searchfest 2013 keynote
TRANSCRIPT
Quality – the Path to Success
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
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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
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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…
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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.
A Changing “Web of Objects”Real-Time Firehose Services
Devices MultimediaPlaces/Things
People
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A Changing Web of Your Objects
Schema.org can help
Mark up your content
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9
Search: Discovery & Interaction
vertically integrated areas
online services
DEVICES PLATFORMS SERVICES
REAL-TIME SOCIAL LOCAL & MOBILE COMMERCE
web
There are hundreds of billions of pages online, from ~ 650 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://
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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
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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
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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
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Mobile
The ultimate “PC”
Not just phones
9B today
25B by 2021
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The State of Mobile
App chaos
AgentsCommerceControl Surfaces
ChallengesBatteriesInterfacesNetwork capacityService interop
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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.
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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
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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!
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More than just traces, a collective convo…
http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/visualizing-friendships/469716398919
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Twitter on NYE 2010
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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)
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Search – you’re trying to solve…
QUALITY TIMELINESSPOPULARITYTRUST
When optimizing your site for search, you invest in these major areas
ContentLinks
Appearance
AuthorityUsefulnessResource
TrafficRepeat VisitsLinks
CurrentFresh
RelevantYour data, always fully provided.
SEO is simply a marketing tool
Throwing rocks Smoke signals
Mercantile shopsMail order catalogues
Billboards
Television
Radio Email SEO PPCTrading
goods
Man’s History of Marketing
Image credit: www.conducthq.com
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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.
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• 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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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 >>>
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Conversion optimization
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• 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
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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
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