4 Pillars for SEO and Online Discoverability in 2014
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Learn the 4 must-have SEO pillars to get discovered online in 2014. These slides were presented in a webinar by Christine O'Kelly and Bernie Borges January 22, 2014. The full webinar playback is available on demand here: http://www.findandconvert.com/resources/webinar-archives/
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4 Pillars for SEO and Online Discoverability in 2014
- 2. #SEO2014
- 3. Bernie Borges Christine O’Kelly @BernieBorges @OnlinePRMedia LinkedIn.com/In/BernieBorges LinkedIn.com/In/ChristineOKelly
- 4. Here’s what we’ll cover today: Why website architecture matters Original, quality, optimized content Link earning, not link building Social sharing
- 5. PILLAR #1 Website Architecture Speed and Performance Matters
- 6. Curb Appeal
- 7. Plumbing & Wiring Matters
- 8. A Clean Website! After careful planning you launch a clean website that is “clutter free.”
- 9. One Year Later….Still Clean? After a year or more online, new and revised content has impacted your site.
- 10. How Cluttered Architecture Impacts Your Website No website can avoid clutter building up over time. Website clutter buildup can negatively impact incoming traffic leading to less leads and sales.
- 11. Speed & Performance Optimization More than 80 factors to study in website architecture optimization. Are URLs SEF friendly/optimized? Can URLs be accessed by Upper Case & Lower Case versions? Are there WWW & Non WWW versions of the site? Are titles optimized? Are meta descriptions optimized? Are H1s optimized? Are 301 redirects set up properly? Is the site using 302 redirects? Are there 404 pages? Is the site organization intuitive (silo’d)? Is there a logical category / subcategory hierarchy? Are there related links in each category? Are all pages crawlable by robot without a sitemap? Orphan Pages? Are there broken links? Is there an HTML sitemap? Is there an XML sitemap? Are URLs duplicated in the sitemaps? How does the site function when you turn off CSS, JavaScript? Is Flash used for important elements? Does the site use AJAX pages? Is content in PDFs also in HTML? Is there duplicate content within the site? Is there duplicate content between subdomains? Is there duplicate content with other sites? What internal pages do they link to the most? What is the quality of outbound linking? Are there too many links on a page? Speed and Code Is the HTML minified & compressed? Is the CSS validated? Are JavaScript and CSS linked to external files?
- 12. URL Structure
- 13. Website Architecture Summary Audit for clutter annually Sweat the URL structure Load speed matters
- 14. PILLAR #2 Original, Quality, Optimized Content
- 15. The Two Critical Jobs of Content in SEO Content serves 2 Critical Jobs in terms of SEO and website ranking
- 16. The Two Critical Jobs of Content in SEO JOB # 1 OPTMIZED CONTENT JOB # 2 EARN INBOUND LINKS
- 17. 1st Critical Job of Content in SEO JOB # 1 OPTMIZED CONTENT is a crucial element that determines the ranking of a web page People won’t find your content in a search if it is not optimized for the terms for which they are searching
- 19. On Page Content Optimization: Past vs. Present Stuffing exact match keywords on pages – even at the cost of readability Creating pages with a variety of related and relevant keyword themes Using the same keyword phrase again and again to achieve a specific density Using semantically related terms that “anchor” and give contextual relevance to your target keywords.
- 20. “Intent” Is More Important than “Exact” Google’s goal has remained consistent since inception. Their ability to interpret patterns and signals has improved.
- 21. We’ve Talked About Optimizing YOUR Website… But that’s not where online discoverability ends A “Hidden” Fact That Many People Overlook… Your own website isn’t the ONLY place where you can publish optimized quality content to gain search engine visibility
- 22. Different Search Terms Have Different Result Types “How to Bind a Book” “Spiral Binding Machines”
- 23. Different Search Terms Have Different Result Types Palm Desert Printers
- 24. Multi-Platform Publishing Publish Different Types of Content on Appropriate Platforms After analyzing the SERPs of various keywords, create valuable optimized content and publish on the content platforms that tend to rank the best.
- 25. Multi-Platform Publishing Why appear just once in the SERPs When you can dominate multiple positions? By publishing optimized content on various platforms, your content can dominate more than one position in the search results
- 26. Multi-Platform Publishing Why appear just once in the SERPs When you can dominate multiple positions?
- 27. Bottom Line… EVERYTHING on the search results page is a form of CONTENT
- 28. Content Creation Recap Identify your keywords Produce useful, information rich, contextually relevant content for your website Analyze the search engine results for your keywords Create an optimized presence on 3rd party sites that have search presence
- 30. The Two Critical Jobs of Content in SEO JOB # 2 INBOUND EARNED LINKS are another crucial element that determines a website’s ranking The way to earn valuable influential links and social shares is to create unique, quality content that people feel COMPELLED to link to
- 31. Link Building: Past vs. Present Publishing user generated content anywhere and everywhere to build links back to a website. Creating quality content that people feel compelled to link to – thus generating earned links from a wide variety of places around the web Embedding links in exact match keywords QUANTITY SELF-CREATED Links embedded in a range of natural keyword phrases VS QUALITY EARNED
- 32. Link Earning Vs. Link Building In the SEO days of old, we asked… How Can I Build Links?
- 33. Link Earning Vs. Link Building Today we need to ask… What would compel others to How Can talk about us? I Build Links?
- 34. Link Earning Vs. Link Building • What proprietary “trend” data can analyze and interpret? • How can you poll your customer base? • Are there any trending news stories that you can respond to? • Do you have predictions about what is up and coming in your industry?
- 35. Link Earning Vs. Link Building Today we need to ask… What can I create for others that will How Can help THEM I Build increase their Links? authority?
- 36. Link Earning Vs. Link Building • Which magazines, trade journals, and blogs can you contribute content to? • Which podcasts and radio shows cover topics to which you can contribute? • What types of awards or certifications can you issue?
- 37. “The Knot” Case Study
- 38. “The Knot” Case Study
- 39. “The Knot” Case Study
- 40. People Like To Share What Makes Them Look Good…
- 41. What Type of Award or Certification Can You Give? “Successful Outstanding Blogger” Award Liz Strauss awards regularly to bloggers that she feels are outstanding Best Family Safety Blog Chose what they felt were the “best family safety blogs divided into various categories HubSpot Certified Defined certification criteria and program and awards pride badges to those who achieve this certification.
- 42. Link Reclamation Gather the Low Hanging Fruit Search for mentions Check links for validity Ask for link inclusion / link repair
- 43. Link Earning Recap Write/contribute useful, original, interesting content that people naturally want to reference and share Ask “How can I compel others to naturally want to link to me,” vs. “Where can I place links” Find places where people are talking about you online but not linking and ask them to include a link
- 46. Social is the new SEO From your LinkedIn profile From your LinkedIn Company Page
- 47. Social is the new SEO From your Facebook Page From your Google+ Profile or Page
- 48. Social is the new SEO
- 49. Key take-aways: Why website architecture matters Quality content that is optimized for search Link earning, not link building Social signals are important
- 50. Tune Into The …. https://www.youtube.com/user/socialbusinessengine Watch the full episode at thesocialbusinessengine.com.
- 51. Our Gift to You!
- 52. Bernie Borges Christine O’Kelly @BernieBorges @OnlinePRMedia LinkedIn.com/In/BernieBorges LinkedIn.com/In/ChristineOKelly
Editor's Notes
- The first pillar we’ll cover today is the one that is the most often overlooked by marketers and that’s the architecture of your website.
- Marketers devote energy and budget to designing a website that looks good, just like we want our homes to look good. But, there is more to a home than curb appeal, and likewise there is more to a website than meets the eye.
- In a home, it's imperative that the plumbing and wiring infrastructure work well. If it doesn't, there can be big problems that are very costly.
- It may seem like a silly analogy, but a website is exactly the same. When we speak of a website's "plumbing and wiring" we are generally referring to many factors that are not visible to the human eye. But, they are very important. To explain this concept, let's just call it "clutter." A new website is free of clutter.
- But, over time as the website is maintained, we generally make changes to it. We add new content, we edit content. We might move the location of content from one area to another. And, we might delete content. All of these changes can result in website clutter usually in the form of code bloat and also out of date URLs, just to name a few of the clutter details.
- Let's look at how this can impact your website. In this one year chart you can see the blue line represents growth in website traffic. That's good right? But, the orange line shows how this clutter affect also grows in time. The real damage is in the loss in traffic represented by the red bars. Notice how the clutter grows, the loss of traffic also grows. This is because the website loses authority with search engines and loses rankings. This is exactly what we all want to avoid.
- So, in order to monitor this issue, we need to look at the factors Google cares about. There are more than 80 factors to monitor in your website. I know this can seem a little overwhelming. But, the reality of website marketing, or online marketing, or if you prefer search engine optimization, has not gotten simpler. The reality is that it has gotten more complex. We prefer to say it has become more scientific. After today’s webinar, we’ll email you a link to download an e-book that covers more than 80 factors marketers need to know to improve website performance.
- Another factor that you must pay close attention to is the URL structure in your website. This is often a common problem depending on how your website was developed. If you follow this seo friendly URL path, you'll be fine. You'll get a copy of these slides, so don't worry about capturing these details right now.
- So, just to recap, just like you do your spring cleaning each year, you should schedule a website audit once per year. No website is immune from the clutter that can build up and cause negative affects to your search engine discoverability. Also, sweat the URL structure because search engines want easy to find content on your website. And, lastly although I didn't mention it in the previous slides in the interest of time, but the load speed of your website also matters. A slow load speed can negatively impact your search engine optimization results.
- And, now I'll turn it over to Christine to cover pillar #2, original, quality, optimized content.
- Social sharing has been increasingly on the rise as one of the signals used by search engines. Let's look at this closer.
- In 2013 Google re-engineered their entire search algorithm. It is known as Hummingbird. At Pubcon, considered one of the biggest conference in the U.S. for search marketers, Matt Cutts, the face of Google for search marketing said that Google is not currently using social signals extensively, but they intend to use them in the future. Frankly, Google has been saying this for two years now. So, our advice is to be ready today. Don't wait for Google to announce they are using social signals more extensively.
- Creating social signals is actually very simple. It's simply a matter of sharing your content through social channels such as a status update in your LinkedIn account either from your profile, or from your LinkedIn company page as shown here.
- Or, sharing content through Google+ which is of course a Google property and widelybelieved to be influential in search signals. Even sharing content through Facebook, although Facebook content is not currently indexed by Google. But, maybe that will change too, so I wouldn't exclude it at least for the possibility of your content reaching the audience you want to reach.
- Be sure to have social media sharing options on your website or blog to make it easy for people to share your content through social media.
- So, to recap today's webinar. The key take away's Christine and I covered today are:1. The architecture of your website is too often overlooked. It matters. If it's not audited and maintained it can negatively impact your search marketing results.2. The quality of your content is huge. Not only can it help you get discovered in search engines, but it can also be amplified across other digital channels to be discovered by your target audience.3. Inbound links remain an important element in organic seo, but instead of thinking how you can build links, think about ways you can earn links. Christine covered several great ideas on this topic.4. And, last but not least the social signals are an important factor. Search engines are improving their ability to measure how others vote up your content by sharing it across digital channels.Together, these 4 factors make up the 4 pillars of online discoverability in 2014.
- Before I turn it back to Michelle to open it up for Q&A I want to invite you to visit my YouTube channel the Social Business Engine where you can get subscribe and inspired by the interviews I conduct with companies enjoying success on their social business journey.