2. A bit about me
• I’m Sara! But a lot of people call
me Sport
• I run the in-house marketing for
Inflow. Also, I’m experienced in PR
and Digital Marketing
• I play roller derby
• I’m #awesome
3. • SEO 101
• Quick and Dirty Guide To Getting Found
• Advanced SEO
• Bitches Be Bloggin’ Pro Tips
• Q & A (if there’s time)
• Don’t worry, this deck will be available!
What’s in store today
4. • What do you want to get out of this?
• What do you need for your site?
• Write your questions down
• Ask them!
Let’s set some goals for this next
hour and a half
8. Who likes animals?
1. Google releases Analytics in 2005
2. There are a number of major and minor
Google Algorithm updates
3. Let’s go to the Zoo!
1. Panda, Penguin & Hummingbird
10. Here are some examples of
thin and low-quality content
• Thin content is content that doesn’t answer the
searcher’s question
• Low-quality, well that’s just throw away content
11.
12.
13. Keyword stuffing,
duplicate content, ads vs. text
• Keyword stuffing is just silly. Don’t even do it. Use
your keywords naturally.
• DO NOT STEAL CONTENT ever
• Clean up your pages to make sure you have more
content than ads on every post and page.
14. When in doubt, do yourself a favor
• Noindex your posts
• Personal stories, filler content, Music Mondays,
Font Fridays, etc.
• Can save you time later
15. Thug Penguin
1. Penguin –
update targeting
sites with crappy
links.
Please note: Thug life chose
the penguin.
16. *face palm* Reckless Linking
• Here’s the bottom line:
• Never buy links
• Don’t do a ton of reciprocal links (ex. Linkups)
• NOFOLLOW your affiliate links and blog comments
• Don’t have a bunch of spammy links going in or out of
your blog
17. What is a spammy link?
• Did you pay for it?
• Is it from a shady site or
link farm?
• Is it from a site that has
received a Manual
Penalty?
• Giveaways & Guidelines
18.
19. • This is the Ultimate Google Shit List
• You may have some weird stuff going on and
perhaps it was missed by one of the other
updates
• Google will get you. You cannot hide.
Manual Penalties
23. Punk Rock Hummingbird
• A true algorithm update
focused on the
Understanding the
Semantic Context of
Your Query
• Social signals officially
counted toward SEO
33. Keywords
An SEO expert walks in a bar, bars, pub, tavern, Irish
pub, tavern, local bar, dive, beer, drinks, cocktails, happy
hour . . . You get the point
34. Keywords
Google’s Keyword
Planner Tool
Google Suggest
Google Autofill
Google Trends
All the on-site spots
Naturally in your
copy
Image Alt Tags
Social Media
Personas
How to Use ThemWhere to Find Them
40. Digging Deeper
• Conduct a content audit to see which low-
performing posts can be noindexed
• Hire a reputable SEO company to do a
technical audit
41. Create Really Valuable Content
• Long, authoritative posts
• 500+ words but really 1000+
• Do keyword research and use your two/three
keywords naturally, yet strategically in your
post
• Beautiful Images to enhance user experience
• Taken together you will attract natural links
42. • Try to always include a call to action (CTA) in
your posts
• Include value adds
• End your posts with a strong summary and
CTA
Call to Action / Value
43. Amplify Your Content
• Take to social media
to promote your
content
• Contact influencers
and involve them
• Consider paid as part
of your strategy
@downey_robinson
44. Now with all that
said
How do you make your blog a big hit? Here are some
Bitches Be Bloggin’ Pro Tips
47. • Be sure that the experience is consistent for
your user
• Image size
• Fonts
• Brand Voice
Adhere to your brand standards
48. • Get organized
• Decide where you ARE going to focus efforts
• Take time every week to continue your SEO
education
• Use your resources
How do you manage all of this?
49. Have an Editorial Calendar
• To plan the content
• To research keywords
• To do competitive analysis of a keyword
• To have a social strategy in place
50. Use Free Plugins
• Wordpress -Yoast All
In One SEO
• Blogger - Fill out the
description and URL
51. Google Analytics
• You can look at what
content performs
• SEO is a lot of
experiments
• Analytics help make
logical connections
and correlations with
our hypothesis
52. Where to go to learn
• Hubspot!
• Marketing Library
• GoInflow.com
• blog!
• Moz
• Blog
• White Board Fridays
54. • SEO is #awesome
• Link responsibly
• Get help when you need it
• Otherwise, focus on what YOU can do
• Infuse inbound marketing in your plan
• Learn more for free!
• Questions?
Quick Recap – TL; DR version
Welcome! Thanks for coming! This is my 3rd Alt, but my first time presenting. How many of you are here for your first time? Even bigger welcome! The party tonight is going to be awesome. Don’t be shy, come say hi! And let’s totally do some photo booths together! We only have an hour and a half together and I need to go get taped into my party outfit, so let’s jump right in!
Also, if you’re an eCommerce site, please write eCommerce on your biz card and drop it off at the end. I’ll email you some additional eCommerce-focused tips and info.
Take a moment and set your intentions for this next bit of time together. I want YOU to get the most out of this as possible.
Okay, so one thing we need to get straight is that SEOs differ in a lot of opinions. We all conduct research and make assumptions. Sometimes we can make concrete connections between things and our SEO is 100 percent in line with Google. However, a lot of SEO is testing and tweaking.
With the exception of the image carousel, all of these results are organic-- meaning they are not paid. The images are there to serve the user. It’s such a vague term that Google really has no good idea as to what relating to roller derby the user is searching for. So they serve up as much RELEVANT content they have. You’ll see that it’s asking me to sign in. If I was signed in, Google would tap into to all of my previous search history and use geo-targeting to serve the most relevant results. Also, note, Google gets 1 trillion searches a year. And a super fun tidbit, Google often uses GeoTargeting when you’re not logged in.
In this example, I searched for “roller derby tickets.” Here, we have the paid results in yellow. It makes sense that we’d have paid results on a page that had a more actionable search like “roller derby tickets.” Google assumes that you may be interested in actually purchasing tickets to see Roller Derby. The reason they are serving Portland, Houston and LA is because these teams have a very high authority and have been around for a long time. You’ll also notice that my search terms are bolded on the SERP.
Previous to Analytics was a program called Urchin that SEOs used to gather metrics. On recent major updates, Google likes to give them animal names for some reason. For all you wondering why we’re going over this, it’s like that old adage about teaching someone to fish. But first I need to talk to you about the lake, and the fishing pole and we’ll fish.
Image source: http://bit.ly/1u4XiGq
#1) Thin has more to do with content that doesn't answer the searcher's question or isn't of much use. For example, those annoying Q&A pages that don't have the answer yet, or internal site search results, or "stub" pages for real estate listings when there are no listings...
#2) If you post stuff like Instagram of the day or something close to that, noindex it. It’s not good content and could harm you in the long run.
These next two slides have examples from my personal blog. This post is a classic example of hilarious yet garbage content. For a very long time on my personal blog, this was my posting MO and well, my SEO could have been way better had I posted better content. This is also a really great example of a post that I should noindex (more on that in a moment)
Believe it or not, this is one of my most popular post with organic traffic. Yes, I have more issues than Vogue. But apparently so do searchers. Again, this is a post that I would noindexed.
This is the other portion of Panda that you need to be aware of.
If you do curate, make sure you use the rel=canonical tag to direct to the correct original source of the content. And give proper credit. There is NO shame in pointing credit to the OP. And just a little tip: this can be a tactic in inbound marketing to grow your Influencer network.
If you really want your blog to grow, then you need to learn your HTML so you can control what is indexed and/or followed.
An advanced SEO strategy would be to take all of those "Font Friday" posts and rel = canonical them to a single "Free Fonts" webpage on your site. This page would be more useful to the searcher, not related to a specific week and would inherit all of the PageRank from all of those other posts. BAM!
Image source: http://bit.ly/1wbE1Tm
Links are how you optimize your site off-site, meaning you earn links from other sites pointing back at yours.
There is a misconception about links out there. People think they are tricky. They’re not. Here’s the bottom line. (see bullets) Reciprocal links seem like a good idea but when done too often, they can make you seem spammy. Links, in search engine’s eyes (Google), are considered an unbiased vote for your content from the linking source. Votes (and by that I mean links) are good for your site. However, if they come from a sketchy place or are paid for, they are very bad. At our agency, we’re now seeing some Penguin penalties that seem more related to outgoing links than incoming ones. So link responsibly.
Image source: http://bit.ly/1BZ4n1q
Of particular importance to this audience would be Google's guidelines on give-a-ways, freebies, product reviews., etc. in which the blogger received something in exchange for the post. No follow the link and label the post accordingly. This has more to do with the FTC than Google, but Google is onboard with the FTC on this: http://goo.gl/sIJDgh
Should you ever end up with any of the penalties, you need to know that the road to recovery is ROUGH. It takes a long time to recover and recapture the traffic you may have had previous to the penalty. Links especially will suck the LIFE out of you. You’ll have to find ways to disavow the links and then ask Google for reconsideration of your site.
You need to follow their rules to a “t” and it can take many months to actually get the penalty lifted. With Panda and Penguin, updates are usually when you’ll see differences in traffic should you get your site in order by the time of their next update. They release updates several times a year.
Yes, it will knock you on your ass.
Lego Batman knows. Again, if you’re already in a good place or just starting out, use these tips to never end up like that poor girl or Lego Batman.
Image source: http://bit.ly/1C2AMEk
Hummingbird (which was a replacement of Google's entire algo, akin to the Caffeine update) was meant to UNDERSTAND THE SEMANTIC CONTEXT OF YOUR QUERY. For example, if you search for “What’s the closest place to buy the iPhone 6 to my home,” a traditional search engine might focus on finding matches for words — finding a page that says “buy” and “iPhone 6,” for example.Hummingbird should better focus on the meaning behind the words. It may better understand the actual location of your home, if you’ve shared that with Google. It might understand that “place” means you want a brick-and-mortar store. It might get that “iPhone 6” is a particular type of electronic device carried by certain stores. Knowing all these meanings may help Google go beyond just finding pages with matching words.
UX is knowing what the user wants, which is why YOU need to know what your user wants. If they get to your page and can’t navigate, then they leave. Google sees that as a bad user experience.
Just checking in.
Who here wants to get found? Now why is getting found so important? Think about a time you searched Google for something. How many of you searched for some Downton Abbey inspired outfit for tonight’s themed dinner?
OK, pop quiz... Is meta description a ranking factor? How do you optimize images? What WP plug-in should I use for SEO?
Just to be clear, the meta description has NO SEO VALUE directly. Its value is that this is the first thing people searching see about your site. Along with the title tag, this is how you reel them in. And indirectly, better click-through-rates on your search result could improve rankings.
I also threw in a trick here. I used the term “Fresh Meat” which we use in the roller derby world to talk about new recruits. Using that word may better help my results get served to the right searcher.
Yeah? Also, Chappelle!
Quick poll: how many of you guys read the descriptions in red before you click on the link?
Also, you’ll see here some things I did well and some things I could have done better.
Alt tags are how Google knows what an image is. Go to that for Roller Derby – Know where your personas are, because you want to meet them where they are online. That will likely be the biggest trend in 2015. Another note on keywords: Thanks to Hummingbird and other algorithm updates in the last five years, Google is VERY good at understanding related terms, including synonyms as well as semantic relations (hockey and puck, for instance). So it really is best to think about "topics" rather than keywords.
Here the term is “roller derby gear” – something that a new recruit or a fan may look for. You’ll notice that it spikes early in the year. Any guesses why? -- It’s when we recruit.
This is additional content that Google deems relevant.
This is also stuff that Google thinks may be good for you.
THIS is on way that SOCIAL can affect your SEO. A user goes to the link, finds it interesting and then goes to your page. All part of the inbound ecosystem. You must include this because you are basically riding on Pinterest-authority coattails to get yourself found.
A content audit is going through all your old posts and telling Google Bot which ones are worth crawling. By setting a post to noindex, it tells the spiders to go elsewhere to your more valuable content. Don’t worry, Boo. If you need additional content audit information – I got you! I’ll be sure to include all of the info when we send out resources!
Knowing, your personas is critical to creating truly valuable content
Employ this tactic. All too often we just end our posts and don’t help our user process what we’ve asked them to read. If we want true engagement, we need to encourage them to comment, to go see older blogs (internal linking – which doesn’t have to be nofollow link) and to make sure we’ve given them a reason to come back. A lot of times, your authentic voice plays a HUGE role in that last bit.
Also consider content amplification services like Outbrain, Cision, Zemanta, Taboola and native ad platforms on social (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter). Also, remarketing/retargeting and Facebook ads
It’s all user experience, yo. Mobile etc., if I can’t navigate, I won’t come back, and neither will Google. Again, this is where personas play in. Be a purple cow. Be remarkable to those you want to find you remarkable.
Totally doable!
Don’t let this scare you. Many times, you’d bring in a company like Inflow to help with this.
Remember, Google cares about bounces. Google cares about how your users interact and engage with your site. How far they dig. If users get to your site and it feels like a hodgepodge, they may quickly exit. If it’s too difficult to navigate, you’re doing yourself no favors. Just always keep your brand standards and user experience in mind.
There are so many tasks, you simply cannot do it all. Come up with a plan of how you will spend your time and resources. Strong organic results take time, keep that in mind.
You can also create an old school one on an actual calendar, or day planner like I do. You can use Trello (I also use) or even a Gdrive spreadsheet to create a calendar. Even WP has an option to make one. Just use it once you build one out.
But in all honesty, I truly suggest WordPress as your blogging platform. You have so many more opportunities there, better theme options, a world of plugins that can be game changers.
After seeing what your users are interacting with, you can then create more content along those lines. It will also help you determine what kinds of people are naturally coming to your site. You may need to more aggressively go after your persona if they aren’t naturally coming.
But mostly: http://www.goinflow.com/blog/
High five!
Shout out to @goinflow and @altsummit for helping get this info out there!