designing web sites for seo visibility, by icrossing's rob garner for sempo

1www.sempo.org Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization

SEMPO’s Sponsors & Donors

2www.sempo.org Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization

Designing for Visibility

Presented by: Rob Garner, Senior Director, Strategy, iCrossing and SEMPO Board Member

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Considerations for SEO in a

website redesign

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Overview

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Why consider SEO in a site design or redesign?

■ Opportunity to transition existing search equity■ Much more effective to prevent obstacles at this stage, rather trying to

reverse engineer later■ Costs a fraction of the price of a site fix■ Cures headaches associated with a site fix■ Opportunity to position site for long term SEO potential■ Opportunity for search user data to inform design and strategy elements■ Opportunity to build modules for agile content creation and development

Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization

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Planning and early stage considerations

PlanningPlanning DevelopmentDevelopment LaunchLaunch

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A few planning considerations

Effective communication – and your brain –

is your best SEO tool


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Budget and scope for search


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Start with search at the beginning of planning and process

… search is not an afterthought


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Give SEO a seat at the design table

… along with back- and front-end developers, creatives, user-experience, marketing stakeholders, project managers, information architects, etc.


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Include search as both a business and technical requirement

… Building business cases may be critical at this stage


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Remind your teams and developers that not considering SEO throughout the process could come at the expense of existing search equity

… Maintaining the search equity that you already have through a redesign should be the primary goal


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Early planning


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Benchmark analysis, followed by post-launch reporting

■ The following data points can be used as benchmark metrics:□Ranking visibility

□ Traffic volume from search

□ Volume of various defined actions

□Revenue generated from natural search

□Content gap analysis

Before launch After launch


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Market research and extensive data analysis

■ Knowing your target audience is now more important than ever

■ Inform your personas through interviews, and ask subjects to talk about how they search; or, better yet, observe how they search online

■ Map keyword learnings into more complex scenarios for the process of finding

■ Leverage learnings from paid search and analytics data early on

■ Remember that often the real gold mine in all of market research is finding and leveraging just one new word or linguistic cue


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Market research and extensive data analysis

■ Get out of the habit of making assumptions based on what you think your target audience will search for

■ Look to social networks for linguistic cues ■ Use internal search data to help inform campaigns and

future designs ■ Consider the various types of digital assets, and how your

target audience searches for them



“The Days of Guessing at Keyword Research Are Over”http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=121839

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Use search data to inform and develop personas


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Industry vs. consumer language

Industry Language

Oral care

Oral health

Locate dental professional

Good oral hygiene

Oral hygiene

Good Oral hygiene

Whitening

Battery-powered toothbrush

Kid’s toothbrush

Professional whitening system

148

5,232

10

190

5,155

190

5,075

145

592

670

17,407

Search Volume per

month

Consumer Language

Dental care

Dental health

Find a dentist

Dental hygiene

Dental hygiene

Personal hygiene

Tooth whitening

Electric toothbrush

Child toothbrush

Tooth whitening system

188,818

74,588

29,525

24,558

24,558

17,670

146,212

16,522

835

6,205

529,491


Search Volume per

month

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Develop content strategy

■ Opportunity to leverage search data to inform strategy■ GO BIG – the amount of engaging content is directly

proportional to SEO success


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Determine which types of digital assets make sense, and create a place for them

■ The days of ten blue links are gone■ Universal search leverages various asset types

□This includes images, video, social, news, real-time, etc.

■ Focus on the most appropriate asset types, depending upon your vertical

■ Ensure that your new site design has a place to accommodate these asset types

■ Optimize and distribute assets both internally (within your public facing site) and externally (locations outside your domain like social networks, feeds, etc.)


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There is a problem with a key approach to site architecture

■ “Top down” is the most common approach■ In other words, the site is only designed for people who

come in through the front door (homepage)■ The reality is that most aggregate entry traffic comes from

the sum of all other pages■ Search may refer 10-50% of a site’s traffic


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Creating experiences that meet the unique needs of each visitor

Dog Breed: (category total: 611,743 monthly searches)

Standard Schnauzer

‘dog grooming tip’

Type of Dog (70,197) “hunting dog” (15,892)

Cocker Spaniel Puppies

Puppy Breed(category total: 1.7 million monthly searches)

“Fancy Dog Bed” (5,088)

Travel Plans

Cheapest Tires

Mercedes Wheels

Kitten Descriptors (63,273) – these included cute, baby, kitten color

5Zigens

Size (61,044) – included small, large, miniature

Feeding baby Kittens

Wheels

Cat Breeds (307,140) Kitten Breeds (119,383)

Sweet rims

Cat Behavior (21,782)

Both Dog and Cats: both dog and cat owners searched for picturesand names frequently Pictures (955,145) vs. Photo (77,475)

Names (390,909)

tires Boxer Photos

“hunting dog”

Dog Health (143,703)

> Information “dog health problem/question”

> Grooming “dog grooming tip”

> Health/Solutions “dog health symptom”

Minivan tires

“Premium Dog Food” (22,358)

Cats (72,640) “older cat care”

Travel Expedition

Cat Breeds (307,140) “Persian cat”

Volkswagen Rims

Consider a relational approach to architecture, as opposed to "top-down"


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Training - Educate your organization about search

■ Educate your organization on the value of SEO prior to planning for any redesign

■ Allocate and budget time for SEO education■ Create and distribute a general “SEO overview”

presentation or handout ■ Integrate SEO training into each phase of the project■ Present a list of technical obstacles of your current site, and

how they could be remedied■ Teach your organization that SEO is an on-going process,

not a finite task


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URL structure and information architecture

■ URL naming conventions should also be addressed in the planning stage, and then more refined in the development and design stage

■ Work closely with IA to ensure crawlability, and proper content and asset support

■ Architecture should be informed by user language■ Sitemaps for both the user and search engines are also

critical, and should be planned at this stage


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Design and development process


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Things we can control: Basic considerations are anything but basic

■ Article Syndication■ Body Content■ Canonicalization Issues■ Cloaking■ Directory Presence■ Document Accessibility■ Duplicate Content■ Frames■ Internal Linking Optimization■ Javascript & Flash Navigation■ Meta Data■ Micro Sites and Sub-Domains■ Obtaining Links from Relevant

Sites

■ On-page Javascript and CSS■ Optimizing Images■ Page Titles■ Redirecting■ Requiring User Actions■ Robots.txt Files■ Secure Servers■ Sites Built in Flash■ Splash Pages■ URL Structure■ Using Ajax■ Video


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Ensure that Flash is both crawlable and indexable

Factor:

Valuable website content is implemented using Flash technology

Implications:

Search engine spiders cannot read content or follow links implemented in Flash

Best Practices/Action Required:■Implement a static HTML, low-bandwidth version of the website that mirrors the content within your Flash files■Implement user-agent detection to deliver the HTML site to spiders and the Flash version to human visitors

Alternative Practices:

Break up the Flash movies into smaller components and lay the SWF files into optimized, linked HTML pages with unique URLs


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Ensure that Ajax is both crawlable and indexable

Factor:AJAX, or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a Web development technique used to load content from a server without changing pages

AJAX relies heavily on JavaScript to display and swap content

Implications:Search engine spiders generally cannot read AJAX content

Implementation could block content visibility to spiders

Best practice/Action required:Use AJAX selectively, primarily for supplemental content associated with low search volumes

Alternative Practices:Create a static, spider friendly version of your site that includes content from within your JavaScript


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Source On-Page JavaScript & CSS to External Files

Factor:

JavaScript and style elements that reside in the webpage code increase loads, and requiring

more processing to parse.

Impact:

Can impede search engine crawling and indexing performance, and also page load time.

Best Practices:

Keep JavaScript off the webpage by putting it into an external file and calling this file from the

webpage. Additionally, using external JavaScript files will increase the flexibility of the code, enabling fast, easy updates and JavaScript

maintenance. JavaScript that cannot be called from an external file without sacrificing the

functionality is acceptable.


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Manage Threshold of Duplicate Content

Factor:Duplicate content exists when two or more

pages within a website, or on different domains, share identical content. Different

domain names do not create distinct content.

Implications:Major search engines consider duplicate

content to be of less value to searchers, and the ratio of duplicate to unique content on a

site can greatly impede or improve performance

Best practice/Action required:Avoid duplicate content issues by using

unique copy and other content on each page of a website, whenever possible. Duplicate

content may also be given a robots.txt or meta robots directive to not index or follow

pages with wholly duplicated content.


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Avoid the creation of URL canonicalization issues

Viewed as the same by most search engines:

• http://en.wikipedia.org• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/• http://www.en.wikipedia.org

Factor:

Canonicalization is the process of picking the best URL when there are several choices, usually referring to the homepage of a website

Implications:

Search Engines may not pick the client-preferred URL, rather the one they determine to be most relevant

Best practice/Action required:

There are a few ways to ensure that the proper URL is indexed:

•Consistent linking

•Use 301 permanent redirects on the Web server

•Redirect the non-www homepage to the www version of the homepage

Use the canonicalization tag


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

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Set up a URL redirection plan

■ In just about every redesign project, at least some content is removed, and URLs go away

■ Redirection helps the engines and users to point them to the most similar page on your site

■ Important to spend time mapping out which URLs are going away, and where they should be pointed

■ Don't sit on the plan – execute the plan on the day or evening that a site is pushed out of production


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Case study: Understanding the impact of a site redesign


Site relaunched with new URLs in mid-month

• 404 errors spiked, and the site never fully recovered• These error visits represent real people and link equity lost

Site relaunch on renamed URLs, with no redirection plan


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Factor:RSS (which, in its latest format, stands for "Really Simple Syndication") is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or special promotions, and a great way to easily syndicate your content to website owners

Implications:RSS feeds give full control to the publisherThe benefit to RSS is that individuals opt-in to content of interest, controlling the flow of information that they receiveRSS is a great way to share your information with other site owners for virtually no cost

Best Practices/Action Required:Provide users with fresh relevant content specific to your industryIf you can break up frequently changing content into specific groups it may be more appealing for others to subscribeKeep the information short but descriptive, tempting users to visit your website for more informationMake sure to syndicate your feeds

Implement RSS feeds for various types of content distribution


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• Allows for on-page content to become portable across multiple channels

• Engines are all displaying enhanced listings for sites with RDF or microformats-tagged data

• Recommended inclusion in HWS 2.0 requirements

• Prominent in travel, restaurant, anything local (reviews), and event-based data

Implement structured data (rich snippets, microformats, etc.)


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Wireframe reviews

■ Wireframes are a visual representation of where things will be laid out on the different templates of the website

■ Your SEO team should review these and make recommendations on the wireframes, as this layout can have a major impact on natural search performance

■ Basic elements include:□ Title

□ Meta description

□ Meta keywords

□ H1 & H2 headings (page title)

□ Page body, text

□ Image alt text

□ Linking

Page H1 & H2 headersPage H1 & H2 headers

Pages textual contentPages textual content

Title, meta description & meta keywordsTitle, meta description & meta keywords

Image alt textImage alt text

Linking from contentLinking from content

Navigation linkingNavigation linking

Global Sitemap linkGlobal Sitemap link


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Assign keyword themes to pages for copywriters


■ Keywords should be assigned to specific pages based on the page theme

■ It may not be possible to assign keywords to all pages, but there will be many pages where the most relevant keyword will be fairly apparent based on the theme of the page

■ This information should be communicated directly to content strategists and copywriters

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Copy deck reviews

■ After the copy deck is created by incorporating your identified keywords, your SEO team should review this to determine if any further modifications need to be made to ensure copy is optimized

■ This is also a good time to re-evaluate pages that keywords were not found for during the roadmap review

■ Now that these pages have copy available, there may be more opportunities for optimization

■ Depending on what was scoped, this would also be the time to create meta descriptions

■ This may have already been done by the client or the Web development copywriters


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Launch considerations


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Launch redirection plan

■ Upon launch of new pages, it is important to activate the redirection plan

■ This ensures a smooth flow for users, and search engines

■ Redirects should be setup on a one-to-one basis

■ Every page should be redirected to a corresponding page

■ If no page corresponds, it is recommended that these be redirected to the homepage


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Remember post-launch reporting

■ The following data points can be used as benchmark metrics:□Ranking visibility

□ Traffic volume from search

□ Volume of various defined actions

□Revenue generated from natural search

Before launch After launch


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Case Study: Combined Insurance

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Project goals

Primary goal■ Drive more qualified leads

Secondary goal■ Help existing customers find what they need

Success measures■ Captured leads, qualified leads, converted leads

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Solution

Our approach: Combine in-depth market research with search analytics to drive the architecture, creative and search strategy for the new CombinedInsurance.com

iCrossing believes: If you truly understand what people are looking for and how they search for it, you can create connected online experiences that deliver on promises and engage the user at every step of the customer journey

RequirementsSite delivery,

Site Map,etc

Final Site

User &Stakeholder

Inputs

Prototype 4

User &Stakeholder

Inputs

Prototype 3

User &Stakeholder

Inputs

Prototype 2

StakeholderAnalysis

CustomerAnalysis

TechnologyAudit

ContentEvaluation

CompetitiveAnalysis

LinguisticAnalysis

User &Stakeholder

Inputs

Prototype 1

Discover Program Develop

Functional Requirements

Current Situation Report

User Personas

User Experience Strategy

Prioritization

Functional Recommendations

RequirementsSite delivery,

Site Map,etc

Final Site

User &Stakeholder

Inputs

Prototype 4

User &Stakeholder

Inputs

Prototype 3

User &Stakeholder

Inputs

Prototype 2

StakeholderAnalysis

CustomerAnalysis

TechnologyAudit

ContentEvaluation

CompetitiveAnalysis

LinguisticAnalysis

User &Stakeholder

Inputs

Prototype 1

Discover Program Develop

Functional Requirements

Current Situation Report

User Personas

User Experience Strategy

Prioritization

Functional Recommendations

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Develop User Experience

Strategy Brief

Develop User Experience

Strategy Brief

Planning

PlanningGather business, brand,

user insights, and search data

DevelopmentCreate site framework,

design and development, page build



LaunchQA testing, deployment


SEO

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Development

Establish hosting

environment

Establish hosting

environment

Create copy deck

Create copy deck

Develop visual design

Develop visual design

Create site map and

wireframes

Create site map and

wireframes

Develop creative concept

Develop creative concept











Baseline search metrics

Baseline search metrics

Develop test

strategy

Develop test

strategy

SEO

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Launch











Ongoingmeasurement

and optimization

Ongoingmeasurement

and optimization

Deploy AnalyticsDeploy

Analytics

Deploy newsite

Deploy newsite

Execute QA tests

Execute QA tests

SEO

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Before

Existing global wireframe

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After


A creative solution that considers a wider user-experience

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Where search intention is met with relevant answers: High ranking pages get straight to the heart of what searchers are seeking

Findability is a usability issue: Both new visitors and existing customers can find what they are looking for, faster

Delivering on the search “promise”: Multiple points of entry create a relevant and engaging experience

A creative solution that considers a wider user-experience

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Search keyword “supplemental insurance”

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Search keyword “supplemental insurance”

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Action-based vernacular reflects user goals

Find > Browse > Learn > Connect

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Case Study: Combined.com

YOY Interactive Results – 2008 to 2009■Unique visitors

□Up 34%

■Search Visits□ 35% of all traffic (natural search previously represented 20%)

■Natural Search Optimization □ Increased keyword visibility YOY by 46%

▪ Branded keywords up 47%▪ Non-branded keywords up 84%

□ Top non-brand keywords▪ Supplemental insurance, disability insurance, accident insurance

■25,000 online applications captured in the new Applicant Tracking System (June 8, 2009 - December 31, 2009)

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Key takeaways

■ Search deserves a seat at the website design or redesign table□Rely on a dedicated SEO expert

■ There are many important aspects of SEO performance that are “baked-in” to the process

■ Considering SEO throughout the process helps remove obstacles that may impede natural search performance

■ Develop business cases for including search in design□ Emphasize not only what can be gained, but what could be lost

■ Using search to inform design can increase various metrics from 100-1000%

■ Search is an integral part of user experience

Join SEMPO today at

www.SEMPO.org

SEMPO, Inc.401 Edgewater Place, Suite 600Wakefield, Massachusetts 01880+1 [email protected]

Questions and Answers

mailto:[email protected]

Thank you

Rob GarnerSenior Strategy Director, iCrossingSEMPO Board of [email protected]

Twitter @RobGarnerFacebook.com/GarnerGreatfinds.icrossing.com Linkedin.com/in/robgarnerMedia Post Search Insider blog

designing web sites for seo visibility, by icrossing's rob garner for sempo

Technology

process search

paid search

thebeginning of planning

search user data

internal search data

site fix opportunity

extensive data analysis

new site design