By Shari L.S. Worthington, President, Telesian Technology
Did you know that duplicate web content will severely damage your search rankings? What about all that material your channel has copied onto their web site? Did you know that Google applies its optimization criteria to PPC’s? Are you generating anonymous clicks or actual leads?
Almost all businesses start searches for products and services online. The first stop is a known web site or a search engine. That means you must have a decent web site and you have to be visible in the search engines. You can’t play at it any more. But search marketing often feels like zookeeping. There are Panda and Penguin updates (and so many more that you haven’t heard about) on the search optimization side. On the PPC side, there are rabid increases in cost-per-clicks (CPC’s) for the best keywords. In this session, Shari Worthington provides an update on the latest tools and techniques for SEO and PPC success
4. What Factors Correlate with
Higher Search Rankings
• Searchmetrics 2013
–Keyword domains and keyword links have lost
relevance
–Brands are the exception to many rules
–Social signals correlate very well with better rankings
–Good content is always important
–Number of backlinks remains immensely important
–On page technology remains a core basic
9. +1’s = Search Rank?
If you make compelling content, people will link to it, like it,
share it on Facebook, +1 it, etc. But that doesn't mean that
Google is using those signals in our ranking.
Rather than chasing +1s of content, your time is much
better spent making great content.
-- Matt Cutts, Google Sr Engineer, Search
11. Google’s Algorithms Rule the Web
• Panda Update
–Major update February 24, 2011
–Update rolls out over 10 days every month
–Focus on higher quality content for individual searcher
•Reduce rank of poor quality sites
•Increase rank of high quality sites
–Block unwanted domains
12. rel=“canonical”
• Goal: 80% unique content per page
• Canonical pages are preferred version of a set of
pages with highly similar content
• Refer to one master, such as product families with
dupe spec tables
• Add rel=“canonical” to header of non-canonical
HTML pages
14. Page Rank vs Author Rank
• Indicates credibility of page/post author
• Will be used to make Page Rank more accurate
• rel=“author”
• "Within search results, information tied to verified online
profiles will be ranked higher than content without such
verification, which will result in most users naturally
clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of
remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”
– Eric Schmidt, Chairman, Google
15.
16. Content Rules
• Aim for 80%+ unique content per page
• Queries with Knowledge Graph entries up
significantly
17. What Gets a Site in Trouble?
• High bounce rate on page or site
• Low visit times on page or site
• Low % of users returning to a site
• Low click-through % from Google SERPs
• High % of boilerplate content on each page
• Low or no quality inbound links to a page or site
• Low or no mentions to a page or site in social media
18. Google’s Algorithms Rule the Web
• Penguin Update (April 2012)
–Importance of incoming links
–Penguin no-no’s
•Paid text links using exact match anchor text
•Comment spam
•Guest posts on questionable sites
•Article marketing sites
•Links from dangerous sites
19. SEO: On-Page Optimization
• Keyword should be 1st
word in page title
• Create engaging meta descriptions to increase
CTRs
• Bing now penalizes keyword tags!!!
• Use rel=“canonical” to avoid duplicate pages
• Embed rich snippets
24. SEO: On-Page Optimization
• Repeat keyword a few times, use naturally
• Use keyword variations
• Use graphic/image/photos on important keyword-
targeted pages with alt attributes of img tag
• Use keyword in image file name
• Keep important pages close to top of hierarchy
• Use intra-site linking
25. SEO: Where to Start
• Google Webmaster Tools account
• Use www. domain so turned into link everywhere
• No duplicate content, lots of cross-linking within site
• No dynamic URLs
• Include keywords in
–TITLES, content headers
–URLs, files names
–Link text, no “click here”
26. Are Searchers Using Online Ads?
• Banner blindness to display ads, top and right
27. Text Ads?
• Yes, per 77% of users in
Google eye-tracking
study at WPI
• When ads are present,
fewer results are viewed:
6 with ads, 9 without
• 9% clicked on PPCs
28. PPC: What’s New?
• Google: New Exact & Phrase matching
–Includes plurals, misspellings, close variants
–“Rotate Evenly” (for ad testing) will stop rotating after
30 days
–Mobile-specific ads get top ranking for searches on
mobile devices
•5-10% of industrial users are mobile, constantly increasing
•Mobile ads + mobile landing pages
•Web site: Responsive Design