SEO STRATEGY IN 2012 – STAYING

VISIBLE, COMPETITIVE AND

PROFITABLE

Richard Baxter, Founder, SEOgadget

Come and say hi at the Travel SEO Site Clinic, RANELAGH 13:00 – 15:00

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If you want to stay profitable:

Understand how search has changed.

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A typical “QDF” query (Query Deserves Freshness) and image results

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“Lion King” yields ratings from Google shopping in PPC ads, video thumbnails, IMDB’s review snippets

via Schema.org…

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FRESHNESS UPDATE

This is what a fresh result looks like – spot the “21 hours ago” text in the snippet

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Blended organic and local listings for “car hire E3”

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AND THEN THERE’S SOCIAL!

Extreme levels of

social bias for high demand terms.

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THERE’S OPPORTUNITY IN HERE

You can be super competitive in this space with video, images, rich snippets and by taking advantage of

the freshness update

Think….

Video? Image?

Rich Snippets? Freshness?

Social?

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The best, most definitive content

on a topic.

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That was not

the best, most definitive content

on a topic.

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I’m going to invest my time, but

does this stuff actually make a difference?

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Yes: “Best pizza in Chicago” - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/eyetracking-google-serps via

http://mirametrix.com/

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YES: “Pizza” - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/eyetracking-google-serps via http://mirametrix.com/

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YES: “How to make a pizza” - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/eyetracking-google-serps via

http://mirametrix.com/

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YES: “Pizza Cutters” - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/eyetracking-google-serps via http://mirametrix.com/

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15 Tips To Help You

Stay Visible, Competitive and Profitable

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Sort out your local pages (Venice)

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Get good agile at video

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That’s not the video! It’s the post image…

Even placing a video on a post can create a video thumbnail, just make

sure you’re using images, too.

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Also check out: (www.doink.com – create animations), (www.voki.com –

create avatars), (goanimate.com, more animations)

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Also check out: (www.doink.com – create animations), (www.voki.com –

create avatars), (goanimate.com, more animations)

Making a video from a script is easy!

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Make it Embeddable

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This drives me crazy…. So difficult to use their data.

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Totaljobs make the same mistake

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An example of embeddable – simple HTML code via

http://www.creditdonkey.com/history-of-money.html

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Understand how your best competitors are

attracting links.

Your best, not your highest ranking.

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HOW HAVE AIRBNB ATTRACTED LINKS?

How have your best competitors (not your highest ranking) been

attracting links

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HOW DID THEY DO IT?

• Links from large volumes of money saving and frugal tips blogs

• Reader offers dedicated to a specific publication , for example: “Roomorama offers TNW Readers 25%”

• AirBNB host regular meet-ups and events for home owners and holiday makers

• Use of PR, for example: “AirBNB’s 1 millionth night booked"

• Partnerships: places to stay for sporting events and conferences

• The ability to create content focusing on packages / inspiration

• AirBNB have a blog, a technology blog , a ceo ‘s blog and an entrepreneur's blog

• Hundreds of top lists for students, places to stay near universities, sports team tours, academics, disabled travel guides

• Festivals - "finding accommodation for Glastonbury"

• Partnering with events sites, conferences and hack days

• Tours content - art, history, museums, - where to stay, when and what to see

Made by scrolling through the results from Open Site Explorer.

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Test with Rich Snippets

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This is hCalendar – simple events markup, highlighting event name, date,

time and location.

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hReview can be included in the body copy of a simple blog post to

generate a valid rich snippet (hreview)

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Get on top of Image Search

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EVERYBODY GETS IMAGE SEARCH?

Queen-Elizabeth.jpg alt=“Queen Elizabeth”

title=“Queen Elizabeth”

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Visually similar? You’re not going to rank then, are you?

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Optimise your snippets for query intent

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0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

Total

ONE PAGE CAN YIELD MANY QUERY TYPES

Generic Location Price Speed

Time!

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CAN WE OPTIMISE THE SEARCH RESULTS FOR MANY?

Generic

“Wordpress hosting”

“Wordpress hosts”

Longer tail

“best Wordpress hosting UK”

“best Wordpress host 2011”

<meta name='description' content='Check out the best Wordpress hosting packages - we

researched the top Wordpress hosts for security, uptime and site speed. Looking for

the best Wordpress hosting in the UK? Our 2011 reviews include 123 REG, Webfaction,

TsoHost, Clook &amp; LunarPages.'/>

This test wasn’t perfect but it works – check out this post on SharkSEO:

http://sharkseo.com/whitehat/meta-descriptions/

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Create Wonderful, Panda Proof Landing Pages.

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Via Gianluca Fiorelli – go to vistitnorway.com, it’s a beautiful website.

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Technical – Sweat the Small Things

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LINKED TO 404 AND 302’S

BA could Reclaim the link juice from 1000+ root domain links, not including the 302 on their

homepage

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IIS SEO TOOLKIT / SEOMOZ / SCREAMING FROG

Internal broken links, duplicate content, unnecessary redirects are all items that can be

cleaned up on an on-going basis

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Produce Something of Value.

Then, Give it Away.

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Free! Took a week to develop – 6,400 downloads, 184 links so far.

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We created great content and gave it away. It spread well, we smiled.

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Translate the Good Content and Place it

Overseas

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Our Mandarin and German translations – remarkably easy to find a good translator,

inexpensive and both contacts made in English.

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Be Cool on Google+

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Whiteboard+ content for Google+ only

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Look at that real estate! Some much Search Result reserved for Aleyda’s post!

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Scale Your Outreach / Guest Posting

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TAKE LINK BUILDING LESSONS FROM SWISS TONI

Check out Jon Quinton’s “Link Building Lessons from Swiss Toni” http://bit.ly/yeLukQ

Find Combine Filter

Competitor Analysis

Scraping

My Blog Guest

Excel

BuzzStream

Domain Metrics

Links

Social Metrics

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Get (excellent) content for your blog and / or build quality links. Blogger link up is well worth

testing, and use Boomerang / Followerwonk to manage and find contacts.

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Clean up after yourself.

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Brilliant content spreads naturally. Our infographic generated mentions on “GeekOSystem”, “GeeksAreSexy”,

“Makeuseof” and Guy Kawasaki’s “Alltop”, amongst many others. They all link to us!

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Brilliant content spreads naturally. Our infographic generated mentions on “GeekOSystem”, “GeeksAreSexy”,

“Makeuseof” and Guy Kawasaki’s “Alltop”, amongst many others. They all link to our client.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

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Make awesome product pages.

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Embedded how to video AND: QA section below

http://www.espares.co.uk/

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QA IN PRODUCT PAGES

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MAKE COMPARISONS AND VISUALISE DATA

This product page is amazing! http://www.goapr.com/products/stage3_b7_rs4.html

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Increase your conversion.

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This is a single page test for one of our clients in Google Website Optimiser. We increased overall conversion on

this page by 78% - CRO maximises your ROI and carries no risk of failure.

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Make (Inexpensive) viral / great content

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How much of your favourite energy drink, soda, or caffeinated food would it take to kill you? 509 root

domain links: http://www.energyfiend.com/death-by-caffeine

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This is a single page test for one of our clients in Google Website Optimiser. We increased overall conversion on

this page by 78% - CRO maximises your ROI and carries no risk of failure.

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Photo fake out - http://www.oyster.com/hotels/photo-fakeouts/ linked to by the NY Times, amongst the thousands

of others.

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http://www.marca.com/deporte/futbol/mundial/sudafrica-2010/calendario-english.html 19k tweets,

218k likes, 915 linking root domain links

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Want to stay profitable?

Watch for the changes and understand your inputs.

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Studies report decay of up to 15% of the web

Algorithmic update

Panda penalty

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DO I HAVE NEW OR LOST LINKS?

Check out ahrefs, linkdex, SEOmoz, MajesticSEO

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CHECK FOR LINK DECAY AND QUALITY

For the Excel minded: https://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-find-lost-links/

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WHAT % OF MY SEARCH RESULTS ARE UNIVERSAL?

Strongly recommend: searchmetrics – shows organic rankings including image, video, news, shopping in

your local market vs competitors

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UNDERSTAND THE INPUTS

Use SEOmoz’s keyword difficulty tool – it’s very powerful for unpicking what you might need to achieve to

improve your rankings: http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty/

Wait, what?

Richard Baxter, Founder, SEOgadget

Twitter: @richardbaxter

Blog: seogadget.co.uk

Email: richard@seogadget.co.uk

THANK YOU