SEO can no longer be treated as a stand-alone activity, with Google enforcing rules and changing its algorithm 300 times a year, the time has come for brands to stop thinking about short-term activities and start building a natural strategy that Google will love for years to come.

1. What Google wants & how
to future-proof SEO
Patrick Altoft – Director of Search
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2. What’s happening in
SEO?
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3. You can’t rank unless you
deserve to rank
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4. What Google wants
“The goal of many of our ranking changes is to help searchers find sites that provide a
great user experience and fulfil their information needs. ”
Matt Cutts
Our strategy therefore is to make our clients a better search result than their
competitors.
This can be split into two simple to understand factors:
•
•
Creating more authority & being a better/more reputable
company
Making better landing pages, specifically your primary pages
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5. The current
Sentiment
Engagement
NEWS
DESIGN
BUILD
Quality
Structure
CITATIONS
is listening to…
CONTENT
CONVERSATIONS
Authority
BLOG
Satisfaction
SOCIAL
Relevance
Freshness
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6. The future (& present) of SEO
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7. Focus on Users
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8. Return to Search
You have a few seconds to get
the visitor’s attention and
persuade them that they have
arrived at a site that will answer
their query
If they go back to Google that’s
a negative signal
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10. Hummingbird
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12. Hummingbird
[Hummingbird] Gave us an opportunity [...] to take
synonyms and knowledge graph and other things
Google has been doing to understand meaning to
rethink how we can use the power of all these things to
combine meaning and predict how to match your
query to the document in terms of what the query is
really wanting and are the connections available in the
documents. and not just random coincidence that
could be the case in early search engines.
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13. Understanding which
words in a query matter
most & giving them
more weight
Long tail & badly
thought out queries will
now get much better
results
Users are more satisfied
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14. Example
Google wants to rank the best result
for the query
Not just the one that best matches
the keywords the user searched for
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15. UK example
Google wants to rank the best result
for the query
Not just the one that best matches
the keywords the user searched for
We are not sure why this hasn’t
changed
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16. Satisfaction
Other than low quality websites, the biggest cause of searchers not being satisfied is
the fact that Google showed them something they just were not looking for
Even if most people are satisfied there are always certain segments of people that
are totally unhappy with a search result
Hummingbird will allow Google to dramatically increase satisfaction rates by gaining
a better understanding of what people actually want, rather than what they type into
the search box
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17. Segmentation &
Personas
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18. Could Google really understand what people want?
Andy
Vin
Tim
• Cars
• Holidays
• Likes
• Restaurants
• Hotels
• Cars
• Holidays
• Likes
• Restaurants
• Hotels
• Cars
• Holidays
• Likes
• Restaurants
• Hotels
Ford
Turkey
Design
Indian
De Vere
Mercedes
Malaysia
Business
Indian
Lastminute.com
Audi
Cruising
SEO
Indian
Hilton
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19. Segmentation
Most brands perform research & segmentation to understand their
customers
Until now, nobody has applied this research to content strategy with the
aim of improving SEO performance
Branded3 is working with Incite, part of the St Ives Group, to create
accurate segmentation models and are already using this knowledge to
drive our content strategy
By understanding who the searcher is & what they are looking for we can
satisfy a much greater percentage of searchers
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20. Incite.ws
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21. Segmentation & Content Strategy
Mum with kids • “Cruise deals”
Play areas,
babysitting, games,
kids pools
Retired couple • “Cruise deals”
Social, food,
entertainment
Honeymoon
couple
• “Cruise deals”
Privacy, romance,
spa, day trips, food,
fitness
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22. #B3Seminar

23. Keyword
Audience
Research
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24. Content Strategy
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25. Content Strategy Framework
Content Audit
Document
• Typography
• Readability
• Spelling/grammar
• Shareability
• Keyword use
• Copyscape report on
stolen content
• Social media shares
Shareable Content
• Brainstorming
• Competitor Analysis
• Examples &
screenshots from
competitors
Informative
Content
User Generated
Content
• Research Q&A on
Yahoo Answers,
Quora, Facebook,
Twitter
• Search for questions
in Analytics data &
keyword tool data
• Gap Analysis of
current content
• Examples &
screenshots from
competitors etc
• Reviews –
implementation,
incentivisation etc
• Q&A section or Q&A
on product pages etc
• Forums, blog
comments, guest
blog posts, in-depth
content reviews
• Examples &
screenshots from
competitors etc
Site Structure
• Where does content
need to go (blog or
Q&A etc)
• How should the
sections be
structured
• Design & UI
• Interlinking between
sections
• Examples &
screenshots from
competitors
Content Roadmap
Document
• Monthly or weekly
content plan
• Special events &
calendar
• Blog calendar
• PR calendar
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26. http://b3.io/TBXFpw
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27. Demographics
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34. Not Provided
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35. Notprovidedcount.com
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36. Data Sources
Not provided will be 100% soon – no more keyword data, attribution modelling
becomes largely useless
Solutions
•
•
•
•
Total organic visits to top landing pages
Total search visits minus brand clicks from WMT data
Estimated visits per keyword via rankings, CTR & search volumes
Click share for product categories
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37. A Good CTR Model
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38. A Better CTR Model
Actual CTR from WMT
We will be sending details next
week
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39. Thank You
Patrick@branded3.com
@PatrickAltoft
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40. #B3Seminar
@Branded_3
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