2. Today You Will Learn
• How the landscape is changing
• Why change is happening
• What direction to invest in
• What skills you will need
3. @duaneforrester
Bing Webmaster Tools
Speaks at shows, runs forums and
blog, provides guidance on new WM tools
www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters
Does he have a clue?
12+ years as an inhouse SEO; ran seo at
MSN; has helped Disney, GAP, Walmart +
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dforrester
And this helps me how?
Blogging since 2001; owns 150 domains;
runs his own sites and monetizes them
http://twitter.com/DuaneForrester
what does duane do at bing
5. • Importance is relative
• Use as a guide – no item is unimportant
Will SEO still be relevant?
Content Social User Experience Link Building SEO
6. • Query is a single action
• Session is a collection of related actions
over time
dog • Monday
• dog beds
• dog accessories
• dog toys
• vet near me
• dog friendly hotels
• organic dog food
• doggy day care
• Tuesday
• dog sweaters
• dog collars
• dog leashes
• puppy training
• dog park
• dog allergies
• pictures of dogs
SessionQuery
7. Time Spent on Sessions
by Length Queries Over Time
0-3 mins
9%
3-10 mins
12%
10-15 mins
10%
15-30 mins
23%
>30 mins
46%
Almost
50%
of all time spent
searching is on
sessions > 30 minutes
Almost
50%
of queries are
returning to
previous tasks
New Queries
51%
Partial
Repeats
30%
Exact Repeats
19%
Moving Beyond Queries to Sessions
Search Sessions are Long and Repetitive…
10. Not just browser, but
devices, services and
social networks
Not just mouse and
keyboard, but also
voice, touch, gesture &
vision
Creation of new
information via social
graph and geospatial
index
Information Architecture
Interaction Model
Entry Points
Reinventing Search Across 3
Dimensions
11. Mobile will continue to influence social
• The ultimate
“PC”
• Not just phones
• 9B today
• 25B by 2021
12. • New devices demand different
search experiences other than
links
• The ability for these devices to
feed in real time signals help us
handle intent better and
therefore can provide a more
tailored experience
• Its not just mobile phones or
tablets and its not just text
entry. Anything could be a
search – voice, a picture, a
gesture, sound –
anything. We are building the
universal interface for search.
13. • Every area of your site has a
value - $, PV, Emails, etc.
• Determine what the value is
• Sort your site by value to see
what really matters
• Organize work around high-
value areas first
14. • The engines respond to
unique, useful content
• How do you define “content”?
• Match content to your audience
• Different mediums for different
jobs (video, text, images, etc.)
• Don’t take shortcuts – limit
syndicated content
image credit: http://mashable.com/2011/01/10/social-content-strategy/
15. • It will always begin here
• Match data from external sources
against your own data
• Develop “Share of Voice” reporting
to explain success
• Back to sessions – create keyword
campaigns around topics
16. • So you want more shares for your content, do
you? Try these ideas.
• Create lists: people love to consume content
in list-form. Its quick, easy and simple.
• Use hooks: ego, humor, anger, contrarian – be
careful with them, but when used well, they
are highly effective.
• Participate in communities: when you are
valued member of a community, the
community supports you.
• Share others’ information: people love when
what they share gets shared itself. Share from
trusted sources.
• Ask questions: your followers will love the
interaction and it’ll grow your following as
others engage.
17. • Crawlability
– Xml sitemaps
– Navigational structure
– Rich media cautions
– Graceful degradation
– URL structure
– Robots.txt
• Site Structure
– Links
– URL structure and keyword usage
– Clean URLs – no extraneous parameters
(sessions, tracking, etc.)
– HTML & XML sitemaps
– Content hierarchy
– Global navigation – springs form hierarchy planning + style of
nav (breadcrumb, link lists, etc.)
– Rich media – don’t bury links in Javascript/flash
/silverlight/AJAX
• On-Page
– Head copy
• Titles – unique, relevant, 60 characters or so long
• Descriptions – unique, relevant, grammatically
correct, 160 or fewer characters (Google shows up to
160 characters)
– Body Copy
• H1, H2 and other H tag usage
• ALT tag importance & usage
• Keyword usage within the content/text – see “Perfectly
Optimized Page” image
• Anchor text – using target keywords to support other
internal pages
• Content
– Build based on keyword research
– Down-level experience enhances discoverability
– Keep out of rich media and images
– 250 words per page or more
– Produce new content frequently
– Make it unique – don’t reuse content from other sources
– Content management – using 301s to reclaim value from
retiring content/pages
– <LINK> canonical to help engines understand which page
should be indexed and have value attributed to it
– 404 error page management to help cleanse old pages from
search engine indexes
• Links
– Plan for incoming & outgoing link generation
– Internal & external link management
– Content selection – planning where to link to
– Link promotion via social spaces – direct traffic & seo value
– Managing anchor text properly
– URL structure can help insert keywords where they are
needed
• Social
– Build your community
– Interact often
– Share useful content
– Be consistent and useful
– Grow facebook, twitter, etc.
18. • Look for ways to streamline
your time
• Identify a customer need
and fill in the blanks
• Look to identify patterns so
you can leverage efficiency
efforts
Trusted RSS feeds
Copy &
Paste
AUTOMATED
AUTOMATED
MANUAL
19. • Do you have the skills to
succeed?
• Do you know what it takes to be
a successful SEO?
• What skills should you add and
why?
• Telling people you’re an expert
doesn’t make you an expert
21. • Take classes on your own
• Take training offered by employers
• Seek mentorship opportunities
(someone to mentor you)
• Run your own websites
• Read more
• Seriously – read this book >>>
22. • Planning
• Create a content calendar
• What topics will I write?
• When will I write them?
• When will I publish them?
• How do I feed the cycle?
• Keyword research
• Analytics
• Ensure you have access to data you need to make
key business decisions
• Open and analytics account somewhere, install the
code and activate it
• Seek out social media analytics if you’re active
socially
• Accounts
• Bing Webmaster Tools
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Analytics of your choice
• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Any other social space that matters to your visitors
• SEO
• Run SEO Analyzer inside Bing WMT to see what
needs work
• Create topic target lists by doing keyword research
• Have I covered the basics?
• Unique, keyword relevant title tags on each page
• Unique, relevant meta description on each page
• Filled in ALT tags on images with relevant
descriptions
• Is my robots.txt file sorted out? See Robotstxt.org
• Check my sitemap for accuracy and completeness
• Oh my, there’s so much more – see the other slide
• Social
• Have accounts where your customers are
• Engage with them
• Answer questions promptly and honestly
• Think of social as a face-to-face conversation
• Share with links to useful content beyond your own
23. • Determine what new skills you need and
acquire them
• Watch the trends that affect you
• Develop efficiencies
• Change happens – be ready and roll with it
• Start today because it’s never too late
Key Takeaways