Site Design, SEO, SMO and Reporting

Andrew Hughes – Snr. Consultant SEO & SMOMay 05th 2011

Today’s SessionDid you know?

The search results

How to approach SEO/SMO

The Fundamentals

Site structure

On page elements

Sign in/register/purchase

Reporting & Testing

Social

Top SEO Actions

Questions

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Did you know #1Google Shopping arrived in Australia two days ago (03/05/11)

Action: You can add a feed through merchant centre

3

Did You know #2YouTube is the second largest search engine in Australia (7th largest

site)

User Stats:• 6.12 Visits / Month• Total reach 42.5%• Over 14 minutes spent on YouTube per user each visit**• Average 62 YouTube pages per user each month

Action: Create and optimise content in different forms

4

Did you know #3Bing ‘Liked results’

Bing’s organic results promotes links that your friends have ‘liked’ publicly or shared on

Facebook. This is to encourage friends and family recommendations.

Action: Implement FB Likes & Shares

Did you know 3.5

Google +1Clicking this button will publicly express your ‘like’ for the website

in Google search results

Action: Apply For +1 Here

Did you know #4

•~$917 billion worth of retail sales last year were “web-influenced”

• Online + web-influenced offline sales = 42% of total retail sales

•By 2014, the web will influence = 53%

Forrester Research March 2010

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Did you know #5

PPC spend = 92% of Internet marketing dollars

<10% of all clicks are made on PPC ads

Organic clicks yield >90% of all traffic

Only 8% of all SEM spend is spent on SEO

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The Search Results

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The Universal Search Results Page

Paid Search Results Driving direct response with tailored messaging and up to

date offers

Organic Search Results Increasingly active social

communities lead to higher SEO rankings

Latest (Google) News Articles Digital PR

Image Search Results Active communities lead to

higher coverage

Video Search Results Social growth results in more

relevant videos.

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What The User Looks At5 sec. 10 sec.

20 sec. 15 sec.

How to Approach SEO/SMO

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Start With Keyword/Market Research• You need to know exactly what people are looking for,

and what you can offer them?

• Relevance - there is no point your website talking about new motors if the audience is searching for new cars.

• Catch people early in the purchase cycle – category based searches & product research

• Use your SEM campaigns to immediately find out what keywords are most profitable / offer highest ROI.

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Keyword Research Tools• Google Keyword Tool• Google Keyword Suggest (Below)• Advanced Search Functions –Eg Wonderwheel (Right)• Bing Keyword Research Tool• WordTracker (more US based)• Your own analytics package (Omniture/GA/WebTrends)

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Understand Your Current SiteWhat are people doing on your current site?

15 Top – Google Analytics | Bottom Left Crazy Egg | Right ClickTail

Tools To Understand Your Potential Audience• Competitive SEO & Social Analysis (Popular Content/Linked

to/Shared• Google AdPlanner• Hitwise (CAN be insightful but expensive)

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The Fundamentals

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Site-wide SEO• Reporting should be considered everywhere• Hosting, Application & Site Speed (Target site to Australia if you have

a .com)• Install and understand Webmaster Tools – Google/Bing/Yahoo• Use logical URL structures (for deep linking)eg.com.au/clothes/jackets NOT eg.com.au/prod.aspx?id=23452345&col=23452345

• Try to be W3C HTML & CSS compliant (Consolidate where possible)• Use Semantic structures within content (H1>H6 sensibly)• Consider Web and Mobile accessibility• Don’t use Flash. If you can’t avoid it offer HTML alternatives• Understand that you should be able to test new layouts & designs at every

opportunity...

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Site Structure

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Your IA should reflect consumer interest• Your keyword research should guide your site structure and

hierarchy• Keep the user in mind at all times (your research as a guide)• Use intuitive menus and navigation• All pages are not equal – consider priorities and quick links• Ensure that your content can be crawled (Spiders)• Sitemaps – XML & HTML all help this• Breadcrumb navigation (RDFa, Microdata or Microformats)• Separate content types if necessary, but try to keep on one

domain!

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Tips and Tricks• Browse your website using Lynx text browser – this is as close to

seeing what Google sees – or in WMT – browse as Googlebot• The first file that Google looks for on your server is Robots.txt• Use Robots.txt to reference your Sitemap Index File• Don’t use robots.txt to limit crawling – you want this!• Create page, image, news, video sitemaps to help index content• Use RSS for news/blog content or special offers• Consider: Dynamic Title, Description, Keyword, RDFa data based

on information in db• Contextual linking is very beneficial – use it carefully• ONLY USE ONE DOMAIN – use vanity URL’s but host all content

on your money domain.

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On Page Elements

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Your Category Pages• Your category pages should be content rich and relevant for the consumerEg. Harvey Norman note laptops not notebooks

• Avoid Duplicate Content – use meta: noindex, follow on duplicate content• Reference preferred content versions eg. if sort by price ensure that

preferred version is canonically referenced or if neccessary, nofollow (not prefered)

• Ensure that it is possible to navigate back to the homepage quickly• Use sitemaps intelligently – if you have lots of content, break it down into

relevant sitemaps• Use offers to drive people to sign up

to RSS or social notifications

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Your Product Pages• Strong Meta calls to action – proven and tested within

the SEM campaign, and tailored by category & sub category.

• Images, Video (Transcripted), Specifications

• Data rich – Rich Snippets (e.g. RDFa)

• RSS subscribe to the category or sub category offer feed

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General On Page Advice• Customers who viewed this also viewed/Customers who

purchased this also purchased

• Purchase based rules – eg. three products or more = free shipping within a product category

• Social sharing: Share & Like – OpenGraph integration / Share on Twitter. For blogs & news – Reddit/Technorati

Which takes us on to...

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Sign In/ Registration/Payment

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Simplify the process – Sign up/Sign InAn interesting ecommerce fact that is very relevant:Two seconds is the new threshold that an average online shopper is willing to wait

for a web page to load and 40 percent of shoppers will wait no more than three seconds before abandoning a retail or travel site (Forrester and Akamai 2009)*

Improve login options:Open ID or Open Graph (Facebook)

27 * From Retail Technology Review October 2010

Payments Simplified• Make sure that your check out process can be completed in three

pages at the most.• Use your reporting to track fall out within the purchase funnel• Offer consumers the option to pay how they want to pay.

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Reporting and Testing

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Reporting• Build a robust analytics and reporting framework• Set up your analytics to report on all aspects• Understand and action the insights that it generates

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Business Objective Goal KPI KPI Target

Get more job enquiries

more job seekers to website

increase visibility in search engines through SEO

30% traffic increase per year

increase visibility through SEM websites

10% traffic increase per

month

more clientsimprove job seekers contacting Robert Half

for jobs (employment success) 35% increase

Effective Online Marketing Build online database

increase number of available job seekers20 job seekers

per week

increase number of employers looking for employees

10 employers per week

Business SpecialisationAcquire more IT, accounting and banking employees/ employers

Acquire quality clients through SEO and SEM

25% increase per month

Testing (MVT)Test to ensure that you maximise your conversionBe it a like, consumption of content, a sale or other, make sure that

you segment your users and maximise your conversions

Google offer Website Optimiser for free – there are paid tools too

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Social

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Five things to bring people to your site• Great service! Build those great reviews, advocates and links

• Offering advice in the research phase – Create great content to become the authority on a topic

• Become the Authority - Facts and figures – Infographics, leverage your data/research

• Socially enable your site

• Incentivise - Offers / Deals – Facebook/Google/Social Media Engagement

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Top SEO Actions

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Things that get forgotten• Platforms (new) should support four to five versions of your site. Front end site

– updates should just be skin/aesthetic changes

• Design and build to be as cutting edge as you can afford to be – a site that is 12 months old looks it compared to a new site

• Employ the best people you can, to action search and social work - They will make more out of reasonable tools, than the best tools with mediocre people

• Record every click - if you have the storage capacity. The more you know about your site and users, the better

So what are the foundations from an SEO perspective?

My Top Tips for Site & Traffic Success(obviously involve an SEO from the start) but...

• Base decisions on data not opinions• Keyword research should be considered in IA design• Try to enhance your SERP listings as much as possible• Don’t believe everything that Google tells you• Create great content that can be referenced, shared and that

aligns with your social media strategy• Report, segment, test, learn, action – regularly• Do what you do best, as well as you possibly can do it• Don’t follow your competitors – offer the user what they are

looking for

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Questions

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Andrew Hughes – Snr. Consultant SEO & SMOReprise Media: http://www.reprisemedia.com.auTwitter: @y0z2aMy Blog (Just Rebuilt): http://searcheverywhere.netThis Presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/y0z2a