five common seo mistakes (and six good ideas!)

5 common mistakes in SEO(and 6 good ideas!)

Maile OhyeDeveloper Programs Tech Lead

Mistake #1: No value prop

Why would a user select my site in search results?

Make your product or service compelling --

be your creative self!

e-commerce Differentiators

● Low prices● Free shipping● Great customer service● Detailed product descriptions● Availability in certain languages or locales● <your value prop here!>

Mistake #2: Segmented approach

Instead approach online strategy holistically -- aligned with larger business goals and every department

communicating

Consider SEO in entire user experience: from marketing

campaign to conversion

Car Company’s Business Strategy

Bring TV viewers to example-edityourown-video.com

Marketing Team goals

Target keywords to bring users to main site

SEO Team Goals

Goals are not aligned

Mistake #3: Time-consuming workarounds

Mistake #3: Time-consuming workarounds

Avoid rel=“canonical” for each component page in a series…

Instead, use new rel=“next” and rel=“prev”

markup for paginated content!

Mistake #3: Time-consuming workarounds

■ New rel=“next” and rel=“prev” markup for paginated content

■ Submit new/updated content to be crawled

through “Fetch as Googlebot” in Webmaster Tools

users

search engines

websites

Mistake #4: Caught in SEO trends

The old days…

search enginessearch engines

userssearch engines

websites search engines

Now running two separate races?

Brings me sadness

Unfortunate SEO trend of yesteryear

What’s the optimal keyword density for my content? Not a great focus, just write

compelling stuff!

Mistake #5: Slow iteration

Aim to be agile.

1. Define metrics for success2. Implement improvements3. Measure impact4. Create new improvements5. Prioritize improvements based on market and

personnel

Repeat.

2009: Rich snippets

Cool!

Rich snippets: Events

Very nice!

Video Sitemaps

SEO instructions

■ Do something cool■ Include relevant keywords in your copy■ Be smart about your tags and site architecture■ Sign up for email forwarding in Webmaster Tools■ Attract buzz and natural links, votes, +1s, follows ■ Stay fresh and relevant (social media sites,

accessible on new devices)