetize them. I used to call this presentation “Why do people search?” and I like you to think about how people in you industry are searching for your content. There are over 300 million people online in the US today, time spent online has eclipsed time people spend watching TV, 87% of all browser sessions start with a search. They might be looking to buy a pair of shoes, who won the game or …
Traditional print products response to loosing control over content distribution. Forbes claims that Google earned/stole $60m just from directing traffic to Forbes.com I say don’t blame Google for having figured out their business model… figure out your own. Information has completed a transition from scarce and expensive to ubiquitous and free
Search is here to stay and it’s great, it what makes the internet work. So part of our online business model has to be how do we work with search. I’m going to refer to search as Google a fair amount in today's presentation but I’m really referring to the other major search engines link Yahoo and Bing as well.
What is SEO Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. We have been able to repeatedly and consistently make significant increases in our traffic across our products by adopting best practice in this discipline This last year People magazine went from 200k unique visitors to 12 million by focusing of SEO, but then they have an amazing search volume to optimize for Angelina Jolie 9 mill Brad Pit 3 mill George Clooney 1 mill
Here’s a quick look at the components of the Google ranking algorithm, we could spend a lot of time drilling down into each of these components and devise the perfectly optimized page for you keywords but… we’re not going to. That's 35 different components across multiple disciplines
We’re just going to focus on Headlines and Title tags, because you can achieve 80% or more of the value possible in the on page equation by getting your titles right. So lets forget about meta keyword and descriptions (although meta description have some engagement value, there is no SEO value, none zero zip forget it) The way we consume information has changed On average, 8 out of 10 people only read headline copy There’s to much information 50% – 60% of the site traffic is there for 8 – 10 seconds
OK so where are that SEO power houses? This is where the Title tag appears in your browser
The way Google uses you title tag on a results page (great example of a really bad title)
Here are the six places you will typically see title page. If your web site does not display the article headline in the browser title tag or a variation of the headline (some content management systems allow you to write a unique title tag). You need to get it fixed. Microcontent Short content, like headlines, which need to be immediately clear and inviting to a reader, and which still make sense when removed from their original context.
Do your title tags look like this? Would you click on one of these? No Reader Benefit Lack of Curiosity Lack of Specificity Lack of Simplicity No Sense of Urgency
Google is a lot like a TOC of the internet. When you see your headlines in Google do they elicit a click?
This is a fantastic graph created by seomoz from a recent study. It shows how the SEO value of the keyword in the title measurably decrease the later it appeared in the headline. There’s also some evidence that the more words in the Headline reduces the value assigned to any of the words. So clearly, using the keyword term/phrase as the very first words in the page title has the highest correlation with high rankings, and subsequent positions correlate nearly flawlessly to lower rankings. But there’s more to a great headline than the length and placement of the keywords.
This is a great case study Two competing Australian news sites. One gets record amount of traffic and the competition registers no notable change Very literal (Great headlines reflect how people search) Very search engine friendly Boring? 15 minutes later “Crocodile Man Reported Dead” ctl.ca – CTL 5/26/2007 Are you ubiquitous (I didn’t think people would even use ubiquitous but there are 100 – 300k search a month) Following her home Editor’s Choice for September 8, 2009 A spoonful of sugar
OK, here’s the best part, the tools. There are new tools that as an editor you need to know about because this is where we can make our headline power really pay off.
There are two great FREE tools to research keywords. Think of these tool as a resource not unlike a dictionary or thesaurus. A dictionary provides a definition for a term; a thesaurus tells you what words are associated with a term; a keyword tool tells you what words people are currently using to define a topic (a term). The industry jargon, lingo, slang, even localization.
This is a screenshot of Google analytics, where you can research the keywords used to find your content.
10x the search volume, I’m not saying to change the title, maybe we need to write another article. Discovery – what to write about Max Baucus
Another quick case study 20,000
I recommend building a list of industry specific keywords that you want to score high for and list their search volume. Know how your users search and what the volume is and you will be able to predict and set traffic goals.