10 Steps to Great SEO: InfusionCon 2011

10 Steps to Effective SEO & Great Rankings
A checklist web marketers can use to build a foundation in strong,
white-hat SEO and inbound marketing.
Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz CEO, March 2011

SEOmoz Makes Software! We don’t offer consulting.

Why is SEO so Important?

In Feb. 2011, Google said they had 2 Billion+ searches/day!
Global Search Volume Growth
Millions of Searches (Monthly)
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
Data via ComscoreQsearch: http://www.comscore.com

Search Engine Market Share
Most of the World (except China, Russia, Korea + Czech Republic) look like this
http://www.hitwise.com/uk/datacentre/main/dashboard-7323.html
http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/2/comScore_Releases_January_2011_U.S._Search_Engine_Rankings
http://www.impactmedia.co.uk/blog/search-engine-news/google/search-engine-market-share-statistics-%E2%80%93-february-2011-18271/

Organic vs. Paid Search
Paid
Organic
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-disconnect-in-ppc-vs-seo-spending

Organic vs. Paid Search
~20% of Clicks
~80% of Clicks
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-disconnect-in-ppc-vs-seo-spending

Click-Through Rates
Ranking #2, #3 and #4 would send less traffic than just ranking #1
http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/google-organic-seo-click-through-rates/

How Can My Website Compete?

Step 1: Good Isn’t Good Enough;Make Your Content Great.

“Good” Content vs. “GREAT” Content
Satisfies the searcher’s basic information requirements
Surprises and delights the searcher by being remarkable
Written by a human and not duplicated elsewhere
Produced by extraordinary writers/designers/producers
Long enough to fulfill basic needs of engines for depth/uniqueness
May leverage video, audio, graphics & photos to convey a unique, shareable experience
Grammatically correct; free of spelling/punctuation errors
Produced by extraordinary writers/designers/producers

OK Cupid Dating Blog
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/

Oyster.com Hotel Reviews
http://www.oyster.com/new-york-city/hotels/the-gem-hotel-chelsea/

Unbounce Marketing Guide
http://unbounce.com/noob-guide-to-online-marketing-infographic/

Searchers LOVE Great Content &People SHARE Great Content
http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-social-networking-sites-dominate-sharing-2009-7

A Blog Alone Doesn’t Cut It.
http://www.wirthmoorerealty.com/real-estate-articles-greater-new-orleans-area

You Must Become a Hub for GreatContent in Your Niche
Answers on Q+A sites reference its resources
Referenced by industry blogs
Site that offers:
Unique Research
Informed Opinions
News/Trend Analysis
Multimedia Content
Authentic Expert Contributors
Quality Discussion/Interaction
Mentioned in news publications
Forum discussions link to its pages
People email links to each other
Links are Tweeted
Liked/Shared on Facebook
Cited at conferences + events
Sometimes, a single piece of content or just a few, can yield these results but, more often, it takes dozens to hundreds of attempts to become a resource hub.

Step 2: Make that Great Content Accessible to Search Engines.

Substantive, Descriptive, HTML Text Content
http://www.hipmunk.com/ is a great site, but there’s no real text content for engines to see! http://adioso.com doesn’t have a ton more, but there’s at least something for Google/Bing to grab onto.

Google’s “Cached Snapshot” is a Great Way to Check
Using the “Cached” link on any search result, you can see what Google’s seen.

Clean, Crawlable URLs
Better
www.adioso.com/seattle/british-airways-flights
www.adioso.com/cat61/british
www.adioso.com/cat61/174
www.adioso.com/f?ID=174
www.adioso.com/f?cat=61&?ID=174
Worse
cdn6.fly.adioso.com/f?cat=61&?ID=174&CustID=5afsdf21
More on good URL structures here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls

Preferably All on a Single Sub/Root Domain
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites

Logical, Shallow Information Architecture
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/diagrams-for-solving-crawl-priority-indexation-issues

No Duplicate Content
Duplicate content causes problems beyond just rankings – it can hurt your esteem/trust in the engines’ eyes: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-block-redirect-or-canonical

Rel Canonical to the Rescue (Sometimes)
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps

Proper Redirects (301 v. 302, etc.)
Good for Users
301 = Permanent Redirect
Good for Search Engines
Good for Web Servers
Fine for Users
302 = Temporary Redirect
Bad for Search Engines (treated as temporary)
Good for Web Servers
Fails for non-JS Users (including many mobiles)
Javascript Redirect
May not be counted by Search Engines
Slower on Web Servers
Fine for Users
Meta Refresh
Search Engines Don’t Always Treat as Permanent
Slower on Web Servers

Effective Error Handling
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/06/crawl-errors-now-reports-soft-404s.html

Step 3: Delight Your Visitors with Phenomenal Design + Usability.

Search Engines Finally Care About Design
http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=5168

Panda/Farmer Update was a First Step
Generic design is one of the features highly correlated with lost traffic in Panda/Farmer. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-farmer-update-analysis-of-winners-vs-losers

Great Design is Surprisingly Easy & Affordable
Using the search query “CSS Gallery” will bring up tons of sites like http://www.cssbeauty.com/gallery/

Many Usability Basics are Intuitive
http://www.usability.gov/basics/index.html

Buy “Don’t Make Me Think.” Memorize It.
A great sample chapter is here: http://www.sensible.com/chapter.html

Use Your Analytics to Establish Baselines and Measure Progress
Google Analytics is totally free! http://www.google.com/analytics

Employ Usability Testing Software to Get Specific
http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/information-gathering-a-roundup-of-ux-applications/

Step 4: Use Words Your Customers Use; Do Keyword Research.

The Best Keywords Are:
High Volume
(many searches/month)
Low Competition
(weak sites/pages in the top 10)
High Value
(large % of visitors convert)
The tricky part is finding these terms/phrases

Keyword Research Starts w/ the Right Brainstorming Process
Graphic via Elliance: http://www.elliance.com/aha/infographics/keyword-research-part-2.aspx?page=1&category=ROI

Researching Keyword Volume: Google’s AdWords Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Microsoft AdCenter Keyword Data
https://adcenter.microsoft.com

Determining Keyword Difficulty
Number of results is meaningless
We want to know how “strong” these sites/pages are
And how our site’s/page’s metrics compare

SEOmoz Has a Tool to Help With This
http://www.seomoz.org/keyword-difficulty

Determining a Keyword’s “Value”
200
Visitors Searched “User Testing Software” and Arrived at the Site
1,000
Visitors Searched “Usability Testing” and Arrived at the Site
20
Visitors Took the Product Tour
40
Visitors Took the Product Tour
Conversion Rate:
2
Visitors Bought the Software
10
Visitors Bought the Software
5%
0.2%
Keyword volume is initially appealing, but conversion rate is critical to the evaluation!

Buying PPC is a Great Way to Test
How do these visitors perform?
Just be aware that PPC behavior isn’t always the same as organic click behavior

Put the Data Together and Start with Low-Hanging Fruit
I like to use heat indices based on estimated value: Excel can do this automatically

Step 5: Optimize your Pages Properly; Get Keyword Targeting Right.

Title Tags
Better
Usability Testing Software | UserTesting.com
UserTesting.com | Usability Testing Software
Usability Testing Software
Usability Testing, Usability Test, User Testing, User Software
UserTesting.com
Worse
NA
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/title-tag

Keywords in the URL Help, Too
Better
www.adioso.com/seattle/british-airways-flights
www.adioso.com/cat61/british
www.adioso.com/cat61/174
www.adioso.com/f?ID=174
www.adioso.com/f?cat=61&?ID=174
Worse
cdn6.fly.adioso.com/f?cat=61&?ID=174&CustID=5afsdf21
Not only is there direct benefit, but people who link using the URL will pass good anchor text, too

Meta Description
TITLE: Low Cost Usability Testing - UserTesting.com
META DESCRIPTION:Usability testing has never been easier. UserTesting.com's online usability testing is the cheapest, fastest way to find out why visitors leave your website.
A good meta description acts like ad copy and draws the searcher in: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/meta-description

Meta Keywords?
The search engines don’t use these at all (and haven’t since the early 2000s)
http://searchengineland.com/meta-keywords-tag-101-how-to-legally-hide-words-on-your-pages-for-search-engines-12099

Body Text Keyword Usage
Not only do search engines like to see keywords in copy, but visitors will be comforted to see that you have content that addresses their query, too.

Keyword Density vs. TF*IDF vs. Topic Modeling
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lda-and-googles-rankings-well-correlated

Images & Alt Attributes
Keywords in alt attributes are surprisingly well correlated with higher rankings

H1, H2, H3 Headlines
Keywords in H(x) tags are not particularly well correlated with high rankings, but may provide some, minor value.
http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/_H35n.html

The Trouble with Domain Names
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/exact-match-domains-are-far-too-powerful-is-their-time-limited

Rel=Canonical on Every Page?
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/dispelling-a-persistent-rel-canonical-myth

Step 6:Make Search Engine Tools & ProtocolsWork for You.

XML Sitemaps
This program can help - http://gsitecrawler.com/

HTML Sitemaps
The Sitemap Page from http://nymag.com/sitemap/

RSS Feeds
Feedburner - http://feedburner.google.com – is a great tool for setting up and monitoring feeds

Google Webmaster Tools
It’s Free! Available at http://google.com/webmasters

Crawl Errors & Error Sources
Most of the time, you’ll want to fix these up.

SEOmoz Does a Good Job of This, Too
Via the PRO Web App: http://pro.seomoz.org

Bing Webmaster Tools
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/bings-duane-forrester-on-webmaster-tools-metrics-and-sitemap-quality-thresholds

Step 7: Earn Citations Engines Can See; Build Links, Tweets, Likes & Shares.

From 1999 – 2008, What Page Ranked #1for the Queries “Exit” and “Leave”?
http://searchengineland.com/google-kills-bushs-miserable-failure-search-other-google-bombs-10363

Ahh… The Power of Links
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements

What Makes a Great Link?
Editorially given
From a trusted source
Uses descriptive anchor text
Points to the right page
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links

Google + Bing Now Counting Facebook & Twitter
Danny Sullivan: If an article is retweeted or referenced much in Twitter, do you count that as a signal outside of finding any non-nofollowed links that may naturally result from it?
Google: Yes, we do use it as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universal by marking how many people shared an article
http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389

SEO Properties of Classic HTML Links
Rel=“Nofollow”
(a tag that indicates search engines shouldn’t trust/count this link)
URL
(the link target)
<p><a href=http://www.seomoz.orgrel=“nofollow”> SEOmoz’s Website </a> is a good resource for those seeking to learn more about search engine optimization.</p>
Anchor text
(tells the engine what this link is about)
Surrounding Text
(may provide context on the link’s relevance)
Text goes here

SEO Properties of Tweets
Tweeter
(the authority/importance of the tweeting person matters)
URL
(the link target)
Retweets
(possible signal that a link/ tweet is more important)
Surrounding Text
(in tweets, this sometimes seems used like anchor text)
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tweets-effect-rankings-unexpected-case-study

SEO Properties of Facebook Shares
URL
(the link target)
Shares
(how many users have shared the link)
Shares, Likes + Updates must be PUBLIC or Google/Bing can’t “see” them.

Why Do People Link/Tweet/Share?
Many of these blogs will use the badge and link to the list, because it makes them look good!
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-emotions-that-make-us-link

Link Building & Social Sharing Resources
Beginner’s Guide: Chapter 7 – Growing Links & Popularity
Link Building Blog Posts on SEOmoz
Webinar on Link Building Strategies
101 Ways to Build Links from SEOBook
Link Building Presentations on Slideshare
The Science of Retweetsfrom Dan Zarrella
These should help you get started!

Step 8: Don’t Go it Alone;Help Your Community Help You.

Encourage & Reward Community on Your Site
At Moz, we’ve made community central to our site: http://www.seomoz.org/community

Spread Your Message Across the Web
News/Media/PR
SEO
Email
Research/White Papers
Blogs + Blogging
Infographics
Comment Marketing
Social Networks
Online Video
INBOUND MARKETING!(Find Your Audience Organically on the Web)
Webinars
Forums
Document Sharing
Social Bookmarking
Word of Mouth
Podcasting
Direct/Referring Links
Type-In Traffic
Q+A Sites

Blogs & Blog Comments

Forums & Discussion Boards
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/headsmacking-tip-18-use-discussion-search-as-competitive-intel

Social Profiles & Interaction
Facebook Company Page
SlideShare Profile
Google Profile
Twitter Profile
Crunchbase Page
Reddit Account
LinkedIn Company Page
Quora Profile
StumbleUpon Account
YouTube Account
About.me Page
StackExchange Account
Crunchbase Page
Scribd Profile
Wikipedia Profile
This is my top list of social sites to register with, but there’s likely more that are relevant to your niche.

Answer Questions on Q+A Sites
http://www.quora.com/Rand-Fishkin/answers

Syndicate Your Content
Dozens of sites syndicate SEOmoz’s blog helping to send links and traffic back to the site
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-leveraging-syndicated-content-effectively

Find Unique Ways to Engage & Reward
UrbanSpoon’s Blogger Outreach Program Sparked Thousands of Links + Great Awareness in Each City: http://www.urbanspoon.com

Step 9: Get Analytics Set Up Right;Track What Matters.

Basic Google Analytics Installation
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=66983

Key SEO Metric #1:Visits / Search Engine
These ones here!
This tells you how many searches resulted in a click on your site in the results

Key SEO Metric #2:Keywords Sending 1+ Visits / Search Engine
This One!
Track this over time to see if you’re ranking for more unique keyphrases

Key SEO Metric #3:# of Pages Receiving Traffic from Each Engine
This One!
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/indexation-for-seo-real-numbers-in-5-easy-steps

SEOmoz PRO Can Help Here Too
Traffic tab of http://pro.seomoz.org

Tracking Keyword Rankings
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-when-to-track-rankings

Critical: Set Up “Goals” / “Conversions”
http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-setup-goals-in-google-analytics.html

Understand Your Website’s Conversion Funnel
Home Page
List of Cheeses
Hours + Directions
15%
10%
Hopefully, this means a customer is going to come buy some cheese!
This is the weakest form of a funnel – applying actions to things like forms, emails, “buy” buttons, checkout pages, etc. is a better way to go.

Step 10: The Web is Not Static;Test & Improve

More Traffic
Home Page
List of Cheeses
Hours + Directions
15%
10%
More visits to the home page means more people will decide to visit
It’s a lot of hard work to get more visits, though, and we don’t know if they’ll be the kind who love cheese!

A Better Funnel
Home Page
List of Cheeses
Hours + Directions
25%
20%
A better “conversion rate” means more people who already visit the site will come to the store!
Woo hoo! Now for every 1,000 people that visit the site, 25 are potential cheese buyers!

A/B Split Testing Resources:
http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/ - Awesome tool – easy to use, popular, good plugins
http://www.optimizely.com/ - Another great option with excellent visuals
http://unbounce.com/ - Hosted, so no dev required! Very easy to use and well made
http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer - Free, but sometimes complex/confusing
http://www.sitespect.com/ - Don’t personally have experience with this one

Test Content Types
Blog
Videos
Email Newsletters
Photos
Webinars
Embeddable Content
Questions + Answers
Slideshows
Infographics
Research/White Papers
Community Forum
Web Apps
Some of these may resonate with you and your audience, others may not. You’ll never know until you experiment!

Test Marketing Channels
Step #1: Discover
Find inbound marketing paths that look promising and make a list.
Step #2:Test
Invest a few days/hours building authentic value in that niche/sector.
Step #3: Measure
Use your web analytics to track primary + second-order impact
Step #4: Repeat
Throw out low ROI projects; repeat high ROI ones.

Ranking Well is Not Enough

We Must DESERVE to Rank in Order to Win in the Long Run

Q+A
Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder, SEOmoz
Twitter: @randfish
Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog
Email: rand@seomoz.org
You can now try SEOmoz PRO Free!
http://www.seomoz.org/freetrial

http://www.seomoz.org	6584
http://s1-suchmaschinenoptimierung.de	683
http://www.dailybloggr.com	357
http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk	282
http://t3n.de	263
http://minterest.co	231
http://www.gramse.net	151
http://www.hallaminternet.com	135
http://marcomontemagno.com	129
http://www.hallam.biz	128
http://moz.com	92
http://www.inboundmarketingcreativo.it	90
http://www.netzpiloten.de	88
http://evolvebeyondmoney.com	84
http://websites.networksolutions.com	71
http://www.fastcustomers.com	50
http://www.evolvebeyondmoney.com	49
http://www.nuvemseo.net	48
http://www.webmastern.se	48
http://paper.li	47
http://exmbas2.wikispaces.com	47
http://codingtutor.info	31
http://static.slidesharecdn.com	28
http://www.untrucadire.com	27
http://blumaya.net	25
http://www.markertising.it	18
http://dubclicks.blogspot.com	17
http://www.uglybear.co.uk	16
http://www.seo-butze.de	15
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	9
http://twitter.com	9
http://fugo.folkuniversitetet.se	8
http://www.meier-meint.de	7
http://dubclicks.com	7
http://peermarketinggroup.com	6
http://hoimoonmarketing.com	5
http://hoimoonmarketing.com	5
http://0353da3.netsolhost.com	5
http://gramse.net	4
https://si0.twimg.com	4
http://yasar.posterous.com	4
http://sps.emea.festo.net	4
http://friends.junkindustries.com	3
http://www.slideshare.net	3
http://werbung-docgoy.blogspot.de	3
http://www.365online.nu	3
http://textbookseo.com	3
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com	3
https://twitter.com	3
http://www.s1-suchmaschinenoptimierung.de	3
http://us-w1.rockmelt.com	3

10 Steps to Great SEO: InfusionCon 2011

by Rand Fishkin

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