Trends, best practices and the future of organic search engine optimization (SEO).

1. Trends, Best Practices in Organic Search
By Josh Smith
Find and Convert

2.  History of Search
 Future of Search
 Important Concepts
 Future SEO Mindset
 Best Practices

3. Unfair advantage
Analogous to
Post Google
Panda & Penguin

4.  Florida Update (Google) – November 2003
◦ Primarily targeted onsite factors
 Rel Canonical – February 2009
◦ Google, Bing, and Yahoo jointly announced
 Social Signals - December 2010
 Panda Update (Google) - February 23, 2011
◦ Content Farms, Article Syndication
 Penguin Update (Google) – April 24, 2012
◦ Blog Networks, Site-wide Links, Exact Match Anchor
Text

5.  Knowledge Graph - May 16, 2012
 EMD Update - September 27, 2012
◦ Large Scale devaluation of exact match domains
 Page Layout - October 9, 2012
◦ Page layouts with too many ads above the fold.

8.  What does Google want?
◦ Provide answers to search intent and not just give
links.
◦ Want to connect topic, ideas, people, places, things
◦ What is? When? Where are?
◦ Answers questions
 What is Pi?
 What is the harlem shake?

9.  How do they plan on connecting all this data?
◦ Entities
◦ Google Authorship
◦ Synonyms (Not keyword based – Topic based)
 Matt Cutts has his own synonym team
 Lag from what Google wants and where it is today
 Imagine a search engine that can differentiate
101 level content and 401 level content.

11.  Answer 30% of users
next queries
 Connects the dots
between entities.

12.  Google is connecting authors that write
quality content (receives links, social,
cocitations) and connecting them with the
vertical that they write in.

13.  Co Citation is when the Brand is mentioned
without a link in context to a specific topic.
 Example: Coca Cola will be mentioned in
articles regarding soft drinks not computers.
Excerpt from the Wall Street Journal.

14.  How does Google determine the authority of
the website?
 How does Google determine the quality of
content?
 How does Google determine higher quality
for 2 identical pieces of content?
 Greatness is not an algorithm factor.
 Answer: Links, Social, & Co Citations to a
webpage.

15.  Google has been giving more love to brands
over the past updates.

16.  User Input a Brand Signal

18.  High quality links .edu, .gov, cnn, wsj, etc.
 Sometimes a lot of links to go with the high
quality
 Social Shares
 Branded Anchor Text
◦ Don’t forget some exact match
<a href=“http://www.brand.com”>Branded
Anchor Text</a>

19.  High quality content will create links, social
shares. This is how Google determines high
quality content.
 E.g., Faces of Meth

21.  Write for humans
 Don’t write for search engines
 Quality of the content in context is KING
 Be Marketers not Google Manipulators
◦ Be Awesome 
◦ Be Creative
Hint: The Future is Now!

22.  Create linkable assets
◦ Interview series
◦ Tools
◦ Contests
◦ Polls
◦ Cover current news events

24.  Webpages rank, not Websites
 Know the User Intent in the keyword
◦ Don’t go by just traffic
 Targeted Traffic
 Closely related keywords can target the same
page
◦ Cars, Autos, Automobile, Vehicle
 Blog Posts are for Long Tail
 This works well with “Siloing” the website

27. Blog is completely separate – All content created goes under
the blog if it is not a landing page. URLs have the correct
subdirectory.
Example: www.website.com/silo1/category1/page

28.  Be natural
 If you do optimize content use synonyms. But
DO NOT over-think, be human.
 Images & videos enhance the quality of a
post.

29.  Google has an army of really well paid, smart,
socially awkward people who live in front of
their computers 18 hours a day.

30.  Content needs to be data driven (KPI).
 Landing Pages vs Blog Post
 Competitive Research
◦ What are competitors writing about?
◦ How well is their content performing? (Links & Social)
 Timely Research
◦ Trending / Hot Topics / Informational (Google Trends)
 Client’s Content
◦ Are the posts generating traffic, links, social mentions? If
not then there is VERY little value given to the content.

31.  How are URLs performing? (Not Keywords)
◦ Traffic
◦ Links
◦ Social

32. Source: Kuno Creative

33.  They comment, share, and link to content.
Helps domain authority for ranking.
 More importantly if the site gets hit by a
future update all traffic does not cease.
 This mindset helps build a business not just
rankings.

34.  How will anybody find an awesome piece of
content if it is only on the your blog?
◦ A) Either you have a huge audience following that
will promote your content
◦ B) Or outreach has to be done to build the brand’s
presence
 How to build an audience?
◦ Reach out to other people & websites in the vertical
 Use the employee team if at all possible
◦ Can be very time consuming and expensive
 Goal: Brand Awareness, Links, Traffic

36.  Internal Links should be natural and for the user.
◦ Don’t overuse Exact Match.
 Internal links only pass authority from other
websites linking to it.
◦ Can’t vote yourself up for competitive keywords.
◦ Stay within silo
 Internal Links should be focused to help a
landing page.
◦ Don’t cannibalize rankings.
 Blog posts can interlink
 The more internal links on a page the less link
juice is passed to each page.

37.  Don’t give hard numbers per post
◦ Sites that were hit by penalties were by more
factors than just internal linking
◦ Don’t be afraid, be cautious
◦ Biggest thing is to have the right mindset
 Don’t overuse exact match anchor text
 Be different as much as possible (anchor text)
 Internal link to relevant landing page or blog
post

38.  Use appropriate alts for images after seeing
the image. Don’t just put keywords in the
image.
 Title and h1 should be different. Blog Posts
can get away with this.
 Don’t over optimize URLs
◦ www.website.com/my-first-keyword-1/second-
keyword-here

39.  Put blog structure as
 Category - www.website.com/blog/name-of-
category
 Blog Post - www.website.com/blog/blog-
post
 This prevents having duplicate content on
site if multiple categories are selected for a
post.

40.  Over-optimization
◦ http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-changes-every-
seo-should-make-before-the-over-
optimization-penalty-hits-whiteboard-friday
 Content Performance
◦ http://uk.blueglass.com/blog/content-auditing/
◦ http://pointblankseo.com/scrape-rate
◦ http://ipullrank.com/scrape-rate-and-shareability-
rate/

41.  Silo Architecture
◦ http://www.bruceclay.com/seo/silo.htm
 Landing Pages
◦ http://yoast.com/cornerstone-content-rank/
 Entities / Synonyms
◦ http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_em
bedded&v=NpnnXt7CHMU
◦ http://www.seobythesea.com/2013/01/insignifican
t-terms-in-queries/

42.  CoCitation / CoOccurence
◦ http://www.seomoz.org/blog/prediction-anchor-
text-is-dying-and-will-be-replaced-by-cocitation-
whiteboard-friday
◦ http://www.seobythesea.com/2012/11/ranking-
webpages-relationships-co-occurrence-patent/
◦ http://www.seobythesea.com/2012/11/not-all-
anchor-text-is-equal-other-co-citation-
observations/

43.  Matt Cutts
◦ http://www.theshortcutts.com/
◦ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMY-iNnqUIo
 URLS
◦ http://www.not-implemented.com/urls-are-for-
people-not-computers/

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