Search Engine Optimization
on a Budget!
Henri Asseily
henri.tel
• CSO/CTO, Telnic Ltd.
November 2009 • Founder, Shopzilla.com
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What is Search Engine
Optimization (SEO)?
∅ $ yoursite.com
$$$
2

Contrast with SEM
SEM = Search Engine Marketing
Paying Ads
$$ yoursite.com
$$$
3

Theoretical Value
Equation
SEO: $$$ - 0 = $$$
SEM: $$$ - $$ = $
4

SEO: More than direct
monetary value
Branding
Awareness
Competitive positioning
Perception of knowledge & expertise
5

Unfortunately...
Lots of
+
Black Box
(“hidden”) potential
Algorithms $$$
=
A perfect market for Snake Oil peddlers
out to cash in on their “expertise”
6

Lies, Fallacies and Snake Oil
" We guarantee a #1 position on Google !!! "
Oh Really?
For what search terms?
For how long?
At what cost?
What are the long-term risks?
What about Bing and other engines?
7

Just the changing facts,
ma’am
HUNDREDS of signals (i.e. parameters) used
✓List of used signals constantly changes
✓Importance of signals constantly changes
User behavior changes
✓More precise queries with more terms
✓Mobile usage exploding
Cat-and-mouse fight against unscrupulous SEO
optimizers
8

One Example among Many
Popular SEO Tools: Manage Meta “keywords”
<meta name="keywords" content="Financial, News, Stock, Market, Headlines, Investments, Quotes,
Trading, TheStreet.com, Alix Steel ,Metals and Mining">
9

One Example among Many
Popular SEO Tools: Manage Meta “keywords”
<meta name="keywords" content="Financial, News, Stock, Market, Headlines, Investments, Quotes,
Trading, TheStreet.com, Alix Steel ,Metals and Mining">
Usage: MILLIONS of web pages
9

One Example among Many
Popular SEO Tools: Manage Meta “keywords”
<meta name="keywords" content="Financial, News, Stock, Market, Headlines, Investments, Quotes,
Trading, TheStreet.com, Alix Steel ,Metals and Mining">
Usage: MILLIONS of web pages
SEO Impact:
9

One Example among Many
Popular SEO Tools: Manage Meta “keywords”
<meta name="keywords" content="Financial, News, Stock, Market, Headlines, Investments, Quotes,
Trading, TheStreet.com, Alix Steel ,Metals and Mining">
Usage: MILLIONS of web pages
SEO Impact: ZERO
No search engine has used meta keywords since 2002. Including Google.
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So, what to do?
Understanding how search engines work
Winning strategies and tactics
Latest tools, channels and networks
Putting it all together
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2 simple goals
Search
Engine
Search Database
Engine
Indexer
Search
Engine
Website
Web
Pages
11

2 simple goals
Search
Engine
Search Database
Engine
Indexer
Search
Engine
Website
MAKE Web
ENGINES
Pages
FIND YOU
11

2 simple goals
Search
Engine
Search Database
Engine
Indexer
Search
Engine
MAKE PEOPLE
Website
CHOOSE YOU!
MAKE Web
ENGINES
Pages
FIND YOU
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What do Search Engines
want?
To be your ultimate destination site for search.
Index anything and everything
Determine “best” results for a search
! Make more money via ads and partnerships
12

What do Search Engines
want?
To be your ultimate destination site for search.
you can
easily get indexed
Index anything and everything
Determine “best” results for a search
! Make more money via ads and partnerships
12

What do Search Engines
want?
To be your ultimate destination site for search.
you can
easily get indexed
Index anything and everything
Determine “best” results for a search that’s the
hard part
to improve
! Make more money via ads and partnerships
12

“Best” as defined by Search Engines
The Obvious
Content relevance given the search terms
Yep, what’s in the page does matter. Amazing, isn’t it?
Incoming links from other relevant pages given the
search terms
They’re called “backlinks” in SEO jargon. It tells engines
your page is important because others think it is. This was
Google’s founding idea.
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Backlinks Power
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“Best” as defined by Search Engines
The Not-So-Obvious
Critically important concept of “Authority”
If Hertz’s corporate site isn’t the first result in a search
for “hertz”, then the user will think something is broken.
This is what an authority for a search looks like:
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“Best” as defined by Search Engines
The Not-So-Obvious
Importance of the URL string
Everyone knows the URL text is important.
But the greatest secret is that the DOMAIN string is the
most important part!
Order of importance of each element: domain, subdomains,
folders, filename
http://some.domain.com/a/b/c/page.html?param=1...
2 1 3 4
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“Best” as defined by Search Engines
The Not-So-Obvious
Age
Relax. Be patient. The older, the better.
First 3-6 months: your domain/page is in a purgatory
sandbox to avoid spamming the index.
Changes slow to appear. Read up on the “Google Dance”
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“Best” as defined by Search Engines
The Not-So-Obvious
Age
Relax. Be patient. The older, the better.
First 3-6 months: your domain/page is in a purgatory
sandbox to avoid spamming the index.
Changes slow to appear. Read up on the “Google Dance”
NOTE: Since Twitter became a hit, search engines have
been pressured to add “real-time search” to their indexes
and are revisiting the age issue. It seems that engines will
differentiate between temporary status/news updates and
intemporal information.
17

“Best” as defined by Search Engines
The Not-So-Obvious
Page load time
Google likes faster page load times
People love faster page load times
Rule of thumb:
5 seconds is horrible
1 second is good
0.2 seconds is a feeling of “instantaneous”
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SEO Strategy
( What to do )
Increase the number of valuable placements
Improve your placements’ rankings for
relevant searches
Don’t try to outsmart the algorithms. Always
ask yourself:
Is what I publish useful to those who look at it?
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Classic SEO Tactics
( How to do it )
Make sure the engines can read your information:
careful with this Flash and Rich Media stuff. It may
be pretty, but it can be very frustrating for both your
users and the search engine robots
Don’t ever duplicate content or functionality
Point the search crawlers to all your properties
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Guerilla Tactics on the Cheap
1. Spend time but little money to add points of presence
for your company/brand online:
Twitter stream: good channel for news updates and
promotions
Facebook page/group for local or global brands
LinkedIn and Google Profile (beware obsolete data)
21

Guerilla Tactics on the Cheap
2. Actively participate in forums dedicated to your areas
of expertise:
Don’t spam the forums, avoid blatant product
placements
Provide valuable in-depth information showing that
you are an expert in your field
When feasible, provide links into your properties of
interest (.tel domain for contact info, your
authoritative website for purchasing)
Traffic from communities is much more valuable
than search engine traffic
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Guerilla Tactics on the Cheap
3. If you have your own domain,
3.(i) if it’s well indexed by search engines,
3.(i)(i) and if it is considered authoritative by
Google
then link as many points of presence
from the previous slide as you can to
your domain
23

Guerilla Tactics on the Cheap
4. You don’t have a domain? Or your domain isn’t optimized
for search engines? No problem:
Buy and leverage your own .tel domain
.tel is your digital business card that gives you an instant online
presence without having to build a website.
Disclosure: I am the CSO/CTO of Telnic, registry for .tel
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Why ?
Very cheap (£ 10/year or less)
No hosting, development or maintenance fees
Mobile friendly: quick access to all your contact information
Perfect for SEO:
Fast!!!
Can become your authoritative domain
Fully leverages the search engines’ love of domain strings
Absolutely no duplication of content with a main .com
domain: .tel is exclusively for communications
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A Practical Example:
My personal brand
2008: Top Google result for “Henri Asseily”
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A Practical Example:
My personal brand
27

A Practical Example:
My personal brand
IL
FA
27

A Practical Example:
My personal brand
2009: Top Google result for “Henri Asseily”
28

A Practical Example:
My personal brand
2009: Top Google result for “Henri Asseily”
Authoritative
Under my control
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How I did it
! Acquired my own .tel domain
29

How I did it
Filled my .tel with
contact info, links
" and relevant
keywords
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How I did it
# Identified existing high-value pages
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How I did it
# Identified existing high-value pages
$
%
%%
%%
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How I did it
& Linked those pages into my .tel
henri.tel
LinkedIn Profile:
Twitter Profile:
My Blog:
And vice-versa: created reciprocal links!
32

How I did it
' Waited 6 months
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Result
I took control over my brand
in 6 months for $15
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Even better on
Google Mobile
Google is saying that
there’s a phone number here
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More Examples
of SEO using .tel
36

More mobile examples
domain name value
page title value
(and a nice short
domain!)
37

marineparts.tel
domain name value
38

Waikiki.tel
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.com & .tel
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Questions?
Comments?
Henri Asseily
henri.tel
Business Startup Expo, November 2009
Seminar: • CSO/CTO, Telnic Ltd.
Search Engine Optimization on a Budget! • Founder, Shopzilla.com
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