ExpOn 2011 - Chris Boggs - Seo E-Commerce

SEO Best Practices and Considerations for eCommerceSitesJuly 22, 2011Chris Boggs – President, SEMPO, and Director, Rosetta@boggleswww.sempo.org

About MeChris Boggs• President of SEMPO, a global non-profit search marketing association• SEO Director – Rosetta:Independent Publicis Brand as ofJuly 1, 2011• Married father of two• Started SEM in health insurancespace in early 2000’s• Extensive experience withoptimizing eCommerce sitesincluding IBM, ATG, Microsoft…www.sempo.org Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization 2

Agenda■ SEO Hierarchy■ Competitive Analysis■ Projecting ROI■ SEO Strategy for Universal SERPs■ Technical/Structural Considerations■ Content and Digital Assets■ Inbound Linking■ Measurement and Reportingwww.sempo.org Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization 3

The SEO Hierarchy Credit to Chris Cotton and Rosetta.comwww.sempo.org Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization 4

Competitive AnalysisIn order to develop a strategy, the best methodology is to lead by gaining astrong understanding of the competitors in your space• Use the keyword research you performed to identify top-ranking sites. •BeijingCreating a matrix can be a helpful tactic. Scandinavia• Set up a spreadsheet to measure your stats against the competitors • Just a few examples:YOUR-SITE.COM 127 104 2,745 47 Google # of Bing # of pages pages # links to # links to top [CATEGORY]Competitor Indexed Indexed domain page New YorkWidgets-R-Us 5,900 3,700 38,958 3,700We Heart Widgets 451 340 1,000,000 7,644Widgets Rule 189 132 3,250 317Widgets for Digits 442 544 5,280 1,500 Prague New York Canada Arizonawww.sempo.org Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization 5

Enterprise Competitive AnalysisIn lieu of Microsoft Excel (everySEO’s favorite tool), Enterpriselevel solutions exist and are worththe investment especially tosupport large scale SEO. Examplesinclude Brightedge, Conductor, andSycara.www.sempo.org 6

Predicting ROIIn order to get the right budget for the job, ROI projection can be very helpful• Once ceilings and past performance are measured, Average and Accelerated SEO projections can be made and matched to average order value + conversion % to project ROI. Avg Multiplie 2008 08-09 2009 Variance 2010 Multiplier r Average Visits Orders Conversion Visits Orders Conversion Budgeted Growth AcceleratedJan 484,538 4,417 0.91% 626174.5 767,811 4,192 0.55% 58.46% Jan 366,221 366,221 366,221Feb 604,132 5,435 0.90% 872922.5 1,141,713 6,421 0.56% 88.98% Feb 408,643 408,643 0.5 408,643 0.5Mar 747,620 8,016 1.07% 1009150 1,270,680 7,344 0.58% 69.96% Mar 593,322 454,118 0.45 454,118 0.45Apr 973,196 7,896 0.81% 971220.5 969,245 6,293 0.65% -0.41% Apr 502,991 485,610 0.5 485,610 0.5May 926,672 7,227 0.78% 928210 929,748 6,031 0.65% 0.33% May 635,283 556,926 0.6 556,926 0.6Jun 1,099,119 9,598 0.87% 1187610 1,276,101 7,830 0.61% 16.10% Jun 787,571 771,947 0.65 890,708 0.75Jul 909,258 7,662 0.84% 854481 799,704 5,291 0.66% -12.05% Jul 617,808 640,861 0.75 726,309 0.85Aug 841,618 6,428 0.76% 791116.5 740,615 4,939 0.67% -12.00% Aug 572,908 672,449 0.85 751,561 0.95Sep 944,054 7,670 0.81% 924479 904,904 3,959 0.44% -4.15% Sep 644,788 832,031 0.9 970,703 1.05Oct 762,166 4,905 0.64% 608066.5 453,967 1,385 0.31% -40.44% Oct 525,892 668,873 1.1 729,680 1.2Nov 763,152 5,298 0.69% 572311 381,470 1,055 0.28% -50.01% Nov 628,977 744,004 1.3 772,620 1.35Dec 961,430 7,788 0.81% 739525.5 517,621 1,815 0.35% -46.16% Dec 853,672 1,035,336 1.4 1,146,265 1.55www.sempo.org 7

Self-Correcting Forecasts If something improves performance for the remainder of the year, it would be nice to know in real time. But what if it’s a just a one week sale that throws numbers off? Curveball. Did they Ok things are coolingHmm, trending down. Dust has settled. fix a bug? Let’s down, but still above Evidence that it was a Forecast returns to On track. project it. the original forecast. promotion/event. normal levels. + +? - - Credit to Aaron Smith and Rosetta.comwww.sempo.org 8

Brazil – Get Ready for Changes■ Current Google.com.br SERP:www.sempo.org Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization 9

Examples of Current Google.com SERPswww.sempo.org 10

Setting a Breathing StrategyOnce competitive analysis is done, you should be in a position to begin tounderstand your site’s shortcomings.• Do you have too few pages indexed?• Do you not have enough links?Beijing Scandinavia• Do you simply not have the right keywords in the right places?All these questions can be answered by going through a full optimization process, and setting up anongoing program to maintain and increase performance over time. Starting with a technical reviewand overhaul, then optimizing content and working on inbound links will lead the way to success PATIENCE IS KEY! New York Tech Content Linking Prague New York Canada Arizonawww.sempo.org Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization 11

Technical SEOSearch Engines are considering site performance to be a greater factor indetermining rankings.• Google has come out recently against “soft 404s,” and has continuously provided tools forwebmasters to help make their sites easier for crawlers to “digest” and index.Beijing Scandinavia New York Prague New York Canada Arizonawww.sempo.org Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization 12

Technical SEOThere are a few primary things to consider improving, from an SEO technicalperspective• If possible, your URLs should contain keywords. Ask your developer if he/she can “rewrite”ugly commerce application-driven URLs to appear like the following:Beijingwww.DOMAIN.com/awesome-widgetsScandinavia• Your pages should return proper server responses. An error page should tell the server (andthe search engine crawler) that the page is dead, or it should redirect to a new version using a“301” permanent redirect (versus a 302 “temporary forward”) (*some exceptions to this rule exist)• Your pages (especially the home page and top-target pages) should load fast• Your content (all of it) should be New Yorkto the search engines, including your links. The visiblefollowing tool will let you know what a search engine “sees” when it visits a page on your site: Prague New York Canada Arizonawww.sempo.org Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization 13

The Importance of Unique Content■ Content “uniquity” can be the biggest opportunity in your spacewww.sempo.org Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization 14

Why Digital Assets are King■ Digital Assets provide both unique content as well as diversified inbound linking patterns – Plus Google loves them■ Just don’t overdo it – you don’t need 5 videos for each way to change a cartridge (left-hand, right-hand, during day, night, etc)■ Additional content on other domains will help reputation management Source: ehow.comwww.sempo.org Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization 15

Inbound Link Growth and MaintenanceLinks are what provide authority to your pages – without them, you areunlikely to perform for competitive keywords• There are a number of ways to improve existing links and get new links, but they break intofour primary buckets: TrustedBeijing Scandinavia Website (.com)1. Direct Access Trusted Website2. Direct Requests (www.DOMAIN.com) (.com)3. Paid Links Trusted Website4. Social Media (.org) New York TrustedLinks should be developed to all pages on a site Trusted Governmental Educational Site Site (.gov.br)The two key elements of a good link: (.edu)1. Relevance Prague New York Canada2. Authority Arizonawww.sempo.org Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization 16

Performance MeasurementWithout measuring your performance, you will not really know how well youare doing. Don’t simply be happy with “more calls”• In order to gain the most value out of SEO, you have to monitor performance, and makeadjustments to strategy, such as increasing content on a particular topic, or getting more linkspointed to a particular page ScandinaviaBeijing• if you are not using tools to monitor performance, set up a free Google Analytics account inorder to best understand your organic traffic from across search engines• Tools such as Rosetta-partner ClearSaleing offer ways to measure multiple touch points witha domain: Scenario Total Paths % of Paths Users Path Starts in Paid Search 43,010 58.83% Closes in Paid Search 41,575 56.87% Closes in Organic Search 518 0.71% Closes Outside of Search 565 0.77% Users Path Starts in Organic Search 11,017 15.07% Closes in Paid Search 331 0.45% Closes in Organic Search 10,299 14.09% Closes Outside of Search 228 0.31% Users Path Starts Outside of Search 18,949 25.92% Closes in Paid Search 902 1.23% Closes in Organic Search 353 0.48% Closes Outside of Search 17,662 24.16% Prague New York Canada Arizonawww.sempo.org Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization 17

Questions?www.sempo.org Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization 18

www.sempo.org www.rosetta.com THANK YOU!chris.boggs@rosetta.com @boggles

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ExpOn 2011 - Chris Boggs - Seo E-Commerce

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ExpOn 2011 - Chris Boggs - Seo E-Commerce — Presentation Transcript