web optimisation: ux and seo
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Web Optimisation
Barry Adams
Polemic Digital
30 January 2015
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About Barry Adams
• Freelance SEO consultant at Polemic Digital
• Dutch (yes, really)
• Twitter ranter: @badams
• Lecturer on SEO, UX & Digital Strategy
• Editor & blogger for StateofDigital.com
• Also blogs at PolemicDigital.com
• 2014 DANI Digital Industries Person of the Year
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Agenda
• What makes a good website?
• Search Engine Optimisation
The Value of SEO
The Three Pillars of SEO;
- Technology
- Relevance
- Authority
Content Strategy
Linkbuilding
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What Makes aGood Website?
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First impressions matter
• The “look and feel” of a website has the greatest impact on users’ credibility assessments, with professional site designs heavily influencing credibility perceptions
• Once users have seen a web page, it is difficult to overcome the first impressions they form based on the professional appearance of a page’s design.*
Source: http://bada.ms/webcredibility
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Key Aspects of good web design
• Your site’s purpose need to be instantly evident
Don’t make users look for the purpose of your site
Strong headlines, clearly named navigation, images
• Your site needs to be easy to use
Uncluttered layout, good supportive images, works in all browsers
• Tell users what you expect them to do
Use calls-to-action to guide the visitorsto the relevant conversion page
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User Testing
• Show your website to people outside your industry;
Ask them to perform some tasks and give a running commentary of what they’re feeling and experiencing
Watch how they do it and listen to what they say
• Use a service like UserTesting.com to perform professional user tests on your website.
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Web Design & Development
• Responsive Design;
Website layout adjusts to size of the screen it’s being shown on
Strive towards a fast load speed
• Standards-based;
Cross-browser compatibility;
- Internet Explorer 8,9,10,11 / Firefox / Chrome / Safari
Limit 3rd party plugins;
- Avoid Flash, Silverlight & QuickTime
- JavaScript is OK, within limits
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Content Management
• Open Source systems are a good choice;
Easily portable so you’re not dependent on a single web developer
Constantly upgraded with security fixes & functional improvements
Most are based on standards and will generate compliant websites
Many plugins & extensions available for extra functionality
• Examples: WordPress, Magento
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Search Engine Optimisation
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UK Online Market
• UK internet economy to make up approximately 10% of GDP in 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 month
That’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
30% of users click here and on the right (Paid listings)
70% of users click here (Organic listings)
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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
• Keywords
• 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
TechnologyRelevance
Overlap
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SEO: Technology
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Technical SEO
• Site indexing
• HTML code quality
• Structured Data
• HTTP Status Codes
• Load Speed
Tools:
Google Webmaster Tools
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Webpagetest.org
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Troubleshooting Technical SEO
• Check site index levels
XML sitemaps?
• Check HTML quality
GWMT HTML recommendations
• Check Structured Data
GWMT Structured Data / Rich Snippet Testing Tool
• Check HTTP Status Codes
SEO crawler
• Check load speed
Webpagetest.org
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W3C Validator
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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
More info: 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 focus
Find the right keywords
Google Keyword Planner / Google Trends
• Navigation Structure
Is it clearly hierarchical? Check sitelinks
• Title Tags & Meta Description
SEO crawler
• Body content
Does 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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Title Tags
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Meta Description
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Content Structure
Title Tag
Meta Description
<h1> headline
Body content(with <h2> - <h6> subheaders)
Image alt attribute
Calls to action
Links to other pages on the site
Source: http://bada.ms/perfectonpageseo
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On-Page Topic Targeting
When writing content, organise keyword phrases and ideas with related concepts in order to provide search engines with better topical signals.
Source: http://bada.ms/topictargeting
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Human-Readable URLs
Bad URL:
http://domain.com/default.aspx?p=43351&s=abx&ref=ps-2301-g&…
Good URL:
http://domain.com/safety-boots/caterpillar/steel-toe-safety-boots.html
• Don’t overdo it – no keyword stuffing
• Use a logical structure that makes sense to humans
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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 Tools
Majestic SEO
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Analysing link profiles
• Check amount & quality of links
Majestic
• Check anchor texts
Majestic
• Check link relevance
Majestic
• Link warnings?
Google Webmaster Tools
• Competitive Analysis
SEMrush
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Webmaster Tools
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Penalty Warnings
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Majestic SEO
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Competitive Analysis
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SEMrush
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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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Matching Content with Search Intent
Write content to match search intent at various stages of the sales funnel
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Align your content with SERPs
• Universal Search:
Google including different types of search elements in its SERPs, such as...
Images
Videos
News
Local businesses
In-depth articles
Knowledge 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 prospects
2. Approach them with a personalised message
3. Offer to write guest content for their website/blog
4. Include a link in that guest article
It’s a lot of manual effort – exactlywhat Google intends.
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Link Prospecting
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Competitive Linkbuilding
• Analyse & monitor your competitors’ links
What are they doing and can you replicate?
• Steal competitor links
Find links to competitor sites that give a 404
Contact linking website and propose alternative
• Give stuff away for free
Ask for a link in return
• Newsjacking
Write 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 Twitter Accounts
• Danny Sullivan: https://twitter.com/dannysullivan
• Barry Schwartz: https://twitter.com/rustybrick
• 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?
www.polemicdigital.com
twitter.com/polemicdigital
twitter.com/badams