Presentation delivered at MagsUniversity 2009 in Toronto on findability and SEO.

1. Improving Findability in Magazine Sites
MagsU Masterclass: SEO Toolkit
Shannon Emmerson
Canada Wide Media Limited

2. Contents
Defining Findability
About Canada Wide Media Limited
Successes & lessons in findability
Strategy & Organization
Design & Development
Content
Marketing & Measurement
Takeaways
Questions/Discussion

3. Defining Findability
“The fundamental goal of findability is to
persistently connect your audience with
the stuff you write, design, and build.”
-Aarron Walter,
Author, Building Findable Websites

4. Defining Findability
Accessibility Usability
Information
SEO Architecture
Findability
Design Development
Development Marketing
-Aarron Walter,
Author, Building Findable Websites

5. About Canada Wide Media
Largest independently
owned magazine
publisher in Western
Canada
30 year history
Diverse range of
media products and
services
50+ titles including
self-owned and
custom

6. About Canada Wide Media
Largely print-based
publishing until 2007
6 million readers ...
and growing

7. About Canada Wide Media
Launched digital media
division in Jan 2007
Digital team now manages
and maintains seven sites,
ten enewsletters
With ten employees, we
are a full-service design
and development house,
and manage all ad sales,
editorial, marketing and
measurement

8. About Canada Wide Media
Starting Out in Digital
Initial Strategy
1. Extend brands into digital environment
2. Contract out consulting, design and
development for initial sites
3. Concurrently build and/or develop
in-house teams

9. About Canada Wide Media
Starting Out in Digital
Initial Site Goals
1. Give advertisers a desirable online platform
2. Make the most of existing content & make it
findable online
3. Create sites that honour their respective brands
4. Grow communities
5. Evaluate and improve

10. About Canada Wide Media
Starting Out in Digital
If you build it ...

11. About Canada Wide Media
Year One

12. About Canada Wide Media
Year Two

13. About Canada Wide Media
This Year

14. Success & Lessons in Findability
Strategy & Organization
Consider findability
from the start: hiring,
training, planning,
strategy
‘Build it and they will
come” only works if
you build it SO they
will come

15. Success & Lessons in Findability
Strategy & Organization
Know Your Site Goals
Business and strategic goals must inform your
findability/search strategy
Discuss and agree on what you want people to find
Identify tactics, assign resources
Document and communicate
Measure
Adjust

16. Success & Lessons in Findability
Strategy & Organization
Goals: YouThink.ca
Increase return visits, time spent on site
Convert readers to eNewsletter subscribers
Improve interaction: quizzes, polls, surveys,
comments
Remind readers about the print mag
Increase content submissions, enable readers to
contact and find our team
Increase traffic

17. Success & Lessons in Findability
Strategy & Organization

18. Success & Lessons in Findability
Strategy & Organization

19. Success & Lessons in Findability
Strategy & Organization

20. Success & Lessons in Findability
Strategy & Organization

21. Success & Lessons in Findability
Strategy & Organization
Goals: YouThink.ca Audience
Know Your Target
Who do you want to find you?
Knowledge of your audience informs your
search/findability strategy
Different, wider audiences accessible online
Target digital content accordingly
Observe, test and survey

22. Success & Lessons in Findability
Strategy & Organization

23. Success & Lessons in Findability
Strategy & Organization
Goals: YouThink.cafor the Goal
Use the Right Tool
Advertisers shifting
from raw traffic to
engagement (CPM to
CPA)
Consider social media
tools as a part of your
search strategy:
‘flip the funnel’

24. Success & Lessons in Findability
Strategy & Organization
BCBusiness & Twitter

25. Success & Lessons in Findability
Strategy & Organization

26. Success & Lessons in Findability
Design & Development
Prepare to Iterate

27. Success & Lessons in Findability
Design & Development
Findability Must Inform Design

28. Success & Lessons in Findability
Design & Development
Search Engines Adore...
Real content - no search tricks
Hierarchies and web standards
Established domains
Easy to understand URLs with keywords
Keyword-rich content (but not gamed)
Indexability (spiders need room to move)
Quick load times
Inbound links from decent sources

29. Success & Lessons in Findability
Design & Development
Your CMS can Help
Open Source can support you: there’s someone
out there working on it...
Active open source communities provide fresh
updates
SEO is a hot topic: guides, SEO-specific upgrades,
blogs are all out there

30. Success & Lessons in Findability
Content
Guess, Analyze, Improve
Editor’s job: Provide content readers will like
If you don’t know, guess
See if you’re right online; get editors acquainted
with analytics tools
Check what most popular, least popular, most
commented, most entered, most existed, etc.
Ask and answer WHY
Answers direct placement of effort in creation,
placement, production, promotion ...

31. Success & Lessons in Findability
Content
More IS Better
More content=more chances of
being found=more time on site
Good, varied content is the best
content
Short works well
Blogs are brilliant:
time on site, interaction, speed,
freshness
Start collecting packages

32. Success & Lessons in Findability
Content
Keywords, Metatags,
and more Keywords
Title tags, meta description, meta keywords,
and URL -- in that order
Title tags: your calling card; rename them if
you can and make ‘em keyword-rich; truncated
at 70 characters
Meta Descriptions: unique for each page
including targeted keywords (search engines
pull snippets); truncated at 150 words
Tip: Make it interesting: it may wind up on
Google’s search results page!

33. Success & Lessons in Findability
Content
Keywords, Metatags,
and more Keywords
Meta keywords: relevant themes
Trick: use Google Adwords, SEOBook.com,
Wordtracker or similar tool to find out what
keywords are dense on your page, along with
related words and phrases.
URL: no query strings; include keywords
where possible

34. Success & Lessons in Findability
Content
Example

36. Success & Lessons in Findability
Bonus Lesson!
Hire Rock Stars
You need people who are
comfortable with chaos &
constant change.
Varied backgrounds help.
Anthropologists.
Storytellers.
Experimenters.
Hurdlers.

37. Success & Lessons in Findability
Marketing & Measurement
Email is Not Dead

38. Success & Lessons in Findability
Marketing & Measurement
Connect & Communicate
Love those inbound links
Know your communities
and go for a visit
Reply: have actual
conversations!
Develop good
relationships

39. Takeaways
Prioritize. You can’t do everything.
Encourage all roles to embrace findability.
Choose & care for your CMS wisely.
Design and develop for findability, not just aesthetics.
Do keyword research. Lots of it.
Create new content with findability in mind. Think
multiplatform, think content collections.
Experiment. Learn. Enjoy.

40. Questions
semmerson@canadawide.com / @semmerson (twitter)
Can I get these slides?
What are those little things on
the end of shoelaces called?
What’s your sign?
Can’t we all just get along?
What is the secret to the universe?
Don’t you just love
Flight of the Conchords?