Stop Playing the Google Yo Yo Game and Win with Real SEO

Presents: Alan Bleiweiss, SEO ExpertStop Playing the Google Yo-Yo Game& Win with Real SEO

About Alan Bleiweiss

• 17 Years Internet Marketing Experience

• 11 Years SEO Experience– Client Sites Contain Up To 80 million pages

• Speaker at BlueglassLA, Blueglass Florida, SMX Advanced, SMX East, Pubcon…

• Journalist at SearchEngineJournal.com

@AlanBleiweiss #VMWebinar

Top Clients

Company Site Size Description

NBC/Universal 228,000 E!Entertainment Televsion’s web site redesign

NBC/Universal 2.5 million Consultant to G4TV’s in-house SEO team

Business Directory 79 million Top 5 Business Directory

ChaCha.com 48 million Ranked among the 200 most visited sites worldwide


In This Webinar

• Understanding Sustainable vs. Myopic SEO

• The Top Five Most Common SEO Mistakes

• Why “Just Write Good Content” is a Fallacy

• The Importance of Critical Thinking in SEO

• Prioritizing Action Plans


Sustainable SEO vs. Myopic SEO

• Sustainable SEO – Takes the long term view– Ensures stability of rankings– Recognizes the user as the primary consideration

• Myopic SEO– Looks for short-term gains– Subject to search engine wrath– Disregards the user



• Sustainable SEO – Creates a stable environment in which users are the

primary consideration above all else• Focuses on quality, depth and refined focus• Cares about the user experience at all times

– Understands search engines attempt to mathematically emulate user experience

• Recognizes search engines need all the help they can get• Knows search engines will continue to work to “clean up” search

results



• Myopic SEO– Takes shortcuts wherever possible

• Continually tries to “trick” search engines with fake signals• Always works to get ahead fast, regardless of long term

concequences

– Operates under the notion that search engines can be fooled

• Uses automation to overwhelm search engine perceived weaknesses

• Relies on cheap labor with minimal quality control



• Sustainable SEO– Stands the test of time– Allows you to build on previous work, add more to it– Relies less on “keeping up with competitors”– Builds trust and authority naturally

• Myopic SEO– Constantly has to reinvent itself– Requires a “churn and burn” mentality– Causes user distrust


Top 5 Most Common SEO Mistakes

• Topical Dilution• Poor Information Architecture• Over-Optimization• Site Speed• External Link Footprint Weakness



• Topical Dilution– Too much diversity of Keywords on a single page– Too many Distractions around the main content– Lack of cross-signal topical confirmation



• Topical Dilution– Too much diversity of Keywords on a single page

• Automobiles• Cars• Vehicles• Motorized Transportation• 4 wheel transport

– Other Common Keyword Dilution Points • Navigation Links• Footer Links• Links to “Top Stories”• Links to “Related Content”



• Topical Dilution– Too many Distractions around the main content

• Content not directly related to this page’s topical focus– Related Articles– Recommended Reading– Top Stories– Around The Web



• Topical Dilution– Lack of cross-signal topical confirmation

• Page Title• URL• Breadcrumb• H1• H2 “sub-topics”• Staying focused on top two phrases, with minor seeding of an additional

two or at most three phrases in the content • Internal Site Anchor Consistency



• Poor Information Architecture– Flat Architecture

• “As few clicks as possible” does not mean http://yourdomain.com/all-content/• “Flat Architecture should not be confused with “quick access”

– Proper URL structure is not flat!• http://YourDomain.com • http://YourDomain.com/Category1/ • http://YourDomain.com/Category1/Product1/ • http://YourDomain.com/Category1/Product2/


http://yourdomain.com/all-content/

http://yourdomain.com/

http://yourdomain.com/Category1/

http://yourdomain.com/Category1/

http://yourdomain.com/Category1/Product1/




• Poor Information Architecture– Not Limiting sectional navigation to just within sections

• Too many sites try to stuff links to every category, sub-category and sub-sub-category in the site-wide navigation

– This overwhelms search engine ability to identify topical intent of pages

– Proper Information Architecture limits sub-category and sub-sub-category links to sub-navigation within their specific category only



• Poor Information Architecture

– Trying to display products in six categories• Pick the category most important to your goals• Include that product in other categories but link to the

single instance of that product in its primary category• Alternately create multiple versions of the same product

and write high quality unique content for every version



• Improper Pagination

– Use of Canonical Tags pointing to the initial section’s landing page is not best practices

– If you have more than a handful of products to display, don’t rely on the “view all” version as your preferred version to index

– Use rel-next/rel-prev and unique URLs for every page in the group

– Insert “page x” on end of page Title, H1 tag



• Over-Optimization• Trying to rank a page for more than two primary phrases and two or three

secondary phrases• Trying to rank the home page for every phrase you care about• Thinking “link to important content from the home page” means you need

two hundred links on your home page• Using several anchor text variations for internal links within your own site• Over-use of keywords within content• Trying to squeeze out every bit of SEO possible

– Image names – image “alt” attributes– image labels



• Site Speed– Megabytes of images buried in CSS files– Dozens of 3rd party widget JavaScript files– Social Sharing for dozens of social sites– Inefficient CDN (Content Delivery Network) solutions

– Cross-check site speed in • Google Analytics• URIValet.com• Tools.pingdom.com

– Check • Home page• Two main category pages• Product Details Page• Blog Page



• External Link Footprint Weakness– Too many links with too little anchor text diversity– Too many links from too few root domains– Forget about “C” block diversity (“A” block diversity is

where it’s at now)– Too many cheap links– Not enough relevance of content sending link– Not enough relevance of site where that content

resides– Not enough diversity of types of content sending links


Why “Just Write Good Content” is a Fallacy

Search Engine Work Really Is Rocket Science

Sitemap.xml files, Rich Snippets, Breadcrumbs, rel-author, rel-canonical, and now Schema.org all show that we need to not just write good content but we also need to help search engines understand our content intent, focus and relationships


We need to send multiple, consistent signals to search engines whenever possible.

For example, if you block a page in robots.txt, don’t use “noindex,follow tag, don’t have a “canonical” tag. These are confusing signals.



– Social Media Engagement is critical to SEO

If you’re the best singer on earth, and you’re on an island thousands of miles from civilization, nobody’s going to know you exist.

Even if search engines find your content, without off-site signals, 99% of the worlds content will never rank in the top fifty



Critical Thinking In SEO

– Stop & consider other things– Different words to describe the same thing– Billions of pages - hundreds of site platforms -

millions of code variations

– Every day, someone’s looking to scam the system. Search engines have a never-ending job to adapt.

– Yet fundamental SEO is always the same!


Prioritizing Action Plans

• What can I do at the template level that will impact my entire site

• Focus on the most important SEO factors• Topical Focus is the most important• Topical Reinforcement is Next

– Cross-match the important signals» Page Title, URL, H1, Content Seeding

– Depth of content matters– Off-site signals add more reinforcement


Takeaways

– Ask “Is this sustainable or myopic”– Ask “Does this dilute this page’s topical focus?”– Ask “Is this forcing the SEO too much?”– Ask “Can I eliminate some of these widgets and make my pages

“cleaner?”– Ask “Do I have to have all these “extra things” on my pages?”– Ask “Is paying for cheap links worth the risk anymore?”– Ask “Why wouldn’t I want to help search engines figure out my

content?”– Ask “Is there another way to look at this outside my experience?”– Ask “What’s going to get me the most sustainable results with the least

amount of effort?


Questions?

Contact: 888-476-1881 www.VerticalMeasures.com

More Traffic. More Leads. More Business.


http://www.verticalmeasures.com/

FREE WEBINAR SERIES:Join us December 13th at 10am PST/1pm ESTMake 2013 Your Best Year Ever by Leveraging 2012 SEO Lessons

Presenter: Kaila Strong– Director of Account Development at Vertical

Measures– Kaila develops campaigns for clients gearing a

variety of efforts toward the overall goal of increasing search engine rankings, brand recognition, traffic, and conversions

Check out our website at www.verticalmeasures.com/webinars

for registration information.

http://www.verticalmeasures.com/webinars

http://www.verticalmeasures.com/webinars

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Stop Playing the Google Yo Yo Game and Win with Real SEO