This presentation was presented to the Lubbock Business Association and is a quick overview on Search Engine Optimization, what it was, what it is now, Google penalties (which changed the industry and any business online), and how to rank well in Google

1. The State of the SEO Industry,
Google Penalties & Rankings
10/17/2014

2. www.cleverlyengaged.com
1. Founded in February 2014 by Corey Barnett
2. Previously at Razorfish Platforms/Publicis (Crown Partners) for 3.5 years.
3. Based out of home in Lubbock, TX with remote contractors throughout the U.S.
4. Half of clients are 4 agencies, other half are personal clients located in Lubbock,
Dallas, and beyond.
5. Cleverly Engaged Marketing enables businesses to get visible online, become an
authority in the industry and drive leads.

3. Jack of All Trades
Master of None
1. Started business out of frustration
2. Developed marketing experience in all areas at prior job: event marketing, print marketing,
website migrations, search engine optimization, email marketing, etc.
3. Left to work with businesses full time, focus on search engine optimization

4. 1# SEO + Business Owner = Hats
1. Search Engine Optimization simply means to help
businesses optimize for search engines in order to rank
higher in results, get more revenue, leads, etc.
2. SEO requires mastery of multiple marketing
disciplines: design, web development, paid advertising,
analytics, social media, copywriting, etc.
3. Wearing a lot of hats is required of any business
owner, especially those involved in SEO.

5. 2# Agencies Are Good
1. CEM works with 4 agencies, primarily the top SEO
agency in Dallas, known nationwide (Globe Runner)
2. One of the few in the SEO industry living in Lubbock,
agencies connect me to other SEO experts in Texas
3. Agencies also provide security, and access to tools
(which cost a lot of money) and are numerous in SEO
4. I take on clients both through agencies and without
agencies, depends on my workload and the client.

6. 3# SEO Has a Bad Reputation
1. SEO largely has a negative perception
2. Early days it was truly search engine manipulation
3. Agencies/Consultants still promise first position
results, but, they can no longer guarantee position
due to Google penalties
4. Not an exact science, part art + science

7. 4# Black Hat SEO is Dead
Black Hat SEO (Unethical SEO/search engine
manipulation) - died 2011
1. Throw money at a consultant, rank higher quickly
(hands-off for business owner)
2. Ignore the customer, focus on search engines
3. Ignore Customer Experience
4. Treat SEO in a Silo (separate from design, dev…)
5. Could prove ROI of SEO
White Hat SEO (ethical SEO) - Flourishes Post 2011
1. More money does not equal higher rankings, it
involves many offline factors (very hands on)
2. The customer is first, search engines are second
3. Customer experience is what Google wants
4. SEO is not a marketing channel
a. inbound marketing (social, website, design,
email, etc.)
5. SEO is not an investment; it’s a requisite

8. 6# 2011 = Google Penalties
1. 2011 is when Google starts to take webspam
seriously (black hat seo)
2. Many businesses are impacted, changing the
entire SEO industry and business model
3. JCPenney, Expedia.com, many well known brands
are penalized for bad SEO practices
4. Can’t use the excuse, “we didn’t know
what our agency was doing”, “we had no idea they
were engaged in bad SEO practices”
5. Google doesn’t care, penalizes sites regardless of
fault. As the business owner, it’s on you to take
ownership of your business online.
6. Penalties fit in two categories: manual and
algorithm which are automatic

9. 7# Manual Penalty
1. Manual penalties are the best because:
1.1. Google tells you, you have a penalty
1.2. Google tells you why, with examples
2. Manual penalties are typically triggered by having
an unnatural backlink profile
3. Initiated by an actual Google employee
4. Take care of penalty, notify Google, or fix more
issues until you no longer have a penalty

10. 8# Panda: 2012 - ∞
Duplicate Content
URL/Site Structure
Duplicate & Masked Domains
Duplicate Titles/Descriptions
Thin Content, Stolen Content

11. 9# Penguin: 2012 - 2013
Buying and selling links
Over optimization
Keyword stuffing
Unnatural links:
- Rich anchor text
- Paid links
- Traded links
- Irrelevant links
- Links added too quickly
- Links added retroactively

12. 10# Google = User Experience
Google’s Mission? Organize the World’s Information… Make that
information accessible, make it useful
1. Responsive Site - information is accessible on all devices
2. Solve problems, answer questions on everything related to
your business (makes your website useful)
3. Content that wants to be read, not a book (make it useful)
4. Site that loads quickly (makes it accessible)
5. Customers that return, because your brand is an authority
(shows that your site is useful)
6. Site that ranks highly, but doesn’t solve the customer’s
problem, causing them to leave quickly and continue to
search for a better result? (not useful)

13. What Do Results Look Like?

14. What do Penalties Look Like?

15. Link References
1. Webmaster Tools - analyze links pointing to your site, how the site is
indexed in Google, determine manual penalties
2. Google Webmaster Guidelines - criteria on what Google wants, what
Google penalizes
3. Webmaster Tools Spam Report - send reports on competitors, whoever
that is obviously manipulating search rankings through paid links, etc.
4. Google Analytics - world’s most popular, free website analytics platform
5. SEMRush - analyze search traffic estimates for you and your competitors
6. Copyscape - determine if your site copy has been stolen, scrapped, etc.
7. Cleverlyengaged.com - Agency website
8. Globerunner.com - Agency partner website