Secrets of Enterprise SEO

Presented by:

Bill Hunt

@billhunt

• 20 years experience in Enterprise Search

• Big Site/Big Brand/Global Focus

• Co-Author – Search Engine Marketing Inc.

• Develop Global Keyword Modeling and Enterprise Workflow Tools

Bill Hunt

3rd Edition Jan 2015

Successful SEO Requires

• Focus on the Fundamentals

• Strict attention to detail

• Root Cause Identification

• Deep integration into web workflows

• Shared responsibility for performance

• Focus on scale not tricks

DIAGNOSTIC WORKFLOW

30 Minutes to Search Greatness

Weekly Reviews

• Top 5 Rank with low visits

– Check Ranking Page and Snippets

• Top 10 High CPC Terms for rank

• New Crawl Errors

• 404’s with inbound links

• Review keywords ranking 11 – 15

6

Highest CPC Collaboration

• Only 1 keyword has a top 5 ranking

$241 CPC keyword ranks #83 in Google

LEVERAGE FORCE MULTIPLIERS

Making SEO Scalable

SEO Systems & Root

Cause Detection

SEO Indexibility

Relevance Authority

Clickability

Brand Style Guide & Development Rules

Help Me Help You

• Simplified and reduced templates saved 3.5k annual man-hours (~ $375k)

• Uniform XML Site Map resulted in 98% of pages indexed and 150% reduction in errors – became “broken links” test process

• “Why IBM” Intro paragraph in style guide improved snippet relevance lead generation by 3,000%

IMPROVE INDEXABILITY

It cannot rank if it is not indexed!

Indexing Challenges

Design issues can impact crawling and ranking

– Complex Coding from AJAX, Sliders, JavaScript

– Slow Loading Pages

– Overly Complex Templates

– Duplicate Content from low quality and local pages

– Complex templates

Ensure all site elements are search friendly

Site Speed Testing – Product

Site Refresh Consolidated 18 scripts to 6 reducing load exponentially

Site Speed Testing – Yslow or

Google Page Speed

Feed the Beast – XML Site Maps • Dynamic XML Site Maps

– Segment by product categories, Line of Business, Country

– Randomize URL’s in each XML Site Map

– Use a max of 10k URL’s per XML Site Map

– Have you reached the max URL’s? Yandex is 1 million

– Ensure you have less than 1% errors

• Tip:

– To refresh an XML site map – add or remove a page

and it will be reindexed!

How Many Errors?

• Site with ~ 50 million pages

• 12.5 million in XML Site Maps

14.6 Million Errors

Confirm Indexability

• Large IT company with 400,000 PDF files

• Broken down to 1k per site map

• Only 1 URL indexed

Submit One but Canonical Another

• Site Map Entry • <url><loc>http://clueless.com/h20195/v2/getDocument.aspx?doc

name=4AA3-0930FRE</loc><changefreq>weekly</changefreq><priority>0.5</priority></url>

• Page Canonical Entry • <link rel="canonical"

href="http://clueless.com/h20195/v2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA3-0930FRE" />

Removed upper case – 98% indexed in 3 weeks with 4,257% increase in traffic from indexed pages

Monitor Index Rates

Use the info: parameter to test inclusion vs. WMT

Monitor critical page inclusions

Note: UK and AU pages & MX and CO pages problem

Site Map URL's Indexed Not Indexed Percent Not PLP NI Avg Reindex

AR 139 133 25 18% 2 7

AU 139 5 134 96% 54 23

ES 139 136 3 2% 0 7

DE 139 125 14 10% 1 7

CO 139 12 127 91% 54 12

FR 139 98 41 29% 16 7

JP 139 133 6 4% 0 12

MX 139 8 131 94% 58 14

UK 139 5 134 96% 55 23

US 189 188 1 1% 0 7

Country Pages Not Indexed

Leverage HREF Language

• Duplicate content from country pages significantly hurts performance

• Helps search engines understand which version is for which country/language

• Replaces global pages for local pages

• Works within 3 to 5 days

• You can use it in the page BUT is more flexible in XML Site Map form

SCALING RELEVANCE

Helping the Search Engine

Understand the Page

How a user sees a website

How Google sees the site

Enabler: Optimize Templates for Scale & Global

Sony.de Sony.fr Etc.

Page Title and Meta Data

recommendations

Fully indexable navigation?

Ensure all parts of the page are

indexable

Correct use of Header tags

Can search engine’s follow all of

the links?

Enhancement of cross-links to

distribute link equity

Maximize Templates at Design

• Develop “building rules” into CMS/Database

Integration

• Ensure templates are “shared” with all countries

• Develop “fail process” in template QA workflow

• Optimizing the templates reduces the amount of

work necessary in the local markets.

Understand your CMS

• How to insert content from a database

• Template creation and restrictions

• Page Management

• Error Management

• Redirect Management

AUTHORITY

(AKA LINKS)

Penguin – Hits Bad Link Building

• Excessive Rich Anchor Text

• Article Directories

• Excessive Directories

• Irrelevant International Links

Fix Wasted Links Check and repair any broken links – Webmaster Tools

Redistribute Links Redirect links from Home Page to Internal Pages

Key product had 5 links but 574 product related to home page

Linking sites changed 105 of best links – page move to #3 in results

MAXIMIZING CLICKABILITY

Maximizing Top Ranking Pages

Review your Snippet Periodically • Review your snippet periodically especially if you get low click through

• if you don’t rank well use the following syntax to review:

Keyword phrase site:yoururl.com

Schema & Rich Snippets

• Key Schema Tags

– Breadcrumbs

– Use Location Schema

– Use Reviews Schema

– Use News Schema

– Monitor Webmaster Tools for Lift

Maximizing your Search Result Listing

• Description comes from one of the following:

– Compiled from content on the page

– Taken from Meta Description

• Optimize the Snippet by:

• Place keyword at the beginning of opening paragraph

• Place benefit statements near your main keyword phrases at the top of the page.

• When an engine takes a snippet for the SERP page, your description will boost your benefits.

MEASURING SEO

Measurement Challenges

• Reports are typically NOT actionable

• Understanding the business value of the

finding

• Time constrained and reports not intuitive

• Executives unaware of the status

Leverage “KMAE” Charts

• Demonstrate “Search Influenced Revenue”

• Highlight any incremental success from search

25% increase in Natural Search Traffic

Increased SEO Revenue by 45%

Opportunity Realized Matrix Start Projected Current Realized

Keyword Demand SE Visits % of

Demand Rank 3% 5% Visits Rank2 +/_ Added Visits

Opp.

Realized

girdle 33,100 0 0.00% NR 993 1,655 1 NR - 1 0%

shapewear 27,100 37 0.14% 36 776 1,318 159 26 10 122 16%

body shaper 12,100 16 0.13% 21 347 589 5 28 -12 -11 -3%

shapeware 1,000 1 0.10% 36 29 49 4 26 10 3 10%

body shapewear 880 0 0.00% 21 26 44 0 NR -9 0 0%

body slimmers 880 18 2.05% 8 8 26 2 13 -5 -16 -190%

mens shapewear 880 23 2.61% 11 3 21 25 7 4 2 59%

shapewear underwear 880 0 0.00% NR 26 44 0 NR - 0 0%

strapless shapewear 880 0 0.00% NR 26 44 0 NR - 0 0%

bridal shapewear 720 0 0.00% NR 22 36 11 21 9 11 51%

body shaper underwear 590 0 0.00% NR 18 30 18 NR 18 18 102%

Total 135,930 131 0.10% 3,947 6,666 332 201 5%

Value of a Visit $120.00

SE Visits

for Words

Listed

Site

Conversion

Monthly

Revenue

Annual

Revenue

Potential

Increase % Gain

Starting SE Traffic 131 5 $15,720 $188,640 -

Projected @ 3% of

Opportunity 3,947 158 $473,628 $5,683,536

$5,494,89

6 2912.90%

Current SE Traffic

(Jan 2012) 332 13 $39,840 $478,080 $289,440 153.44%

Take Away Actions

• Leverage search data to take our position at the center of the universe and drive change

• Understand why your organization does what it does and integrate change into the existing process using “Force Multipliers”

• Deploy KPI’s and Metrics that “Enhance your Agenda” and “Show the Value of Your Efforts”

• Maximize your “30 Minutes to Search Greatness”