The document discusses the evolving landscape of SEO, asserting that while traditional SEO methods may be declining, there are still effective strategies that can be utilized in the modern digital marketing space. It highlights the importance of leveraging both paid and organic methods, analyzing data, collaborating across teams, and staying informed about changes in the SEO environment. Several actionable tips and tools are provided for maximizing SEO effectiveness in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

1. SEO is dead.
You have no time.
Welcome to BIG SITE SEO!
SEARCH CHURCH
November 2013
Adam Audette
@audette

2. SEO IS DEAD

3. SEO IS DEAD

4. SEO IS DEAD

5. SEO IS DEAD

6. SEO IS DEAD

7. SEO IS DEAD

8. SEO IS DEAD

9. SEO IS DEAD

10. SEO IS DEAD

11. SEO IS FOR SURE SUPER DEAD

12. PAID : ORGANIC CLICKS IN B2B

13. SEO IS DEAD

14. SEO IS DEAD

15. SEO IS DEAD

16. SEO IS DEAD

17. SEO IS DEAD

18. SEO IS DEAD

19. SEO IS DEAD

20. PAID : ORGANIC CLICKS IN B2B

21. SEO IS NOT DEAD

22. MARKETING & INNOVATION

24. SEO cannot
exist in a silo
Digital Visibility
SEO
PPC
Search
PLAs
CSEs
Tech
On-Page
Links
CSEs
PLAs
Display
Display
Social
Search
Outcome
Paid
Content
Content
Social
Community
Social Ads
Management
Website
Website
Social Ads

25. SEO WILL ALWAYS CHANGE

26. THE BLUE SKY…

27. YOU KNOW WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE

28. BUT YOU HAVE NO TIME

29. YOU HAVE NO RESOURCES

30. SEO KNOWLEDGE IS NOT
WIDESPREAD

31. LEADERSHIP WANT
QUICK FIXES and
SILVER BULLETS

32. WHAT YOU DON’T SHIP, DON’T
COUNT

33. TIP #1
PROJECT THE OPPORTUNITY

34. PROJECT THE OPPORTUNITY

35. PROJECT THE OPPORTUNITY

36. PROJECT THE OPPORTUNITY
Share of Voice for Top Terms
0.73%
1.71%
allrecipes.com
3.17%
drinks.com
about.com
2.44%
drinkmixer.com
2.93%
2.68%
recipes.com
chow.com

37. PROJECT THE OPPORTUNITY
Not Present for High Priority KWs
Drinks
About
Drinkmixer
Allrecipes
Recipes
Chow
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40

38. PROJECT THE OPPORTUNITY
Monthly Share of Search Volume for High Priority KWs
250000
200000
150000
100000
50000
0
Chow
Recipes
Allrecipes
Drinkmixer
About
Drinks

39. PROJECT THEKW Monthly Volume vs Earned
High Priority OPPORTUNITY
Traffic (Jul-Sep), 13,451
Monthly Volume, 358,610

40. PROJECT THE OPPORTUNITY

41. PROJECT THE OPPORTUNITY

42. PROJECT THE OPPORTUNITY
Traffic
Organic
conversion
%
Leads /
sales

43. LOTS OF TIPS
STUFF YOU CAN DO YOURSELF

44. 1. GWT TOP PAGES REPORT

45. GWT TOP PAGES REPORT

49. 2. GET QUERY LEVEL DATA

50. (Not Provided) SUCKS!

51. INTERNAL-ish SOURCES
Internal
 Paid search query report
 Site search data
 GWT queries
 New paid & organic report
 Bing queries

52. ADWORDS SEARCH QUERY
Good:
 Actual queries that triggered paid ad
 Data IS available via API

53. ADWORDS SEARCH QUERY
Not so good:
 Paid search ≠ organic search behavior
 Have to be running paid ads
 And there‟s this…

54. ADWORDS SEARCH QUERY
Not so good:
 "you‟ll only see search terms that were
used by people at least 24 hours ago
and have either received clicks in the
past 30 days or were searched for by a
significant number of people."

55. ADWORDS SEARCH QUERY
Not so good:
 "Any search terms that did not meet this
criteria will be summed up in the 'Other
search terms' row.”

56. ADWORDS SEARCH QUERY

57. SITE SEARCH DATA
Good:
 Hey, it‟s keyword data!

58. SITE SEARCH DATA
Not so good:
 Site search ≠ organic search
 Your site probably has issues

59. GWT DATA
Good:
 The actual queries! FTW!
 Impressions, avg. position, CTR

60. Uncovering (Not Provided)

61. GWT DATA
Not so good:
 Limited to ~2,000 queries per day
 (there‟s a trick to expand this)
 Queries are bucketed
 Clicks ≤ 1 don‟t count
 Data is „sanitized‟

62. PAID & ORGANIC ADWORDS REPORT
Good:
 Query data!
 Impressions, avg. position, CTR
 View of paid + organic

63. PAID & ORGANIC ADWORDS REPORT
Not so good:
 Not in the API
 (at least not officially?)
 You‟ve gotta‟ be running paid search!

64. BING / YAHOO! BABY
Good:
 You‟ve got actual organic query data
 It‟s raw and unfiltered

65. BING / YAHOO! BABY
Not so good:
 Small segment of organic search
 ~20% of RKG‟s clients‟ traffic

66. BING + YAHOO! = 20%

67. HOW ‘BOUT EXTERNAL SOURCES?

68. HOW ‘BOUT EXTERNAL SOURCES?
External
 Competitive insight tools (SEM Rush,
Search Metrics, etc)
 SEO analytics (Brightedge, SEO Clarity,
etc)
 Panel data (comScore, Alexa,
Quantcast)

69. CONUNDRUM OF SCRAPED DATA
What scraped data gives you:
 Query data
 Ranking position
 Competitive insight
 Ecosystem insight

70. 3. VERIFY MORE FOLDERS IN GWT
Why verify more folders?
 GWT limited to ~2,000 daily queries
 You don‟t control what these are

71. 3. VERIFY MORE FOLDERS IN GWT
Verify folders and subdomains
 Requires folder structure like
/drinks/whiskey
 Gives individual account access / data
 Can be used for subdomains, too

72. 4. ANALYZE LOG FILES
Ask IT for 4 weeks of log files

73. 4. ANALYZE LOG FILES
Ask IT for this:
 Timestamp
 URL requested
 User agent (limit to Googlebot and
Bingbot
 Response code

74. Googlebot is spending most of its crawl allotment on two err
pages, which could mean these pages return the wrong
status code.
Googlebot is crawling the same page with 3 separate
URLs, which could indicate a canonicalization/duplication
problem.
These URLs with ?utm_source and ?creative_desc
parameters shouldn‟t be indexed.

75. SERVER LOG ANALYSIS
Look for:
 Which URLs have the most requests?
 Are there duplicate URLs?
 Any language selector issues?
 Are 404s returning the wrong status
code?
 Are parameters being indexed?

76. 5. ADD PARAMETER HANDLING RULES

77. 5. ADD PARAMETER HANDLING RULES
WARNING: Use Care! Be holistic
w/other tools.

78. TECHNICAL READING
SEO tools for duplicate content:
http://plotin.us/17ChBFp
Robots.txt best practices for SEO:
http://plotin.us/1gnC8Ae

79. LOG FILE TOOLS
 Adam‟s: http://www.rimmkaufman.com/blog/seodiagnostics-tool/15072008/
 Ian‟s: http://www.portent.com/blog/seo/log-files-forseo-32011.htm
 Sawmill: http://www.sawmill.net/features.html
 Splunk: http://www.splunk.com/download/

80. 6. SETUP SEO LUNCHES
Use monthly „brown bags‟ for:
 Building bridges across departments
 Keeping other teams up to speed on
changes
 Finding out what projects are in the
pipeline

81. 7. USE THE BATHROOM
Put up “did you know” posters:
 Did u know? SEO isn‟t about spamming
search engines!
 Did u know? When you permanently move a
page use a 301.
 Did u know? Your SEO team is in building Q
and we‟ve got beer!

82. USE THE BATHROOM
Put up “did you know” posters:
 Did u know? SEO isn‟t about spamming
search engines!
 Did u know? When you permanently move a
page use a 301.
 Did u know? Your SEO team is in building Q
and we‟ve got beer!

83. 8. CREATE A RUTHLESS ROADMAP
Create a 2014 technical roadmap:
 Be ruthless: what are THE TOP 3 technical SEO
things that MUST be accomplished in 2014?
 Say why they must be accomplished (back it up with
data)
 Build a business rationale with all that time you have
don‟t have.
 Have a year end meeting and set owners and
timelines for 2014.

84. 9. TAKE (OVER) YOUR G+
The G+ is without country:
 Does social own it? Marketing? Search?
 In G+ you have a CMS and social channel at
your fingertips
 With rel publisher and authorship this is ever
more important
 Hummingbird-ness….

85. 10. QUORA FOR CONTENT IDEAS
Quora and social sites vet for you:
 What topics are most popular
 What types of content get shared the most
 Hat tip: Mike King @ipullrank  follow him

87. 11. STEAL YOUR COMPETITOR’S IDEAS

89. 12. INSIGHT FROM TWITTER

95. BUILD A REVERSE PROXY TOOL
Why a reverse proxy tool:
 Allows you to make SEO changes w/out need
for IT or dev
 Gives you flexibility to implement metadata,
titles, and optimizations
 Provides a relief for swamped dev teams, too

96. Lives here
Marketing
Engineering
Spans this and
more
Merchandising
UX
Content

97. Marketing
Engineering
Merchandising
UX
Content
9
7

98. 9
8

99. Get your CEO thinking about SEO

100. Thank you Philly!
Adam Audette
@audette