Bootstrap Web Marketing: SEO & Social Media Who I am Disclaimer Format of the presentation

SEO

Why SEO Kicks Ass Other than effort, it’s free. The skillset required for the time intensive work is relatively inexpensive. SEO is the gift that keeps on giving

Why SEO Doesn’t Kick Ass SEO is a fast-changing world. You live and die by Google. It’s delayed gratification (and there’s a chance of NO gratification)

SEO Ranking Factors – Markup / Keywords (most startups do fine here) Title Tag H1 Tag Body Text Domain Name URL

SEO Ranking Factors – Other Markup Popularity within internal linking (very important for long tail or low competition keywords) Quality of OUTGOING links Page updates

SEO Ranking Factors – Overall Site Popularity Global popularity of your site (combination of link quantity/quality) Age of site Site performance (time on page, bookmarks, etc.)

Inbound Links Relevance of inbound links Anchor text (Google bomb) and adjacent text.

Negative Factors Duplicate Content –Very Similar Pages –Identical Page Titles / Meta Info Keyword stuffing?

Keyword Research (most startups suck at this)

How to Evaluate Keywords? How many people are searching for a particular word/phrase? How competitive is the landscape for that word/phrase? How relevant is the keyword? Actionable keywords? “lowest price wii” –Measure the conversion! Non-bouncing keywords

How do people search? # of words –28.9% 2 word phrases –27.8% 3 word phrases –17.1% 4 word phrases –11.4% 1 word phrases 62% click on the first result 21% feel search engines don’t understand their query

Keyword Research – Have someone else do it :$99.95http://

Count, relevance (entered by you) and # of targeted searches per day Estimated monthly clickthru for 1 st, 5 th, and 10 th position on each major engine. Competitiveness of each keyword

Keyword Research – Do It Yourself

Overture Keyword Research Tool (free) Source: Yahoo and Affiliates Notes: Doesn’t distinguish singular and plural Not an ideal tool for exact phrases

WordTracker.com ($8/day) Source: Dogpile (.6%)and MetaCrawler (.4%) (what kinda people use these engines!?)

Adwords Traffic Estimator (free, req. AdWords account) Source: Google Notes: Not good for long tail phrases

Other Resources Yahoo Search Marketing Tool KeywordDiscovery.com Google Trends Estimated monthly clickthru for 1 st, 5 th, and 10 th position on each major engine.

Best Resource – Pay for It Buy an Adwords campaign for a phrase. Pay enough to get your ad on the first page. Metrics will show you the number of ad views.

Spiderability

Can Search Engines Find Every Page/view on Your Site? Create a “sitemap” (HTML and/or XML) Be mindful of internal link text Remember that internal link popularity is important (more than 1 link is better than one link) –“Related content” buckets are valuable Most important for sites with lots of data hidden behind a search interface

Effective Presentation on SERPs Readable, compelling, objective title (65 characters) Readable, compelling, objective meta description (155 characters) Short URLs perform better Stuffed titles, descriptions, and URLs look spammy and don’t get clicks

Title Meta-Description URL

Npost Example

Keyword Research: “Tech Startup Jobs”? Markup for SEO: Title tag, tag, referring anchor tag

If you were a search spider, what would you click on to find “seattle rails jobs”?

What about here? No spiderability! Site Structure for SEO: Keyword targeted pages linked to (flat site structure). Internal link popularity is important.

SERP Title: For the target phrase “rails jobs seattle”, the title should lead with “Rails Jobs in Seattle, WA” or somesuch. Description: meta description should be unique and compelling. URL: Short urls perform better

Link Building Campaigns

Anotomy of a Link Building Campaign Links from trusted sites. Links to “deep” pages in your site. Links with good anchor text Links from good pages –Home pages –Content pages Links from relevant pages No JavaScript / no ‘nofollow’!

Value of Building Links People click on them! Branding And, of course, SEO

Anatomy of a Good Link Source Search for your top keywords/phrases – the top or so are worth getting links from. Content rich page Links deep to the most relevant page Anchor text, title tag, h1 tag, etc all match to the keyword in question

Who to Ask for Links Any relevant site Good way to find sites to ask are to find sites that link to your competitions’ sites. –Linkdomain:mycompetition.com Linkdomain:mycompetition.com “my keywords”

How to Ask for Links First, see if there is a standard procedure for getting links Second, see if you (as a user) can post a link (comments, look for nofollow), forums, etc. (Be careful of abuse) If not, ask for it. If necessary (if you can), buy it.

Say Thanks for EVERY Link That You Can Set up a google alert for your business name Any time you get ANY mention, stop by and say THANKS Any time you get criticized, stop by and respectfully engage in the conversation (and keep it going!)

Social Media Marketing (Big linkbuilding Opportunities!)

Linkbait (It’s Easy!) Defined as something that people want to link to, blog about, talk about, digg, vote up, etc. The good news is, baiting web geeks words. Write something –Useful –Funny –Controversial Better yet, have your standard content pages be –Useful –Funny –Controversial To get a feel for linkbait, head over to popurls.com (list of top digg, reddit, del.icio.us links) Would you bookmark this? Would you it to your friends?

Headlines/titles Win the Day “Who wants [blank]?” “The Secret of [blank]?” Little known ways to [blank]?” Lists – Top 5, Top 10, etc. (useful, funny, controversial)

Top Social Media Venues Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc. Blogs (all blogs matter, top blogs matter more) –(check source for nofollow tag / server redirects ) Forums –(check source for nofollow tag / server redirects ) Public Profiles (anywhere) Directories Design Portals

Go Viral Ideally, using your product is an inherently public act that elicits others to jump on board Viral is not a marketing strategy, it’s a product strategy –"Tell a friend" –Widget embeds –Addressbook importing (These don’t make your product viral, but they’ll help it if it is) First priority is creating something that is useful, funny, controversial enough that people want to share it Second priority is making it easy