© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts SEO 101 presented by Chris Silver Smith, Lead Strategist, Netconcepts

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Today’s Agenda  What is SEO?  The Seven Steps to Higher Rankings –Get Your Site Fully Indexed –Get Your Pages Visible –Build Links & PageRank –Leverage Your PageRank –Encourage Clickthrough –Track the Right Metrics –Avoid Worst Practices

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Part 1: What Is SEO?

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Everything Revolves Around Search

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Search Engine Optimization  6 times more effective than a banner ad  Delivers qualified leads  80% of Internet user sessions begin at the search engines (Source: Internetstats.com)  55% of online purchases are made on sites found through search engine listings (Source: Internetstats.com)

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts SEO is NOT Paid Advertising  SEO – “Search Engine Optimization” – seeks to influence rankings in the “natural” (a.k.a. “organic”, a.k.a. “algorithmic”) search results  PPC – paid search advertising on a pay-per- click basis. The more you pay, the higher your placement. Stop paying = stop receiving traffic.  SEM – encompasses both SEO and PPC

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Natural Paid

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Google Listings – Your Virtual Sales Force  Savvy retailers making 6-7 figures a month from natural listings  Savvy MFA (Made for AdSense) site owners making 5-6 figures per month  Most sites are not SE-friendly  Google friendliness = friendly to other engines  First calculate your missed opportunities

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Not doing SEO? You’re Leaving Money on the Table  Calculate the missed opportunity cost of not ranking well for products and services that you offer? # of people searching for your keywords x engine share (Google = 60%) x expected click- through rate average conversion rate average transaction amount xx  E.g.10,000/day x 60% x 10% x 5% x $100 = $3,000/day

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Most Important Search Engines  Google (also powers AOL Search, Netscape.com, iWon, etc.) – 60.29% market share (Source: Hitwise)  Yahoo! (also powers Alltheweb, AltaVista, Hotbot, Lycos, CNN, A9) – 22.58%  Live Search (formerly MSN Search) – 11.56%  Ask – 3.63%

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts People Are Googling… Are You There?

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts What Are Searchers Looking For?  Keyword Research –“Target the wrong keywords and all your efforts will be in vain.”  The “right” keywords are… –relevant to your business –popular with searchers

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Keyword Research  Tools to check popularity of keyword searches –WordTracker.com –Trellian’s KeywordDiscovery.com –Google’s Keyword Tool –Google Trends –Google Suggest

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts WordTracker.com  Pros –Based on last 60 days worth of searches –Singular vs plural, misspellings, verb tenses all separated out –Advanced functionality: keyword “projects”, import data into Excel, synonyms, …  Cons –Requires subscription fee ($260/year) –Data is from a small sample of Internet searches (from the minor search engines Dogpile and MetaCrawler) –Contains bogus data from automated searches –No historical archives

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Keyword Popularity – According to WordTracker

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Trellian’s KeywordDiscovery.com  Pros –Full year of historical archives –Data is from a large sample of Internet searches (9 billion searches compiled from 37 engines) –Singular vs plural, misspellings, verb tenses all separated out –Can segment by country –Advanced functionality: keyword “projects”, import data into Excel, synonyms, …  Cons –Access to the historical data requires subscription fee (~$30/month) –Contains bogus data from automated searches

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Keyword Popularity – According to KeywordDiscovery

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Google AdWords Keyword Tool  Pros –Free! (Must have an AdWords account though) –Data is from a large sample of Internet searches (from Google) –Singular vs plural, misspellings, verb tenses all separated out –Can segment by country –Synonyms  Cons –No hard numbers  Augment this tool with other free Google tools: –Google Suggest (labs.google.com/suggest) –Google Trends (

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Keyword Popularity – According to Google AdWords Keyword Tool

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Keyword Popularity – According to Google AdWords Keyword Tool

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Keyword Popularity – According to Google Trends

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Keyword Popularity – According to Google Suggest

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Keyword Research  Competition for that keyword should also be considered –Calculate KEI Score (Keyword Effectiveness Indicator) = ratio of searches over number of pages in search results –The higher the KEI Score, the more attractive the keyword is to target (assuming it’s relevant to your business)

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts SEO. A Moving Target.  A lot is changing… –Personalization & customization –Vertical search services (Images, Video, News, Maps, etc.) –“Blended Search” – aka “Universal Search”  Fortunately, the tried-and-true tactics still work… –Topically relevant links from important sites –Anchor text –Keyword-rich title tags –Keyword-rich content –Internal hierarchical linking structure –The whole is greater than the sum of the parts

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts The Search Engines Are Your Friend  Sitemaps.org  Webmaster tools (e.g. Google Webmaster Central, Live Search Webmaster Center, Yahoo Site Explorer)  Rel=“nofollow” tag  Meta NOODP tag  Speaking at search engine conferences  Publishing blogs dedicated to helping webmasters  Participating on SEO forums  “Weather reports”

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts SEO Can Dramatically Improve Traffic/Sales Non-optimal site with few pages indexed Optimized site with many pages indexed Few visits/sales per dayMany visits/sales per day! $ =

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Part 2: Seven Steps to High Rankings

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Begin The 7 Steps 1) Get Your Site Fully Indexed 2) Get Your Pages Visible 3) Build Links & PageRank 4) Leverage Your PageRank 4) Encourage Clickthrough 6) Track the Right Metrics 7) Avoid Worst Practices

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts 1) Get Your Site Fully Indexed  Search engines are wary of “dynamic” pages - they fear “spider traps”  Avoid stop characters (?, &, =) ‘cgi-bin’, session IDs and unnecessary variables in your URLs; frames; redirects; pop-ups; navigation in Flash/Java/Javascript/pulldown boxes –If not feasible due to platform constraints, can be easily handled through proxy technology (e.g. GravityStream)  The better your PageRank, the deeper and more often your site will be spidered

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts  Lack of links down into all content pages; Common Barriers to Spidering: ! Non-textlink sitewide navigation; Search-form-only; Javascript/Java-only (ie: dynamic menus); Flash apps / Splash pages; Non-optimal URL formats of pages; URL Framed Content

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts 1) Get Your Site Fully Indexed (cont’d)  Page # estimates are wildly inaccurate, and include non-indexed pages (e.g. ones with no title or snippet)  Misconfigurations (in robots.txt, in the type of redirects used, requiring cookies, etc.) can kill indexation  Keep your error pages out of the index by returning 404 status code  Keep duplicate pages out of the index by standardizing your URLs, eliminating unnecessary variables, using 301 redirects when needed

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Results in “Supplemental Hell”

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Example of Non-Optimal Site Design: PR 8 site has META refresh redirect on homepage – spiders not redirected to destination page: Also, indexed “shell” page doesn’t contain any text content!

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Not Spider-Friendly  GET --> 302 Moved Temporarily  GET --> 302 Moved Temporarily  GET =http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bananarepublic.com%2Fbrowse%2 Fhome.do&CookieSet=Set --> 302 Moved Temporarily  GET --> 200 OK

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts 2) Get Your Pages Visible  100+ “signals” that influence ranking  “Title tag” is the most important copy on the page  Home page is the most important page of a site  Every page of your site has a “song” (keyword theme)  Incorporate keywords into title tags, hyperlink text, headings (H1 & H2 tags), alt tags, and high up in the page (where they’re given more “weight”)  Eliminate extraneous HTML code  “Meta tags” are not a magic bullet  Have text for navigation, not graphics

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Pretty good title

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Not so good title – where’s the phrase “credit card”?

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Dynamic Site Leaves Session IDs in URLs: Titles not specific to page (“jewelry”) Main text on page just nav labels – Little text/keyword content

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Good link text and body copy

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Good link text and body copy

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts No link text or body copy

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts No link text or body copy

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Take a peek under the hood

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts The “meta tags”

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Unnecessarily bloated HTML

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts 3) Build Links and PageRank  “Link popularity” affects search engine rankings  PageRank™ - Links from “important” sites have more impact on your Google rankings (weighted link popularity)  Google offers a window into your PageRank –PageRank meter in the Google Toolbar (toolbar.google.com) –Google Directory (directory.google.com) category pages –3rd party tools like SEOChat.com’s “PageRank Lookup” & “PageRank Search”  Scores range from 0-10 on a logarithmic scale  Live Search and Yahoo have similar measures to PageRank™

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Google’s Toolbar – with handy PageRank Meter

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Google Directory – listings are organized by PageRank

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Conduct any Google query and get results organized by PageRank

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts 4) Leverage Your PageRank  Your home page’s PageRank gets distributed to your deep pages by virtue of your hierarchical internal linking structure (e.g. breadcrumb nav)  Pay attention to the text used within the hyperlink (“Google bombing”)  Don’t hoard your PageRank  Don’t link to “bad neighborhoods”

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Ideal internal site linking hierarchies: Homepages often will be highest-ranking site pages since they typically have most inbound links. Good link trees inform search engines about which site pages are most important. *Sitemaps can also be used to tell SEs about pages, & to define relative priority.

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts 4) Leverage Your PageRank  Avoid PageRank dilution –Canonicalization ( vs. domain.com) –Duplicate pages: (session IDs, tracking codes, superfluous parameters) –In general, search engines are cautious of dynamic URLs (with ?, &, and = characters) because of “spider traps” Rewrite your URLs (using a server module/plug-in) or use a hosted proxy service (e.g. GravityStream) See

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Duplicate pages

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Googlebot got caught in a “spider trap”

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Search engine spiders turn their noses up at such URLs

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Thus, important content doesn’t make it into the search engine indices

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts  Zipf’s Law applies - you need to be at the top of page 1 of the search results. It’s an implied endorsement.  Synergistic effect of being at the top of the natural results & paid results  Entice the user with a compelling call-to-action and value proposition in your descriptions  Your title tag is critical  Snippet gets built automatically, but you CAN influence what’s displayed here 5) Encourage Clickthrough

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Where do searchers look? (Enquiro, Did-it, Eyetools Study)

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Search listings – 1 good, 1 lousy

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts 6) Track the Right Metrics  Indexation: # of pages indexed, % of site indexed, % of product inventory indexed, # of “fresh pages”  Link popularity: # of links, PageRank score (0 - 10)  Rankings: by keyword, “filtered” (penalized) rankings  Keyword popularity: # of searches, competition, KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Indicator) scores  Cost/ROI: sales by keyword & by engine, cost per lead

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Indexation tool –

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts

Link popularity tool –

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts

Avoid Worst Practices  Target relevant keywords  Don’t stuff keywords or replicate pages  Create deep, useful content  Don't conceal, manipulate, or over-optimize content  Links should be relevant (no scheming!)  Observe copyright/trademark law & Google’s guidelines

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Spamming in Its Many Forms…  Hidden or small text  Keyword stuffing  Targeted to obviously irrelevant keywords  Automated submitting, resubmitting, deep submitting  Competitor names in meta tags  Duplicate pages with minimal or no changes  Spamglish  Machine generated content

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Spamming in Its Many Forms…  Pagejacking  Doorway pages  Cloaking  Submitting to FFA (“Free For All”) sites & link farms  Buying up expired domains with high PageRanks  Scraping  Splogging (spam blogging)

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts BMW.de hosted many “doorway pages” like this one

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts “Sneaky redirect” sent searchers to this page

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Not Spam, But Bad for Rankings  Splash pages, content-less home page, Flash intros  Title tags the same across the site  Error pages in the search results (eg “Session expired”)  "Click here" links  Superfluous text like “Welcome to” at beginning of titles  Spreading site across multiple domains (usually for load balancing)  Content too many levels deep

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts What Next? Conduct an SEO Audit!  Is your site fully indexed?  Are your pages fully optimized?  Could you be acquiring more PageRank?  Are you spending your PageRank wisely?  Are you maximizing your clickthrough rates?  Are you measuring the right things?  Are you applying “best practices” in SEO and avoiding all the “worst practices”?

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Review Errors/Messages in Webmaster Tools

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Content Opt Opportunities via Webmaster Tools

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Check Robots.txt Exclusions in Webmaster Tools

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Case Study: Homestead.com  What worked –Comprehensive SEO & usability audit –Intensive on-site training sessions with their IT and marketing teams –6 months of support  What didn’t work –No significant changes to the look of the home page were allowed for political reasons, significantly reducing the options available

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Case Study: Homestead.com  Results –Within 8 weeks of launch of some preliminary optimization work, on page 1 for “website hosting” in Google –With our audit as a blueprint, later that year launched an internally built site redesign which landed them the #1 Google position for “website hosting” –Consistently held #1 position for 2 years

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts

In Summary  Focus on the right keywords  Have great keyword-rich content  Build links, and thus your PageRank™  Spend that PageRank™ wisely within your site  Measure the right things  Continually monitor and benchmark

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Further Reading  blogs.cnet.com/seosearchlight  google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769    googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com  blog.outer-court.com    

© 2008 Chris Silver Smith Netconcepts Q&A! Special White Papers Available: Image Search Optimization Local Search Optimization Tactics New Link Building Paradigms Online Marketing Tips for Universities Tips & Tricks for Local Search Ads