expon 2011 - chris boggs - seo e-commerce
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O palestrante Chris Boggs no Expon 2011 fala sobre SEO no E-CommerceTRANSCRIPT
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SEO Best Practices and Considerations for eCommerce
Sites
July 22, 2011
Chris Boggs – President, SEMPO, and Director, Rosetta
@boggles
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About Me
Chris Boggs
• President of SEMPO, a global non-
profit search marketing association
• SEO Director – Rosetta:
Independent Publicis Brand as of
July 1, 2011
• Married father of two
• Started SEM in health insurance
space in early 2000’s
• Extensive experience with
optimizing eCommerce sites
including IBM, ATG, Microsoft…
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Agenda
■ SEO Hierarchy
■ Competitive Analysis
■ Projecting ROI
■ SEO Strategy for Universal SERPs
■ Technical/Structural Considerations
■ Content and Digital Assets
■ Inbound Linking
■ Measurement and Reporting
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The SEO Hierarchy
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Credit to Chris Cotton and Rosetta.com
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Competitive Analysis
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In order to develop a strategy, the best methodology is to lead by gaining a
strong understanding of the competitors in your space
• Use the keyword research you performed to identify top-ranking sites.
• Creating a matrix can be a helpful tactic.
• Set up a spreadsheet to measure your stats against the competitors
• Just a few examples:
YOUR-SITE.COM 127 104 2,745 47
Competitor
Google # of
pages
Indexed
Bing # of
pages
Indexed
# links to
domain
# links to top [CATEGORY]
page
Widgets-R-Us 5,900 3,700 38,958 3,700
We Heart Widgets 451 340 1,000,000 7,644
Widgets Rule 189 132 3,250 317
Widgets for Digits 442 544 5,280 1,500
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Enterprise Competitive Analysis
In lieu of Microsoft Excel (every
SEO’s favorite tool), Enterprise
level solutions exist and are worth
the investment especially to
support large scale SEO. Examples
include Brightedge, Conductor, and
Sycara.
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2008
Avg
08-09 2009 Variance 2010 Multiplier
Multiplie
r
Visits Orders Conversion Visits Orders Conversion Budgeted
Average
Growth Accelerated
Jan 484,538 4,417 0.91% 626174.5 767,811 4,192 0.55% 58.46% Jan 366,221 366,221 366,221
Feb 604,132 5,435 0.90% 872922.5 1,141,713 6,421 0.56% 88.98% Feb 408,643 408,643 0.5 408,643 0.5
Mar 747,620 8,016 1.07% 1009150 1,270,680 7,344 0.58% 69.96% Mar 593,322 454,118 0.45 454,118 0.45
Apr 973,196 7,896 0.81% 971220.5 969,245 6,293 0.65% -0.41% Apr 502,991 485,610 0.5 485,610 0.5
May 926,672 7,227 0.78% 928210 929,748 6,031 0.65% 0.33% May 635,283 556,926 0.6 556,926 0.6
Jun 1,099,119 9,598 0.87% 1187610 1,276,101 7,830 0.61% 16.10% Jun 787,571 771,947 0.65 890,708 0.75
Jul 909,258 7,662 0.84% 854481 799,704 5,291 0.66% -12.05% Jul 617,808 640,861 0.75 726,309 0.85
Aug 841,618 6,428 0.76% 791116.5 740,615 4,939 0.67% -12.00% Aug 572,908 672,449 0.85 751,561 0.95
Sep 944,054 7,670 0.81% 924479 904,904 3,959 0.44% -4.15% Sep 644,788 832,031 0.9 970,703 1.05
Oct 762,166 4,905 0.64% 608066.5 453,967 1,385 0.31% -40.44% Oct 525,892 668,873 1.1 729,680 1.2
Nov 763,152 5,298 0.69% 572311 381,470 1,055 0.28% -50.01% Nov 628,977 744,004 1.3 772,620 1.35
Dec 961,430 7,788 0.81% 739525.5 517,621 1,815 0.35% -46.16% Dec 853,672 1,035,336 1.4 1,146,265 1.55
Predicting ROI
In order to get the right budget for the job, ROI projection can be very helpful
• Once ceilings and past performance are measured, Average and Accelerated
SEO projections can be made and matched to average order value + conversion
% to project ROI.
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If something improves performance for the remainder of the year, it would be
nice to know in real time. But what if it’s a just a one week sale that throws
numbers off?
On track.
Curveball. Did they
fix a bug? Let’s
project it.
Ok things are cooling
down, but still above
the original forecast.
Hmm, trending down.
Evidence that it was a
promotion/event.
Dust has settled.
Forecast returns to
normal levels.
+ +? - -
Self-Correcting Forecasts
Credit to Aaron Smith and Rosetta.com
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Brazil – Get Ready for Changes
■ Current Google.com.br SERP:
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Examples of Current Google.com SERPs
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Setting a Breathing Strategy
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Once competitive analysis is done, you should be in a position to begin to
understand your site’s shortcomings.
• Do you have too few pages indexed?
• Do you not have enough links?
• Do you simply not have the right keywords in the right places?
All these questions can be answered by going through a full optimization process, and setting up an
ongoing program to maintain and increase performance over time. Starting with a technical review
and overhaul, then optimizing content and working on inbound links will lead the way to success
PATIENCE IS KEY!
Tech Content Linking
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Technical SEO
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Search Engines are considering site performance to be a greater factor in
determining rankings.
• Google has come out recently against “soft 404s,” and has continuously provided tools for
webmasters to help make their sites easier for crawlers to “digest” and index.
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Technical SEO
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There are a few primary things to consider improving, from an SEO technical
perspective
• If possible, your URLs should contain keywords. Ask your developer if he/she can “rewrite”
ugly commerce application-driven URLs to appear like the following:
www.DOMAIN.com/awesome-widgets
• Your pages should return proper server responses. An error page should tell the server (and
the search engine crawler) that the page is dead, or it should redirect to a new version using a
“301” permanent redirect (versus a 302 “temporary forward”) (*some exceptions to this rule exist)
• Your pages (especially the home page and top-target pages) should load fast
• Your content (all of it) should be visible to the search engines, including your links. The
following tool will let you know what a search engine “sees” when it visits a page on your site:
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The Importance of Unique Content
■ Content “uniquity” can be the biggest opportunity in your space
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Why Digital Assets are King
■ Digital Assets provide both
unique content as well as
diversified inbound linking
patterns – Plus Google loves
them
■ Just don’t overdo it – you
don’t need 5 videos for each
way to change a cartridge
(left-hand, right-hand, during
day, night, etc)
■ Additional content on other
domains will help reputation
management
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Source: ehow.com
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Inbound Link Growth and Maintenance
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Links are what provide authority to your pages – without them, you are
unlikely to perform for competitive keywords
• There are a number of ways to improve existing links and get new links, but they break into
four primary buckets:
1. Direct Access
2. Direct Requests
3. Paid Links
4. Social Media
Links should be developed to all pages on a site
The two key elements of a good link:
1. Relevance
2. Authority
Trusted
Educational
Site
(.edu)
(www.DOMAIN.com)
Trusted
Governmental
Site
(.gov.br)
Trusted
Website
(.org)
Trusted
Website
(.com)
Trusted
Website
(.com)
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Performance Measurement
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Without measuring your performance, you will not really know how well you
are doing. Don’t simply be happy with “more calls”
• In order to gain the most value out of SEO, you have to monitor performance, and make
adjustments to strategy, such as increasing content on a particular topic, or getting more links
pointed to a particular page
• if you are not using tools to monitor performance, set up a free Google Analytics account in
order to best understand your organic traffic from across search engines
• Tools such as Rosetta-partner ClearSaleing offer ways to measure multiple touch points with
a domain:
Scenario
User's Path Starts in Paid Search
Closes in Paid Search
Closes in Organic Search
Closes Outside of Search
User's Path Starts in Organic Search
Closes in Paid Search
Closes in Organic Search
Closes Outside of Search
User's Path Starts Outside of Search
Closes in Paid Search
Closes in Organic SearchCloses Outside of Search 17,662
58.83%
56.87%
24.16%
10,299
228
18,949
14.09%
0.31%
25.92%
1.23%
0.48%
331
902
353
565
43,010
11,017 15.07%
0.45%
% of PathsTotal Paths
41,575
518 0.71%
0.77%
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Questions?
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