SEO Hot Topics 2012

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SAScon 2012 Presentation By: Amy Harris, Oliver Ortiz And Ian Wright

Transcript of SEO Hot Topics 2012

Page 1: SEO Hot Topics 2012

SAScon 2012

Presentation By: Amy Harris,

Oliver Ortiz And Ian Wright

Page 2: SEO Hot Topics 2012

Key Points • Creating a brand is vital

• Mobile is growing rapidly

• Quality content is more important than ever

• PRs and SEOs are increasingly operating in

the same arena

• Exact match anchor text and over optimised

on-page content are on the way out

• We’re all Blackhats now

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Big Brand Perspective • We may now finally be in the year of the mobile

• Mobile causes problems for site design (app v. site)

• Social is much easier for some brands - Seatwave v.

Moneysupermarket

• Focus on consumer benefits, provide value or a

gimmick

• Goal for all brands is to turn users into ‘Brand

Evangelists’

• Build on top of Social rather just building for Social

• Google updates mean more natural looking pages

and link profiles – use a softer touch

• Brand traffic ultimate goal, which also helps PPC

• API traffic can also be huge - Expedia

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Stat-o-Rama: An Industry in

Numbers • How many visits to search engines per month in the

UK?

• What month is the most popular for people to buy

contact lenses? Why?

• People are becoming wary of social media

• Focus on terms in your industry luxury v. designer

jewellery

• Llloyds TSB – Facebook and Olympics 65% Social

Media – 8% left to visit another page on Llloyds site –

50% of whom had never been on their site before

• 1 in 5 minutes online is spent on Facebook

• Non-PC share of internet growing quickly - 10% now

• Characters key financial site branding – Meerkats

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Running a European Search

Campaign

• Every country needs a different approach

• Understand the market and do research

• “About Us” page is important

• Site needs to have a flavour of localization

• Localize templates: Structure > Physical layout >

Navigation

• Local Domains are by far the safest

• Send Google signals that eg. Google.fr is the

local Search Engine

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• Landing page > always in preferred

language

• Use languages within the country, eg.

Catalan

• Newly translated Domain > at least 10

pages

• Colours play a role

• Education website for MBA, targeting

Scandinavia and India.

• In Scandinavia > Young people doing

research (English)

• In India > Parents doing research

(Translate)

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• Main Factors to consider:

• Design

• Language

• Colour

• Their Own Payment Systems

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Social Commerce

• Evolving from something that already

exists

• “Social Giving”

• Seal of approval from a friend > inspiration

and discovery

• Important to get key influencers to

purchase

• It is key to get someone who is engaged in

the product they purchase

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Are PRs from Venus and SEOs

from Mars

• SEOs and PRs increasingly operate in the

same arena but approach things differently

• PRs most concerned with revenue not other

KPIs

• PRs measure influence and brand rather than

links and rankings – Brand links rather than

anchor

• Launch new things in January as everyone

wants to write about the next new thing

• Writing press releases try to think what we

want to get out of it

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Breaking Free of Panda

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Google Updates?

• Google Panda (Feb 2011) • Google Venice (Feb 2012) • Google Panda (April 2012) •Google Penguin (May 2012)

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According to Google's official blog post when Panda launched...

“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites – sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites- sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

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What do these updates mean?

• Google is clamping down on sites that have:

(a) a large quantity of low quality links

(b) over-optimised keyword anchor text

• Not tolerating black hat tactics

• The changes lower the rank of low-quality sites and put higher quality sites near the top of search results

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Impact in Numbers

• 60% of sites – no effect on rankings

• 30% of sites – drops on specific keywords but other keywords are still ranking high

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How to break the cycle?

• Not all content is good content

• Push for quality

• Utilise a varied link profile to promote your site

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Final Tips

• Get your link profile brand friendly –

over reliance on non brand anchors = slippery slope

• If possible - tie into Google Authorship Programme

• Brand anchor text to protect yourself + good quality sites + building authority

• Create a website with the user in mind

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Search And Social – The Legal

Perspective • UK companies can’t own twitter followers even if the

account is branded as long as only one person is

using it.

• Issues of social media use off hours

• Normally companies own what’s produced by

employees during work hours – but freelancers are

separate

• Headlines can be copyrighted

• Linking, in theory, can get your in legal trouble (TBT)

• Hate sites can operate as long as they don’t profit

• EU cookie law comes into effect today

• Testimonials need clear trail – can’t be made up

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How to Create an Online Brand

through Search

• Used the quote:

“The consumer is not a moron; she is your wife”

• Understand your customer and what they are

interested in

• Important not to look down on them!

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• Originality

• Learn by copying then start deploying your own

style

• Buy a Product > “Does”

• Buy a Brand > “Says”

• Stories are key to brands

• We don’t like to think > Rely on shared knowledge

• Meta description > Benefits instead of a feature

• Create something of social meaning

• Good way to understand a brand is by knowing

what it stands against

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• He organises #BrightonSEO.

• A free SEO event in September.

• Tickets to the last event sold out in less

than 13 minutes

• http://www.brightonseo.com/

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Building An In-House SEO

Team • Companies that do well with SEO employ PPC like

ROI expectations and invest accordingly (with risk

discount)

• Branding is good for defensive SEO

• Small experiments before big ones

• Monthly contracts for agencies

• PR key to success for many online brands (e.g.

MoneySupermarket)

• Need short, medium, long terms content/link

strategies

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Social Media Meets PR

• “Social Media is still PR”

• Just a different channel

• Social is about relationships

• Crucial: Fans and metrics

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Reputation Management in a Digital Age

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A brand isn't what you think it is – it's what your customers think

(and say it is)

• Good examples

- BP oil spill

- Primark and ethical trading

• Bad examples

- Interflora on Valentine's Day – didn't deal with tweets about missed deliveries

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Reward the Positive

• Acknowledge positive feedback

• Keep a record of who they are

• Dedicate a member of your team to 'network' with the

followers

• Respond to any questions they have

• Engage with followers

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Dealing with the Negative

• Uncover and respond to all mentions

• Respond publicly so others can see

• Never respond posing as a happy customer

• Don't ignore negative press (it won't go away)

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Brand Monitoring Tools • BrandsEye

• Brandwatch

• Trackur

• Sprout Social

• Free tools? Tweet Deck, Google Alerts, HootSuite, Social Mention

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Brand Monitoring Dashboard

http://kooz.ai/brand-monitoring-dash

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Is There a Place For Blackhat SEO

In Modern Day SEO Campaigns?

• We’re all Blackhats now: “While SEOs can

provide clients with valuable services,

some unethical SEOs have given the

industry a black eye through their overly

aggressive marketing efforts and their

attempts to manipulate search engine

results in unfair ways.”

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Social, Mobile and Twitter

• Interstices: It means the gap between things

• If you want to understand mobile you need to really

mind about the gaps

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• The potency of gaps between things (now

often filled with social media)

• Bring those moments (like reading media)

to a space that didn’t exist

• Exploit Interstices, 3 Rules:

1. Truly Mobile

2. Simple

3. Easy to Action

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Anyone recognise this in

themselves?

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• Development of the web is accelerating –

not slowing

• Two lessons of what is changing:

1. It is mobile first

2) What used to be the gaps are now

becoming the main event

1. We are using our phones to bring

connectivity in every conceivable space.

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• Anyone feel like they cram more into their

life now than they ever did before?

• Anyone always use their phone while they

are waiting for a coffee?

• Anyone routinely find themselves walking

down the street on their phone?

• By putting mobile phones in people’s

hands we have changed what people are

able to fill their time with

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Interstices 3 Rules:

1) Truly Mobile

• Design web for mobile too

• Be genuinely and uniquely mobile

• Massive shift towards mobile

2) Simple

• Text is Much quicker than email. Email > 2 days, Text > 4 minutes

• The potency of simplicity

• Text is > Mobile, Simple and Easy Action

3) Easy to Action

• Ease of transaction > Most important

• Glances

• People look at mobile an average of 150 times a day

Seize the opportunity in the interstices

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General Twitter

• Twitter Ads

• Discovery Tab: Surfacing things that are adjacent to your

interests

• Mobile is point of Sale.

• Create a hashtag (#) for a campaign/program - eg. Nike

#makeitcount, X-Factor

• It directs people to the program

• Incredibly strong for holding a conversation together. eg.

#prayformuamba

• Journalists use Twitter handle

• 60% of audience tweet and create content, 40% of people

don’t

• David Guetta

• Twitter is now Open to advertising

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How Social Media & The Internet

Are Changing The Media

• Technology is changing rapidly – we don’t

know the winner yet

• Personal/Professional dilemmas exist for

many people in the media

• We don’t have a lot of control over social

media, but no one else does either

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Increasing Site Engagement

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What is engagement and what works?

· Things to keep people interested, content that sparks curiosity, encourages them to stay on your site

· Levels and nature of engagement on your site need to be determined by KPIs and objectives

· Engagement is only a metric: with this measure you cannot gauge the level of engagement or quality of user experience

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Good Site Engagement Example

LINGsCARS.com

· looks like a cluttered and off-putting site

· offers a unique brand experience – engagement comes from the personality of the brand

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Link Building 1/3 • Scalable link building very tough in post-

Penguin/Panda world

• Buying links no longer a good idea

• Creating massive content still a good idea

• Know your and competitor’s link profiles

• Outreach key

• Label links as retractable

• Build to what Google wants two years from now

• Providing education materials one way to get links

• PR increasingly key to media mentions/good quality

links

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Link Building 2/3

• Debate about if Google is correlating anchor text

with PPC value

• Google may be monitoring those who’ve sold links

• If you get a warning screenshot e-mails, but don’t

send

• Negative SEO can work – outsource to India or do a

campaign badly (xrumer spam may be too obvious)

• WHOIS fake link requests are happening

• Links as part of partner contracts

• Less than 20% of all links using exact match anchor

text

• Citation (Brand mention) even without links has

value

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Link Building 3/3

• Variation key in link building – heavy on brand terms

• Incentivise users/customers to build links for you

• Ranking content based on 7 day likes/tweets/+1s

• Competitions still work

• Rel=author should be used

• We have to think more like PRs

• LSI keywords next to brand link can still be powerful

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Marketing across Multiple

Platforms

• 1.2 billion Mobile web users

• Don’t forget TV, non-digital space

• Tablets > content consumption not creation

• A form of business communication

• Tablet KPI is focussed around engagement

• PC/Desktop KPI is focussed around engagement

and response

• Smartphone KPI is focussed around response

• Tailor message to device

• Smart TVs, connective TVs > Not current from a

commercial perspective

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People will be accessing devices at different

times

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Delivering Insights from Social Media

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Social Media Tips?

· Use “their language” to help build “our language”

· Social cannot stand alone and needs to be part of the entire marketing strategy

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How to Measure Social Media?

(1) Outreach

(propensity to share and engage)

- Klout: http://klout.com/home

(2) Influence

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Psychology in Search

• Psychological factors:

• We trust the opinion of authorities

• We like to spread the word

• We want what others have

• We are open to peer pressure > want to

belong to the group

• We can’t resist our kids

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• Google > Own background > Making it

personal

• Google + is an identification management

tool

• http://google.com/s2/search/social

• Google are making connections

• Targeting and the way people think > Then

make it personal

• People do click on personalized

results/rich snippet results

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• Jesus was the first social marketer. “He

had 12 followers, and one unfollowed him”

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• Target a “Talker” > Shares content

• Clients are not going to trust you if you

say you’re good, but will do if others do

• Target people to influence each other by

getting them talking

• Target people based on trust

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Creating Effective Search

Campaigns • Expectations, measure results, report, refine, start

again

• Make sure data is not just in one person’s head –

have a back-up

• Links are still about relationships

• Use connectors to launch new campaign – special

Press Release, pictures, go live URL, advance

warning

• Outsourcing works so long as there is a project

manager

• Peer review for dev. teams

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Understanding the Role of Social in Search

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Will link building die as a result of social signals in search?

· It won't die but will decline

· It is easy to manipulate search results using links, but doing the same with the social graph is much harder to do

· “If you have social signals and no links, then it will look as unnatural as links with no social”

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Key Points • Creating a brand is vital

• Mobile is growing rapidly

• Quality content is more important than ever

• PRs and SEOs are increasingly operating in

the same arena

• Exact match anchor text and over optimised

on-page content are on the way out

• We’re all Blackhats now