the current state of... search engine optimization (seo) (july, 2015)
TRANSCRIPT
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
the current state of…
Presented to theSmithsonian National Museum of Natural History
Social Media Summit7/21/2015@balpert
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Today’s Stuff What does SEO Mean Today? Search at SI Importance of Personalization Old-School Website SEO Still Matters New Stuff that Matters Search Engine Relevance Factors (2014) Discredited practices Structured Data Local (Geo-targeting) Social Media’s Role Open Graph meta tags are essential Individual Social Networks / Video Next up: App indexing
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What does “SEO” mean today? Search Engines (SE’s) are smarter than ever. Google has worked to defeat tactical SEO, but… “Old school” stuff, (titles, text content, links,
URLs, site architecture) still matters. Google is about 65% of all engine traffic… …Bing “and the rest” still account for billions of
searches every month. There’s lots of new wrinkles to SEO.
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Search at SI In our favor:
We have great content! We have ultra-high domain authority!
92 out of 100! (moz.com)
We have one of the strongest brands in the world! Brands matter on search engines
Many sites receive 40-60% of traffic from organic search. Social media helps (but maybe not as much as we think).
Challenges: Despite great content, many sites aren’t optimized. Some have technical issues such as “duplicate content.” Some are too small / unlinked, to break through.
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Importance of Personalization Virtually all search results are personalized now. This is true whether or not you are logged into Google, but
especially true if you are. SO… there is no standard rank for a given keyword. Analyzing rankings for specific keywords is a flawed strategy
anyway! Tip: try Chrome’s ‘Incognito’ mode – Shift-Ctrl-N
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Old-School Website SEO Still Matters Page Title Tags are important:
They tell an SE what the page is about They are the headline for the search listing They need to be customized, and short: ~50 characters!
Meta Description tag helps improve click-through Needs to be customized and short (~120 characters)
Body content – keywords, semantically-related words. Links using keywords, from high-authority domains. Optimize images with ALT and TITLE tags. URLs, site architecture, page structure… all still important.
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New Stuff that Matters Engines are better at understanding content, related words.
Individual keywords are less important
New ways to improve the way your search results appear. Structured data - “Rich snippets”
Site speed matters. A lot. Mobile-friendly / responsive design is boosted in Google. User reviews matter! Social matters, and is more integrated into search results. Security - https is better than http
Technical hurdles (certificates, etc.) https://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl
Localized results – Geo-targeting is pretty accurate.
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2014 moz.com Overall Ranking Factors
According to moz.com, “Link Signals” account for about 18% of influence, “On-Page Signals” about 21%.
On-page signalsLink signals
Business signals
Location signalsReview signals
Social
Mobile
Personali-zation
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Discredited Practices On-page
Keyword stuffing Meta keyword tag Spammy comments
Exact match domains “cheapairlinetickets.com”
SEO “gateway” pages Off-page
Paid links Poor-quality links Content farms Guest blogging
Flash (doesn’t get indexed) Google Penalties are usually applied by algorithm
Behaving badly means real penalties!
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Structured Data
Schema.org metadata provides info SE’s need to understand content, provide better results.
Tells the engines what your data means, not just what it says. Meta tags improve search results by displaying enhanced content.
Authorship "In-depth articles" feature (Article markup) Other “Rich Snippets”
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Structured Data (cont’d)
Structured data can be used to mark up: Creative work Event Organization Person Place Product Recipes
Structured data may help: Enhance CTR from search engine results Search engines understand your content Your content to appear in specialized search results like "in-depth Articles“
Google Structured Data Testing Tool
SI content is especially relevant to “in-depth articles”
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Local (Geo-targeting)
40-50% of Google searches are location-related. (2011-12 data)
Google’s ~3.5B searches / day means ~40-50B local searches / month!
Consistent “NAP” (name, address, phone) is critical.
“Authoritative OneBox” is the grand prize
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Social Media’s Role Google’s Matt Cutts stated there is no
causation of high social metrics and Google rank (2013). I.e., authoritative “social signals" (Facebook likes,
Twitter followers) do not affect rank.
Do you believe that? Not sure I do.
Social media matters: It encourages links to your content.
These links may influence rank by helping engines understand a site’s credibility.
Bing: “We take into consideration how often a link has been tweeted or retweeted, as well as the authority of the Twitter users that shared the link.”
Social media profiles rank in search engines.
Google+ does influence search results
5 Things You Need to Know About Social Media & SEO (kissmetrics)
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Social Media’s Role (cont’d)
Social networks are search engines too! Twitter handles over 2B searches a day. (2015; statisticbrain.com)
In 2012 Facebook said it got around one billion searches per day.
In March 2010, YouTube got roughly 3.7 billion searches a month.
Enhance findability in social networks by: Using hashtags effectively Properly categorizing images Deleting old profiles (they compete with current ones)
Hashtags can alert you to topics/trends, popular ways people are following them, that you may be overlooking How Hashtags Work on Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, Pinterest, Facebook, Tumblr, and
Flickr (Ann Smarty on moz.com; 2015) How to Rock Hashtags (And Why You Should) (searchenginejournal) 5 Free and Awesome Tools To Use #Hashtags Wisely (searchenginejournal)
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Open Graph meta tags are essential
Open Graph (OG) tags (2010) promote integration between social sites and your website.
Allows you to control how site content appears in social media posts.
OG tags can significantly affect click-through rates and conversions from social sites. What You Need to Know About Open Graph
Meta Tags for Total Facebook and Twitter Mastery (kissmetrics)
Individual Social Networks
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Google+
Not the dominant social network, but cannot be ignored. Google+ influences Google's search results:
For logged-in searchers, pages that have been shared or +1'd by people you follow may rank higher in your search results (moz.com)
Those with Google+ accounts can connect them to their published works to nudge Google search to show authorship next to their pages in the results (moz.com)
Tip: Headlines! Google+ posts act more like mini blog posts, and every post
needs a headline https://moz.com/blog/google-plus-tips-seo
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Facebook Facebook Page optimization looks like commonsense SEO:
Titles / headlines Descriptions URLs Filenames
Tips: Choose your Page name carefully Create a custom (“vanity”) URL Treat the first 18 characters of a post like a meta description https://moz.com/blog/7-key-ways-to-optimize-facebook-fan-page-seo
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Twitter Google has access to twitter’s "firehose“ of tweets (over 6K/minute)! Possible influencing factors:
Follower count Hashtags Images Twitter Cards – custom meta tags
If Twitter bots can’t find them, they use OG tags
Tips: Choose an optimized handle Select an account name carefully Optimize the account’s bio Initial characters of a tweet may influence indexing
How the New Twitter Deal Will Impact SEO (2015) Top 10 Twitter SEO Tips (2009)
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SEO on Pinterest means moving to the top of their predictive search platform, Guided Search.
Tips: Optimize your profile, pins, boards for Pinterest and Google search
(incl. name plus your most important keyword). Use simple, descriptive names. Keyword-optimize your description, while maintaining readability. Install “Pin It!” buttons on your site. Hashtag support is limited. “They serve no purpose on Pinterest.” Use “Rich Pins” – structured data, similar to twitter cards.
Pinterest SEO: 7 Tips From A Pinterest Engineer (searchengineland) Why You Should Care About Optimizing Your Pins (HootSuite blog)
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Flickr
Flickr is already optimized for SEO! It doesn’t require you to do a lot to make a photo’s page work
well for SEO.
Tips: Titles, descriptions, other factoids, etc. It's unclear if hashtags improve visibility, or how different they
are from traditional tags. Link back to your website, and include keywords in the link label. These are all Google “nofollow” links, but they are still thought to
be valuable for SEO.
10 Image Optimization Tips For Local SEO (Bruce Clay)
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Instagram allows profiles to be indexed, but not photos. Instagram images may appear on Google via 3rd party
Instagram sites/apps, such as http://ink361.com/ Tips:
Optimize account names, profiles and descriptions Hashtags can increase your following, but use common sense Add links, but don’t expect high CTR
This doesn’t mean Instagram isn’t a valuable way to promote your content, website and unit!
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YouTube / vimeo YouTube and Vimeo are well-optimized for the basics.
Metadata, OG Metadata, Description text A video sitemap is essential, even if you’re on YouTube or Vimeo.
Create and upload a Video Sitemap to Google Ensures indexing in Google Video Search. Free / Paid video sitemap tools create the XML. Video sitemap example: http://winefolly.com/video-sitemap.xml https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/80471?hl=en
Create a video resource microsite. http
://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2343365/10-video-seo-tips-that-can-truly-impact-your-rankings# (read the comments!)
Tips: Titles, descriptions, thumbnails, use tags wisely http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/2015-02-25/7-essential-vid
eo-seo-tips-rank-1-youtube
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Next up: App indexing
Google has been driving engagement with mobile apps by indexing links within apps. Since 2013 Perform a Google search on a mobile device Search results will include web pages and also relevant content
from within an app
Primarily for Android, but expanding to iOS. You need to proactively get your app indexed. App Indexing: Why It Matters For The Future Of Search Google: App Indexing
Thanks!
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Brian AlpertWeb Analytics & SEM AnalystOffice of the CIOSmithsonian Institution@balpert