B3 Seminar: The Latest Advanced SEO & Link Strategies - Patrick Altoft

The Latest Advanced SEO & Link Strategies

Advanced SEO
by Patrick Altoft


What I’m talking about
• The importance of making your content strategy & content marketing integral to
your normal day to day business, PR and comms strategy

• Why you need to focus on your core pages first as part of a content strategy

• Who is doing this right


Doing Real Stuff
Would you do this if it didn’t help
with SEO?

When you release a new page or
piece of content would your MD or
PR department tweet about it?

If not then you probably shouldn’t
be doing it


Real Company Stuff

http://b3.io/10ZXMjy


What Google Wants
The goal of many of our ranking changes is to help searchers find sites that provide a great
user experience and fulfil their information needs.

Matt Cutts

Our strategy therefore is to create a better search result for our clients than their
competitors.

This can be split into two simple to understand factors:
• Creating more authority & being a better/more reputable company
• Making better landing pages, specifically your primary pages


Achieving This

The tactics to achieve this are a mixture of links, content strategy, onsite optimisation &
usability.

It’s important to remember that while the tactics might change the strategy has not
changed in nearly 15 years.

As an SEO agency we focus on making our clients websites a better destination for
searchers than their competitors.

If Google thinks that our clients site is more useful and will give a better experience for
users then the site will probably rank higher.


Authority
Google measures authority using offsite factors, for example:
• Links
• Press coverage
• Social media mentions
• Traffic
• Search volume

All things being equal a searcher prefers to visit a well known authority brand than an
unknown website with the same content.

Turning yourself into an authority and building your brand by becoming an expert is the
best possible way to improve SEO


Good News – Finance is Complicated
It’s easy for an ecommerce site to be an
authority on the products it sells & the barrier
for entry is low

In the finance sector only a very small number
of companies can be a true authority about
their products

Whether it’s loans, mortgages, pensions,
insurance, debt advice or anything else you
need to take the initiative and become an
authority


Content Marketing
Every time we execute a strategy we
have to ask ourselves whether it moves
us towards our ultimate goal of being a
better search result. If not then why
are we doing it?

How many people have published an
infographic or linkbait article recently?

Why would this make you a better
destination search result for your
visitors?


Infographics
Does this make Confused.com
a greater authority on
insurance?

If not then why do it?

In the long term do you think
Google will reward sites that
built their SEO strategy around
irrelevant infographics?


http://www.copyblogger.com/content-marketing/


Data Visualisation
Releasing useful and interesting data and
integrating this with your core website is the key to
driving long term rankings

If I was searching for “used cars” and the
destination website had published an infographic
showing lots of data on used cars and their
likelihood of breaking down would they be a better
search result?

How about if they had not done the infographic but
included the data on their make/model landing
pages instead?


KBB.com
Real awards, real stats

Integrated into landing pages

SEO is an afterthought, they’ve probably
been doing this for years


Use Your Assets to Build Authority
Moneysupermarket.com
releases an annual Home
Insurance Monitor report
detailing which towns in the UK
are most likely to be burgled,
common accidents, premiums
etc

With data from 3.3m quotes this
could be amazing

It’s in a PDF – big missed
opportunity


Use Your Assets
There is a press release page
talking about it

It looks like this


Rainfall
Even the Daily Mail get this right


Guardian Data Blog
Interactive salary data map


Bond Cars from Evans Halshaw

Brands should have fun
too

Make sure it’s topical &
you are passionate
about the subject


Think About the Future
Google has a history of devaluing every type of link that was created for SEO purposes
• Directory links
• Press release syndication
• Article syndication
• Blatant paid links
• Wordpress theme links
• And many more

Unless the links you build are part of your overall marketing & communications strategy
they will only work for a limited amount of time


Authority
Payday UK don’t have an SEO
agency, don’t engage in link-
building and still rank top 3
most days for “payday loans”

They built authority, in an
industry where competitors
have zero authority, by having
an unwavering focus on the
payday keyword which brands
like Wonga are forced to shy
away from.


Payday Loans
It helped that the previous market leader has not performed well this year


Barclays Business Banking
Authority

Lots of very useful
information


Barclays Business Banking


Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis has
become pretty much
useless in the last 12
months.

Most of your competitors
links probably look terrible

Maybe they disavowed
them?

Never analyse links in the
insurance sector


Competing
If you don’t have a better site, don’t expect to rank higher. Build links
people can’t replicate rather than just copying competitors

http://www.rosshudgens.com/authority-bloat/


Does The AA have a good SEO strategy?
They have the best linkbait in the
entire sector


They certainly have a
lot of links


Do they rank?
The AA ranks well but nowhere near the position they could rank if they were to
integrate their SEO strategy with the rest of the business


Integration
Every aspect of SEO has to be totally integrated and
aligned with your current and future business strategy.

Whether it’s links being integrated with your PR &
communications strategy (which Tim will cover later) or
your website and content strategy if you are not
integrating you risk seeing your SEO strategy fall apart in
years to come.

In 2012 Google has made it clear they are willing to
penalise major brands who thought they could outsource
SEO without integrating it


Content Marketing
Linkbait blog posts
Infographics
Data visualisations

All these things are great but
they don’t always turn your
site into a better destination
for searchers unless you can
use them to brand
yourselves as the experts


Money.co.uk Content Strategy
Huge gains recently due to aggressive content strategy – is this sustainable during
future updates?


It wasn’t always good


Money.co.uk User Generated Content


Money vs Moneysupermarket
At current growth rates they could overtake Moneysupermarket for credit cards within
months, purely due to content strategy


They are also catching in the loan sector


And are ahead already in savings


Mint.com vs Lovemoney.com
Two very successful sites in the
personal finance sector

Built almost entirely around useful
tools as a marketing strategy


Mint.com
Hugely successful in linkbaiting
the tech and personal finance
sector


Mint.com


Mint.com
Build a travel budget
planner tool, get links
from travel blogs


Mint.com
Personal finance tool, sold
for $170m


Lovemoney.com
Mint.com for the UK,
with a strong
content strategy


Lovemoney.com
Impressive recent growth as they have switched strategy to be a comparison site –
definitely one to watch for 2013


Questions?
Patrick@branded3.com

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