Internal Search Optimization, or iSEO as I like to call it.
The process of optimizing your site’s internal search results
To help users find information
Via a query
As fast as possible
And
To take them to the most relevant results.
When you think about it, it’s sort of a combination of SEO, paid search, and UX skills all wrapped up in one and this is what I’m going to dive into today.
Presented at PubCon 2015 (Las Vegas)
Are you sending mixed messages to Google? There are many different signals that feed into URL selection for search engines, and when these signals aren’t implemented correctly search engines have to make their own assumptions about your website and what’s important. In this talk, Rachel will share examples where a website’s signals can be ignored or overruled, as well as how to test your site setup. Don’t leave anything to chance – be sure that the most important areas of your site are getting the attention the attention they deserve.
Botify webinar Internal Linking - October 2018Botify
Linking is the architecture that binds your website together. The way you construct your linking directly influences a host of diverse SEO factors, including crawl ratio, rankings, conversions, user behavior, site structure, and almost everything else on your site.
The fundamental importance of linking has never wavered. But the linking strategies that SEOs are most familiar with have changed with the advent of larger sites, JavaScript crawling, and new ranking impacts.
In our latest webinar, we’ll show you how to bridge the gap between new and old linking strategies to maximize ROI with the Botify Methodology!
6 steps to earning more leads using Local SEOEagan Heath
People search online every day for local services and products, but unless your link appears in the top spots on the results page, chances are they aren't finding you. Local SEO agency owner Eagan Heath will share the steps his agency Get Found Madison takes to make themselves and their clients appear at the top of Google searches. He'll cover these actions in his "Local SEO checklist," a phrase which often ranks on page 1 nationally itself! Leave with an action plan for getting your small business found.
The 30 Minute Website Audit - Using Google to Make Your Website More EffectiveWebLink International
Are you using the wealth of data that Google provides to maintain and enhance your website? Are you overwhelmed with all of the data and don't even know where to start?
In this quick 30 minute website audit, Benji Craig, Senior Website Designer at WebLink International, will give you simple tips for using Google and its various tools to better understand what information they maintain on your website and how you can use it to your advantage. We’ll show you how you can leverage this information to make improvements, increase traffic and bring more value to you and your members.
You’ll learn the following in this webinar:
- A brief understanding of how Google.com works and why that’s important.
- How Google reads your website content and what they think is most valuable.
- How to use Google tools to find out what content you should be building on your website.
- Why your brand isn’t as important to your website success as you think.
Are you sending mixed messages to Google? There are many different signals that feed into URL selection for search engines, and when these signals aren’t implemented correctly search engines have to make their own assumptions about your website and what’s important. In this talk, Rachel will share examples where a website’s signals can be ignored or overruled, as well as how to test your site setup. Don’t leave anything to chance – be sure that the most important areas of your site are getting the attention the attention they deserve.
Botify webinar Internal Linking - October 2018Botify
Linking is the architecture that binds your website together. The way you construct your linking directly influences a host of diverse SEO factors, including crawl ratio, rankings, conversions, user behavior, site structure, and almost everything else on your site.
The fundamental importance of linking has never wavered. But the linking strategies that SEOs are most familiar with have changed with the advent of larger sites, JavaScript crawling, and new ranking impacts.
In our latest webinar, we’ll show you how to bridge the gap between new and old linking strategies to maximize ROI with the Botify Methodology!
6 steps to earning more leads using Local SEOEagan Heath
People search online every day for local services and products, but unless your link appears in the top spots on the results page, chances are they aren't finding you. Local SEO agency owner Eagan Heath will share the steps his agency Get Found Madison takes to make themselves and their clients appear at the top of Google searches. He'll cover these actions in his "Local SEO checklist," a phrase which often ranks on page 1 nationally itself! Leave with an action plan for getting your small business found.
The 30 Minute Website Audit - Using Google to Make Your Website More EffectiveWebLink International
Are you using the wealth of data that Google provides to maintain and enhance your website? Are you overwhelmed with all of the data and don't even know where to start?
In this quick 30 minute website audit, Benji Craig, Senior Website Designer at WebLink International, will give you simple tips for using Google and its various tools to better understand what information they maintain on your website and how you can use it to your advantage. We’ll show you how you can leverage this information to make improvements, increase traffic and bring more value to you and your members.
You’ll learn the following in this webinar:
- A brief understanding of how Google.com works and why that’s important.
- How Google reads your website content and what they think is most valuable.
- How to use Google tools to find out what content you should be building on your website.
- Why your brand isn’t as important to your website success as you think.
Botify Webinar - The new Version of Botify KeywordsBotify
With our new version of Botify Keywords, we are revolutionizing keyword research and ranking analyses by providing full transparency into what, when, where, and on what device people are searching.
Google Rank is an algorithm used by the Google web search engine to rank websites in their search engine results.
Google works because it relies on the millions of individuals posting links on websites to help determine which other sites offer content of value. Google assesses the importance of every web page using a variety of techniques, including its patented PageRank™ algorithm which analyzes which sites have been “voted” the best sources of information by other pages across the web.
SEO: Top Rank in Google and other Search EnginesAlainaSheer
http://www.cementmarketing.com. Achieve top rank in Google and other search engines. Original presentation given by Brad Spencer at the Sway Workshop in Columbus on January 20, 2011.
How to start an SEO strategy - A SEMrush exampleStefania Borchia
Six key steps on how to start an SEO strategy. Once you have identified your website/webpage core keywords, run a competitive analysis, develop a link-building strategy, monitor your keywords' ranking, follow SEO recommendations and benchmark your SEO implementations (SEMrush).
If you’ve ever worked on a development project from start to finish, and you don’t operate on a fully integrated design, development, and digital marketing team, then you may be familiar with the struggle of prioritizing which SEO steps should be taken when.
Seo actions to move the needle pub con austinBill Hunt
Specific SEO workflow actions you should take to improve indexability, ranking and clicks. No hype or super secret techniques just old fashioned effort to find anomalies in performance.
SEO leads cost 60% less & close 2x faster than any other digital channel. When it comes to lead generation, SEO is a no brainer. Yet, most marketers fumble at strategy implementation.
Check out “The Definitive B2B SEO Playbook” presentation to build a lead-gen focused organic search strategy.
5 Epiphanies from 20 Years in Search MarketingBill Hunt
Keynote presentation from SES Atlanta describing 5 key pivotal moments of my career that changed the way I approached Search. Understanding how to integrate Search into the workflow and leverage force multipliers to gain success.
7 Key Elements for an Effective SEO Strategy - WebforKevin Getch
In this presentation I cover some of the key elements that your SEO strategy should address including on-site technical seo, links, citations, reviews, a content plan, a focus on user experience, bench marking and analytics as well as an in-depth understanding of your customer.
Practical SEO for Developers - An IntroductionNoel Flowers
A presentation to help developers get a basic understanding of Search Engine Optimization by looking at it from a practical web development perspective.
This is an introduction that tries to explain the purpose of SEO & dispel the myths surrounding this facet of digital marketing. Rather than over-complicating it, as is so often the case, we look at the reasons it exists, the underlying purpose it serves, and the objectives that serve as its foundation.
What a search engine can teach you about product sitemaps - BrightonSEO April...Pricesearcher
Pricesearcher is a vertical search engine and our mission is to give consumers the complete view. Our technology processes 500m+ prices per day across 10 countries.
2017 saw the launch of Pricesearcher’s web crawler – PriceBot, to complete the indexing of all UK prices.
In this talk we will analyse what PriceBot discovered and how this information can help you improve the crawlability of your own site.
SEO for Ecommerce: A Comprehensive GuideAdam Audette
A comprehensive guide to ecommerce SEO. With bronies. Why, you may ask? Because that's my daughter's current obsession. Also because SEO+bronies=monies.
Slides broken into sections:
1. Technical SEO
2. On-page and Content
3. Social Media
4. Reporting and Analytics
5. Business Concerns
[BrightonSEO 2019] Restructuring Websites to Improve IndexabilityAreej AbuAli
[BrightonSEO April 2019] This talk shares the detailed methodology used to restructure a job aggregator site, which, like many large websites, had huge problems with indexability, and the rules used to direct robot crawl, taking the site from over 2.5 million URLs to just 20,000. It covers crawling and indexing issues and dive into the case study aided by flow charts to explain the full approach used to restructure the site and how to implement it.
Markitors aggregates the top SEO audit tools into one, easy to read report. Here is an SEO audit example and website review sample. For more information and to learn what tools we use in our audits, please visit: http://markitors.com/seo-audit/
Botify Webinar - The new Version of Botify KeywordsBotify
With our new version of Botify Keywords, we are revolutionizing keyword research and ranking analyses by providing full transparency into what, when, where, and on what device people are searching.
Google Rank is an algorithm used by the Google web search engine to rank websites in their search engine results.
Google works because it relies on the millions of individuals posting links on websites to help determine which other sites offer content of value. Google assesses the importance of every web page using a variety of techniques, including its patented PageRank™ algorithm which analyzes which sites have been “voted” the best sources of information by other pages across the web.
SEO: Top Rank in Google and other Search EnginesAlainaSheer
http://www.cementmarketing.com. Achieve top rank in Google and other search engines. Original presentation given by Brad Spencer at the Sway Workshop in Columbus on January 20, 2011.
How to start an SEO strategy - A SEMrush exampleStefania Borchia
Six key steps on how to start an SEO strategy. Once you have identified your website/webpage core keywords, run a competitive analysis, develop a link-building strategy, monitor your keywords' ranking, follow SEO recommendations and benchmark your SEO implementations (SEMrush).
If you’ve ever worked on a development project from start to finish, and you don’t operate on a fully integrated design, development, and digital marketing team, then you may be familiar with the struggle of prioritizing which SEO steps should be taken when.
Seo actions to move the needle pub con austinBill Hunt
Specific SEO workflow actions you should take to improve indexability, ranking and clicks. No hype or super secret techniques just old fashioned effort to find anomalies in performance.
SEO leads cost 60% less & close 2x faster than any other digital channel. When it comes to lead generation, SEO is a no brainer. Yet, most marketers fumble at strategy implementation.
Check out “The Definitive B2B SEO Playbook” presentation to build a lead-gen focused organic search strategy.
5 Epiphanies from 20 Years in Search MarketingBill Hunt
Keynote presentation from SES Atlanta describing 5 key pivotal moments of my career that changed the way I approached Search. Understanding how to integrate Search into the workflow and leverage force multipliers to gain success.
7 Key Elements for an Effective SEO Strategy - WebforKevin Getch
In this presentation I cover some of the key elements that your SEO strategy should address including on-site technical seo, links, citations, reviews, a content plan, a focus on user experience, bench marking and analytics as well as an in-depth understanding of your customer.
Practical SEO for Developers - An IntroductionNoel Flowers
A presentation to help developers get a basic understanding of Search Engine Optimization by looking at it from a practical web development perspective.
This is an introduction that tries to explain the purpose of SEO & dispel the myths surrounding this facet of digital marketing. Rather than over-complicating it, as is so often the case, we look at the reasons it exists, the underlying purpose it serves, and the objectives that serve as its foundation.
What a search engine can teach you about product sitemaps - BrightonSEO April...Pricesearcher
Pricesearcher is a vertical search engine and our mission is to give consumers the complete view. Our technology processes 500m+ prices per day across 10 countries.
2017 saw the launch of Pricesearcher’s web crawler – PriceBot, to complete the indexing of all UK prices.
In this talk we will analyse what PriceBot discovered and how this information can help you improve the crawlability of your own site.
SEO for Ecommerce: A Comprehensive GuideAdam Audette
A comprehensive guide to ecommerce SEO. With bronies. Why, you may ask? Because that's my daughter's current obsession. Also because SEO+bronies=monies.
Slides broken into sections:
1. Technical SEO
2. On-page and Content
3. Social Media
4. Reporting and Analytics
5. Business Concerns
[BrightonSEO 2019] Restructuring Websites to Improve IndexabilityAreej AbuAli
[BrightonSEO April 2019] This talk shares the detailed methodology used to restructure a job aggregator site, which, like many large websites, had huge problems with indexability, and the rules used to direct robot crawl, taking the site from over 2.5 million URLs to just 20,000. It covers crawling and indexing issues and dive into the case study aided by flow charts to explain the full approach used to restructure the site and how to implement it.
Markitors aggregates the top SEO audit tools into one, easy to read report. Here is an SEO audit example and website review sample. For more information and to learn what tools we use in our audits, please visit: http://markitors.com/seo-audit/
Social Media Monitoring 2016: Tools, Technik, TrendsStefan Evertz
Auch im Jahre 2016 kann man den Toolmarkt in der DACH-Region in verschiedene Arbeitsfelder aufteilen. Neben der Königsdisziplin Social Media Monitoring wird auch Social Media Analytics für die Kunden immer wichtiger, Tools helfen aber oft auch bei Publishing und Engagement. Welche Tools sollte man auf dem Radar haben, was tut sich in Sachen Technik und welche Trends zeichnen sich ab?
Vortrag auf der 56. Social Media Night am 8. Juni 2016 im Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart
The ITSEOZONE is pleased to have you. Your website’s SEO potential can be unlocked with the aid of our knowledgeable staff. Utilizing our innovative techniques, you may enhance conversions, rank higher, and drive traffic. ITSEOZONE can help you immediately to improve your online success.
Drive Website Traffic with Effective KeywordsScott Abel
Presented by Sonny Cohen at Web Content Chicago, June 17-18, 2008.
Learn how to increase search engine traffic to your site by understanding what makes an effective search engine keyword and how you discover the ones that work for you. This combination seminar and hands-on workshop gives you the keys and puts you in the driver’s seat. You will leave with a set of tools and steps to help you grow your website traffic.
100 Ways to Transform Your Business OnlineBabich Media
Over 100 tips and tricks from BabichMedia.com on digital marketing in 2019. Influencer Marketing, Facebook ADS, Mobility Scoring, Google Ads, Google My Business, and more...learn more at http://babichmedia.com/ 1-602-497-1011
Discover actionable SEO tips from industry thought leaders at Online SEMrush and the Melbourne SEO Meetup.
The presentation covers the following topics:
1. Copywriting for Search Success (Jim Stewart)
Jim will dive into a real-world case study and share tips on how to rank in Google's Featured Answer.
2. Basic E-Commerce Site Audit (Tim Capper)
Beginners guide to Auditing your E-Commerce site. Tim will cover the most common problems encountered within an E-Commerce site, and how to check for these problems using both free and paid tools.
3. 10 Techniques to Convert Your Search Visits (Frederic Chanut)
Frederic will share his tips on how to increase profits to online business by understanding what exactly makes audience become customers.
4. WordPress SEO Tips and Tricks (Chris Burgess)
Chris will share the essential steps to creating and optimizing the perfect WordPress website, popular SEO plugins to use and common mistakes marketers make to when working with WordPress.
You can find more tips here: https://www.semrush.com/webinars/online-seo-meetup/
You’ve got your site, done your research, got feeds coming in but you still aren’t making enough to retire to the south of France. In fact, you don’t seem to be pulling the traffic and... nope, you just aren’t ranking. But your site is HUGE and should be ranking – why isn’t it?
This session will look beyond SEO 101 to the specific issues affiliates face with large sites, product feeds, architecture and optimization. By examining beyond the basics, this session will build on existing knowledge about SEO to help those with larger, more complex sites requiring more bespoke solutions to rank well and beat the ‘affiliate penalty’.
With topics covered ranging from uniqueness, madlib, linking, and monitoring to site architecture, vertical selection, roadblocks and more, this session is going to be crammed full of interesting tips, tricks and insight.
SEO Secrets for Online Retailers Webinar getelastic
Webinar featuring useful tips, tools and best practices for optimizing your ecommerce site for search engine rankings. Presented by Elastic Path Ecommerce Software's Jason Billingsley and Founder of SEO firm Netconcepts Stephan Spencer.
SEO 101: How to Get Started Winning Google Search TrafficBernard Huang
Last updated 3/27/17 - Learn how to start winning in SEO. Here's a talk I gave at the 500 Startups Marketing Hell Week for Batch #18, #19, #20:
Topics covered include:
* State of SEO in 2017
* Should you do SEO?
* How to set up your relevant SEO accounts
* How to do keyword research
* On-site content considerations
* Top on-site technical considerations
* Anddddd, off-site hacking (backlinks)
* Recommended SEO tools
What a wonderful day to celebrate the eternal sunshine of the spotless SEO mind! If you weren’t at the conference today or missed something, it’s alright, we’ve got your back - here are the key takeaways from the BrightonSEO September 2017 main stage. Check them out!
How to Incorporate ML in your SERP Analysis, Lazarina Stoy -BrightonSEO Oct, ...LazarinaStoyanova
How are you currently doing SERP analysis? Is your approach efficient or scalable?
How SEOs can incorporate programmatic approaches and advances in machine learning in order to identify winning strategies?
This talk will leave you with a better understanding of what is possible for SERP analysis at scale, what insights you can capture with the help of machine learning quickly, and how to incorporate insights into your strategy and visualize your findings to impress your stakeholders.
C-T-R-You Ready for 2021?! - On-SERP SEO StrategiesIzzi Smith
As SEOs we have to do all in our power to drive more and more relevant clicks to our website, but the SERP is an over-populated and competitive space filled with ads and Google integrations, so we need to stand out as much as we can. Izzi's new talk covers useful strategies you can use in 2021 to: better analyze and interpret searcher intents, scale the creation of rich results and featured snippets, satisfying "needs met" and more.
Calgary Entrepreneurs Search Engine Marketing with Laura CallowUlistic Inc.
Laura Callow from Intuit and Stuart Crawford from Bulletproof InfoTech hosted June's Calgary Entrepreneur Meetup with our topic on Search Engine Marketing. This was a great presentation on what small business owners can do immediately to grow their business online.
I can speak from experience that Bulletproof InfoTech does a tremendous amount of marketing online to bring our quality IT support services to business in Calgary and laying the ground work for those in search of Central Alberta IT services.
How to Run Landing Page Tests On and Off Paid Social PlatformsVWO
Join us for an exclusive webinar featuring Mariate, Alexandra and Nima where we will unveil a comprehensive blueprint for crafting a successful paid media strategy focused on landing page testing.With escalating costs in paid advertising, understanding how to maximize each visitor’s experience is crucial for retention and conversion.
This session will dive into the methodologies for executing and analyzing landing page tests within paid social channels, offering a blend of theoretical knowledge and practical insights.
The Pearmill team will guide you through the nuances of setting up and managing landing page experiments on paid social platforms. You will learn about the critical rules to follow, the structure of effective tests, optimal conversion duration and budget allocation.
The session will also cover data analysis techniques and criteria for graduating landing pages.
In the second part of the webinar, Pearmill will explore the use of A/B testing platforms. Discover common pitfalls to avoid in A/B testing and gain insights into analyzing A/B tests results effectively.
When most people in the industry talk about online or digital reputation management, what they're really saying is Google search and PPC. And it's usually reactive, left dealing with the aftermath of negative information published somewhere online. That's outdated. It leaves executives, organizations and other high-profile individuals at a high risk of a digital reputation attack that spans channels and tactics. But the tools needed to safeguard against an attack are more cybersecurity-oriented than most marketing and communications professionals can manage. Business leaders Leaders grasp the importance; 83% of executives place reputation in their top five areas of risk, yet only 23% are confident in their ability to address it. To succeed in 2024 and beyond, you need to turn online reputation on its axis and think like an attacker.\
Key Takeaways:
- New framework for examining and safeguarding an online reputation
- Tools and techniques to keep you a step ahead
- Practical examples that demonstrate when to act, how to act and how to recover
In this presentation, Danny Leibrandt explains the impact of AI on SEO and what Google has been doing about it. Learn how to take your SEO game to the next level and win over Google with his new strategy anyone can use. Get actionable steps to rank your name, your business, and your clients on Google - the right way.
Key Takeaways:
1. Real content is king
2. Find ways to show EEAT
3. Repurpose across all platforms
Videos are more engaging, more memorable, and more popular than any other type of content out there. That’s why it’s estimated that 82% of consumer traffic will come from videos by 2025.
And with videos evolving from landscape to portrait and experts promoting shorter clips, one thing remains constant – our brains LOVE videos.
So is there science behind what makes people absolutely irresistible on camera?
The answer: definitely yes.
In this jam-packed session with Stephanie Garcia, you’ll get your hands on a steal-worthy guide that uncovers the art and science to being irresistible on camera. From body language to words that convert, she’ll show you how to captivate on command so that viewers are excited and ready to take action.
Everyone knows the power of stories, but when asked to come up with them, we struggle. Either we second guess ourselves as to the story's relevance, or we just come up blank and can't think of any. Unlocking Everyday Narratives: The Power of Storytelling in Marketing will teach you how to recognize stories in the moment and to recall forgotten moments that your audience needs to hear.
Key Takeaways:
Understand Why Personal Stories Connect Better
How To Remember Forgotten Stories
How To Use Customer Experiences As Stories For Your Brand
Mastering Multi-Touchpoint Content Strategy: Navigate Fragmented User JourneysSearch Engine Journal
Digital platforms are constantly multiplying, and with that, user engagement is becoming more intricate and fragmented.
So how do you effectively navigate distributing and tailoring your content across these various touchpoints?
Watch this webinar as we dive into the evolving landscape of content strategy tailored for today's fragmented user journeys. Understanding how to deliver your content to your users is more crucial than ever, and we’ll provide actionable tips for navigating these intricate challenges.
You’ll learn:
- How today’s users engage with content across various channels and devices.
- The latest methodologies for identifying and addressing content gaps to keep your content strategy proactive and relevant.
- What digital shelf space is and how your content strategy needs to pivot.
With Wayne Cichanski, we’ll explore innovative strategies to map out and meet the diverse needs of your audience, ensuring every piece of content resonates and connects, regardless of where or how it is consumed.
Monthly Social Media News Update May 2024Andy Lambert
TL;DR. These are the three themes that stood out to us over the course of last month.
1️⃣ Social media is becoming increasingly significant for brand discovery. Marketers are now understanding the impact of social and budgets are shifting accordingly.
2️⃣ Instagram’s new algorithm and latest guidance will help us maintain organic growth. Instagram continues to evolve, but Reels remains the most crucial tool for growth.
3️⃣ Collaboration will help us unlock growth. Who we work with will define how fast we grow. Meta continues to evolve their Creator Marketplace and now TikTok are beginning to push ‘collabs’ more too.
First Things First: Building and Effective Marketing Strategy
Too many companies (and marketers) jump straight into activation planning without formalizing a marketing strategy. It may seem tedious, but analyzing the mindset of your targeted audiences and identifying the messaging points most likely to resonate with them is time well spent. That process is also a great opportunity for marketers to collaborate with sales leaders and account managers on a galvanized go-to-market approach. I’ll walk you through the methods and tools we use with our clients to ensure campaign success.
Key Takeaways:
-Recognize the critical role of strategy in marketing
-Learn our approach for building an actionable, effective marketing strategy
-Receive templates and guides for developing a marketing strategy
SEO as the Backbone of Digital MarketingFelipe Bazon
In this talk Felipe Bazon will share how him and his team at Hedgehog Digital share our journey of making C-Levels alike, specially CMOS realize that SEO is the backbone of digital marketing by showing how SEO can contribute to brand awareness, reputation and authority and above all how to use SEO to create more robust global marketing strategies.
AI-Powered Personalization: Principles, Use Cases, and Its Impact on CROVWO
In today’s era of AI, personalization is more than just a trend—it’s a fundamental strategy that unlocks numerous opportunities.
When done effectively, personalization builds trust, loyalty, and satisfaction among your users—key factors for business success. However, relying solely on AI capabilities isn’t enough. You need to anchor your approach in solid principles, understand your users’ context, and master the art of persuasion.
Join us as Sarjak Patel and Naitry Saggu from 3rd Eye Consulting unveil a transformative framework. This approach seamlessly integrates your unique context, consumer insights, and conversion goals, paving the way for unparalleled success in personalization.
The digital marketing industry is changing faster than ever and those who don’t adapt with the times are losing market share. Where should marketers be focusing their efforts? What strategies are the experts seeing get the best results? Get up-to-speed with the latest industry insights, trends and predictions for the future in this panel discussion with some leading digital marketing experts.
It's another new era of digital and marketers are faced with making big bets on their digital strategy. If you are looking at modernizing your tech stack to support your digital evolution, there are a few can't miss (often overlooked) areas that should be part of every conversation. We'll cover setting your vision, avoiding siloes, adding a democratized approach to data strategy, localization, creating critical governance requirements and more. Attendees will walk away with actions they can take into initiatives they are running today and consider for the future.
For too many years marketing and sales have operated in silos...while in some forward thinking companies, the two organizations work together to drive new opportunity development and revenue. This session will explore the lessons learned in that beautiful dance that can occur when marketing and sales work together...to drive new opportunity development, account expansion and customer satisfaction.
No, this is not a conversation about MQLs and SQLs. Instead we will focus on a framework that allows the two organizations to drive company success together.
Come learn how YOU can Animate and Illuminate the World with Generative AI's Explosive Power. Come sit in the driver's seat and learn to harness this great technology.
1. Presenter: Linda Caplinger
Global Search Lead @ NVIDIA
INTERNAL SEARCH OPTIMIZATION (iSEO):
CREATING PROMOTED SEARCH RESULTS
IMPROVING SEARCH UX
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
2. 2
INTERNAL SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION:
iSEO
“The process of optimizing your site’s internal search results
to help users find information
via a query
as fast as possible
AND
to take them to the most relevant results.”
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
3. 3
WHY DO USERS RESORT TO SEARCHING
ON YOUR SITE?
• Main or Global Navigation
• UX, IA, or Organization of Content
• You’re not talking the customer’s language
• Cul-de-sac landing pages (no CTA, no links)
• Impatience
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
4. 4
3 GENERAL LEVERS FOR iSEO
1. Content:
• What can the internal engine or crawler find and display?
2. Results:
• What can the user do with the results?
3. Design & UX
• Where is the search box?
• How does the user decide where to click?
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
5. 5
THIS IS EASY
Optimizing for SEO harnesses your Paid Search AND SEO skills.
If you are a SEM professional,
you already know what to do here.
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
6. 6
PROMOTED SEARCH RESULTS
Promoted Search Results
are
search results that show
up on TOP of your onsite
or internal search results
page on your website.
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
7. 7
WHY BUILD PROMOTED RESULTS?
You can:
Control search results placement & “look – feel” on your site
Bubble up most relevant results
Direct users to eCommerce or other domains
Drop into sales funnel FASTER > higher conversions
Results are trackable & scalable
Increase time on site; page consumption
Makes for happier site visitors
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
9. 9
7 STEPS TO OPTIMIZING PROMOTED SEARCH
RESULTS
1. Get ahold of internal search query data (keywords + instances)
2. Scrub your data (stop words, characters)
3. Cluster or categorize “like” terms
4. 80:20 Rule: terms that cover the most queries
5. Write targeted ad copy (“paid search” skill)
6. Identify most relevant URLs
7. Add conversion tracking
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
10. 10
1. GATHER KEYWORDS + INSTANCES
Google Analytics (search queries), Weblogs
How much data?
• More = irons out variations, seasonality
• Less = campaigns, holidays, events
Export your query data as:
Full query string, Instances (of the query)
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
11. 11
2. SCRUB YOUR DATA
Remove stop words that your internal search engine ignores.
Remove characters if your engine ignores them
`-=[];’,./~!@#%^&*()_+{}|:”<>?
$ is usually NOT one to remove
Convert everything to lowercase
Sort a > z
Dedupe: excel or use a macro
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
12. 12
3. CLUSTER LIKE TERMS
Creating a single promoted result for each query is time intensive
Use your Paid Search skills here. Think: “broad match”
Find queries that contain a similar keyword to hone in on:
Tegra 3 processor
Tegra mobile processor
Tegra mobile processors
Tegra processors
Write once, use multiple times.
Cluster these into “Tegra” category
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
13. 13
4. IDENTIFY HIGH VALUE QUERIES
First, identify what construes a conversion.
High value ($$) products or AOV
Lead gen
Download (whitepaper)
Watch video
Consider marketing to:
Differing parts of the funnel
Personas
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
14. 14
5. WRITE TARGETED AD COPY
Just like Adwords:
Incorporate keyword
Query in: title, description
Ugly URL? Use a vanity or shortener
If your URL doesn’t include the keyword,
you can use a shortener and get same
effect.
Include CTA
Images help CTR
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
15. 15
6. RELEVANT URLS
Think: Adwords Quality Score
Alignment between:
Keyword > Ad Copy > Landing Page
Are you taking the user to the most relevant landing page?
If you’re showing more than 1 promoted result, are they different
enough to keep from confusing the user?
I nearly always prefer to display the destination URL.
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
17. 17
7. TRACKING CONVERSIONS
Prove value
Add conversion tracking to your promoted result URLs
Digital River: CID tag
Amazon: use your affiliate ID
Google Analytics: tag pages for GA and conversion script on confirmation page
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
Fast Hack:
http://www.yoururl.com#source=internal-search&keyword=pubcon
18. 18
LAUNCH
LATHER > RINSE > REPEAT
Test variations on ad copy, images, and landing pages to find highest
converting
Compare your promoted KeyMatch terms to your search logs to find
opportunities for further promoted results
Isolate ZERO results queries > redirect user to sitemap or other
experience.
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
21. 21
GOOGLE CUSTOM SEARCH (CSE)
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
You can view
meager data
in this view –
best to
integrate
Google
Analytics and
view more in
depth insights
there.
23. 23
DID IT WORK?
What determines success?
Reduced bounce rates after search results page
Lower repeat queries
Do a path analysis:
Query 1 > Page > Query 2 > Page 2 > Query 3 (eh…)
Query 1 > Page > Conversion (better!)
Increased conversions
Other…
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
24. 24
KPIs FOR INTERNAL SEARCH
Lower repeat queries:
Do a path analysis:
Query 1 > Page 1 > Query 2 > Page 2 > Query 3 (eh…)
Query 1 > Page 1 > Conversion (better!)
Lower bounce rates
Increased time on site AFTER doing a search
Reduce number of visits that END on a search results page
Increase in clicks, conversions from Internal Search
Increase successful queries (user selects a search result on page 1
and no subsequent search occurs)
Increase in average page depth > Increase in engagement?
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
25. 25
ONGOING MAINTENANCE
Look for queries that generate no results
Customize your empty result page (sitemap, include the query, offer
similar content)
Look for repeated queries (query 1 looks a lot like query 2)
Go over your top 200-300 queries – make sure your results are tight.
80/20 rule!
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
26. 26
KEY TAKEWAYS
1. Normalize and clean your query data
2. Use your SEO and Paid Search skills to create relevant, highly
converting Promoted Results
3. Use the 80:20 rule! First focus on the top 200-300 queries.
4. Add tracking. Prove your success.
5. Solve for zero result pages.
6. Continually test.
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
29. 29
ADDED VALUE FOR INTERNAL SEARCH
Auto-compete suggestions
Images for Autocomplete &/or iSERPs
Image search results page
Meta data for pivoting / filtering results:
By Product
By Year
By Document Type (HTML, PDF, Video)
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
30. 30
PIVOTING OR FILTERING
SAP results let user pivot on:
Content Type:
HTML
PDF
Audio / Visual
Press Release
Industry or BU
Line of Business (LOB)
Customer’s Company Size:
Small business
Medium business
Enterprise
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
31. 31
PIVOTING OR FILTERING
Time intensive to add lots of meta data
Google can do “entity recognition”
Other pivot points:
Year of Publication
Language
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
32. 32
QUICK LINKS
Uses?
Bubble up most popular
site sections
Most popular query
categories
Replicate footer content
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
34. 34
GOOGLE RESOURCES
Google Search Appliance (GSA):
http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/support/
Google Custom Search Engine (CSE):
https://www.google.com/cse/
Google Site Search:
http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/products/gss.html
GSA vs. Site Search:
http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/products/
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
37. 37
FURTHER READING
eConsultancy: Site Search for eCommerce: 13 Tips
Google: How Site Search Metrics are Calculated
Google Dev: Structured Data and GCS
#pubcon @lindacaplinger
Editor's Notes
Linda Caplinger
I’ve been working in search-related positions for the last 15 years.
Search engines Infoseek and Yahoo! Where I worked on the director and internal search programs.
Consulting - most notable project was for the MicroSoft Bing Toolbox launch.
Software Companies: McAfee, Symantec – both Anti-Virus companies, and then SAP’s Global Search Marketing Lead in NYC (mostly SEO, Internal Search and Paid)
And now….NVIDIA where I do a bit of everything search.
Types of search products that I’m worked on and are most familiar with:
Google Search Appliance (GSA) or Enterprise search
Google Custom Search
Google Site Search
Internal Search Optimization, or iSEO as I like to call it.
The process of optimizing your site’s internal search results
To help users find information
Via a query
As fast as possible
And
To take them to the most relevant results.
When you think about it, it’s sort of a combination of SEO, paid search, and UX skills all wrapped up in one and this is what I’m going to dive into today.
John Sherman just spoke to you about WHY you want to have search on your site and I’m going to try to tell you a few neat things you can do with it to add value.
How many of you are using a “search” feature on your website?
To reiterate and build on the WHY:
Your navigation might be bad.
Many companies organize their site navigation according to how their BUs are structured rather than how a user might look for content or products. For instance, can we all agree on what a small business is as compared to a medium sized business?
Related to having a confusing nav structure: Your content or Information Architecture (IA) might ALSO be organized in a confusing manner.
Sometimes the language that we use on our site is “inside out”. We use what I call “Marketing-ese” rather than the customer language. We like to say “notebook” when our customers are really querying for “laptops”.
Sometimes the organic landing page just fails to deliver. The meta description says one thing but the page content is thin or not deep enough.
Sometimes users just don’t trust your site and they head straight to the search box.
These folks are “impatient”.
Content: What content do you want to be crawled and displayed?
You might have multiple subdomains or websites you want the user to find. Or forums. With Google custom search, you can even point your engine to crawl a site you don’t even own.
Results:
Once the user gets to your landing page, then what? Can they sort or filter? Can they narrow results?
And then there’s the entire User Experience:
How do you make it easy for the customer to find what they want?
How many of you are already doing SEO and SEM?
What is key here is that if you are already doing SEO and SEM, you have the skills you need to optimize your search results.
Of course you might need a bit of technical help INSTALLING your search engine (and that’s what your IT team is for), but the rest is fairly straightforward.
You have a default way that your search results appear.
Those can be customized for look, feel…
to have images (or not)
to show the URL (or not)
Part of customizing the content you deliver to the searcher is what are called “promoted results”, or if you are using Google Search Appliance, “Key Matches”. This is an area that’s often overlooked by whoever controls onsite search.
Google Search Appliance (GSA) – often called Enterprise Search – server or blade that crawls your content (internal or external site). Crawls YOUR results.
Google Custom Search – a view of the “organic results” (with respect to search collections that you point it at).
There are a lot of players in this space but we’ll just go into Google Search today.
I’m going to focus on creating promoted search results for Google “ search products.
.
Benefits of customizing your promoted search results
So, we know a few reasons why users use the search box and that provides a natural starting point for why you want to use it.
But there are also a few other reasons:
Configuring your search results page lets you control what the user sees to a large degree.
You can point visitors to sections of your site (or other sites!) that aren’t being crawled by your search engine.
In creating custom links you can drop customers directly into the sales funnel.
You can bubble up what you feel are the best or most relevant (or highest AOV) items.
In the end, it just makes for happier site visitors.
The added benefit, is that you get immediate gratification.
Results are quick.
SEO takes time.
Paid search is nearly immediate.
These are the 7 steps that I use for creating Promoted Results or KeyMatches:
Get your onsite search data
Scrub it
Cluster or group together like-terms
Pull out the low-hanging-fruit
Write & optimize your ad copy (like you would for paid search)
Integrate the most relevant (and hopefully the highest converting) URL to point the user at
Add tracking parameters if you want (you can integrate Google URL UTM codes, Digital River CIDs, etc)
And launch.
One at a time now.
Collect data on the terms that people are searching for on your site.
You’re probably using Google Analytics to track internal search. If you’re using Microsoft Fast or other tools, there will be data you can grab.
If you want to iron out seasonal variations and anomalies, get lots of data. Maybe a year’s worth. Expect your data set to be HUGE.
If you want to create campaigns for recent behaviour, maybe just grab a month.
Export it all to a spreadsheet.
What you need are the full query string AND query instances.
At Symantec, we started with the top 50,000 queries.
That’s a lot of data.
Trust me, there’s going to be a great deal of duplication in your data set
so you’ll need to scrub your data.
Cleaning data is the most fun and frustrating part of this exercise.
Many internal search engines will ignore stop words. Also, thinking like paid search, the default search type in GSA and Google Custom Search is similar to a broad match type.
Google calls the promoted query that you are going to build a KEYMATCH.
If you enter the keymatch “Tegra” into your engine, it’ll return results for “Tegra processor”, “Tegra Tab” and any other query unless you tell it not to.
So, a customized result for “Tegra” in your engine, might cover many many more queries than just “Tegra” alone.
So clean out all of the stop words, characters, and so forth.
Convert all your data to lowercase.
tegra lowercase and TEGRA uppercase will pull up the same search result. Yes? Right. And we don’t want to waste time creating two search results for Tegra.
Once clean, sort your data A through Z.
Remove all of the duplicates.
Give your data a sanity check.
Did you remove all of the stopwords and random characters?
Leave the misspellings in there. You want those.
You might need to do this a few times to get to a list that you can work with. You are trying to scrub the data so that you are left with truly unique queries in the ed.
It’s also interesting to see, much your data set was reduced by this process. This helps you understand how scalable this will be if you need to localize this to other regions or sites.
The next two steps sort of work together. They’re not necessarily done in a linear fashion.
First: keep in mind that GSA and Google Custom Search default to broad match in that a single term is wildcarded and will cover a great number of queries that contain that term.
Look at the Tegra example.
I see 4 queries that all contain Tegra. I can create a “Tegra” keymatch and ad copy in GSA that will cover all query permutations that contain Tegra.
Remember:
you want to: Write once, and use over and over.
Also:
think “broad match” when you’re starting out.
Keep an eye out for queries that you know are associated to high AOVs, high CVR, and so forth.
If you have a very high value query, something that’s important to your company, you can actually create what’s called an ExactMatch keymatch where you have one KeyMatch that shouldn’t pull in other permutations. (Doesn’t always work as it should, but for the most part it does).
Also keep an eye out for queries that are more lead gen focused, or might cover different areas of the conversion funnel.
You may find something happen that we call “bleed”, where one result bleeds into the result of another.
For example:
What if you have one keymatch entry for Tegra queries
And another for “mobile processors”
And then someone does a query for “Tegra Mobile Processors”?
You might see two ads show up at the same time.
You can solve this with the ExactMatch function.
Now this step is not a lot different than writing ad copy for Adwords.
Make sure the query term is in the title and the description. For GSA, the query will show up bolded by default in the search results. Your developer may have turned this off. If they have, revert it back.
Depending on your engine installation, your URL may or may not show up. If it’s long and convoluted, you can use a shortener or a vanity.
Try to include a CTA.
And of course, images are nearly always compelling and can boost your click through rates.
Also worth mentioning for those of you in large organizations is that Google Search Engines will show 3 (or 5?) promoted search results.
You may find, over time, that as people in your organization see how well this works particular business units (or Bus) may pressure you to let them own all of the promoted results. Not a great user experience. You may even find yourself in the position of having to create a policy for your company that given three results, one is for B2C, one for B2B, and one for support related results. Sometimes creating such a policy keeps competing interests from polluting your search results.
Also, when the user’s query is ambiguous, and you don’t know precisely what they are looking for, try to show a good mixture of promoted search results. Spread the love over your different organizations.
When you’re thinking of where to point users, try to grab the most relevant landing page possible.
Think of Google’s quality score when you’re creating your ad copy and destination URL.
Not only does your ad copy need to contain the query term, your landing page needs to resonate with the user that, “Aha! This is it!”
If it doesn’t resonate, they’ll bounce, they’ll search again, and eventually your promoted search results will not be seen as being trustworthy.
For generic organic queries, Google likes to show you Wikipedia results. It just doesn’t know what you want.
For a very generic query where you aren’t sure where to take the user, you might want to provide a mix of results, a “What is a..” page, a “glossary” page or other area that is high level.
Akin to the previous slide, for some companies this might mean providing three results: one small business, one medium, one enterprise. Or some similar division.
And again, if your program takes off and you are at a large company, you may need to create a process for “who owns which keymatch” (or do they all have to share)?
I like to add conversion tracking in my Promoted Search results so I can prove value.
If you’re not directing users to pages where they’re going to convert, or if your web dev resources are scanty, you can always add in a hash and then a parameter so that you can easily parse the data out of your weblogs for page hits.
Once you’ve gone through the previous steps, you’re ready to push out your search results.
You’ll want to test variations of ad copy, images, and destination URLS. Like paid search, continually optimize.
You’ll also want to analyze which queries do NOT result in ANY search results for your user. In these cases you’ll probably want to create a customized landing page that reflects their query back to them, maybe they misspelled something, and offer to help them find what they’re looking for.
Lastly, you’ll want to compare your list of KeyMatches in your search engine to the actual query logs and determine what queries are NOT addressed by your KeyMatch settings.
I do this in Access.
I had a developer friend create a script for me that I run in Access that takes the two lists of data (queries and volumes) versus (KeyMatches), scrubs the query data, and then churns out a list of which queries are still not KeyMatched. Essentially, it isolates the queries I still need to create KeyMatches for.
It’s handy.
Very meager data.
Not that exciting.
Integrate with Google Analytics and view over on the GA site.
So, did it work?
To reiterate what you want to track:
Bounce rates
Repeat queries
Page consumption (may or may not be a good thing)
Conversions (whatever that might be to you)
What are the KPIs you want to track for internal search?
Scour logs for searches with 0 results – what is the user looking for? Does a keymatch solve this?
Ensure your empty results page includes suggestions for what to do next (sitemap, related searches, etc). Update this frequently, as your site will change over time.
Continually look for searches with repeated search attempts (either the same query or something very similar) that happen in same session – create KeyMatch results
Go over your top 200 or 300 results (80/20) and ensure results are tight and that the results are what you’d expect.
There are a few extra slides in the appendix for other things you can do to improve your site’s internal search results.
Please feel free to email me directly for any questions.
SAP did a great job on meta tagging their content for pivot capabilities.