Natural Search Tactics for the Retailer

Ken Jurina, President, EpiarJenny Schlueter, Global Online Search Manager, Dell

Stephan Spencer, President, NetconceptsIan McAnerin, CEO, McAnerin International

Keyword ResearchThe Do’s and Don’ts

You Need to Know About

Ken JurinaPresident, Epiar Inc.

ken@epiar.com1-888-428-5545

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Who is Epiar?• Founded in 2002, international Experts in SEO/SEM.

• SEO/SEM Services Driven by Internet Marketing Research & Proprietary Applications.

• Have Spoken at International Online Marketing Conferences Since 2001

• International Clients Include SME to Microsoft.

• 11th Fastest Growing Company In Alberta (AB Venture Feb ‘07).

• 2007 Business Owner of the Year Award (Edm, AB ‘07).

• Saving Companies 20% to 40% on their PPC Spend!

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Agenda

• Don’t Assume

• Do Mine Multiple Keyword Sources

• Don’t Just Depend on Tools

• Do Determine Keyword Difficulty

• Do Think Beyond SEO/SEM

• Don’t Be Greedy (Keyword Theme)

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DON’T: Assume

…that you know the correct keywords to optimize your site with.

• Instead discover how your target market searches for your products/services.– You want customers not visitors to your site

• If you fail in determining the correct keywords to optimize your website with all your other SEO efforts may be in vein.

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Keyword Research - what it should be…

• Data mining all possible keyword search behavior around your online offering targeting hundreds of thousands of phrases from multiple sources.

• Eliminating skewed results including inconsistencies, non-seasonal irregularities, and obvious data flaws.

• Identifying core relevance / irrelevance of phrases by demographic, geographic, usage & other defining target market parameters.

• Identifying opportunities for both search and other marketing media...

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•Effective Keyword Research equals:

= Effective Online Market Research

= Search Informed Marketing

Meaning!

Keyword Research - what it should be…

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DO: Mine Multiple Keyword Sources

• Don’t just depend on one keyword source!

• Eliminate any skewed results in your data

• Correct for rank-checking distortions

• Look for realistic phrase variations in your data– Sort sources alphabetically in Excel

• Rarely is long tail searched more than the head

• Use common sense!

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Red = in only one Datasource Note: Huge # Differences

DO: Mine Multiple Keyword Sources

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Google Insights for Search

• Comparative data on phrases• Identify phrases by topic/brand/category you

might want to rank on• Breakout tool shows fast rising phrases on a topic• Geo target where to sell your products• Identify product seasonlity• Identify if news stories relate to spikes in searches

• Leverage top 100 Google “Hot” trends• Updated multiple times/day• Past history helps determine product popularity

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Keyword Research Tools

• WordTracker• Yahoo Panama Keyword Tool• Google Keyword Tool• MSN Keyword Forecast• Trellian Keyword Discovery• Google Webmaster Tools• Wordze

• Google Suggest• Google Traffic Estimator• Google Trends• Hitwise• NicheBOT• SEO Book Keyword Tool• GoodKeywords.com

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Don’t: Just Depend on Tools• Track phrases being searched within your internal

site search (Do you have one?)

• Mine your log files (split organic and paid phrases)– Analytics? Which paid phrases convert, are you ranking

organically?

• PPC broad match “head” of phrase to identify “tail”– Eg: “women’s shoes”, identifies “Jimmy Choo classy

women’s shoes”

• Talk to your Front Line Employees– What phrases in questions are being used/asked?

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DO: Determine Keyword Difficulty

• Set yourself up for success – Manage expectations on what phrases you can win on!

Search in Google for:– womens shoes 12,300,000 (Results in Google)– “womens shoes” 1,920,000 – allintitle: womens shoes 381,000 – allintitle: “womens shoes” 105,000 – allinurl: “womens shoes” 99,400– allinanchor: “womens shoes” 61,200

• SEOmoz.org Keyword Difficulty Tool

• We Build Pages “Cool SEO Tool”

• KEI from Trellian or Wordtracker

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SEOmoz.org - Keyword Difficulty Tool

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Trellian - Keyword Effectiveness Indicator

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Trellian - Historical Data

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Trellian - Competitive Intelligence

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DO: Think Beyond SEO/SEMIdentify new opportunities via keyword research

• Business Research– Product Research– Brand Equity– Competitive Intelligence– New Market & Product Opportunity Identification– Consumer Feedback

• Social Research– Political Topics– Public Issues– Celebrity Brand

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Top 15 Topics in Online Searches Surrounding:

TelevisionsTelevisions

Product Segmentation

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What Brands to Sell?

Top 15 Topics in Online Searches Surrounding:

Television BrandsTelevision Brands

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Top 15 Topics in Online Searches Surrounding:

Wholesale CandlesWholesale Candles

Get New Product Ideas

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Consumer Feedback

Top 15 Topics in Online Searches Surrounding:

Auto Brands: EGR & Auto Brands: EGR & PCV ValvesPCV Valves

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Consumer Feedback

Top 15 Topics in Online Searches Surrounding:

Ford: EGR & PCV Ford: EGR & PCV ValvesValves

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DON’T: Be Greedy

• Yay! You’ve got your keywords…no don’t go stuffing them everywhere on your site.

• Isolate targeted phrase groups– Select and optimize 2-3 phrase per page

• Results in targeted traffic to targeted pages = $$$

– Very competitive phrase? Optimize that one phrase on one page…don’t keyword stuff.

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Thank You!

Ken JurinaPresident, Epiar Inc.

ken@epiar.com1.888.428.5545

Presentations from shop.org & previous speaking engagements online at:

http://www.epiar.com/seo-presentations

Optimizing Your Content

Jenny SchlueterDell Inc.

Optimize the Right Pages Decide which page is most relevant

for each keyword (or group of words)

Consider which pages are already search friendly

Create a “link library” of keywords to page urls

Keyword DensityBrowser Title- Include Keywords & Relevant

Variations

URL Naming – Include Targeted Keywords

Page Title- Use Targeted Keywords

Content- Sprinkle keywords throughout the page to increase density (target 3-10%)

Contextual Links – Never say “click here”…

Images Do Matter

• Relevant tags on images help your page rank

• Plus image search and universal search is growing signficiant – 2x in 2006!

• High Brand Benefit / Lower Conversion

Focus on the Right Meta Content

Meta Title- Descriptive title. ~80 characters max

Meta Description- Descriptive language that summarizes page’s content. ~200 characters max.

Track Improvement

Track search rank, traffic, keyword density and links over time

Keywords for Country A Month 1 Month 2 Change

Tools:www.SEOchat.comwww.SEOmoz.comwww.keyworddensity.comwww.seotoolset.comwww.keyworddiscovery.com

The Impact of Content

• Simple terminology, localization changes and keyword density can have a large impact

• Jan 2006 Dell moved from just “notebooks” to “laptops & notebooks”• Result: Instantly moved to page 2 of Google for “laptop”

Set Yourself Up to Win

• SEO can be tactical Establish operational process to implement & maintain SEO

• SEO can be scientific Hire a SEO firm to help with strategy, technical & future SEO

• SEO can be a art Implement, Test, Learn, Adjust….then do it again…

Make It Easy for Marketers

• Everyone owns SEO! Education / Training for Marketers Part of the Content Process – Checklist, Signoff, Audits Corporate Styleguide Marketer ToolKit

Corporate Styleguide

….And Make It Exciting

• Get your marketers excited! Hold a learning summit, invite expert speakers and make it fun.

• Dell Search Summit, January 2008. Lead by Mark Jarvis, Dell CMO.

•John Battelle, Federated Media – Why Search Matters•Matt Kain, 24/7 Real Media – How Marketers Influence Search•Wendy Kano, Intuit - Case Study on Search Lessons Learned •Penry Price, Google – Best Practices on the Power of Search•And much more….

Participate In YourOnline Community

• Tips:• Be part of the conversation• Provide Help• Positive reputation

Management

• Results:• Help customers fix their

problem• Bonus: Rank at the top for

product or service issues

Prepare For Linking

Distribute your link library to all marketing teams

Successful press release with LINKS!

Link Building Tactics for the Retailer

Stephan SpencerPresident, Netconcepts

sspencer@netconcepts.com(608) 285-6600

Build More, Better Links

• Inbound links play a key role in determining rankings

• It’s not just about quantity (“link popularity”); it’s about quality (importance of the page, topically relevant/authoritative)

Check Link Popularity

• To a page– Google’s and Yahoo’s link: query operator

• To your site– Google Webmaster Central, Live Search Webmaster

Center, Yahoo Site Explorer & Yahoo’s linkdomain: query operator

• Subtract sites from the results (Yahoo only)– E.g. linkdomain:www.yoursite.com -site:yoursite.com -

site:yourothersite.com

• Google’s link: query operator displays only a sampling of backlinks (to foil SEOs)

Checking Link Popularity

• Tools:– Yahoo’s Site Explorer (siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com)– Netconcepts’ Link Checker (www.netconcepts.com/linkcheck) – Back Link Analyzer (tools.seobook.com/backlink-analyzer/)– Thumbshots Ranking tool (ranking.thumbshots.com)– TouchGraph GoogleBrowser (www.touchgraph.com)

Yahoo’s Site Explorer

Thumbshots Ranking tool

PageRank

• PageRank™ – Google’s algorithm for measuring a page’s importance; Yahoo & MSN have similar measures

• Each web page (not site) has its own PageRank score• PageRank scores from 0 to 10; logarithmic scale• Who’s at the top of the PageRank food chain?

– 10: Google, Apple, NSF, FirstGov; 9: Yahoo, MSN, Stanford

• Sites with higher PageRank get crawled earlier, faster, and deeper by Googlebot

Check PageRank

• Google Toolbar for IE or Firefox– Download it from toolbar.google.com

• Google Directory (directory.google.com)– Only works for pages that are listed in DMOZ

(e.g. your home page)– Listings are ranked in order of PageRank– Get historical PageRank scores w/ Wayback

Machine (www.archive.org)

• Google Webmaster Central

Google Toolbar

Google Directory – listings are organized by PageRank

Check PageRank

• More free tools– SEOChat PageRank Lookup

(www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-lookup/)

– SEOChat PageRank Search (www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-search/)

– SEO for Firefox extension (tools.seobook.com)

SEOChat’s PageRank Lookup

The way to check the home page PageRank when a redirect is present

SEOChat’s PageRank Search

SEO for Firefox

“Google Bombing”

• Inbound contextual links alone can drive a site to the top of Google

• Google has defused some Google bombs (e.g. “miserable failure”), but not all (e.g. “click here”)

• Also works on Yahoo, Live Search, etc.

• THE LESSON: Link text is your secret weapon!

An unintentional “Google bomb”

Find Link Targets

• Review links of competitive sites, sites in your keyword market– Use tools like the ones just mentioned– Check sites with high rankings for relevant

keywords– The fewer the number of links on their page,

the better

• Review links to your site; look for opportunities to get the link text revised

Request Links

• NOT:– “Hi, Let’s swap links!”– “I’ve already linked to you.”– “Great site!”– “You already link to our competitor XYZ.com and we offer a

better product.”– “Please use the following text in your link…”

• Maybe?– ”Hi, found a broken link on _____. btw, you might want to add

xyz.com as a link.”

• What then?…

Hi Lois,

My name is Eric Ward, and I am working with StormwaterAuthority.org to help them announce the launch of their new web site located at http://www.stormwaterauthority.org

I am hoping you will consider mentioning or linking to the StormwaterAuthority.org site on your Water and Wastewater Engineering page at http://www.library.umaine.edu/science/waterresources.htm

I have included a brief overview of the site below, and should you need anything at all I am a real person and actually reply to email. You can also contact me by phone.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Regards,

Eric Ward(On behalf of StormwaterAuthority.org)eric@ericward.com voice 865.637.2438

------------------------------------------------------Overview of StormwaterAuthority.org

Source: Eric Ward

Watch Out For…

• Types of links that are likely to get discounted:– Reciprocal links– Affiliated sites (on the same IP range or hostname)– Footer links (at the bottom of the page)– Site-wide links– Links contained on a page called links.htm / links.asp – Links with the exact same anchor text– Remember: the more links on the linking page, the

less PageRank you’ll get

Update Link Text

• Link text (anchor text) is critical for SEO

• Review your existing links and link text– SEOBook’s Back Link Analyzer tool

• Are the keywords you are targeting in the link text?

• Contact webmasters, particularly those who you have a relationship with & those with the most valuable links

SEOBook’s Backlink Analyzer

Best Practices

• Offer link-worthy content. Keep it fresh.• Try to get good keywords in the link text• Make it easily shareable (RSS feeds, Email to a friend,

Submit to Digg/delicious/etc.)• Simple keyword-rich urls encourage deep linking• When you redesign your site, keep your old URLs or 301

redirect them to the new URLs• “Nofollow” any links you don’t want to spend PageRank

on– <a href=“/privacy-policy.htm” rel=“nofollow”>

Worst Practices

• Participating in “link farms” or FFA (“Free For All”) sites– Hallmarks of a link farm = more urls per page & less organization

• Splogging, comment spamming, guestbook spamming• Linking to “bad neighborhoods”• Hiding links• Hoarding all your PageRank• Unnatural link structures

– Too much symmetry, link text never varies, or otherwise looks “engineered”

• Acquiring links from sites all on the same IP block • Acquiring links only from the same top level domain

(.com, .org, .edu, etc)

Blogs

• Search engines – and Google in particular – love blogs• Inherently link-rich

– “Hat tips” – part of blog etiquette– Blogrolls– RSS feeds– Trackbacks– Comments

• The dark side of the blogosphere:– Blog comment spam– Splogs (spam blogs)

Text Ads

• Good– High rankings for the search terms targeted with the existing ads’

link text– Stats showing the page you’ll be on gets good traffic numbers– Stats showing a respectable amount of traffic is sent to the

advertisers– Site is topically relevant to your business– Site is likely to be considered an authority site– Inbound links from .gov, .edu, .mil sites – Good Alexa rank– Extra good if the site you’re placed on is a .gov, .edu, or .mil– Reasonably good PageRank score on the page you’ll be on– Reasonably few other links on the page you’ll be on– Link is within the main body of the page

984th most popular website

Note: Alexa rankings can be manipulated

Text Ads

• Bad– Sitewide link– Site has been greybarred (i.e. banned)– Neighboring ads are of dubious nature (casinos, Hoodia, Viagra,

etc.)– Acquired PageRank through dubious means (e.g. hidden or

obscured links)– Advertisers have left in droves (evidenced by Wayback Machine

archives)– “Advertisers”, “Sponsors”, or “Sponsored” closely associated

with the ads– No visibility in top 10 pages in Google for advertisers’ targeted

keywords

Get Creative

• Give awards / recognition– Badges with link text underneath

• Allow webmasters to republish your articles– Require a link in your byline

• Publish unique content– Podcasts (e.g. SteveSpangler.com)– Screencasts (use TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio)– Wikis (e.g. SEOGlossary.com)

Get Creative

• Offer useful tools for webmasters, such as…– Hit counters

• E.g. NOT like 123counters.com

– Weather stickers• E.g. Wunderground.com, SuperPages.com

– RSS feeds• Lottery winning numbers from SuperPages.com

Get Creative

• Start a blog• Give testimonials

– E.g. www.wordpress.org/about/testimonials– E.g. www.keyworddiscovery.com/testimonials.html

• Sponsor a nonprofit– E.g. Kohl’s supports the Eastern Pennsylvania Youth Soccer

Association

• Leverage your affiliates– Get a straight link (e.g. from Legal Notices page)– 301 redirect

Link Bait

• Offer a niche-specific blogroll, tool, How-To, or compilation of news stories

• Post a scoop• Expose a story as flawed or a fraud• Be a contrarian about a story, product, or

prominent blogger’s opinion• Be humorous. Good topics include a bizzare pic

of your subject, “10 things I hate about…”, and “You know you’re a when…”

Source: Performancing

Link Bait

• Publish or commission some original research• Creative-Commons-license photos you made of

an event you’re blogging about• Make available for free a theme, plugin or piece

of software• Start a meme that others can replicate and that

links back to you (e.g. buttons/stickers/tools for bloggers/webmasters to post on their sites, contests, quizzes, surveys, etc.)

In Summary

• Best links are:– Topically relevant– One way (not reciprocated)– Not in footer and not site-wide– Appear to be earned by merit– Not crowded with many other links on the

page– On a high PageRank-endowed, high Alexa-

ranked, .edu/.gov/.mil authority site

In Summary

• Get creative– With your content, functionality, free tools,

your budget– Think “Web 2.0” (blogs, RSS, tagging, etc.)

• Measure success not by fixating on the PageRank meter, but by measuring the rankings lift and other KPIs

Thank You!

• For three hours of screencasts on link building, e-mail your request to seo@netconcepts.com

• Also, feel free to email me: sspencer@netconcepts.com

Technical SEO Issues

Ian McAnerinMcAnerin International Inc.

ian@mcanerin.com1 403 444-6981

Who?

• YOU! (Probably)

• In our experience, roughly 60% of SEO issues can be traced to technical problems.

• Most companies face unnecessary hurdles due to technical issues that can often be fixed in minutes.

Where?

• Problems can be a single critical issue, but more commonly are a combination of several issues.

• Often an accumulation of problems results in an accumulation of distrust for the site as a whole.

Why or How?

• Accident or omission

• Deliberately done to accomplish another goal.

• Software bug or hardware glitch

• Technical limitation of environment

• Political or management decisions.

What?The Seven Deadly Technical Sins

1. Hosting and Infrastructure

2. DNS and Domains

3. Errors and Redirects

4. HTML Validation

5. Spider Traps

6. Scripting and Objects

7. Geolocation / Personalization Disconnect

Hosting and Infrastructure Small Business = LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)

Medium = LAMP or IIS Cluster

Large = IIS Cluster

Mega = Custom OS: GoogleOS, Dynamo

Why Care?: Slow response times = site Google doesn’t want to send many visitors to. Also slower indexing.

Hosting and Infrastructure Multiple Servers

• Rotating IP addresses (load balancing) = many different sites = duplication.

• Edge computing can cause geolocation issues.

• Fix: detect spiders and send to a canonical site version.

DNS and Domains• www vs non-www versions of sites

• Subdomain.domain.TLD/subdirectorywww.mysite.com/stuff

• Subdomains and sub-subdomains (circular dependency)

• Multiple DNS servers sometimes not updated = weird results.

DNS and DomainsRule of Thumb:

• TLD (and ccTLD) for country

• Subdomains for language or major groups

• Subdirectories for Topics

• language.domain.ccTLD/topic/page.htm

• en.canada.ca/justice/introduction.htm

Errors and Redirects• An error page should always respond

with a 404.

• Strongly recommended that you use custom error pages for usability, but watch for error codes.

• Error responses are different at directory and page level – test both.

Errors and Redirects• Fun with error pages: an intelligent error

page can solve a lot of problems, such as redirecting old pages.

• Google Webmaster Tools are strongly recommended – need working error page and robots.txt file.

www.mcanerin.com/EN/search-engine/robots-txt.asp

Or search “robots.txt generator”

Errors and Redirects• 301 redirect (Permanent) • 302 redirect (Temporary) • 200 OK

Errors and Redirects• Parameters:• URL = http://www.ibm.com/

UAG = Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0

Receiving Header:• HTTP/1.1·302·Found(CR)(LF)

Date:·Sun,·14·Sep·2008·10:11:01·GMT(CR)(LF)Server:·IBM_HTTP_Server(CR)(LF)Location:·http://www.ibm.com/us/(CR)(LF)

• Receiving Header:• HTTP/1.1·200·OK(CR)(LF)

Date:·Sun,·14·Sep·2008·10:11:01·GMT(CR)(LF)Server:·IBM_HTTP_Server(CR)(LF)

HTML Validation• Search engines strip most HTML code out

of a document before parsing, so most HTML validation errors do not affect rankings.

• Exception: Some errors, such as a missing “>”, can kill the indexing of your page.

• Best Practice: always try to validate your code.

Spider Traps• Spider Trap: Dead ends, such as Word or

PDF documents.• Honey Pot: PR scupting to the extreme –

creates a circular trap.• Anchor Away: Only the first anchor text of

a link on a page counts. • Infinite URLs: Pages with more than one

URL to them – canonical issue.

Scripting and Objects• Search engines don’t run scripts.• Script that changes look of link = good. Script

that builds link on the fly = bad• Flash is not indexable. (Well, it is, but it’s best

to assume it isn’t). Most AJAX isn’t.• An Iframe is treated as a separate page –

includes are better.• Use a spider simulator (i.e. SEO-Browser,

Lynx) to test site.

Geolocation / Personalization• A gTLD (.com, .net) is almost always

geolocated via IP address

• A ccTLD (.ws, .la, .tv) overrides IP geolocation

• Duplication problem does not affect clearly geolocated sites

• Always declare language and character types on web pages.