SEO Keyword Research and Content Mapping

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Part 1:
SEO Keyword Research and Content
Mapping
Search Post Intensive
Bill Hunt
Keyword Research
• Keywords are the lifeblood of any search
marketing program. It is essential that you
understand the universe of keywords related
to your products and services.
• From this understanding you can understand
the needs, wants and intent of the searcher to
more effectively map your content with their
query.

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Generate Keyword Review Matrix
3
Keyword Related Keyword Demand
Rank
Data
CPC
Site
Search
Type Comments PLP
diabetes 375,567
diabetes supply 58,731
Diabetes symptoms 48,148
Diabetes diet 22,133
Type 2 diabetes 21,393
Diabetes mellitus 21,038
Gestational
diabetes 19,755
Diabetes treatment 18.999
Diabetes
information 17,345
Juvenile diabetes 17,125
Initial Keyword
Research gives
you related words
Number of
searches last
month.
How is are the
words performing
elsewhere
Research?
Purchase?
Service?
Good word? Bad?
Issues?
Recommend
Landing page URL
Brainstorming Keywords
Brainstorming words are our starting point. We take these top‐
level, general keyword phrases and use them as the basis of the
next set of actions.
Start the process by answering the following questions:
1. Make a list of your products, services and categories of each
2. What do your potential visitors search for when trying to find your
product/services/information?
3. When you search for your own site, what do you search for
4. What do you want to be #1 in the search results for?
5. What terms are currently driving visits to your site (analytics)
6. What are people searching for currently on your site? (site search)

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www.mergewords.com
Mine your Pages for Keywords - Manually
• Review your site content for targeted keyword phrases.
• Start with general words and dig deeper to get more specific phrases that are
exact matches.

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Research Demand & Opportunity
• Leverage one of the keyword research tools to
understand variations of keywords and
relative search volume for each phrase.
• Use “exact” or “phrase” match to get a closer
representation to a natural search query
• Results are “averages” and not exact numbers
7https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Google Keyword Planner
8
adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner

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WordTracker
9
Subscription-based keyword research tool that offers a wide selection
of keyword variations and relevance weightings for keywords.
- www.wordtracker.com
Keyword Discovery
10
Subscription-based keyword research tool that offers a wide selection
of keyword variations and relevance weightings for keywords.
Can save and recall keyword research projects
- www.keyworddiscovery.com

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UberSuggest
Scrapes variations of “auto suggest” for
alphabet and some symbols
http://ubersuggest.org/
Keyword Prioritization
12
Prioritization buckets words into
High, Medium and Low categories
•Categories used to:
•Control SOV levels on specific
segments in paid search
•Identify priority words for SEO
work
• Advise content developers on
best words to include in new
content
Awareness
High Priority
“Must Have” Keywords
Medium Priority
Keywords that are important but expensive or
not targeted enough
Low Priority
“Nice to haves”
• High Priority keywords get 60% of budget & effort
• Medium Priority keywords get 30% of budget & effort
• Low Priority keywords get 10% of budget & effort
•Ensures important words get most exposure

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Map to Specific Relevant Pages
• Preferred Landing Pages (PLP’s) are used to match
keywords to the best page for that word or phrase. 13
Map Keywords to Predefined Actions Segments
• Use a brainstorming session to discuss and segment words into appropriate
purchase lifecycle segments to understand how to better align messages.
• This will be very helpful later when creating ad groups and messages for
PPC

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Current State Performance
• Once you have your list of keyword phrases, a
Keyword Ranking Report can be run to
benchmark a site’s current position in the
search results for these phrases.
• Knowing how well Preferred Landing Pages are
ranking for associated keyword phrases puts a
priority on which pages need to be audited for
optimization or added to your PPC campaign.
Additional Research Tools

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• Provides a graphical,
relative search
volume comparison.
• Enter in up to 5
search terms.
• Shows related news.
• Free but not
necessarily current
Google Trends
www.google.com/trendswww.google.com/trends
Keyword Spy
• Wide selection of keywords
• Additional unique features
– See paid and organic data
– Export master list of words
– Great for competitive
analysis and budget planning
• Free and Subscription
versions
www.keywordspy.comwww.keywordspy.com

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Best Practices
• Brainstorm your keywords with a wide team to
understand your base universe.
• Look at your content, site search data and
external tools for variations
• Work to understand the intent of a searcher for
each phrase and map to the appropriate page
on your site.
• Repeat the process often to maximize your
keyword universe.
Part 2:
Fundamentals and Best Practices of
SEO

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SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
21
Making changes to your site to ensure it
maximizes the key elements used by
search engines to score and rank pages
How Search Engines Work
1. Spiders (crawlers, robots) crawl the Web and extract
information from each page
2. Information helps to build an Index
– What the page is about (number of times an
important word appears)
– Where on a page the word appears
– How the word appears (capitalization, punctuation,
bolded, etc.)
– Who else links to the page (number of times, and
rank, of other pages linking to it)
3. Encodes, weights, rank, then stores information
Simple right?
Search engines have many hurdles to overcome

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How does the Algorithm Work
• Spam and Inflation Detection
– Verifying that no unethical tricks are being used
– Verifying that there are not duplicates or redirections
• Keyword Phrase Inclusion/Content Relevancy
– Does the exact phrase occur on the page
– Location and proximity of keyword and/or keyword phrase
– What is the relationship of the keyword to the content?
– How many other similar or relevant pages on the site are
connected to this page?
• Internet Relevancy
– How many other sites/pages are linked to this site and page?
– How “relevant” are the pages/sites linking to the page?
– How are the other links references which point to the page?
What is Search Optimization?
• Ensuring your site is search friendly which allows spiders to index the
content on the site
• Ensuring your pages include the keyword phrases actually used by
searchers
• Ensuring your pages offer “relevance signals” to the search engines to
help them understand what the page is about.
• Ensuring the pages of your website are as compliant as possible with the
search engine scoring algorithms
• Ensuring your relevant pages are considered “authoritative” by other sites
via quality and contextually relevant links to them.
• Ensuring compelling and action oriented descriptions that encourage
visits

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4 Fundamentals of SEO
25
SEO
Indexibility
Relevance Authority
Clickability
INDEXABILITY
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Ensuring that all of the pages on your site
are able to be detected and indexed by the
search engines.

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Indexability
• Is the site created in a way to enable the spiders to get
to the site, into the site and capture all the pages within
the site?
• Do you have spider traps and barriers to indexing
– Improper redirects
– Incorrect robots coding
– JavaScript and DHTML navigation
– Multiple dynamic variables & Session ID’s
– Session ID’s or cookie restrictions
27
Inclusion Test
• Test how many pages in the indexed
– site:yourdomain.com as well as site:www.yourdomain.com
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Robots.txt Syntax
• Common protocol for blocking bots to all or part of your site
– Available at www.yoursite.com/robots.txt
– Keeps spiders from specific sections of the site – scripts or user profiles
– Done wrong, can block bots from entire site
Tip: Unless you need to block them always allow all bots access to all content
User-agent: *
Disallow:
User-agent: *
Disallow:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /go/
Disallow: /info/
Disallow: /support/
Disallow: /JumpData/
Sitemap: http://www.hp.com/google-sitemap-index.xml
Complex URLs can be a challenge
• Can inhibit or
prevent crawling
• Can result in
duplicate pages for
same products with
different attributes
• May not be linked
so no way to find
and index them
• Leverage XML site
https://avnetexpress.avnet.com/store/em/EMController/Audio-Amplifier/Maxim-Integrated-
Products/DS4420N/_/R-7392976/A-7392976/An-0?action=part&catalogId=500201&langId=-
1&storeId=500201&listIndex=-1
https://avnetexpress.avnet.com/store/em/EMController/Audio-Amplifier/Maxim-Integrated-
Products/DS4420N/_/R-7392976/A-7392976/An-0?action=part&catalogId=500201&langId=-
1&storeId=500201&listIndex=-1

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Complex URL Optimization Tips
• Remove extraneous parameters that are no
longer necessary
• Rename parameters like Category=400 to
Category=Blue‐Widgets to add keywords to the
URL.
• When possible, use a rewrite engine to make
complex URL’s “friendly URL’s”
• Leverage XML site maps for the different
categories of products and content to monitor
indexing rates and completeness.
• Reduce repetitive path elements that are not
Canonicalization
• Home pages can be accessed many ways. Example:
– dell.com
– www.dell.com
– http://www.dell.com/us/en/gen/df.aspx?refid=df&s=gen
• Results in link dilution and content duplication.
• Use 301 redirect for non‐www to www redirect
• Use “Canonical” tag for page to page
– V1 ‐ http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron‐r‐series.aspx?c=us&cs=19
– V2 ‐ http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron‐r‐series.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
– V3 ‐ http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron‐r‐series.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn
– Canonical Tag Selects one version as the primary page:
– <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-r-series.aspx?cs=19" />

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Design Issues Create Indexing
Challenges
Design issues can impact ranking – educate developers on key challenges
Evaluate impact when integrating the following when building a site – not
all are bad if integrated correctly
– Flash
– Frames
– JavaScripts
– Table Structures
– Dynamic Content
– Redirects
– Slow Loading Pages
– Graphics vs. text
– Image Maps
Spider-Friendly Sites -
Navigation
• HyperText alternatives to GUIs
• Footer Navigation
• Hierarchical, link-based navigation (vs. dropdowns/input
boxes)
• Spiders love hierarchies, users prefer search (have both)
• Always link back to your HomePage
• ...so spiders can find the rest of your site
• ...and lost users can re-orient
• Use Site Maps
• Link in footer of site with sitemap.html
• Include links to key areas of the site
• Maximum of 100 links on the page

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Spider-Friendly Sites -
Settings
• Don’t require Cookies/Session IDs
• If you “Soft 404” ....let the spider know
• redirect to one generic page designed for that purpose (i.e.
not the HomePage)
• Title your page appropriately (e.g. “ERROR 404”)
• If your site has moved, 301 the old URLs to point to the new
ones
• transfers in-link credit from the old site to the new one
• keeps legacy in-links and user’s bookmarks from breaking
• don’t be afraid to leave the 301s in place as long as
necessary
Spider-Friendly Site Hierarchy
• Avoid excessive URL depth
– Increases the chance that crawlers won’t find all your pages
– Very-deep URLs typically don’t rank as well
– Hard for users to e-mail
• Example
www.mybooks.com/order-of-the-phoenix
(Depth 1, but may be hard to build a 50K page site this way!!)
www.mybooks.com/uk/fiction/childrens/jkrawlings/harry-potter/order-of-the-
phoenix
(Depth 6, may not get crawled!!)
www.mybooks.com/jkrawlings/harry-potter/order-of-the-phoenix
(Depth 3, probably a reasonable balance)

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XML Sitemaps
Protocol to inform the search engines of your pages.
– Auto‐discovery through robots.txt or submission via Webmaster Tool Accounts
– Same format and file supported by all major search engines
Google and Bing report “issues” with URLs.
Site Map Protocol ‐ www.sitemaps.org
XML Site Map Best Practices
• Build one sitemap category of business with a
maximum of 10,000 records per site map.
• Build one site map per country or language on
the site to monitor inclusion
• Append new pages and push new sitemap.xml
nightly
• Rebuild full Site Map set and Index monthly

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Barrier Checking Tool
FireFox Webmaster Tool https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/web-developer/
Check for cookies, page size, JavaScript and other key barriers
Site speed...
• How quickly do you deliver content?
– Dirty code
– Unnecessary files
– No compression
– Oversized images
– Server speed & pipe
Don’t waste the spiders time!
Test with Speed tools
Yslow
Google Speed Tool

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Site Speed Testing Example
Test indicates multiple areas of improving load speed which will
help the spiders access the content quicker – this will also be
helpful to visitors – especially on mobile phones.
RELEVANCE
42
Ensuring that your pages are relevant to the
query by placing keywords in location that
send strong signals to the search engines.

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Relevance Questions
• Do your on-page elements align with the search
industry’s understanding of the algorithm scoring model
as represented by accepted best practices?
• Is the desired keyword included on the page?
• Is keyword included in key elements on page like title
and heading?
• Is the keyword phrase used in the body copy?
How a user sees a website

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How a spider sees the site
Optimal Keyword Placement
• Title Tags are the MOST IMPORTANT attribute
– Supply Chain Management Consulting - TCS
</title>
• Heading Tags - <H1> and <H2>
• Body Copy - Keywords appearing throughout page
content
• Anchor Text - The keyword phrase appearing in a
hyperlink to your site or within it
• Alt Attribute - In lieu of keyword rich content, engines
will pull a page description from an images alt attribute.

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Optimal Keyword Locations
Illustrated
Overlay Source: SEO xRay from SEO for FireFox tool
bar
Not Spam, But Bad for Rankings
• Splash pages, content‐less home page, Flash intros
• Title tags the same across the site
• Error pages in the search results (e.g., “Session
expired”)
• "Click here" links
• Superfluous text like “Welcome to” at beginning of
titles
• Spreading site across multiple domains (usually for
load balancing).
• Content too many levels deep

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• Hidden or small text
• Keyword stuffing
• Targeted to obviously irrelevant keywords
• Automated submitting, resubmitting, deep submitting
• Competitor names in meta tags
• Duplicate pages with minimal or no changes
• Spamglish
• Machine generated content
Spamming in Its Many Forms …
AUTHORITY
50
Ensuring that your pages are considered
relevant and authoritative by other
authoritative sites via links and anchor text.

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Key Off‐Page Factors: Links
• Search Engines look for clusters of thematically similar content. To do this
they look at:
– Link Popularity ‐ Number of links pointing to site
– Link Authority – Quality of links pointing to site
– Anchor Text or Link Text
• The keyword phrase appearing in the hyperlink to your site
– Title Tag
• The keyword phrase appearing in the title of page linking to your
site
• Think of inbound links as “votes of authority” between sites
Votes – website backlinks
A webpage with little or no authority
A webpage with some authority
A webpage with lots of authority
Internal web
pages
Externally linked
web pages

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Types of Links
• Reciprocal (Fig 1) – Less important today due to past abuse;
value of reciprocal links is usually discounted
• Triangular (Fig 2) – Attempt to hide reciprocal linking – easily
detectable
• One Way (Fig 3) – One way inbound links are usually most
valuable
Fig 2.
B C
A
Fig 1.
A B
Fig 3.
A B
A Closer Look at Links
• Popularity:
95 Pages linking to this page
• Authority:
3.9% are quality links (PR>5)
• Relevance:
74.7% of the links are relevant

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Age – how old is your site?
• Google gives great weight
to sites that have been
around for a few years or
more. This makes them
seem to be more
legitimate.
• New sites will find it very
hard to compete in
mature markets
5 Tips for Successful Link
Building
1. Build Links Naturally
2. Get Links from Sites That Give Few.
3. Get Your Keywords into Your Link Text
4. Get Links from Relevant Sites
5. Go for Deep Links

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CLICKABILITY
57
Ensuring that your SERP Snippets are
relevant and compelling to searchers to
encourage more clicks.
Maximizing Click Opportunity
1. Relatively little risk
2. We are impatient and easily frustrated
• 6.4 seconds before clicking on a link
3. There is a lot of information
• Scan an average of 3.9 results
• Assimilate an average of 140 words
• Included in those words are between 35 to 60
factors we have to consider to make a decision

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Review your Snippet Periodically
• Review your snippet periodically especially if you get low click through
• if you don’t rank well use the following syntax to review:
Keyword phrase site:yoururl.com
Maximizing your Search Result
Listing
• Description comes from one of the following:
– Compiled from content on the page
– Taken from Meta Description
– Open Directory Listing
– Anything else the engines can find (Alt, navigation) to form a snippet
• Optimize the Snippet by:
• Place keyword at the beginning of opening paragraph
• Place benefit statements near your main keyword phrases at the top of
the page.
• When an engine takes a snippet for the SERP page, your description will
boost your benefits.

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You cannot build a house in a day...
• SEO takes time to identify the issues make the changes and wait for
reindexing and scoring.
• Often resources and Web Development team are not available or
have conflicting ideas
• Educate the wider team to help integrated into the existing content
creation workflow
• SEO must be done in line with Google standards
• Never employ black hat solutions or risk the negative consequences
• If you invest now SEO will deliver long term quality traffic for the
future!
SEO Best Practice Key Takeaways
1. Reduce barriers to entry for search spiders
2. Keyword phrase in far left of title tag
3. <H1> heading tag includes primary keyword phrase
4. Emphasize the primary keyword early in the content
and include secondary phrases as you write
5. Create strong and relevant content
6. Use relevant keywords in the anchor text for all links
7. Contextually relevant inbound links from quality sites
8. Consolidate links and pages to form clusters
62

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Part 3:
Using Project Management to
Manage SEO Projects
What is SEO Project Management?
• Embedding SEO into marketing strategy
• Planning your SEO program
• Making SEO operational
64

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Direct marketers always think
metrics at the start
• Target your first campaign
• Assess your current situation
• Calculate your opportunity
65
Define
numeric
objectives
Get real
feedback
Constantly
look at
performance
Try different
approaches
66
Use SEO to drive conversions
How many search visitors come to buy?
The right search result puts the visitor in the “Learn”
stage to view a product page.
How many customers that view a
product page put items in their
carts?
And how many check out?
Multiply by your average revenue
and you have the impact of search
on revenue.
Learn
Buy
Shop
Use
Get
Search
Increasing the success rate at any stage increases the
overall conversion rate

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SEO Project Management
67
Planning your SEO Program
Choose the scope of your overall
SEO program
• A single
product line?
• Business
unit?
• Country
market?
• The entire
enterprise?
68
Digital Cameras
Home Theatres
DVD Players
Televisions
Time

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What are the basic steps of each
campaign?
• Make sure your pages are in
the search indexes
• Identify the words that
searchers use to find you
• Use those words in the right
places on your Web pages
• Create content that others will
link to
69
Get Pages
Indexed
Choose
Keywords
Optimize
Content
Attract
Links
70
Decide what tasks you must
centralize
Task Functional Product-
Oriented
Multinational Conglomerate
Targeting
search engines
Central Central Extended Central
Planning
keywords
Central Extended Extended Central
Reporting
metrics
Central Central Central Extended
Defining
standards
Central Central Central Extended
Organization type influences the right place for each task

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How does a company plan an SEO
program?
• Example: Snap Electronics
• A fictional electronics manufacturer
• Well‐known brand name
• Large Web site with heavy online sales
• High‐end, innovative, easy‐to‐use products
• “Our products are a snap!”
71
Choose the target area of your site
• Pick something high profile
• Ensure the impact is measurable
• Keep it simple
• Make it practical
72

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73
How much search traffic do you
already get?
• Your metrics facility can tell you your current
traffic
• You can project your missed opportunities:
Check to see where your
competitors are
• Competitors rank much higher for digital
camera than Snap does
• That likely means you can improve
74

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75
How much more traffic can you
get?
Project the traffic improvement for each keyword
76
Then project the value of the
resulting conversions
• To know what the value of search marketing
is worth, you must calculate the conversion
rate and its value
• You can use this to justify the investment
and to check your return on investment later

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Project your costs
• You already projected your revenues
• Now you need to see the other side
77
Put together your revenue and
expenses
• Your mileage may vary, but the number will be
big for you
• This won’t persuade everyone, but it’s a start
78

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Put together your plan
• Don’t skimp on
details for
execution
• Anyone can cook
a spreadsheet to
forecast success
• Make sure that
your plan is
detailed and
believable79
SEO Project Management
80
Making SEO Operational

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Mike Moran
© 2010 Mike Moran81
Make your search program
operational
• Your central team handles everything you need to do in
one place in your organization
• But their most important job is working with your
extended team—all of those specialists that already run
your Web site:
– Copy writers
– Product managers
– IT folks
– etc.
Search Ecosystem
An ecosystem approach to build a world‐class infrastructure
• Knowledge platform
• Thought leadership
• Uniform KPI’s
• Ridged Training Program
• Content Prioritization
• Searcher Intent Modeling
• Keyword Page Mapping
• Keyword Centralization
• PPC/SEO Co‐Optimization
• Keyword Level Performance
• Always On Monitoring
• Integration with IT & Content
• Crawlable Infrastructure
• Relevance built into templates
• SEO into localization process
Infrastructure
Integration
Keyword
Management &
Reporting
Centre of
Excellence
Content &
Social Media

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Education Infrastructure
Enhancement
Force
Multipliers
Which are most
effective techniques,
tools and resources?
Uniform
KPI’s
How do we
compliment other
teams for enhanced
outcomes?
Where can we
intersect with
current activities
and
technologies?
What do we
measure and
why?
T3
Rapid repairs
T1
Fast & easy
claims
T2
Personalized
coverage tool & same
day assistance
E2
Makes me feel
valued & there with
me every step of
the way
E1
Treats me as an
individual
Emotional
F3
Fair prices & easy /
upfront information
F1
Personalized
service, just right
for me
F2
Clear info, fair
claims, sound
advice
Functional
P2
Understanding,
proactive,
empathetic
P1
Dynamic, fast,
dependable,
efficient
R1
Known for effective
& caring
intermediaries
R2
Known for good
claims service &
customer service
Persona /
Reputation Touchpoint
Functional
Benefits &
Touchpoints
Reputation &
Persona
Emotional
Benefits
Desired
Outcome
T2
Fast claims process
P1
Dependable & Efficient
.868
Insurance Company I Would Proactively
Recommend
T1
Has an easy to use
website
.333
F3
Responds quickly to
my changing needs
E2
Makes me feel reassured
because they deliver
when it really matters
.839
.160
P2
Understanding
.518
.812
43.3%
40.6%
43.5%
42.0%
40.5%
38.1%
27.8%
35.9%
25.2%
20.8%
43.3%
30.6%
General
Direct
Life
Helpful and
Fair
Claims
Partner
who
Delivers
• Ensures that claims will be resolved to our satisfaction
• Has fair prices
• Known for open and transparent dealings with customers
• Has a dedicated relationship leader focused on my company's needs
• Helps my business move on because they deliver when it really matters
• Makes me feel like they are there with us every step of the way
• Is a global thought leader known for analytical rigor
• Dedicated, proactive and dynamic
• Global view of reported and paid claims
• Helps get my employees back to work quicker
• Has a deep understanding of the unique needs of our business
• Uses a thorough understanding of our business to tailor its risk
management services to us
Tailored
Insight
Deep
Understanding
• Has tools that help us identify and mitigate risks specific to our business
• Offers a unique tailored solution that fits the needs of our business
• Provides professional guidance that keeps me on top of my business
Nice to Have
But not
Discriminating
Must Have
but not
Discriminating
1 2 3 4
Best Practice – Center of Excellence
IBM, Dell, P&G, Nestle and Coach have adopted COE to manage shared
services, centralize best practices which have been leveraged to scale search
globally resulting in exponential performance improvements.
Mike Moran
© 2010 Mike Moran
Purpose
• Lower operating costs of running global search programs
• Increased leverage of portfolio site assets
Search Council Responsibilities
• Deploy best practices, standard metrics, and tools
• Consistent process, reporting, and optimization
methods
• Coordinate with PR, other agencies, web dev, analytics
• Evangelize and educate business units and geographies
• Standardized in-sourcing / outsourcing delivery
Coordinated Oversight
Implemented At

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• Incremental page audits – on demand page auditing via automation or agency resources to identify problems with
pages outside the Top and Strategic Keywords Lists
• Ad Hoc site and diagnostic audits – leverage agency resources to triage site segments for SEO performance beyond
the page level
• Link building and outreach – leverage external resources to identify and request relevant links from relevant third party
sites
• Localized and translated research & modeling – working with translation resources to conduct local language keyword
research and page mapping
• Market assessment modeling – using localized keyword data and keyword demand tools to develop opportunity models
to understand missed opportunity in non-core markets
Core deliverables (COE-funded)
Incremental
COE Obligations & Deliverables
SEO Consulting
• Support development of COE and
GBU SEO strategies
• Identify SEO tools and GBU
optimization best practices
• Create models aligning search interest
and content
• Review PLP relevance and actionable
keywords
• Sponsor “Lunch & Learn” sessions
• Audit underperforming content
• Integrate SEO models into COE
workflows
Basic SEO Services
• Conduct org level keyword research
• Develop keyword mappings/clusters
• Publish text and XML site maps
• Monitor blogs, podcasts, videos,
pdfs, pages for best practice sharing
and process improvement
• Align SEO requirements with Global
IT infrastructure
• Maintain preferred landing page
(PLP) keyword mappings for Top and
Strategic Keywords
SEO Reporting/Analysis
• Monitor performance of top and
strategic keywords
• Provide reports and analysis
- KPIs (rankings/ traffic/
conversions)
- Compare SEO & PPC results
- Compare SEO and social media
keywords
- Directional metrics
• Establish diagnostic signals
• Maintain Issue Tracker
Mike Moran
Training the extended team is the
main job
• Explain why search is important—they all want the site
to be successful and they all search themselves
• The specialists on your extended search team need
different training in their own
languages:
– Copy writers: Keyword rich
– Product Managers: Keywords
– IT folks: Spider traps
– etc.

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Mike Moran
What levers do you pull?
• If you use “processes” to your advantage, you can
use the system against itself
– Change existing standards
– Leverage compliance systems to enforce
• Training and Evangelizing
– Show the negative current situation
– Offer focused training sessions
Mike Moran
Fix your infrastructure to get your
pages indexed
• Set standards to control spider traps:
– Ban frames, pop‐ups, JavaScript links, etc.
– Regulate Flash, cookies, dynamic pages
– Correct robots directives
– Redirect pages properly
• Enforce standards with
existing processes
whenever possible

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Enabler: Optimize Templates for Scale & Global
Sony.de Sony.fr Etc.
Page Title and Meta Data
recommendations
Fully indexable navigation?
Ensure all parts of the page
are indexable
Correct use of Header tags
Can search engine’s follow all
of the links?
Enhancement of cross-links
to distribute link equity
Data Input Central Keyword Database Informed Output
BASIC DATA
•Keyword
•Keyword Demand
•Page/URL
•Owner
ADVANCED DATA
•Organic Referral
•Paid Clicks
•Organic Conversions
•Paid Conversions
BASIC OUTPUT
•Duplication Identification
•Primary v Secondary
•Pages with multiple primary
keywords
ADVANCED OUTPUT
•PPC + SEO Co‐Optimization
•Organic Keyword Opportunities
•Page Optimization Opportunities
•Keyword Overlap & Arbitration
Provides a central resource combining all major data points for informed
decision-making on Paid and organic search priorities
Centralized Keyword Management

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Is Your Keyword Data Aligned?
• Paid Search Spend $20 million US
• Critical/Important Keywords – 1,120
• SEO Team ‐ 98 important keywords
• Active Paid Search Keywords – 187,252
• Omniture Keywords – 397,832 (>20 visits)
• SEO Tool – 298 keywords (allowance was 10k)
• 4,887 keywords in PPC are Top 3 Organic
• No coordination between teams
After Coordination
• 1 to 1 alignment of Tier 1 Keywords
• Found 2,783 PPC keywords cannibalizing SEO
• Shift saved $180k in first month
• Shift went to 1,016 important words not ranking
• SEO revenue Increased 67% w/no loss from PPC
• Weekly monitoring of Top 3/Top 3 keywords
• Weekly monitoring of new and expensive
• Co‐Optimization Monitoring

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Managing the Performance
93
94
Assess your content with metrics
• Build or buy an automated program that
regularly inspects your content
• Check compliance to all key standards:

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Rank checking alerts you to sudden
movements
• You can check manually, but automated rank
checking programs save you effort
• Increasing personalization is making ranking
harder to measure than in the good old days
• Observe changes in your rankings or your
competitors’
95
96
Assess your referrals and
conversion metrics
• Use the Web Conversion Cycle to use
your added search referrals to show the
revenue and costs for each conversion
• Use this to compare to the projections
you made and to detect any changes
(positive or negative) that need
attention

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Monitor search referrals and
conversions regularly
• Overall
• By keyword
• By search engine
• Organic vs. paid
97
If you see referrals and
conversions out of sync, it
can be worth examining
Mike Moran
Use scorecards to “motivate”
teamwork
Keyword Google Rank MSN Rank Yahoo Rank AOL Rank AlltheWeb Ask Rank
keyword 1 1,2 58 1 1,2 1,2 100
keyword 2 1,2,6 70 1,5 1,2,6 1,2,6 29
keyword 3 1,2 45 1 1,2 1,2 65
keyword 4 1,2 3 1 1,2 1,2,10 4
keyword 5 3,4 2 2 3,4 3,4 1
keyword 6 18 13 16 20 18 18
keyword 7 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 1,2,3,4,5 1,2,3,4 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 1,2,3
keyword 8 3,4 4,6 3 3,4 4,5 12
keyword 9 1,2,10 1,2,3 1,9 1,2,10, 1,2,10 2,4
keyword 10 1,9,10 100 1,7 1,9,10 2,3,4 50
keyword 11 2,3,4 0 2,3 2,3,4 0 0
keyword 12 1 100 1 1 1 0
keyword 13 1,2 20 1 1,2 1,2 47
keyword 14 10 100 9 10 27 100
keyword 15 8 100 11 7 7 100
Keywords with Top 10 Rankings 14 5 13 14 12 4
With KW List Size Factor 0.933333333 0.333333333 0.866666667 0.93333333 0.8 0.26666667
With Browser Share Factor 0.466666667 0.033333333 0.086666667 0.09333333 0.08 0.02666667
Number of Top 10 Rankings 34 12 20 34 31 7
Unit: XX URLs: URL1, URL2, URL3
Search Engine Brand Unit Scorecard Worksheet
Current Missed Current
Keyword Monthly Annual Visits Visits 10% 25% Google Rank
Keyword 1 59,130 709,560 591 58,539 5,913 14,783 25
Keyword 2 41,580 498,960 416 41,164 4,158 10,395 45
Keyword 3 40,050 480,600 401 39,650 4,005 10,013 22
Keyword 4 31,560 378,720 316 31,244 3,156 7,890 88
Keyword 5 23,700 284,400 237 23,463 2,370 5,925 120
Keyword 6 19,860 238,320 199 19,661 1,986 4,965 75
Keyword 7 12,660 151,920 127 12,533 1,266 3,165 46
Keyword 8 7,740 92,880 77 7,663 774 1,935 82
Keyword 9 6,210 74,520 62 6,148 621 1,553 38
Keyword 10 1,230 14,760 12 1,218 123 308 98
Total Searches/Visitors 243,720 2,924,640 2,437 241,283 24,372 60,930
Results Current 10% 25%
Visitors 2,437 24,372 60,930
# Leads @ 10%Conversion 244 2,437 6,093
Increased Traffic Potential
Estimated Searches Potential
Score each business
unit every month and
publicize the results
internally

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Create Missed Opportunity Performance Models
99
Create Cost of Not Ranking Models
• 3.75% increase clicks would bring additional 111k visitors
• Potential for $220k in PPC click costs reduction if ranked better
100

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Enabler – Deploy BU Performance Metrics
• Leverage Scorecards for governance to ensure consistent global performance
goals are achieved.
• Helps prioritize resource allocation
• Effectively blend paid search and natural search for brand awareness and lead
generation
101
IBM’s global search
performance
increased 500%
when BU level
performance
metrics
implemented
Slowly change organizational
behavior
• Change the rules
• Set benchmarks
• Review business unit scorecards
• Demand improvement
• Repeat
102

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Summing up SEO Project
Management
• Embed SEO into your marketing strategy
• Plan your SEO program
• Make SEO operational
103
Part 4:
Developing Efficient
Link‐Building Strategies

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105
Links Defined
• In basic terms, links are the underlined words people click on a website to go to
another. Technically, they are called "hyperlinks" which is the foundation of how
the web works.
Text Link
Image Link
Why are links important?
• Links are the foundation of the Internet
– Links allow users to move site to site seamlessly
– Links connect pages with similar and relevant information
• Links are a source of targeted traffic.
– Links from similar themed websites drive relevant and targeted traffic.
– Links create exposure and a “referral” scenario from the other site.
• Relevant links raise your natural search engine rankings.
– Links connect you to search engines for inclusion.
– Search engines use links in their relevancy algorithms as a means of
determining “relevance” and “authority” of your site within the peer
sites of a similar topic.

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107
Importance Of Links For SEO
Internal Links
• Ensures all pages are connected and findable via crawling
• Tells SE’s what each page is about and how relevant they are
• Identifies primary keyword phrases
• Highly relevant links often used at SERPS as “site links” to internal pages
External/Incoming Links
• Drives traffic from relevant site to your site
• Allows SE spider to find pages naturally and in context
• Identifies key authoritative pages and site sections
• Creates a “contextual link” between similar content that increases relevance
for search engines resulting in higher rankings

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Google Penguin Updates
• 4 Major Variations
• 36+ iterations to the algorithms
• Goal: Identify and remove any value derived
from unnatural links and spam link building
techniques
• Reciprocal (Fig 1) – Less important today due to past abuse; value
of reciprocal links is usually discounted
• Triangular (Fig 2) – Attempt to hide reciprocal linking – easily
detectable
• One Way (Fig 3) – One way inbound links are usually most
valuable
Fig 2.
B C
A
Fig 1.
A B
Fig 3.
A B
Types of Linking

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Link Quality (Popularity + Authority)
Important pages are either linked to by a lot of pages or by other
important pages
– Page A is more important than page B
– Page C is more important than Page D
B
C
A
D
1 1 1 1
1
1
3
3
External “inbound” links
Link Quality (Popularity + Authority)
Page Importance (or “Link Value or “Link Juice”) counts…
– Page B is more important than page A
– Page D is more important than Page C
B
C
A
D
1 1 1 6
63
3 6
External “inbound” links

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Google Page Rank
• Google PageRank™
– Google’s Algorithm for measuring a page’s importance
based on the quantity, quality and contextual relevance
of links
– Each “page” has its own score
– Scores are are from 0 – 10 – logarithmic scale
• Tool Bar Page Rank
– A simulation of Page Rank in the form of a “bar” and
“number 0 to 10”
– Not always accurate and should not be obsessed over
View Google PageRank in Chrome
Browser with PageRank Viewer Plugin
Current State Assessment
IBM CONFIDENTIAL114

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Current State Assessment
• How many links do we have to the following:
– Home page (and variations)
– Key categories
– Specific pages
• How many links do we have that are:
– Linking to broken pages
– Linking to the home page vs. category or page
Google Webmaster Tools
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools

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Bing Webmaster Tools
www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster
Open Site Explorer
www.opensiteexplorer.com

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MajesticSEO
www.majesticseo.com
Link Research Tools
www.linkresearchtools.com

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LINK BUILDING STRATEGIES
“Give them a Reason to Link”
IBM CONFIDENTIAL121
Why should they link?
• Why would anyone want or need to link to you?
– Does your content provide topically relevant and trusted information to its
audience?
– Is your content solve a problem, save time or money?
– Is your content interesting or relevant to an audience?
– Is your content timely, relevant and/or entertaining?
– Would you read your content if it was not yours?
– If not, then you don’t deserve links!
• Are you an Authority?
– Are you well known in your field?
– Are you active in committees, forums and blogs?
– Have you been quoted in articles, press releases?

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Popular Content Ideas
• How to & Beginner Guides related to your products and
services
• Top 10 ways to... [Number + Adjective + Keyword Phrase]
• Surveys & Polls and Survey Data
• Handy Web Tools & applications that streamline tedious tasks.
• Expert Interviews on relevant and timely topics
• Awards or Recognition for your industry or customers
• Develop your Asset Matrix of valuable content
Develop Content to Satisfy Needs
How To related searches
80,000 monthly

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Content Distribution Strategy
• Companies create “transportable” assets each year yet doesn’t always
maximize their portability
• When using and distributing marketing assets, always ask yourself some key
questions
– Is my content linkable?
• Does this product, news release, event create interest where someone
would link to it?
• Have you clearly articulated the proper destination URL for more
information?
– Is my content portable?
• Do you have anything you can pass along? PDF? Video? Widget?
• Have you included “forward to a friend” or other social media capabilities on
the page?
– Have you syndicated your portable content?
• Do you have it indexed in Google and/or White Paper aggregators like
Bitpipe?
• Do you have videos in YouTube and Google with appropriate meta
information?
• Have you included the content in your Pressroom?
Digital Asset Distribution 101
• Enable RSS feeds.
– Potent permission marketing tool, RSS feeds provide an avenue for ongoing
distribution of assets in context.
• Enable social bookmarking.
– Ensure you’re using social media tags in footers.
– Submit the new page to social bookmarking sites with relevant tags so that others
can find it.
• Ensure all digital assets have meta data.
– Pull together your relevant words and develop a solid asset title and description.
– Update the Meta properties of digital assets.
• Develop social media tags.
– Pull together a list of most impactful and relevant tags for the individual asset.
– Investigate Technorati, Delicious, and other social media referral sites to identify
which tags are garnering maximum traffic.

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LINK BUILDING STRATEGIES
“Fix the Ones You Have”
IBM CONFIDENTIAL127
Consolidate or Migrate
- Consolidate existing links from old or legacy pages or domains and properly
redirect them to the proper page or primary domain
- Free Management tools: Google & Bing Webmaster Tools
Why are they linking here?

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Fix Wasted Links
Check and repair any broken links – Webmaster Tools
Shows you pages that link to the Page Not Found.
External Links – Portfolio
Family domains
Identify all the domains that your company owns as well as key partner sites and acquisitions.
Example: http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.nsf/home
http://www.telelogic.com/
International Sites
Identify your international sites and create links from them to each other for
relevant content.
Link “context to context” using your
international site navigation in the footer
or in a SEO friendly pull down

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Maximize WW Link Architecture
•Leverage enormous power of globally
located sites to build link equity
•Leverage Partners and Distributed
content to increase link equity
•Leverage different C block sites in your
portfolio
Leverage the links between your sites where they are hosted in separate environments.
132
IP & Class C Blocks
• The IP address is a numeric address, providing a unique
identification of a computer and the network it resides,  written as
a set of four groups of  numbers separated by dots, for example
129.42.38.121
Typical IP Address 129.42.38.121
A block - 129
B block - 42
C block - 38
D block – 121
• Imaging “C block” as an apartment building and all of the
apartments are all “D blocks” this means the potential for
these people to know each other and “help” each other
achieve a goal is pretty high.

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Leverage Business Relationships
Business partners
Review special deal partners, vendors, and channel partners
Conduct training or share linking best practices
Trade & Industry associations
Identify reputable industry associations, especially the ones where your
currently a membership.
Review the links you get to ensure they are relevant
Industry Events
Participate in industry events to get content exposure and links
Bloggers and online bios are often great places to get links
Business Partners
Confirm reciprocation from business partners.
Request your business partners to add a link on the relevant page and use
the keyword in the anchor text pointing to the IBM small business resources
page.
Opportunity IBM Page

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Industry Associations
Industry associations are a great source of links but make sure they use the context
in the anchor text.
Request the association to add a link
and use the keyword in the anchor
text pointing to the Point-of-sale
page.
Opportunity IBM Page
LINK Acquisition
“Finding Relevance”
IBM CONFIDENTIAL136

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137
Key Link Acquisition Concepts
Quality vs. Quantity
• Better from Relevant sites & Authority sites than many non-related or poor
quality.
Contextual Relevancy
• The measure of how well two sites are related in content and Theme
Authority & Trustworthy Sites
• A site highly rated by a search engine: size, importance, & relevance
• Age and perceived “trustability” of the site
138
Choosing Quality Links
Authority Sites
Site Rated By Size, Importance, & Relevance
• Unique content
• Many inbound links, especially from other authority sites
• Many of outbound links
• Inbound links built gradually over time
• Usually an older site.
Avoiding A Bad Neighborhood
• Has been banned
• Under a penalty
• From a link farm
• From a shady industry

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Start with Google
Review the top positions for key phrase and what links do they have!
Identify Quality Shared Links
• Identify relevant links with a high PageRank that are linking to top sites in search
results. Quality is more important than quantity.
* Below are URLs currently linking to the top ranking pages in Google's results for a specific keyword phrase. Sort linking by
Google PageRank and Link Score, which helps assess the validity of a site.

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Quality Not Quantity of Links
PR0 PR1 PR2 PR3 PR4 PR5 PR6 PR7 PR8 PR9 Total PR6+ %PR6+
app server 450 15 149 96 537 148 23 6 0 1
1425 30 2%
Google #1
701 27 204 57 63 96 41 23 4 0
1216 68 6%
Google #2
223 10 45 31 36 145 143 30 11 28
702 212 30%
Google #3
613 38 120 191 100 121 35 3
0 0 1221 38 3%
• While the IBM page as more links than anyone, only 2%
were links from high-quality sites.
Compare your links to those in the top positions of Google or Yahoo!
Link Quality Worksheet
http://ontolo.com/link-building-tools/link-building-worksheets

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Search Modifiers
• Leverage “search syntax” in engines to find
relevant content:
Syntax Term Location Results
“digital camera reviews” Anywhere on page 1,180,000
allintext: “digital camera reviews” Body Text 1,150,000
allintitle: “digital camera reviews” Only Page Title 821,000
allinanchor: “digital camera reviews” Only In Anchor
Text
922,000
allinurl: “digital camera reviews” Only in URL 85,500
Note: Helps find “contextual relevance but not quality”
External Blogs/ Sites
Google Blog Search
Use target keywords to
find topically relevant
blogs.
Sign up ‘Blog Alerts’ to
stay updated on potential
blogs.

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Submission Opportunities
Directories
• General: Yahoo! & Open Directory Project (Google) Business.com
Local Directories
• Google
• Yahoo!
• City Search
• AOL
Yellow Pages
• Super Pages
• City Search
• Info USA and Info USA Business
• MSN Yellow Pages
• Yahoo! Yellow Pages
.Edu and .Gov Sites
• These are valuable since they don’t just link to anyone
• Ways to get .edu and .gov links
– Provide valuable content to their audiences
– Speak at their events, seminars and provide resources
– Leverage memberships and alumni organizations
146

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147
.Edu and .Gov Sites
Provide high-value and relevant information to be linked as a
resource
148
.Edu and .Gov Sites

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Integrate Search and Social Media/PR
149
Priceline release announcing
destinations for Valentines day and
Presidents Weekend
1. 20,300 pick ups of digital release
in Google
2. 2,589 inbound links to release
3. 3,043 new links to blog
4. 1,500+ new links to destination
pages
Caution: Google monitoring
“excessive links” in releases
Buying Links
• Simple answer – Don’t buy them
– Ever from a link broker or link builder
– If your business depends on traffic from Google
• Complex answer – Buy them when:
– You negotiated the direct link from a highly
relevant site where you would benefit primarily
from traffic and there is not mention of the sale or
tracking.

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151
Avoid Link Spamming Techniques
What to Avoid
• Link farms
• Reciprocal links
• Republished or poorly written articles
• Inconsequential or repeatedly used press releases
• Paid links
• Hidden image & text links
• Blog spam
• Forum spam
• Site wide links
Best Practices Recap
• Link Building is hard and cannot be faked or
rushed
• Quality and relevant content generates links
• Clean up and fix current links
• Research quality links from relevant sources
• Leverage digital press releases
• Leverage social media for real time impact

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Part 5:
Optimize your Search Program
through Research and Ongoing
Diagnostics
What do I Need or Want to know?
1. How are we doing and how to benchmark?
2. How and what is my competition doing?
3. What opportunities am I missing?
4. Key SEO diagnostics to monitor your search health

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Benchmarking Current State
1. What are my business goals?
a. What do we want from our search program?
b. What products and keywords do we need to perform?
c. What would be a considered a success?
2. How are we doing today?
a. How much traffic and for what keywords?
b. What share of search am I getting?
c. What are my most valuable words?
3. Where can I get improvements?
Create a Traffic BaselineSelect a subset of important keywords related to your business & average traffic
Baseline Options:
• Average of 3, 6, 12 months
• Average of seasonal variations – busy, slow, average
• Average of advertising cycles – high advertising, low advertising
and/or no advertising

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Demonstrate Change over
BaselineShow the % Change (Δ) over baseline for all important keywords
Change Formula - (Current month divided by baseline) -1
Show overall improvement in your SEO traffic over some baseline period.
Cost of Poor Performing SEOShow the incremental PPC budget to make of for organic search traffic
Helps demonstrate to management why additional
resources should be spent on SEO activities to capture a
larger share of traffic that does not have a cost per click.

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What is my competition
doing?
Who is your competition?
• Named Competitors
– Typically companies management really cares about that
compete with you on sales and market share.
– Who are your biggest direct competitors IBM vs. HP
– The larger the company typically the poorer they do in SEO
• Search Results Competitors
– These are the companies that rank in the top positions of search
engines and may not be a direct competitor – like Wikipedia or a
Trade Journal
– Need to understand “why they are ranking” and if you can
leverage their ranking via advertising or links

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What do you want to know?
• PPC Advertising Spend
– Insight on what your competition is spending on paid search
– What keywords do they seem be be performing well for?
– What ad messages are they using?
• Keyword Lists
– What keywords are they using in PPC and/or ranking well for in
SEO
– How are they performing for various keywords ?
– What pages are ranking well – home page or deep pages
• Inbound Links
– What quality and relevant sites are linking to them?
What do you need to know?
• Team Size and Bench Strength
– How do they manage program? In-house, agency
– How many team members? Skills?
– How big is the agency and their reputation?
• Business & Actionability Value
– Leverage their team size to increase mine
– Expect lack or quality performance based on team

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SEM Rush – www.semrush.com $
163
Keyword Spy – keywordspy.com $
164

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PPC Ad Performance Monitoring
165
See which competitor ads are being clicked and converting and which are not!
Spyfu– spyfu.com $
166

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167
Compete – compete.com $
168

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Open Site Explorer –
opensiteexplorer.org $
169
Competitive Research Takeaways
1. Care about competitors once your house is in order
2. Monitor performance against your baselines
3. Use multiple tools to “Monitor” competition but don’t
obsess over it
4. Spend time diagnosing site performance
5. Share any and all findings with wider audience!
170

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Building the Business Case via
Opportunity Research
Why Calculate Your
Opportunity?
Calculating opportunity from the start
helps…
• Make the business case and justify the
investment
• Focus your activities and identify
content gaps
• Set expectations – Keeping it real
• Prioritize resources to focus on the
most value and greatest return

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Search Influenced Revenue
Keyword
Global
Demand
SE
Visits
% of
Global
Demand
SE
Visits
% of
Global
Demand
Est % Visits
Added
Visits
Added
Visits
Opp.
Realized
% Gain
free mobile software 15,508 0 0.00% 53 0.34% 3% 465 465 53 -89% 100.00%
nokia mobile software 3,195 18 0.56% 66 2.07% 7% 224 206 48 -77% 72.73%
free nokia software download 1,850 0 0.00% 102 5.51% 8% 148 148 102 -31% 100.00%
free nokia n70 software 1,448 0 0.00% 63 4.35% 10% 145 145 63 -56% 100.00%
mobile search 1,320 4 0.30% 175 13.26% 3% 40 36 171 380% 97.71%
Total 23,321 22 0.09% 459 1.97% 4.38% 1,021 999 437 -56%
$1.00
SEVisits
for
Words
Listed
Monthly Annual Gain
Beginning 22 $22 $264
Projected 1,021 $1,021 $12,255 $11,991
Current 459 $459 $5,508 $5,244
Projected RealizedStart Current
1986.36%
Value of a Visit
% Gain
4542.16%
We may not be able to tie to exact sales but we have “influenced” the sale by
brining traffic and matching to needs of searcher.
Set time periods
May not be very exciting
but it does show an
improvement that will
focus efforts and
attention.
6 Parts of the Opportunity
MatrixTM
1. Identify your important target keywords (gold
words)
– These are the words that are critical to your
business
2. Determine demand for your gold words
– Get data from Keyword Discovery,
WordTracker or Google AdWords Suggestion
3. Determine current gold word performance (rank
and/or traffic share)
4. Estimate a share of search clicks for your brand
5. Estimate the value ($$) of a visitor to your site
6. Estimate the incremental sales or leads from SEO

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SEO Diagnostics
WHY ARE WE DIAGNOSING THE
SITE?
• Did traffic decline to whole site or specific
page?
• Did rank decline to whole site or specific page?
• Did conversions decline for specific keywords?
• Did one or more ranks increase or decrease?
• Did your page inclusion count
increase/decrease?

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Webmaster Tools
Messages/Alerts
Due to ranking loss…
Drop For All Keywords
Is the site still indexed in the
engines?
Did you substantially change the
site content?
Did you change the underlying
site infrastructure?
Was there a large change in
linking behavior?
Does the site rank for different
queries than before?
Drop For Only Some Keywords
Did the content of those pages
change?
Is the page(s) still indexed?
Do you syndicate this same
content?

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Ranking Checklist
Relevance
Is the page related to the keyword phrase?
Are the current pages ranking for the desired query more
relevant?
Are keywords in the key relevance locations? Title,
headings?
Authority
How many relevant links (and how authoritative are they?)
What’s the value of the page to a user? (do more useful
and authoritative pages rank above yours?)
SERP display
Are the title and snippet compelling and action oriented?
Do Sitelinks appear for navigational queries are they
relevant?
What universal elements appear on the page? Are they
yours?
Does the site rank for non‐branded queries?
Penalty Warning Signs
• Search Engine Referrals dropped drastically
• Decreasing rankings
• Drastic drop in PR (7 -> 1) in three months
• Complete loss of page rank – “gray bar”
• Loss of pages reported by Google; 500, 250,
50, 1
• Can only find website by URL search
• No referrals from Google in previous months
• Back links decrease each month, until none
reported

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Webmaster Tools Traffic Change
Crawl Efficiency Checklist
Ensure page load times aren’t slow as to reduce number of
pages crawled
Ensure server is responsive
Return a 304 for unchanged content
Use compression
Return a 404 for not found content
Ensure each page has at least one link
Avoid infinite redirects and redirect loops
Ensure most important pages are linked from home page
No JavaScript redirects or meta refresh redirects (if possible)
Reasonable crawl‐delay setting (if used at all)
Reasonable use of Google Webmaster Tools crawl setting

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Inclusion Test
• Test how many pages in the indexed
site:www.yourdomain.com
Robots.txt Syntax
• Common protocol for blocking bots to all or part of your site
– Available at www.yoursite.com/robots.txt
– Keeps spiders from specific sections of the site – scripts or user profiles
– Done wrong, can block bots from entire site
User-agent: *
Disallow:
User-agent: *
Disallow:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /go/
Sitemap: http://www.mysite.com/google-sitemap-index.xml

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Current Crawl Rate Changes?
Using Google Webmaster Tools determine of the crawl rate
has increased or decreased.
Review Webmaster Tools Crawl Errors

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XML Site Map Errors
Protocol to inform the search engines of your pages.
Google and Bing report “issues” with URLs.
Site Map Protocol ‐ www.sitemaps.org
Spam Domains
(whois.sc or domain tools)

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Hacked or Malware Inclusion?
Design Challenges
Have any of these items been added to
the site?
– Flash
– JavaScript Navigation
– AJAX & Flex
– Dynamic Content
– Cookies, custom plugins
– Slow Loading Pages
– Graphics vs. text

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Monitor HTML Issues
• Spamglish

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Manual Penalties
Have you been penalized?
To Many Links Too Soon
Does it make sense this page got 40 new links in
10 days with nearly perfect link text?

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Toxic Links
www.linkresearchtools.com
http://backlinks.webmasterworld.com/google-backlink-tool-penguin-disavow/
SEO Diagnostics Best Practices
1. Reduce barriers to entry for search spiders
2. Check diagnostic issues weekly
3. Monitor your key snippets
4. Monitor your links and link changes
5. Monitor paid and organic optimization
6. Monitor keywords ranking and not performing

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Part 6:
Getting the Best Results In Search
Through Effective Copywriting and
Optimized Social Media Content
Writing for search… oh joy!

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The Web is Task Oriented
• The consumer is no longer surfing the
Web aimlessly; They are on a quest to
find, do or buy something!
• Success on the Web is achieved when
your site is focused on getting visitors
to engage
And the actions visitors take is the
ultimate measure of your sites success
Optimization Blend
Searcher
Business Goals/Content
Search Engine

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Optimization Blend
Searcher
Business Goals/Content
Search Engine
The Reality: An Imperfect Fit
“If it can be searched on, it can be optimized for
better marketing performance.”
Lee Odden
Copywriting = Content
Optimized Copywriting = Searchable Content

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RELEVANCE
Ensuring that your pages are relevant to the
query by placing keywords in locations that
send strong signals to the search engines.
Relevance Questions
• Do your on-page elements align with the search
industry’s understanding of the algorithm scoring model
as represented by accepted best practices?
• Is the desired keyword included on the page?
• Is keyword included in key elements on page like title
and heading?
• Is the keyword phrase used in the body copy?
• Is the content engaging?
• Does the content encourage the next step?

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Content Is King
• Feed the Spiders
– Content is the food of search engine spiders.
– Keywords integrated into the page helps the spider to understand
the topic and relevance of the page.
• Opening Paragraph
– The first 25 words on a page are important to search engines as they
begin to formulate an idea about what the page is about.
– If there is interesting content at the beginning the user will be more
compelled to dig deeper. Start general and get specific.
How a user sees a website

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How a spider sees the site
Spiders ONLY care about the text and information on the page.
They are not humans – they don’t interpret they only gather and
segment patterns.
• Identify 1‐2 most important keywords
• Front load headline with Primary Keyword
• Use keywords in headings, subheads and
throughout the copy
• Add links to keywords
• TIP: Think about what people are going to type
into a search to find your page. Make sure those
keywords are on that page.
– Matt Cutts, Head of Google Web Spam Team
Keywords

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Optimal Keyword Locations Illustrated
Overlay Source: SEO xRay from SEO for FireFox tool bar
Optimize Templates for Scale & Global Reach
Sony.de
Sony.fr
Etc.
Page Title and Meta Data
recommendations
Fully indexable navigation?
Ensure all parts of the page
are indexable
Correct use of Header tags
Can search engine’s follow all
of the links?
Enhancement of cross-links
to distribute link equity

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Title Tag: Your Secret Weapon
• Every page should have a unique title
• Each unique title is built around target phrase for that page
– This will be a two or three word phrase
– “Keep it short, attractive and enticing.
– Relevance and Clickability
• Most important phrase as far to the left as possible
– <title>Absolut Raspberri – Raspberry Flavored Vodka</title>
– <title>Laptop Computers – Dell</title>
Relevance Best Practices
1. Keyword phrase in far left of title tag
2. <H1> heading tag includes primary keyword phrase
3. Emphasize the primary keyword early in the content
and include secondary phrases as you write
4. Create strong and relevant content

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Titles Serve a Dual Purpose
<title> ABSOLUT RASPBERRI - Raspberry Flavored Vodka </title>
Page Headings
• Search engines consider Page Headings and related sub-headings
to be important signals.
• Headings act like a Table of Contents with sections and subsections.
• Each page should have one main header tag marked as <H1> and
may be followed by subdivision with <H2>

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Not Spam, But Bad for Rankings
• Splash pages, content‐less home page, Flash intros
• Title tags the same across the site
• Error pages in the search results (e.g., “Session
expired”)
• "Click here" links
• Superfluous text like “Welcome to” at beginning of
titles
• Spreading site across multiple domains (usually for
load balancing).
• Content too many levels deep
Optimized Copywriting Steps

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• Bullets
• Short paragrapha
• Easy reading
• Lists
• Break it up with headings
Page Format/Style
• What do you want them to do?
• Ask for the sale
• You need to tell your searcher
exactly what to do, how to do it,
and that you want them to do it
right now.
Add Calls to action

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• Write for your target audience
• Most important above the fold – for
websites/blogs
• At least 250‐300 words ‐ more is better
• Break up copy with bold headings
Optimizing Guidelines
Page Level Audits
• Identify all of the elements which are
preventing the page from ranking for the
desired keywords
• Compare your page to top ranking pages
t id tif

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“THE” Cisco LAN Switches Page
1 mention of “lan switches”
Cisco vs. Top 3

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• Spamglish
Snippet Optimization

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Factors Influencing How We
Search
1. Relatively little risk
2. We are impatient and easily
frustrated
• 6.4 seconds before clicking on a link
3. There is a lot of information
• Scan an average of 3.9 results
• Assimilate an average of 140 words
• Included in those words are between
35 to 60 factors and details we have
to consider to make a decision
How Searchers Search
1. Develop query: 75% of searchers
search on 3-word phrases – or more
2. Search and Scan: Searcher filters SERP
listing through collection of words in
their head – semantic filter
3. Click, Scan, Repeat: Click on the first
link that resembles what they are
looking for, scan your site and…
Engage with your site or go back to
SERP

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Review your Snippet Periodically
• Review your snippet periodically especially if you get low click through
• if you don’t rank well use the following syntax to review:
Keyword phrase site:yoururl.com
Anatomy of a Listing
• Link is pulled from the Title tag
• Description comes from one of the
following
– Compiled from content
– Anything else the engines can find (Alt,
navigation)

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Maximizing your Search Result
Listing
• Description comes from one of the following:
– Compiled from content on the page
– Anything else the engines can find (Alt, navigation) to form a snippet
• Optimize the Snippet by:
• Place keyword at the beginning of opening paragraph
• Place benefit statements near your main keyword phrases at the top of
the page.
• When an engine takes a snippet for the SERP page, your description will
boost your benefits.
• Pinterest
– Encourage people to “Pin”
– Offer compelling images
– Pin new images to relevant
categories
– Name images logically
Socializing,
Optimizing and Copywriting

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• Twitter
– Take time and write with the
purpose of getting RT
– Use keywords and hashtags
– Follow influencers and RT key
influencer tweets
Socializing,
• LinkedIn
– Profiles and Updates
– Use relative keywords in profile
– Share updates with links to relative
news with your network
Socializing,

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1. Findable
2. Readable
3. Understandable
4. Actionable
5. Shareable
Not just any copy... great copy that makes
great content

SEO Keyword Research and Content Mapping

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