Advanced Strategies to Move

the Needle on Your SEOJune 2010

4 Methods to Accelerate Your SEO

1. Increase Rankings on Individual Results

2. Earn Rankings in Alternative Results Types

3. Improve Visibility in the Long Tail

4. Better Convert Existing Search Traffic

Strategies to Boost

Individual Rankings

Competitive Analysis Process: Step 1

Determine Your Weak vs. Strong Metrics

Competitive Analysis Process: Step 2

Establish the Optimization Techniques You Need

1. More Root Domains Linking to the Page

2. Possibly More Subtlety in Anchor Text

3. Possibly Higher Value/Relevance in Links

www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-what-kind-of-links-do-you-need

Value vs. Difficulty

www.seomoz.org/keyword-difficulty

Low difficulty + good search vol. + high conv. rate = WIN

Exact Match Domains

www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements

Highest correlation w/ rankings in GG

& Bing

Widgets & Badges

www.picnik.com/info/badges

Embeddable Infographics

www.onlinemba.com/blog/stats-on-internet-pornography/

Content & Technology Licensing

http://allrecipes.com/help/aboutus/licensing.aspx

Link Attraction Targets w/ Regular Updates

http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

Earn Rankings in Alternative Results

Video Results & YouTube

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/creating-online-video-strategy

Local/Maps Results

http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

Image Results

http://www.seosmarty.com/image-seo/

News Results

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-started-with-google-news

“Real-Time” Results

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-seofriendly-real-time-content

Blog Results

http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=541

Shopping Results

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-rank-well-in-google-products-search-a-

big-list-of-places-to-get-reviews

Improve Visibility in the Long Tail

http://searchengineland.com/google-25-of-queries-are-new-adding-

question-engine-11535

25% of queries searched on Google each month

are entirely unique and have never previously been

searched for in the engine’s 10+ year history.

- Udi Manber, Head of Search, Google

The Long Tail is Much Less Competitive

Required: High Quantities of Unique Content

Blogging daily for 6 years only produces a few thousand pages.

Required: High Quantities of Unique Content

This Q+A site launched 6 months ago and already has nearly the

same quantity of content

http://answers.onstartups.com

Is Blogging a Long Tail Strategy?

http://mashable.com/about/

Articles

100% UGC

100% Editorial

Editorial + UGC + Machine-Built

Editorial + Licensed

Paid Content Writers

http://valleywag.gawker.com/339271/denton-to-pay-bloggers-based-on-traffic

Tweets & Social Updates as Content

http://twitter.com/randfish

2,266 pieces of content providing no SEO value!

Options for UGC

Forums

Q+A Sites

User-Submitted Articles/Posts

Social News & Discussion

Wikis

Hybrids & More

Incenting UGC w/ Recognition & Rewards

http://www.stackoverflow.com and http://www.yelp.com

Better Convert Existing Search Traffic

Conversion Rate Optimization Funnel

2X Traffic vs. 2X Conversion Rate

2X Visits = 2X Revenue(but only if they’re the same quality of visitor)

2X Conversion Rate = 2X Revenue(for any visitor segment)

Psychology & Conversion Rates

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/an-illustrated-guide-to-the-science-of-

persuasion-influence

Anchoring with Pricing

http://wufoo.com/signup/

Gets more expensive reading left to right

The Power of Default Selections

http://www.volusion.com/ecommerce/web-hosting.asp

Social Proof

http://www.surveymonkey.com

Scarcity

http://www.alaskaair.com

Only 2 seats left! I’d better buy it now!

Reciprocity

http://www.pricingwire.com/home/2009/5/7/referral-and-pricing-lessons-

from-dropbox-beta.html

Q+A

Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder, SEOmoz

• Twitter: @randfish

• Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog

• Email: rand@seomoz.org

Ask Him

Anything!