best-kept secrets for search marketing success
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Best-Kept Secrets for Search Marketing Success. Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts. Advanced SEO: Part Art, Part Science. Stay tuned for the tools and tactics that most search agencies won’t reveal… These tools and tactics will be broken into three major categories - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Best-Kept Secrets for Search Marketing Success
Stephan Spencer,Founder & President, Netconcepts
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Advanced SEO: Part Art, Part Science Stay tuned for the tools and tactics that most search
agencies won’t reveal… These tools and tactics will be broken into three major
categories – Technical Optimization– Content Optimization– Link Building
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Technical Optimization
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Grouped Google Results Science:
– Finding the true position of an indented result by appending &num=9 to the URL of the Google SERP, then &num=8 etc.
– http://searchengineland.com/070705-123736.php Art:
– Knocking out your competitor’s indented second listing
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
This isn’t really #3
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Nope, not yet
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Gone! It’s true position was #9
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
SEO the title of #12 to bump it up to page
1 – it will be grouped to
#2. Then link to #11
and bump it up to page 1 to knock
#4 to page 2
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Indexation Science:
– Essential tools: Yahoo Site Explorer, Netconcepts URL Checker, Netconcepts Product Page Checker (www.netconcepts.com/productcheck)
– Set Google preferences to “English Only” to get a more realistic number, minus pages not crawled
– XML Sitemaps generators Art:
– Figuring out the main indexation threshold for your level of PageRank/authority
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Results estimate
decreased by 2/3rds
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Flowing PageRank Science:
– Using rel=nofollow on low-value internal links– SEOChat PageRank Search tool– SEOChat PageRank Lookup tool– SEO for Firefox tool
Art:– Knowing which of your pages to nofollow– Iterative testing
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
301 Redirects Science:
– When moving sites– For canonicalization– “Conditional” redirects?
Art:– When to use 301 and when to use 404 or 302
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Cloaking Science:
– Viewed cloaked content with Google Translate and translate it from English to English
• http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=en&u=URLGOESHERE&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=9&ct=result
Art:– Good cloaking vs bad cloaking
• For bots only, drop tracking tags and other superfluous parameters from the URLs of your links
• Use “user agent” detection and don’t “noarchive” the pages to obscure what you’re doing
• http://searchengineland.com/070301-065358.php
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Supplemental Index Science:
– Figuring out which pages are and are not in “Supplemental hell”
• http://www.mapelli.info/tools/supplemental-index-ratio-calculator/• site:www.xyz.com -allinurl:www.xyz.com
– Popping pages out of supplemental with robots.txt disallow, rel=nofollow, internal linking, link building
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Duplicate Content Science:
– Scanning for duplicate content– Blocking duplicate content without blackholing the PageRank (i.e.
disallowing with rel=nofollow)– If using tracking parameters in URLs, use 301 redirects or JavaScript– http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/444/SEO-The-Duplicate-
Content-Penalty/ Art:
– Augment and/or revise duplicate content with APIs, unique titles/metadata,
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
CSS Science:
– Reordering content above navigation– Image replacement technique– Progressive enhancement for Flash & AJAX– http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/251/SEO-
Harness-the-Power-of-CSS/ Art:
– Design worthy of CSS Zen Garden
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Content Optimization
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Keyword Research Science:
– Mastering tools such as KeywordDiscovery, Google Suggest, Spyfu,WordTracker, Google Trends, Googspy, SEOSleuth, Yahoosearchranking.com
Art:– Working in misspellings without looking stupid– Thinking like a thesaurus - finding related words that machines can’t
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Keyword Density/Prominence Science:
– Ranks.nl Art:
– Increasing keyword density and prominence in a way that looks natural to the engines and reads well
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
“Thin Slicing” Science:
– Mass edit admin– Mechanical Turk
Art:– Separating the wheat from the chaff
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Link Building
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Reverse Engineer Competitors Science:
– Yahoo Site Explorer– link: on Google & on Google Blog Search– Backlink Analyzer or Neat-o tool
Art:– Negotiating links from the same sites– Outing competitors’ dodgy link schemes
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
High-Value Link Targets Science:
– Build spiders to find sites with super high PageRank, 1 click away from Google, .edu or .gov, high Alexa ranked
– Avoiding situations that erode the value (e.g. reciprocal, in footer, site-wide, adjacent to paid links, too many links on page)
– Use tools like SEOMoz Page Strength tool, SEO for Firefox, SEO-Links Firefox extension
Art:– Identifying sites with a propensity to give link love (e.g. acknowledging
patrons/sponsors) – Crafting approaches & incentives– Buy them
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Mining Your Own Links Science:
– Locating inbound links with poor anchor text with BLA or Neat-o
Art:– Negotiating with these linkers to change the anchor text. Pull
some favors with friends who link to you. It helps to be a blogger when reaching out to other bloggers.
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Wikipedia Science:
– Wikiscanner– Article monitoring (e.g. trackengine, changenotes, urlywarning,
changedetect, watch function)– Building up a long & virtuous contribution history– Flowing pagerank internally with Disambiguation pages, Redirects,
Categories Art:
– Negotiating with an article’s “owner”– Making friends who will back you up in AfDs– Earning Barnstar awards & adminship status
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Digg Science:
– Stripping away all commercial links during the initial Digg swarm– Friending popular Diggers – Timing your presence on the Digg front page for daylight hours
Art:– Crafting a killer title– Getting a powerful Digger to submit your story
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
YouTube Science:
– Proper formatting– Tagging– Title and description– Channels
Art:– Entertainment value– Finding that viral hook
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
MySpace Science:
– Configuration of your profile and page (e.g. profile type)– Establishing critical mass with #s of Friends by targeting bands
Art:– Getting your brand in the URL– Creating a viral MySpace avatar, comment graphic, layout etc.– Having a profile layout that differentiates you without killing usability
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Flickr Science:
– Tagging– Title and description– Albums / photosets– Creative Commons licensing– Commenting (note: links in comments no longer pass juice)
Art:– Photo quality– Viral hook
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Blogs Science:
– Knowing which blogs pass PageRank to commenters (e.g. Mark Cuban’s)– Decoupling your blog’s title tags from the post titles (e.g. “SEO Title Tag”
WordPress plugin)– Using “Sticky” posts to improve keyword prominence on your blog
Art:– Courting bloggers– Commenting in ways that add to the conversation so they get approved
and stay
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
More SEO Tools For link analysis and PageRank
– TouchGraph– Live PageRank– WebmasterEyes– Google Webmaster Central– Thumbshots Ranking tool– SEOpen
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
More SEO Tools Technical optimization
– User Agent Switcher– SwitchProxy– Scrutinizer– Copyscape– Poodle Predictor– Xenu Link Sleuth– Robot Replay– CrazyEgg– What’s That Site Running– Wayback Machine
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
More SEO Tools Other reporting
– Alexa– DigitalPoint Keyword Rankings– Urltrends– Hitwise ($$)
List and links at– www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/368/SEO-Toolkit/– www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/176/SEO:-Tools-for-Link-Building/
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Q&A! For an ebook on Google power searching, SEO
checklists & worksheets, and audio recording, executive summary & transcript of an SEO thought leaders teleconference, email [email protected] or give me your business card
Any questions come to you later, contact me: [email protected]