arts marketing association north-east network meeting: the evolution of search (what you need to...

www.venturestream.co.uk

THE EVOLUTION

OF SEARCH

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT TECHNICAL & ON-SITE SEO

Marty Hayes, Digital Director,

Venture Stream

@MartyHayes


ABOUT US

VENTURE STREAM


WHO ARE WE

Vic MorganFounder & MDExtensive ecommerce & digital experience as entrepreneur & consultant in the US & UK.

US-UK cross ponder, Boston Red Sox fan and aspiring park ranger.

Andy RobinsonCreative Director10 years experience in omni-channel ecommerce design and creative marketing with multi-million pound brands.

Dog-loving newlywed with a penchant for shiny gadgets and American beer.

Marty HayesDigital DirectorManagerial consulting experience in leading digital agency and client-side ecommerce.

Drum-playing, jumper-loving family man and coveter of VW campervans.


OUR DIGITAL MARKETING APPROACH…

Conversion Rate Optimisation

SEO PPC Email Affiliates Social Content

Strategy Leadership

Analytics


WHO WE WORK WITH


PARTNERS


A LITTLE ABOUT ME


LET’S GET CRACKING…

WHAT WE’LL COVER


WHAT WE’LL COVER

• A (brief) history of search

• Key algorithm updates and what they mean for you

• What does technical SEO mean?

• How to check, audit and improve your technical SEO

• What does on-site SEO mean?

• How to audit, research and optimise your on-site content

• How technical & on-site SEO can combine forces for search supremacy


FIRST UP…

A (BRIEF) HISTORY

OF SEARCH


PAGERANK

• One of the first algorithms used by Google (named after one of the founders – Larry Page)

• According to Google…– “PageRank works by counting the

number and quality of links to a page to determine a rough estimate of how important the website is. The underlying assumption is that more important websites are likely to receive more links from other websites”

• This ‘voting system’ led to underhand tactics and spamming


ACQUIRING LINKS

• Link A• Link B

Website 1


Website 2


Website 3


"If there is a link selling site and they get

caught for selling links, and they just happen

to be linking to you, the value of that link that

the site was providing, it just goes away”

» Matt Cutts, Head of Webspam, Google


EARNING LINKS

• Link A

• Link BWebsite

1

• Link A

• Link BWebsite

2

• Link A

• Link BWebsite

3

• Link A

• Link BWebsite

1

• Link A

• Link BWebsite

2

• Link A

• Link BWebsite

3


“This is the beginning of the

journey to brands becoming more

like publishers”.

» Hamish Priest, Global Media Categories &

Partnerships, Dove, Unilever.


NEXT…

KEY ALGORITHM

UPDATES AND WHAT

THEY MEAN FOR YOU


GOOGLE PANDA UPDATE: FEB 2012

• “Cleaning up the web”

• Panda seemed to crack down on thin content, content farms, sites with high ad-to-content ratios, and a number of other quality issues. Panda rolled out over at least a couple of months, hitting Europe in April 2011

• Panda 4.0 – May 2014– impacted 7.5% of English-language

queries

• Panda 4.1 – September 2014 (actually the 27th iteration of the update)

– Thin content / affiliate crack-down

– Low dwell time / high bounce rate

– Keyword stuffed, doorway pages

– High ad content / deceptive ads

– impacted 3-5% of English-language queries


GOOGLE PENGUIN UPDATE: APRIL 2012

• After weeks of speculation about an "Over-optimization penalty", Google finally rolled out the "Webspam Update", which was soon after dubbed "Penguin." Penguin adjusted a number of spam factors, including keyword stuffing

• Rewarding high quality sites –penalising link-farms and unnatural link-building

• Penguin 3.0 – October 17, 2014


SO…..


WHAT WAS TO COME NEXT…?

MORE BLACK AND WHITE ANIMALS?


NOPE…

THE BIRDS


GOOGLE HUMMINGBIRD UPDATE

• September 2013 – Google officially unveils the first major algorithm upgrade in 3 years

– Previous version, ‘Caffeine’ was built to better index websites in search results

• Hummingbird affected about 90% of Google searches

• Targeting longer, more complex, conversational search queries

• Google attempting to understand intent and meaning

• A shift in the landscape


THE IMPACT OF HUMMINGBIRD

Pre-Hummingbird

• Individual keyword targeting

possible

• Little evidence of context

• Little correlation between

search query intent and

video

• Keyword / index focussed

Post-Hummingbird

• No longer optimise solely

for key words or phrases

• Context is key

• Content needs to be

created to meet user intent

• Audience focussed


GOOGLE PIGEON UPDATE

• July 2014

• Aim to make more useful, relevant and accurate local search results

• Dramatically altered some local results and modified how Google handles and interprets location cues

• Impacted local search results rankings and some local businesses may have noticed an increase or decrease in web site referrals, leads and business from the change


MOZ ALGORITHM CHANGE HISTORY

http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change


SO…

WHAT DOES TECHNICAL

SEO MEAN?


LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS FOR SUCCESS

Technical SEO

Search Marketing


WHAT DOES ‘TECHNICAL SEO’ MEAN?

Site Architecture

URL Structure

Webmaster Tools

Sitemaps

Meta Robots PaginationGeo-

TargetingResponse

Status Codes

Site SpeedImage

OptimisationRich

SnippetsAuthorship


WHAT NEXT…

HOW TO CHECK, AUDIT

AND IMPROVE YOUR

TECHNICAL SEO


THE CONSULTANT IN ME SAYS…


BUT…

THERE’S A LOT YOU CAN

DO YOURSELF, WITHOUT

HAVING TO GIVE ME A

CALL


GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS


GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS

• Structured data

• HTML improvements

• Manual actions

• Index status

• Remove URLs

• Crawl errors

• Crawl stats

• Fetch as Google

• Robots.txt tester

• Sitemaps

• Security issues

• PageSpeed Insights

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/


MOZ

• Crawl diagnostics– High

– Medium

– Low

– Notices

• Open Site Explorer

• On-Page Optimisation– Grade a Page

• Crawl Test Tool

• Link Analysis

• Free 30-Day Trial

• From $99 / month

https://moz.com


SCREAMING FROG SEO SPIDER TOOL

• Site Crawler – emulates search engine spiders

• Client & Server Errors

• Redirects

• URI Issues

• Duplicate Pages

• Page Titles & Metas

• Canonicals

• Anchor Text

• Images

• XML Sitemap Generator

• Free Download (with 500 URI crawl limit and limited functionality)

• £99 / year licence

http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/


ONCE YOU’VE

EXHAUSTED THOSE

TOOLS (OR YOUR SELF)

THEN GIVE ME A SHOUT!


HOW ABOUT…

WHAT DOES ON-SITE

SEO MEAN?


WEBSITE CONTENT: 2 DISTINCT TYPES

Page Elements (Meta)

URL

Page Title

Meta Description

Page Content (Body)

H1 Heading

Body Content

User Generated Content


PAGE ELEMENTS (META)



PAGE TITLEYour Page Title should be unique to that page

and reflect the key themes of it. Keyword

research should be undertaken to optimise

Page Titles as they are a key ranking factor.

Each one should be around 65 characters in

length.



URLThis includes your domain name and page

name. It should reflect the content of the page

accurately, and be search-engine friendly.






length.



URLThis includes your domain name and page

name. It should reflect the content of the page

accurately, and be search-engine friendly.






length.

META DESCRIPTIONAlthough not a ranking factor, a meta

description has the potential to encourage

users to click on your site via a well-written,

unique, conversion-optimised description. It

should be fewer than 150 characters, include

your USPs and a clear call to action, where

appropriate.


PAGE CONTENT (BODY)

BODY CONTENT

Each page should have an

appropriate amount of well-

written, informative body

content in order to answer

user questions and encourage

them to find out more

SEO should be your

secondary concern, with user

experience and conversion

optimisation your primary

H1 HEADING

One of the most important on-

page SEO ranking factors

Should be a single, unique,

well-optimised H1 Heading

per page

Keyword research should help

to inform the wording of the

H1 Heading.

USER GENERATED CONTENT

Search engines (and users)

value user generated content

as it provides freshness to

pages in the language of site

users

Examples of UGC include:

Reviews

Questions

Answers

Comments

Images.


THINK BACK TO THE GOOGLE PANDA UPDATE.

DON’T PRACTISE KEYWORD STUFFING

DON’T HAVE THIN CONTENT.

DO CONNECT USERS WITH UNIQUE,

AUTHORITATIVE, VALUABLE CONTENT.


WHICH LEADS US ON TO….

HOW TO AUDIT, RESEARCH

AND OPTIMISE YOUR ON-

SITE CONTENT


STEP 1: AUDIT

• Use a tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider to visit every page on your site (you could do this manually for smaller sites)

• Record key elements on each page:– Page Title

– H1 Heading

– H2 Headings

– Meta Description

– Body Content


STEP 2: RESEARCH

• Use a tool like Google’s Keyword Planner to research key words and phrases associated to your on-site content

• Include landing page, category and product / service

• Choose relevant, niche keywords with appropriate search volume

https://adwords.google.co.uk/KeywordPlanner


STEP 3: OPTIMISE

• Page Title: 65 Characters

• H1 Heading: Single, unique, optimised

• Meta Desc: USPs –about 150 Characters

• Body Content: Unique, value-add, informative, engaging content – FOR USERS

http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html


IF YOU GET STUCK

DURING ANY OF THOSE

STEPS THEN GIVE ME A

SHOUT!


FINALLY….

HOW TECHNICAL & ON-SITE

SEO CAN COMBINE FORCES

FOR SEARCH SUPREMACY


A HANDY

SUMMARY


• Search has evolved over the years to better connect users and their intent with websites and their content.

• Technical SEO & On-Site SEO are two areas that you should control, or at least influence. Build internal resource and knowledge, and seek expert help.

• Lay the foundations for search success with a website that search engines can access, index and infer authority to, and a one that users can gain insight, value and knowledge from.

• As long as you keep those things in mind, then algorithm updates and tactical changes shouldn’t matter – provide search engines and people with what they want and they will love you for it.


RIGHT THEN…

ANY QUESTIONS?


VENTURE STREAM

ONLINE – venturestream.co.uk

EMAIL – [email protected]