HOW I THINK ABOUT SEO
Richard Baxter
SEOgadget.co.uk
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This is how search used to look
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It’s changed. A lot!
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Know your ecosystem. Organic search covers less than 25% of the visible search result – understanding the makeup of the search results you’re targeting will help you win.
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SOCIAL ANNOTATIONS
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Yoast has a great piece for those using Wordpress here: http://yoast.com/wordpress-rel-author-rel-me/ and this one’s good too:
http://anthonyvbrunetti.com/marketing/google-rel-author-infographic-how-to-implement/
Potential impact on CTR?
REL=AUTHOR
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GOOGLE+ A PRIMARY SEARCH CONNECTOR?
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FRESHNESS UPDATE
This is what a fresh result looks like – here’s how to find quick wins for freshness:
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IS FRESHNESS IN MY SERPS?
What are the rising searches in Google Insights? Are there fresh results for those queries?
SEOgadget.co.uk
SEARCH ENGINE RANKING FACTORS
...............................................................................................................................................................................................LARGE # OF INBOUND LINKS FROM EXTERNAL SOURCES
The more diverse the sources of inbound links, the greater the correlation with higher rankings.
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HOW CAN I MEASURE THAT?!
Opensiteexplorer.org is a great tool to find out who is linking to you!
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PAGE LEVEL FACTORS
Document title
Social media activity?
Relevant body copy
Image filename and alt attribute
“Classic” page level ranking factors, such as document title, <title> element in the meta code and relevant body copy are still strong ranking factors – but there’s a new guy in
town…
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SOCIAL SIGNALS IN RANKINGS
Bing and Google have said publicly they use Twitter and Facebook for rankings: and SEOmoz’s correlation data suggests they’re telling the truth. Track your social activity with PostRank analytics, learn what works
in your social networks.
http://sharedcount.com/
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HOW CAN I MEASURE THAT?
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TOPSY’S SOCIAL ANALYTICS
Check out http://analytics.topsy.com/?q=bowel%20cancer – compare upto 3 queries
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OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE ALGORITHM 2011
132 SEO professionals were invited to take part in the 2011 SEOmoz Search Engine Ranking Factors survey. Check out the report at this URL.
Panda: an algorithm change to help assess the quality of a site
Site Quality
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THE MINDSET OF A GOOGLE IR SPECIALIST
Google released more guidance on building high quality sites on May 6th
. The post contained 20+ questions you might ask yourself about a site to “get into the mind-set of a
Google engineer”
Amit Singhal
Google Fellow
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INNOCENT BYSTANDERS WERE HURT
• High % of duplicate content
• Very thin / boiler plate content
• Large volumes of very similar content
• Many “redundant” pages
• Advertising in visible area
Q: Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics
with slightly different keyword variations?
Use this custom search engine to search from a list of known sites to have been impacted in the US Panda update – what traits do they share?
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WOULD YOU TRUST THIS WEBSITE AS AN EXPERT SOURCE OF INFORMATION?
YESNO
A simple mechanical Turk test… Check out: http://seogadget.co.uk/high-quality-web-sites-the-new-google-ranking-factor/ also check out 5 second test:
http://fivesecondtest.com/
“I won't trust this website as an expert source of information because it doesn't seem like a genuine and professional e-
commerce site, dealing with electronic as well as other products. The site looks pretty ordinary and the content quality is
average.”
After going through the website I feel that this website is a trusted one. More over it has over 27,000 Facebook likes and
has presence in six countries. I would definitely trust this website as an expert source of information.
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CTR (CLICK THROUGH RATE) IN SEARCH
“….using click and visit data to rank results is a very reasonable and logical thing to do,
and ignoring the data would have been silly.”
Edmond Lau, former Google Engineer
Google have never admitted they use CTR as a ranking signal, but they do factor site speed into their algorithm. Bing confirmed they use CTR at “Ask the search engines, SMX
East”
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POOR INTERNAL LINK STRUCTUREPage Rank
1/10
1/100
1/1000
1/10000
1/100000
Homepage
Too many “levels” between the homepage and your deepest layer of content is not good for long tail SEO. Your deepest pages get starved of PageRank, and may not appear visibly
for search engine queries.
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INCREASE THE # OF LINKS PER PAGE
0
1
2
3
By increasing the number of links on each page (in a meaningful, usable way), you can reduce the number of levels between the homepage and your deepest content. This can
positively influence your long tail SEO traffic
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INTERNAL LINK STRUCTURE
Improving your internal link structure can be great for users, too. Think about what they might be looking for when they hit your page. What are the most popular routes users take
from your page, where do they click? Search engines love internal links
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CRUK INTERNAL REDIRECTS
The platform relies on internal “ssNODElink” redirects. These redirects “decay” the flow of internal PageRank making pages less likely to rank well.
Some PageRank Decay
A lot of PageRank Decay
301
http://cancerhelp.cancerresearchuk.org/type/bowel-cancer/ssLINK/the-bowel
http://cancerhelp.cancerresearchuk.org/type/bowel-cancer/about/the-bowel
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EXCESSIVE DUPLICATION OF CONTENT PRINT PAGES, ACCESSIBILITY AND SEARCH RESULTS
Check out this pagination guide: Best Practices for SEO & User Experience (SEOmoz), be careful with rel=“canonical” and use noindex, avoid robots.txt if you
can
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THIN INTERNAL PAGES / NO CONTENT / BOILERPLATE CONTENT
Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
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LEGACY DOMAIN MIGRATION MOP-UP
Restricted By Robots
Not Found HTTP Unreachable0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
35000
40000
45000
50000
Total Errors – cancerhelp.org.uk
Series1
Legacy Site
Redirects
New Site
Some redirect errors exist from the legacy site migration. This is easy to mop up and will benefit SEO as a result.
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THE OUTPUT
We’ve issued technical recommendations ready for the digital and IS team to implement
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Link worthy content
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GREAT CONTENT FOR SOCIAL AND LINKS
10,800 mentions in 24 hours, 201 links to the client, mentions in high authority tech blogs all over the world. Tweets from smashing magazine, 1000’s of RT’s and
1000’s of likes.
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GREAT CONTENT FOR LINKS
695 links, 1000+ tweets, 1000+ Facebook Shares
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Highly authoritative content
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What’s the very best resource I can create for my visitors?
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Satisfies basic requirements
Written by a human – not auto generated
More than 150 words
Very few or no spelling errors
Remarkable, insightful content that adds a unique
viewpoint
Produced by extraordinary writers/designers/producers
May leverage video, audio, graphics & photos to convey
a unique, shareable experience
Detailed, rich and oft linked to
UNDERSTAND POOR VS GREAT CONTENT
Great content is a key principle of inbound marketing. This article: Inbound Marketing & the Next Phase of Marketing on the Web is a must read.
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APPROPRIATE SOCIAL INTEGRATION
twitter.
com
stumbleu
pon.com
news.y
combinato
r.com
faceb
ook.com
sphinn.co
m
delicio
us.com
linke
din.com
answ
ers.ya
hoo.com
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500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
Visits
Learning where your traffic comes from via top referrers in Google Analytics is an important first step towards understanding how best to use social network sites submit / share
buttons.
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OpportunityGreat search engine optimisation strategy starts with an
understanding of how users search. Let’s prioritise opportunity.
Meet 4.6 million searchers per year:
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breast ca
ncer
prostate ca
ncer
bowel cance
r sym
ptoms
lung cance
r
leukemia
prostate ca
ncer s
ymptoms
melanoma
breast ca
ncer s
ymptoms
brain tumour
liver c
ancer
bone cance
r
symptoms o
f cervi
cal c
ancer
symptoms o
f bowel c
ancer
skin ca
ncer s
ymptoms
malignant m
elanoma
symptoms o
f brain tu
mour
symptoms o
f bowel c
ancer in
women
bowel cance
r sym
ptoms in w
omen
symptoms o
f a brain tu
mour
cervi
cal c
ancer ja
b
womb cance
r
hodgkins l
ymphoma
non hodgkins l
ymphoma
leukemia re
search
signs o
f bowel c
ancer
womb cance
r sym
ptoms0
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10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
35000 1
6
11
16
21
26
Sum of Local Monthly Searches
Sum of Entries
Sum of ranking
This chart represents 50 highly searched for disease and symptom terms in the UK. “Local monthly searches” were conducted in August 2011. Rankings were taken on 19/09/2011.
50%
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GOOGLE KEYWORD TOOL
Richard Baxter, Founder, SEOgadget
Twitter: @richardbaxter
Blog: seogadget.co.uk
Email: [email protected]
THANK YOU