rimc 2013 keynote address

Search, Social and the Future

Who’s the speaker today?

Duane Forrester

@duaneforrester

Bing Webmaster ToolsSpeaks at shows, runs forums and blog, provides guidance on new WM toolswww.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters

Does he have a clue?12+ years as an inhouse SEO; ran seo at MSN; has helped Disney, GAP, Walmart +http://www.linkedin.com/in/dforrester

And this helps me how?Blogging since 2001; owns 150 domains; actively optimizes and monetizeshttp://twitter.com/DuaneForrester

what does duane do at bing

Your data, always fully provided.

Search – we're trying to solve…

Imprecise Results Refinements Lengthy Tasks

1 in 4

delivers successful

results

44% of sessions lasting day

or more

42% of sessions

require refinements

ComScore and Microsoft Internal AnalysisYour data, always fully provided.

Move from “Query” to “Session”

• Query is a single action

• Session is a collection of related actions over time


dog • Monday• dog beds• dog accessories• dog toys• vet near me• dog friendly hotels• organic dog food• doggy day care

• Tuesday• dog sweaters• dog collars• dog leashes• puppy training• dog park• dog allergies• pictures of dogs

SessionQuery

Time Spent on Sessions by Length Queries Over Time

0-3 mins9%

3-10 mins12%

10-15 mins10%

15-30 mins23%

>30 mins46%

Almost

50%of all time spent searching is on sessions > 30

minutes

Almost

50%of queries are returning to

previous tasks

New Queries51%

Partial Repeats

30%

Exact Repeats19%

Moving Beyond Queries to SessionsIncreasing Use for More Complex Tasks

Search Sessions are Long and Repetitive…


A hotel that’s near Bryant Park, since that’s near my meeting, has reliable air conditioning, good smelling shampoo and a shower taller than me. A decent bar is nice to have. A coffee maker in the room is critical. I don’t care if it’s Starwood. Needs to be under $200/night.

7

Search: Discovery & Interaction

vertically integrated areas

online services

DEVICES PLATFORMS SERVICES

REAL-TIME SOCIAL LOCAL & MOBILE COMMERCE

web

There are trillions of pages online, from ~ 700 million sites

We need to crawl them all to see if they’re worth indexing

To crawl a URL costs roughly a penny…a little less, in fact

http://


keywords

UNDERSTANDING THE WEB

UNDERSTANDING THE USER

apps

geo spatial

social

topical

actions

interests

context

SEARCHthe consumer

gateway to the cloud

Reorganize the Web for Task Completion


Not just browser, but devices, services and social networks

Not just mouse and keyboard, but also voice, touch, gesture & vision

Creation of new information via social graph and geospatial index

Information Architecture

Interaction Model

Entry Points

Reinventing Search Across 3 Dimensions


A Changing “Web of Objects”Real-Time Firehose Services

Devices MultimediaPlaces/Things

People


A Changing Web of Your Objects

Schema.org can help

Mark up your content


Search - Evolved

Deliver knowledge by computationally understanding user intent.

“home gym”

• Purchase• Install• Sell• Set fire to• Impress friends

• Who• Where• Others• Semantic• Research

KnowledgeContentServicesMediaReal Time

+ UX

“Linda” Query Intent Detection Task Derivation


Mobile

The ultimate “PC”

Not just phones

9B today

25B by 2021


Search continues to evolve

New devices demand different search experiences other than links

The ability for these devices to feed in real time signals help us handle intent better and therefore can provide a more tailored experience

Its not just mobile phones or tablets and its not just text entry. Anything could be a search – voice, a picture, a gesture, sound – anything. We are building the universal interface for search.


Why social matters to search

• Signal of topical authority

• Real-time – engines want fresh content, fast

• Integrated social signals influence click actions of searchers

• Social signals remain only a few of thousands of signals for organic ranking

How users click on your results can impact rankings and when we show cues like your Facebook friends with results, click rates can be impacted.

http://www.kyleclouse.com/social-media-marketing/Your data, always fully provided.

What’s on your mind?

• Buy a camera

• Search finds:

• Expert results

• Crowd-sourced opinions

• Getting close, but want a friend’s opinion

• Wait for lunch?

• Social search helps me see their opinion faster

• I skip from asking a question (including my friend) to impressing them with a choice they’d make (and getting their approval)

Social search gets us closer to what we really want – even if we don’t state it clearly

http://www.kyleclouse.com/social-media-marketing/Your data, always fully provided.

How Social Impacts Search


Humanity is leaving its traces…

60+ Billion Tweets sent on Twitter in 2012

65+ hours of video uploaded every minute to YouTube

30+ photos uploaded to Flickrevery second

30BB+ posts/month Facebook!


More than just traces, a collective convo…

http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/visualizing-friendships/469716398919


Social Graph and PatternsSocial Graph

Focus

PatternsNatural

Unnatural

Quality TrustPopularityTimeliness

You:FollowersFollowsLikesReplies

Retweets/Likes (by whom)

Follows (Twitter)

Followers (Twitter)

Who else Posts/Shares (reputation)

Fans (Facebook)


• Don’t try to extrapolate from this graph• Importance is relative• Use as a guide – no item is unimportant

Where does SEO fit in?

Content Social User Experience Link Building SEO


6 major investment areas for SEO

• Crawlability– Xml sitemaps– Navigational structure– Rich media cautions– Graceful degradation– URL structure– Robots.txt

• Site Structure– Links– URL structure and keyword usage– Clean URLs – no extraneous parameters (sessions,

tracking, etc.)– HTML & XML sitemaps– Content hierarchy– Global navigation – springs form hierarchy planning +

style of nav (breadcrumb, link lists, etc.)– Rich media – don’t bury links in Javascript/flash

/silverlight/AJAX

• On-Page– Head copy

• Titles – unique, relevant, 60 characters or so long• Descriptions – unique, relevant, grammatically correct, 160 or

fewer characters (Google shows up to 160 characters)

– Body Copy• H1, H2 and other H tag usage• ALT tag importance & usage• Keyword usage within the content/text – see “Perfectly

Optimized Page” image• Anchor text – using target keywords to support other internal

pages

• Content– Build based on keyword research– Down-level experience enhances discoverability– Keep out of rich media and images– 250 words per page or more– Produce new content frequently– Make it unique – don’t reuse content from other

sources– Content management – using 301s to reclaim value

from retiring content/pages– <LINK> canonical to help engines understand which

page should be indexed and have value attributed to it– 404 error page management to help cleanse old pages

from search engine indexes

• Links– Plan for incoming & outgoing link generation– Internal & external link management– Content selection – planning where to link to– Link promotion via social spaces – direct traffic & seo

value– Managing anchor text properly– URL structure can help insert keywords where they are

needed

• Social– Build your community– Interact often– Share useful content– Be consistent and useful– Grow facebook, twitter, etc.


A Fresh approach to Targeting Optimization

• Every area of your site has a value - $, PV, Emails, etc.

• Determine what the value is

• Sort your site by value to see what really matters

• Organize work around high-value areas first


Content Development

• The engines respond to unique, useful content

• How do you define “content”?

• Match content to your audience

• Different mediums for different jobs (video, text, images, etc.)

• Don’t take shortcuts – limit syndicated content

image credit: http://mashable.com/2011/01/10/social-content-strategy/Your data, always fully provided.

Keyword Research

• It will always begin here

• Match data from external sources against your own data

• Develop “Share of Voice” reporting to explain success

• Back to sessions – create keyword campaigns around topics


Encourage more Sharing

• So you want more shares for your content, do you? Try these ideas.

• Create lists: people love to consume content in list-form. Its quick, easy and simple.

• Use hooks: ego, humor, anger, contrarian – be careful with them, but when used well, they are highly effective.

• Participate in communities: when you are valued member of a community, the community supports you.

• Share others’ information: people love when what they share gets shared itself. Share from trusted sources.

• Ask questions: your followers will love the interaction and it’ll grow your following as others engage.


Building Efficiencies

• Look for ways to streamline your time

• Identify a customer need and fill in the blanks

• Look to identify patterns so you can leverage efficiency efforts


Trusted RSS feeds

new

slett

er

Copy & Paste

AUTOMATED

AU

TO

MATED

MANUAL

Skills you will need

• SEO tactics

• Social tactics

• Paid search methodologies

• Budget management

• Negotiation

• Executive pitching

• Influence

• Psychology

• MarketingYour data, always fully provided.

Never Stop Learning

• Take classes on your own

• Take training offered by employers

• Seek mentorship opportunities (someone to mentor you)

• Run your own websites

• Read more

• Seriously – read this book >>>


Conversion optimization


• Different sources must be handled differently

• Organic traffic is building trust

• Paid traffic is ready to open their wallets

• Email traffic is ready to buy…now

• Ensure your conversion path is short and sweet

• Off the shelf carts can usually be tweaked to gain improvements in conversions.

Tools should enable doing

Found @ Google WMT Found @ Bing WMT

crawl data

crawl rate configure

sitemap submissions

parameter handling

link data for your site

traffic stats

keyword data

messaging

block URLs

fetch as bot

crawl data

crawl rate configure

sitemap submissions

parameter handling

link data for your sitetraffic stats

keyword data

messaging

block URLs

fetch as bot

organic keyword researchrank stats

index stats

index tracker

canonical alerts

SEO reports

SEO analyzer

link explorer


Wrapping up

• Content is the reason• Keyword research is a beacon• Quality is your watch word• Authority is your goal• Niche is your starting point• User Experience is your religion

…and use the tools provided.

Thanks for your time!Duane Forrester

Sr. Product Manager - Bing

@duaneforrester


rimc 2013 keynote address

Education