Is SEO Dead? Keeping SEO Alive Across All Marketing Channels

@marketingmojo | marketing-mojo.com
IS SEO DEAD? KEEPING
SEO ALIVE ACROSS ALL
MARKETING CHANNELS
Janet Driscoll Miller
Marketing Mojo

TODAY’S PRESENTERS
Janet Driscoll Miller
President and CEO,
Marketing Mojo
Follow on Twitter: @janetdmiller

ABOUT MARKETING MOJO
• Search engine marketing firm founded in 2005
› Search engine optimization (SEO)
› Pay-per-click advertising management (PPC)
› Social media advertising
› Online reputation management
• Headquartered in Charlottesville, VA
› Office in Charleston, SC
• Featured in the Washington Post, B2B Magazine,
MarketingSherpa, Visibility Magazine and many blogs
• Speakers at SMX Advanced, MarketingProfs, PubCon and more

OUR CLIENTS

IS SEO REALLY
DEAD?

SEO ISN’T DEAD. IT’S DIFFERENT.
• Inbound links
– Press releases
– Spammy sites
• Greater emphasis on content
– Authorship
• Greater emphasis on social
– Google+
• SEO has become more
holistic
– More barriers to success

BIG CHANGES IN
SEO

THE FOUR MAIN FACETS OF SEO
• Keywords
• Content
• Inbound Linking
• Social Media

HOW KEYWORDS HAVE CHANGED
• Still have to have some focus on keywords

• Tools aren’t as good for research
› Free Google keyword tool retired
› New Google Keyword Planner data isn’t completely accurate

• Google Webmaster Tools query data

HOW KEYWORD MEASUREMENT
HAS CHANGED
• Google now encrypts all organic searches

HOW CONTENT HAS CHANGED
• Panda Update
› Addresses duplicate content

• Authorship
› Emphasis on author’s authority on a subject
› How do you get everyone to embrace authorship
and write online?

• Schema (structured markup)
› Allows for rich snippets in Google and Bing

• When to add it?
› How big is your site?
› Cost/benefit analysis
• Not all CMS support innately
› May have to involve developer time

HOW LINKS HAVE CHANGED
• Three main changes in the last year
› Penguin updates
› Google’s position on press releases
› Value of anchor text in links

PENGUIN UPDATES
• Penguin focused on linkspam
• “Any links intended to
manipulate PageRank or a
site's ranking in Google search
results may be considered
part of a link scheme and a
violation of
Google’s Webmaster
Guidelines. This includes any
behavior that manipulates
links to your site.”

GOOGLE’S POSITION ON PRESS
RELEASES
• Google’s guidelines re: link schemes
› “Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases
distributed on other sites.”
• Google: If you are publishing a press release or an article on your site and
distribute it through a wire or through an article site, you must make sure
to nofollow the links if those links are “optimized anchor text.”
• Pubcon 2013, Matt Cutts:
› Press releases are considered “paid links”
› Google just doesn’t count them
› Press release anchor-text linking isn’t necessarily helping you today

GOOGLE’S POSITION ON
PRESS RELEASES
• Messages from Google are cryptic.
Make press release links
“nofollow” and avoid anchor text
optimization.
We don’t follow those links
anyways because they are paid
links.

ANCHOR TEXT

SOCIAL IMPACTS SEO

CORRELATION ≠ CAUSATION

GOOGLE PERSONALIZATION AND
GOOGLE+
• The default setting for Google signed-in users
is “Search Plus Your World”
• These results are heavily personalized on
search history, location and the connections
and content associated in Google Plus with +1
votes and G+ shares

PERSONALIZED VS. NON-
PERSONALIZED

HOW MEASURING SUCCESS HAS
CHANGED
• Rankings reports are inaccurate
› Personalization
› Geolocation

THE FUTURE OF
SEO

MORE FOCUS ON MOBILE
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
2011 2012 2013
YouTube Percent of Traffic from Mobile

• Hummingbird
› Designed to focus on conversational text

FOCUS ON QUALITY CONTENT
• Knowledge Graph

• Knowledge Graph relies on “sentences”, i.e.
the relationship of various objects
› Paris is the capital of France.
• Google creates relationships from what it
learns and returns it via Knowledge Graph
• Hummingbird = sentence queries
• Schema (structured data) also helps search
engines understand relationships

• AuthorRank vs. Authority
› Authority = measure of importance on a subject
› AuthorRank = type of algorithm adjustmentCurrent: PageRank
PR 8
PR 3 PR 6
Coming: PageRank + AuthorRank
+
PR 8
AR 10
PR 3 PR 6

Within search results, information tied to verified
online profiles will be ranked higher than content
without such verification, which will result in
most users naturally clicking on the top (verified)
results. The true cost of remaining anonymous,
then, might be irrelevance.
-- Eric Schmidt

FOCUS ON SOCIAL
• Pubcon Keynote Oct. 2013
› While Google can’t necessarily crawl all of Facebook (or other social
networks) today, they clearly recognize how social influence can be a
key indicator in understanding a person’s authority. Google will
continue to try to read these social signals moving forward. So even if
some social engagement doesn’t have direct ranking impact today, it
may in the future. Just do what you can to be an authority in your
space across these social networks.

MEASURING SEO

MEASURING SEO
• Keys to effectively measuring SEO:
› Shift away from rankings
› Holistic attribution view
» Attribution modeling
› Conversion optimization

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR SEO?

CONTACT
JANET DRISCOLL MILLER
President and CEO
Marketing Mojo
@janetdmiller +Janet Driscoll Miller
MARKETING MOJO
Twitter: @MarketingMojo
Facebook: facebook.com/MarketingMojoAgency
Google+: +Marketing Mojo

Is SEO Dead? Keeping SEO Alive Across All Marketing Channels

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