library websites: are you meeting your seo goals?
TRANSCRIPT
ALA 2012
Library Websites: Are You Meeting Your SEO Goals?
Jennifer Grappone@jengrappone
Gradiva Couzin@gradiva
ALA 2012
About Us
Jennifer Grappone & Gradiva Couzin
Partners, Gravity Search Marketing LLC
Coauthors, Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day (Wiley, 2011)
Find out more about us: www.yourseoplan.comTwitter: @jengrappone, @gradiva
ALA 2012
What We’ll Cover
• Defining Goals• Measuring Goals with Google Analytics• What’s Getting in the Way of Your Goals?
www.slideshare.net/gravitysearch/
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Know Your Goals
What do you want your website to accomplish?
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Ranks Are Not Goals
“We aren’t anywhere”
“We’re on the third page”
“We’re number one!”
“We should be ranking ahead of that site”
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Ranks Are Not Goals
But…
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Search Engine Ranking Factors
Inbound Links
Keywords
Search engines can find your pages
Search engines have reason to trust your pages
Search engines can understand your pages
Site Structure
Semantic tagging
XML Sitemaps
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Clarify Your SEO Goals
I want to on my site
Separate goals for separate audiences
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Clarify Your SEO Goals
I want to on my sitestudents
at my school
find items from our catalog
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Clarify Your SEO Goals
I want to on my sitelocal
school-age
children
sign up for homework
help
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Clarify Your SEO Goals
I want to on my siteresearchers find scholarly resources
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Clarify Your SEO Goals
I want to on my sitemobile users
find our locations and hours
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Clarify Your SEO Goals
I want to on my sitestudents
at my school
find documents from our catalog
These are your target audiences
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Clarify Your SEO Goals
I want to on my sitestudents
at my school
find documents from our catalog
These are your conversions
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Clarify Your SEO Goals
For each of your conversions:
• What page/type of page on your website will this person enter?
• How are you going to measure success?
These need to be accessible to robots and optimized for search
Know your way around your analytics program
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Measure Your Success with Google Analytics
Google Analytics:
• Free• Works great for SEO• Can be used as a
supplement to another analytics system
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Measure Your Success with Google Analytics
Common conversions
• Page views• Time on site/# of pages viewed• % of total site traffic that comes from organic
search• A visit to a "thank you"/"success" page
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Measure Your Success with Google Analytics
Goals that are hard or impossible to measure
• Offline conversions (walk-in visitors,phone calls)
• Awareness• Word-of-mouth referrals
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Measure Your Success with Google Analytics
Analyze and Interpret!
• Exit pages: exit may mean success• Time on site: are your users engaged or lost?• Low-frequency conversions: find proxy
conversions• Bounce rate: view by audience segment
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Measure Your Success with Google Analytics
Segment your audience
Average time on site: 50 seconds
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Measure Your Success with Google Analytics
Segment your audience
Average time on site: 50 seconds• For visitors arriving via keywords containing
[name of special collection]: 4 minutes
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Measure Your Success with Google Analytics
Segment your audience
Average time on site: 50 seconds• For visitors arriving via keywords containing
[name of special collection]: 4 minutes • For visitors landing on your “hours and
location” page: 32 seconds
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Measure Your Success with Google Analytics
Segment your audience
Average time on site: 50 seconds• For visitors arriving via keywords containing
[name of special collection]: 4 minutes • For visitors landing on your “hours and
location” page: 32 seconds• For visitors in Germany: all bounce out
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Measure Your Success with Google Analytics
I want to on my sitethepublic
find digital collections
Case Study
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Measure Your Success with Google Analytics
• How many people are coming to the Cuneiform collection via organic search?
• What keywords are they using?
• Are they finding it useful?
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Measure Your Success with Google Analytics
No search entries
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Measure Your Success with Google Analytics
Only a few relevant referring keywords
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Measure Your Success with Google Analytics
Low time per visit
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Measure Your Success with Google Analytics
High bounce rate
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Measure Your Success with Google Analytics
All the traffic using the keyword “cuneiform” is landing on the same URL.
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Measure Your Success with Google Analytics
This landing page is a terrible destination!
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Measure Your Success with Google Analytics
Why?
• The cuneiform collection pages are blocked from search engine crawling
• The terrible landing page is findable by search engines
• The terrible landing page has keywords on it
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Structure Your Site for Search-Friendliness
What do search engines see on your site?
• Access to pages (find)• Keywords on page (understand)
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Structure Your Site for Search-Friendliness
Access to pages
Are there pages on your site that search engine robots can’t reach?
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Structure Your Site for Search-Friendliness
Barriers to Access: Form input / Search
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Structure Your Site for Search-Friendliness
Barriers to Access: Form input / Search
Possible Solutions: • XML sitemap – Webmaster Tools• Navigable (clickable) path
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Structure Your Site for Search-Friendliness
Barriers to Access: Content behind authorization
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Structure Your Site for Search-Friendliness
Barriers to Access: Content behind authorization
Possible Solutions: • Expose preview info (80 words: abstract,
description, etc.)• First click free program (Google)
http://support.google.com/news/publisher/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=40543
• Avoid blanket restrictions – use intelligent rules
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Structure Your Site for Search-Friendliness
Site Structure Diagnostic Tools
• Your own analytics• Google Webmaster Tools• crawl errors• fetch as Googlebot
• “site:” search in Google
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Structure Your Site for Search-Friendliness
What do search engines see on your site?
• Access to pages (find) ✔✔• Keywords on page (understand)
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On Page OptimizationExample: Huffington Post
This page is an attempt to rank well for “egypt protests”
HTML title
Page URL
Text on page
Internal links on site
(understand)
(find + understand)
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Structure Your Site for Search-Friendliness
On-Page Optimization Basics
• Unique content at every URL • Unique, descriptive HTML titles on every
page• Descriptive text (keywords) on page
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On-page Keywords
Case Study: Berkeley Public Library – Kindle
I want to on my sitepatronsknow we
offer Kindlebooks
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Google Search Suggestions
Search suggest
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Google Insights for Searchgoogle.com/insights/search
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Google AdWords Keyword Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
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Google AdWords Keyword Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
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On-page Keywords
“Kindle” appearsonce on this page
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On-page Keywords
Berkeley Public Library – Kindle keywords
Solutions: • There should be a page on this site
dedicated to Kindle borrowing. • For each of your website goals, create (at
least) a dedicated page or family of pages containing relevant keywords
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Resources for Further Learning
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Search Engine Ranking Factors: Resources
• LOCAL RANKING FACTORS 2012 http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml
• SEARCH ENGINE LAND’s Periodic Table of SEOhttp://searchengineland.com/seotable
• WATCH THIS SPACE FOR FUTURE EDITIONS (last was June 2011, may be biannual) http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors
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Tools For Checking Ranks
• SEOMOZ RANK TRACKER (paid)http://www.seomoz.org/rank-tracker
• ADVANCED WEB RANKING (paid)http://www.advancedwebranking.com/
• GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLShttp://www.google.com/webmasters
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Tools for Site Diagnostics
• GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS http://www.google.com/webmasters
• SEO BROWSER (spider emulator)http://www.seo-browser.com
• REX SWAIN’S HTTP VIEWERhttp://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html
• WEB DEVELOPER BROWSER EXTENSIONhttp://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/
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Untapped Possibilities
• Social signals• Authorship• Mobile search• Semantic tagging• Local search
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Untapped PossibilitiesSocial Signals
One student clicks “Like” or “+1” on your site.
Original person AND other interconnected members of the community see results biased in your favor
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Untapped PossibilitiesSocial Signals
Social sharing links
Recommended at a minimum: • Google+• Tweet this• Facebook Like/Recommend
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Like vs. Recommend
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Untapped PossibilitiesAuthorship
Identify page author in search listings:• Ties to Google+ or
on-site profile page
• Adds credibility
• Likely to increase clickthrough rate
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Untapped PossibilitiesMobile Search
Mobile search to exceed desktop search circa 2013
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Untapped PossibilitiesSemantic Tagging
Schema Tags - http://schema.org/Library
• Conveys meaning to search engines• Supported by Google, Bing. Rank effect unknown if any.• Can be used for basics (location, hours) or more complex• May be problematic if you don’t want your content repurposed
by Google
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Untapped PossibilitiesLocal Search
• Google will show local results if query deserves
• Google Places listing merging with Google+
• Claim your business to manage, edit
Local Results More & More Prominent