Download - Bootstrap Web Marketing: SEO & Social Media Who I am Disclaimer Format of the presentation
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
• http://www.seoresearchlabs.com/ :$99.95
Count, relevance (entered by you) and # of targeted searches per day
Estimated monthly clickthru for 1st, 5th, and 10th 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 1st, 5th, and 10th 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, <h1> 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 100-150 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 email 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