Post on 16-Jul-2015
FENDER MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
• Legendary Brand Founded in 1946 • Today: the world’s leading guitar, bass & amp manufacturer • The two most expensive guitars sold at auction were Fender
guitars (Bob Dylan’s - $965,000 & Eric Clapton’s guitar “Blackie” - $959,500 )
• Fender was founded on a platform of product excellence & innovation through consumer engagement
MOVING INTO THE DIGITAL AGE
• In 2014 – Social, Technology & Consumer engagement were a company focus.
• Additionally, Fender became the 1st guitar manufacturer to sell direct to consumers.
Portent, Inc. is one of North America’s elite Internet marketing companies. Located in Seattle, WA., Portent is a full-service agency with in-house design, creative, and development teams including experts in paid advertising, analytics, SEO, content strategy/writing, and social media.
Greetings from the #smithtower
Ahead of The Horizon
SEO Design Basics Portent
Our Approach It’s All Integrated
PPC DISPLAY SOCIAL BLOG SEO CREATIVE
OWNED PAID EARNED
CONTENT
ANALYTICS
INFRASTRUCTURE
Channels
Elements
SEO Design Basics Portent
SEO is the result of all your marketing elements working together.
Change
that!!
More Text
here!
Don’t have this!
Add nav
item here!
Make this
text!
What CMS is
this??
More CSS Sprites!!!!!
Get rid of this page!
SEO Integration
Timing is Everything
Integrating SEO early on
in the design of a site
leads to wireframes, title
tags, headings, img alt
tags, content,
navigation, etc. working
together.
Proper SEO influences: Wireframes Information Architecture Marketing Strategy Content and even, Design
Important
Less Important
Not Important
The LEAST Important
SEO Design Basics People v. Robots
Google Actually uses human factors to determine importance.
Behavior Crawl data
12
111
23
34
45
Strong behavior cues, and a great site
#1 for behavior cues, but many crawl issues
Crawlable Robots can find all pages
Robots can see all content
Robots can understand all the content
Distance From Perfect
Relevant Page is useful
Page is engaging
Page is trustworthy
Page performs
SEO Design Basics
Crawlable Infrastructure
Architecture
Code
Distance From Perfect
Relevant Design
Content
Page Speed
SEO Design Basics
WHY SEO AT FENDER
• Fender launched a Direct to consumer business without: • PPC
• Display
• Social Advertising
• Google Product feed
• And other traditional digital channels
• SEO became a primary focus
WHY WE HIRED AN SEO FIRM
• In 2014 we implemented an Ecommerce platform, a PIM & new CRM
• Many of the moving pieces could have significantly impacted our SEO rankings
• An after fact: Company wide we became more in sync with our SEO efforts between departments
THINGS TO CONSIDER
• An SEO agency provides guidance. It still requires action on the client side.
• Hiring an internal SEO guru you are limited by their skill set.
• SEO is the most unpredictable area in Digital Marketing and there are many conflicting opinions.
SEO - DEVELOPERS
• Code Compression
• Account for CMS limitations – www.fender.com/default/ was one of ours
• Create Canonicals
• Fix re-direct hops
• Internal linking issues – Example, our still duplicate menu (mobile & desktop)
• Dynamically populating SEO info when none is available
• Site Speed
SEO - Marketing
• H1’s • Title tags • Meta Description • Image alt text • Copy • Vanity URLs • Etc…
49
Re-Design Woes Top SEO considerations when re-designing or re-platforming
SEO Design Basics SEO & Fender
Losing High Authority Pages Changing URLs of Top Pages Decrease in Page Speed Increase in Code Bloat Creation of Duplicate Content 404 Errors & Broken Links Drop in Ranking Shift in Indexation CMS Behavior Template Issues (design, titles, etc.) Redirect Hops 301 Redirects Canonicalization Issues
Spider Traps
SEO Design Basics SEO & Fender
The Reality
Infinitely-expanding URLs like this mean search engines may get captured in ‘spider traps.’ They can spend all their time in these traps, instead of crawling other pages of your site. This is a long chain in which each page loaded adds one new page to the queue.
Image Compression Image compression has a huge impact on load time. We’ve used compression to reduce load time by 50%.
The images at right show a comparison of 2 images that were compressed to almost 1/3rd their original size. Code Size Too much code can slow a page down dramatically. It can also be a flag to Google that your pages are ‘thin’ on content.
We aim for a content to code ratio of around 30%. Compression, minification, and using external files can save valuable seconds.
Page Speed
Product Pages
Page Title
H1 Tag
Image alt tags
Content
Schema
American Special Jazzmaster® | Fender Electric Guitars
Product Pages Page Title H1 Tag Image alt tags Content Schema
American Special Jazzmaster® | Fender Electric Guitars
Signals for Search Engines
• “Jazzmaster”
• “American Special”
Signals for Users
• Price = $999.99
• “Fine US Made” guitar
• CTA – “Play One”
Product Pages
Signals for Users
• CTA – “Play One” many guitarists won’t buy directly online. Leads them to a local dealer
• CTA – “Add to Cart” able to buy it now for many products on Fender.com
• CTA – “Add to Wishlist” for future shopping or gift suggestions
Before & After
• Pre-Launch: 1,047,517 visit
• Post-Launch: 918,506 visit • *** matching periods vs. previous year
Top Pages Before -‐ 2014 A3er -‐ 2015 % Change
Home Page 564,618 566,707 0.37%
/guitars/stratocaster/ 139,440 175,074 25.56%
/guitars/telecaster/ 90,118 115,370 28.02%
/guitars/ 92,551 100,413 8.49%
/community/guitar-‐tuner/ (moved) 87,560 44,953 -‐48.66%
/amps/guitar-‐amplifiers/ (moved) 66,961 34,803 -‐48.02%
***Matching ranges vs prior year, immediately post launch
WHEN TO CONSIDER AN SEO FIRM
• During a re-platform or re-launch
• To review current content or structure
• Technical advice (code ratios / speed / redirects / error page, etc.)
• Content development
• International expansion
• Mobile expansion
• Training staff
IN SUMMARY
• A successful launch or review requires a lot of work, between many departments.
• SEO requires forethought.
• Prioritization of the structural elements is key. • Our Top SEO efforts:
• Our CMS required /default/ • Multiple subdomain, refined to 2. Open task to combine. • Maintaining High Authority Pages • Avoiding duplicate content (Wishlist & Product variation issues)