Bing Webmaster Tools Webinar - Tomorrow's SEO

Tomorrow’s SEO

Who’s the speaker today?

Duane Forrester

@duaneforrester

Bing Webmaster ToolsSpeaks at shows, runs forums and blog, provides guidance on new WM toolswww.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters

Does he have a clue?12+ years as an inhouse SEO; ran seo at MSN; has helped Disney, GAP, Walmart +http://www.linkedin.com/in/dforrester

And this helps me how?Blogging since 2001; owns 150 domains; actively optimizes and monetizeshttp://twitter.com/DuaneForrester

what does duane do at bing

Your data, always fully provided.

EMERGING TECHNOLOGY:• VOICE• VISION• TV

LOCATION-BASED SERVICES

TOUCHAPP ECOSYSTEM

WEB BROWSER

E-COMMERCE

The FACEBOOK

SOCIAL GRAPH

INFORMATION ANYTIME

DIRECTORIES

PAGERANK

NEXT GEN SEARCH

USER-GENERATED CONTENT

Web innovation and the evolution of search

1995

2007 201320102004

2001

• Importance is relative• Use as a guide – no item is unimportant

Will SEO still be relevant?

Content Social User Experience Link Building SEO


Move from “Query” to “Session”

• Query is a single action

• Session is a collection of related actions over time


dog • Monday• dog beds• dog accessories• dog toys• vet near me• dog friendly hotels• organic dog food• doggy day care

• Tuesday• dog sweaters• dog collars• dog leashes• puppy training• dog park• dog allergies• pictures of dogs

SessionQuery

Understanding searcher behaviour

Imprecise Results Refinements Lengthy Tasks

1 in 4

delivers successful

results

46% of sessions lasting day

or more

40% of sessions

require refinements

ComScore and Microsoft Internal AnalysisYour data, always fully provided.

Time Spent on Sessions by Length Queries Over Time

0-3 mins9%

3-10 mins12%

10-15 mins10%

15-30 mins23%

>30 mins46%

Almost

50%of all time spent searching is on sessions > 30

minutes

Almost

50%of queries are returning to

previous tasks

New Queries51%

Partial Repeats

30%

Exact Repeats19%

Moving Beyond Queries to Sessions

Search Sessions are Long and Repetitive…


As Search Evolves, So Must You

Creating personas can help

“home gym”

• Purchase• Install• Sell• Set fire to• Impress friends

• Who• Where• Others• Semantic• Research

KnowledgeContentServicesMediaReal Time

+ UX

“Linda” Query Intent Detection Task Derivation


A Changing “Web of Objects”Real-Time Firehose Services

Devices MultimediaPlaces/Things

People


10

Search: Discovery & Interaction

vertically integrated areas

online services

DEVICES PLATFORMS SERVICES

REAL-TIME SOCIAL LOCAL & MOBILE COMMERCE

web

There are hundreds of billions of pages online, from ~ 650 million sites

We need to crawl them all to see if they’re worth indexing

To crawl a URL costs roughly a penny…a little less, in fact

http://


keywords

UNDERSTANDING THE WEB

UNDERSTANDING THE USER

apps

geo spatial

social

topical

actions

interests

context

SEARCHthe consumer

gateway to the cloud

Reorganize the Web for Task Completion


Not just browser, but devices, services and social networks

Not just mouse and keyboard, but also voice, touch, gesture & vision

Creation of new information via social graph and geospatial index

Information Architecture

Interaction Model

Entry Points

Reinventing Search Across 3 Dimensions


Mobile will continue to influence social

The ultimate “PC”

Not just phones

9B today

25B by 2021


Search continues to evolve

New devices demand different search experiences other than links

The ability for these devices to feed in real time signals help us handle intent better and therefore can provide a more tailored experience

Its not just mobile phones or tablets and its not just text entry. Anything could be a search – voice, a picture, a gesture, sound – anything. We are building the universal interface for search.


A Fresh approach to Targeting Optimization

• Every area of your site has a value - $, PV, Emails, etc.

• Determine what the value is

• Sort your site by value to see what really matters

• Organize work around high-value areas first


Content Development

• The engines respond to unique, useful content

• How do you define “content”?

• Match content to your audience

• Different mediums for different jobs (video, text, images, etc.)

• Don’t take shortcuts – limit syndicated content

image credit: http://mashable.com/2011/01/10/social-content-strategy/Your data, always fully provided.

Keyword Research

• It will always begin here

• Match data from external sources against your own data

• Develop “Share of Voice” reporting to explain success

• Back to sessions – create keyword campaigns around topics


Encourage more Sharing

• So you want more shares for your content, do you? Try these ideas.

• Create lists: people love to consume content in list-form. Its quick, easy and simple.

• Use hooks: ego, humor, anger, contrarian – be careful with them, but when used well, they are highly effective.

• Participate in communities: when you are valued member of a community, the community supports you.

• Share others’ information: people love when what they share gets shared itself. Share from trusted sources.

• Ask questions: your followers will love the interaction and it’ll grow your following as others engage.


6 major investment areas for SEO

• Crawlability– Xml sitemaps– Navigational structure– Rich media cautions– Graceful degradation– URL structure– Robots.txt

• Site Structure– Links– URL structure and keyword usage– Clean URLs – no extraneous parameters (sessions,

tracking, etc.)– HTML & XML sitemaps– Content hierarchy– Global navigation – springs form hierarchy planning +

style of nav (breadcrumb, link lists, etc.)– Rich media – don’t bury links in Javascript/flash

/silverlight/AJAX

• On-Page– Head copy

• Titles – unique, relevant, 60 characters or so long• Descriptions – unique, relevant, grammatically correct, 160 or

fewer characters (Google shows up to 160 characters)

– Body Copy• H1, H2 and other H tag usage• ALT tag importance & usage• Keyword usage within the content/text – see “Perfectly

Optimized Page” image• Anchor text – using target keywords to support other internal

pages

• Content– Build based on keyword research– Down-level experience enhances discoverability– Keep out of rich media and images– 250 words per page or more– Produce new content frequently– Make it unique – don’t reuse content from other

sources– Content management – using 301s to reclaim value

from retiring content/pages– <LINK> canonical to help engines understand which

page should be indexed and have value attributed to it– 404 error page management to help cleanse old pages

from search engine indexes

• Links– Plan for incoming & outgoing link generation– Internal & external link management– Content selection – planning where to link to– Link promotion via social spaces – direct traffic & seo

value– Managing anchor text properly– URL structure can help insert keywords where they are

needed

• Social– Build your community– Interact often– Share useful content– Be consistent and useful– Grow facebook, twitter, etc.


Building Efficiences

• Look for ways to streamline your time

• Identify a customer need and fill in the blanks

• Look to identify patterns so you can leverage efficiency efforts


Trusted RSS feeds

new

slett

er

Copy & Paste

AUTOMATED

AU

TO

MATED

MANUAL

Let’s Talk About You

• Do you have the skills to succeed?

• Do you know what it takes to be a successful SEO?

• What skills should you add and why?

• Telling people you’re an expert doesn’t make you an expert


Skills you will need

• SEO tactics

• Social tactics

• Paid search methodologies

• Budget management

• Negotiation

• Executive pitching

• Influence

• Psychology

• MarketingYour data, always fully provided.

Never Stop Learning

• Take classes on your own

• Take training offered by employers

• Seek mentorship opportunities (someone to mentor you)

• Run your own websites

• Read more

• Seriously – read this book >>>


Checklist

• Planning• Create a content calendar

• What topics will I write?• When will I write them?• When will I publish them?• How do I feed the cycle?

• Keyword research

• Analytics• Ensure you have access to data you need to

make key business decisions• Open and analytics account somewhere,

install the code and activate it• Seek out social media analytics if you’re

active socially

• Accounts• Bing Webmaster Tools• Google Webmaster Tools• Analytics of your choice• Twitter• Facebook• LinkedIn• Any other social space that matters to your

visitors


• SEO• Run SEO Analyzer inside Bing WMT to see what

needs work• Create topic target lists by doing keyword

research• Have I covered the basics?

• Unique, keyword relevant title tags on each page

• Unique, relevant meta description on each page

• Filled in ALT tags on images with relevant descriptions

• Is my robots.txt file sorted out? See Robotstxt.org

• Check my sitemap for accuracy and completeness

• Oh my, there’s so much more – see the other slide

• Social• Have accounts where your customers are• Engage with them• Answer questions promptly and honestly• Think of social as a face-to-face conversation• Share with links to useful content beyond your

own

Wrapping up

• SEO has evolved – have you?• Recognize the changes and get new skills• SEO of tomorrow is here now• SEO will simply become Online Marketing• You might be an SEO, but you need to know it all• Never stop learning

…and use the tools provided.

Thanks for your time!Duane Forrester

Sr. Product Manager - Bing

@duaneforrester


Education

Bing Webmaster Tools Webinar - Tomorrow's SEO