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Search Engine Optimisation

Barry AdamsPolemic Digital

15 October 2014

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About Barry Adams

• 17 year veteran of SEO & digital marketing

Winner of 2014 DANI Digital Industries Person of the Year

Shortlisted for two 2014 UK Search Awards

Winner of two 2012 DANI awards, shortlisted for two more

Shortlisted for Best Agency, 2012 EU Search Awards

• Founder of expert SEO agency Polemic Digital

Previously Digital Director at The Tomorrow Lab

• Editor & blogger for StateOfDigital.com

Winner of Best Blog, 2012 EU Search Awards

• Personal SEO blog: PolemicDigital.com/blog

Shortlisted for Best Blog, 2013 UK Search Awards

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Agenda

• The Value of SEO

• The 3 Pillars of SEO; Technology Relevance Authority

• Content Strategy

• Linkbuilding

• Websites & Blogs to Follow

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The Value of SEO

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UK Online Market

• UK internet economy to make up approximately 10% of GDP by 2015 (± £160 billion)

• 93% of online purchases start with a search engine query

• 81% of consumers will research products online before making a major buying decision

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Search Engine Market

• UK Search Engine Market:Google: 90%Bing: 6%Yahoo: 3%Other: 1%

• Google handles 115 billion searches a monthThat’s over 44,000 search queries every

second

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Search Engine User Behaviour

70%+ of clicks on search results are on the organic listings

5-30% of users click on a Paid listing

70-95% of users click on an organic listing

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SERP* Click Through Rate

In Google’s search results, first place matters.

*SERP = Search Engine Results Page

Source: http://bada.ms/ctrstudy

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Digital Channel Comparison

• Organic search is the top converting traffic source, followed by Paid Search, then Email.

• Organic search is still the fastest growing acquisition channel.

Source: http://bada.ms/dmchannels

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The Three Pillars of SEO

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The Three Pillars of SEO

Technology

Relevance

Authority

Relevance

Technology Technology

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SEO: Technology

• Fully indexable website• Clean HTML code• No content hidden in Flash or JavaScript• XML Sitemaps• Structured Data• HTTP status codes• URL query parameters• Robots meta tags• Canonicals & Pagination• Load speed• ....

Technology

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SEO: Relevance

• Keyword focus• Title tags & meta description• High quality content• Content structure• Separate pages focused on (sets of ) keywords• Navigation links & internal ‘diagonal’ links• Human-readable URLs• Image ALT attributes• Information Architecture• Panda filter risk factors• ....

Relevance

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SEO: Authority

• Link profile• Anchor text distribution• Domain metrics• Content Marketing• Social Media integration• Local citations• Brand mentions• Links to broken URLs• Outbound linking• Penguin filter & manual penalty risk factors• ....

Authority

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Authority

Technology

Relevance

Overlap

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SEO: Technology

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Site Audits

• Site indexing• HTML code quality• Structured Data• HTTP Status Codes• Load Speed

Tools:Google Webmaster ToolsScreaming Frog SEO SpiderWebpagetest.org

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Troubleshooting SEO

• Check site index levelsXML sitemaps / GWMT Index Status

• Check HTML qualityGWMT / SEO crawler

• Check HTTP Status CodesGWMT / SEO crawler

• Check load speedGA / Webpagetest.org

• Check Structured DataGWMT Structured Data / Rich Snippet Testing

Tool

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Google Webmaster Tools

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Screaming Frog SEO Spider

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WebPageTest.org

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Rich Snippets

http://bada.ms/richsnippets

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SEO: Relevance

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On-site Optimisation

• Keyword Focus• Navigation Structure• Title tags• Meta descriptions• Body content

Tools: Google AdWords Keyword Planner Google Trends Google Webmaster Tools Screaming Frog SEO Spider

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Identifying On-Site Issues

• Keyword focusFind the right keywordsGoogle Keyword Planner / Google Trends

• Navigation Structure Is it clearly hierarchical? Check sitelinks

• Title Tags & Meta DescriptionSEO crawler

• Body contentDoes it make sense for people?Diagonal linking with rich anchor texts

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Google AdWords Keyword Planner

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Google Trends

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The Long Tail

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SEO: Authority

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Link Analysis

• Number of links & linking domains• Quality of links• Anchor texts• Competitive Analysis

Tools:Google Webmaster ToolsMajestic

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Analysing link profiles

• Check amount & quality of linksMajestic

• Check anchor textsGWMT / Majestic

• Check link relevanceMajestic

• Link warnings?Google Webmaster Tools

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Majestic

?

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Competitive Analysis

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Content Strategy

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Content Strategy

“A content strategy for a website is a plan for the creation, publication, distribution, and management of content in various formats – text, video, images, interactive – that helps establish the online brand as a leader in its industry.”

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Content Strategy for SEO

• Optimised content will contain the right keywords in the right places, thus increasing the website’s relevance.

• Engaging content will be shared and linked to, thus increasing the website’s authority.

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Aspects of a Content Strategy

1. Set Objectives

2. Define Your Audience

3. Create a Content Calendar

4. Plan Your Content Promotion

5. Engage With Your Readers

6. Measure & Refine

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Align your content with SERPs

• Universal Search:Google including different types of search elements in its SERPs, such as... ImagesVideosNewsLocal businesses In-depth articlesKnowledge Graph ...

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Universal Search

Knowledge Graph

Informational result

News results

Informational result

Image results

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Linkbuilding

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Linkbuilding

• Content alone is not enough to build authority.

• Approximately 50%-60% of Google’s ranking algorithms are link-based.

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But… Google doesn’t like linkbuilding

“Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.”

Source: http://bada.ms/googleguidelines

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So what’s a SEO to do?

• We have to tread carefully and ensure that we acquire only ‘natural’ links.

• That means we have to earn them.

• Earned links are (or appear to be) entirely valid recommendations from one website to another.

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Linkbait

Content published on your own site that…… is informative;… is entertaining;… is inspiring;… has viral potential;

…so that it naturally attracts links.

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Linkbait types

• Definitive guides / resources

• Top 10 lists• Infographics• Controversy• Quirky angles on old

topics

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Outreach Linkbuilding

‘Outreach’ is basically PR for SEO purposes;

1. Research link prospects2. Approach them with a personalised message3. Offer to write guest content for their

website/blog4. Include a link in that guest article

It’s a lot of manual effort – exactlywhat Google intends.

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Competitive Linkbuilding

• Analyse & monitor your competitors’ linksWhat are they doing and can you replicate?

• Steal competitor linksFind links to competitor sites that give a 404Contact linking website and propose

alternative

• Give stuff away for freeAsk for a link in return

• NewsjackingWrite about hot/controversial topics

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SEO Resources to follow

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Top SEO blogs

• SearchEngineLand.com

• StateofDigital.com

• Moz.com

• BlindFiveYearOld.com

• GoogleWebmasterCentral.blogspot.com

• PolemicDigital.com/blog

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Top SEO Twitterers

• Danny Sullivan: https://twitter.com/dannysullivan

• Matt Cutts: https://twitter.com/mattcutts

• Moz: https://twitter.com/moz

• Google Webmaster:

https://twitter.com/googlewmc

• Lee Odden: https://twitter.com/leeodden

• Barry Adams: https://twitter.com/badams

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Questions?

barry@polemicdigital.comwww.polemicdigital.comtwitter.com/polemicdigital