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Search directions: best practice & strategy

Matt Trimmer Principal Consultant & Managing Director

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Agenda

Organic search SEO in a world of Google penalties

Paid search The amazing and increasing power of AdWords

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SEO is really hard!

On-page SEO is not easy With a changing/developing website

Off-page SEO - link building Now genuinely difficult

Spam free You have to be interesting

Have something to talk about You have to embrace social

Blogging to customer servicing via Twitter/Facebook Zendesk

Google Penalties

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Google penalties – understanding

Manual penalties by Google Staff “Manual Actions” Google policing or acting on a tip-off (spam report) Notified to you via Webmaster Tools account

100% are notified Automatic penalties (filters) by Panda, Top Heavy, Penguin,

Pirate, EMD “Algorithmic Actions” No notification

Use http://www.panguintool.com/

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Both result in

Suppression of your organic rankings Greatly reduced organic traffic

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Manual actions – 0.22% domains marked for removal

Source - Google – Inside Search http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/fighting-spam.html

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Manual action notifications via Webmaster Tools

Source - Google – Inside Search http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/fighting-spam.html

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Manual actions – the reasons?

On and Off-page

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Algorithmic actions – the reasons?

Normally on-page spam, but not always 25 Panda updates

Now part of standard algorithm 4 Penguin updates

April 24th, 2012 May 25th 2012 October 5th 2012 Sometime in 2013 according to Google

See SEOmoz http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-

change

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The good news?

Actions are temporary If you take action with algorithmic actions

They will correct (If you correct the problem) If you don’t take action with algorithmic updates

They will expire (could be years) If you take action with manual updates

You can do a reconsideration request You must do a reconsideration request

If you don’t take action with manual actions They will expire (could be years)

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So what does this all mean?

Don’t spam on your site! Be really careful about who’s building your links

and how! Interflora

Use of Advertorials

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Interflora – link building gone wrong?

History of poor quality link building Blogger outreach for free products?

“Random acts of kindness” campaign http://wearesocial.net/blog/2013/03/interflora-story-

seo-turning-ugly/ Use of Advertorials?

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Interflora Advertorials

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Interflora Advertorials

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Interflora Advertorials

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Interflora Advertorials

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Google comment

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Safe, legitimate link building?

Core infrastructure and vertical directories But don’t waste time on others

Press releases News worthy, syndicated

Blogger outreach Content for bloggers to post about you theme

Manual outreach Identifying sites that would link

Link bait Something so worthy, people link back

Blendtec

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Link building and link acquisition

We think of link building as a series of steps each step increasing in difficulty, resources and

engagement with an appropriate return in ranking reward the 9 point link building plan

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The 9 point link building strategy

Harness your internal link structure Harness your political link structure Connect to the core Develop your profile Connect to your theme Make your news Interact with your theme Make the news Develop thought leadership

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Paid Search - AdWords

Fundamentals 103 changes in the last year A larger number are planned for this year!

Google is awesome at integrating products!

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You can target your audience in many ways

Keywords Relevant to product/service

Geographically You can target by countries, cities/states, metro

areas (e.g. Chelsea), or a radius around a location Through the wording of your adverts

If you are high end quality or bargain basement, say so in your ad to attract the right type of visitor

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Important features I don’t want to tell you about

Enhanced campaigns Context of device, time and location

Migration by July Offer extensions

10% off this weekend Seller ratings Call extensions Product listings

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Google Display Network (GDN)

Selecting relevant sites where your ads can appear

Display your ad using keywords and topics Choose where you want you ads to appear

the travel section of www.telegraph.co.uk

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GDN Remarketing (haunting)

Display ads to a visitor has previously visited site Remarketing lists

Visitors who abandoned the checkout process Visitors who viewed a specific product category

but did not purchase You can combine groups of people you target by

time frame Target visitors to your site in the last 12 month Exclude visitors to your site in the last 11

months Highlights an audience of people whose

annual health insurance is likely to be coming up for annual renewal

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GDN Remarketing with Google Analytics

Visitors who spent more than X seconds on the site

Shows a certain level of interest Visitors who viewed more than X pages on the

site Shows a certain level of interest

Visitors who purchased product X, up-sell product Y

If they purchase a dining table, up sell the matching sideboard

Visitors who purchased 3 months supply of product X

Target them 10 weeks later to remind them to re-order, for example 3 months supply of Wellman

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GDN - Dynamic Remarketing

Ads dynamically created to include images, descriptions and prices

of the actual products previously viewed by the visitor

This is Google’s response to Criteo

Currently only available to whitelisted clients

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GDN Remarketing in search

Remarket to searchers on Google Bid higher when customers search existing keywords Target broader more expensive keywords, only to

visitors who are on one of you remarketing lists

Currently only available to whitelisted clients

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Remarketing – the business case

How much of your revenue is from new vs. returning visitors?

What’s your E-commerce conversion rate for New and Returning visitors?

Returning visitors Will drive a % of sales Convert at higher conversion rate Have a higher AoV

Dashboard http://goo.gl/R3jtU

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ivantage E-commerce dashboard

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Conclusions

AdWords is very powerful Explore enhanced campaigns Explore remarketing

Get sophisticated with remarketing SEO

Get in control of your links Build a long term SEO strategy