Managing Entropy - Clarity '13 - Keith Goode
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Transcript of Managing Entropy - Clarity '13 - Keith Goode
Managing Entropy
Keith L. GoodeSEO Technology LeadeDell, Global Online Team
Global Enterprise SEO in a Changing Landscape
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Self-Introduction
Keith L. Goode• SEO Technology Lead at Dell
• Former Director of SEO at Sparefoot
• Former SEM Manager at BDX
• Former SEO Team Lead at HomeAway
Connect with me:
Twitter: @keithgoode
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Limited Liability
• The ideas and statements in this presentation do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Dell Inc. but are based on my personal experience in the SEO industry.
• Repeat after me: “Keith is not Dell. “
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The Problem of Scalability in a Changing Landscape
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ROI – Eating a Much Larger Elephant
• Proving ROI in larger organizations
• Proving ROI in larger organizations– Natural search attribution
amidst– Paid Search efforts– Traditional media outreach– Press releases– Social Media
– Scaling SEO activities across 100K+ page sites – Content Optimization– Link acquisition– Indexation– Canonicalization– Code optimization– Usability– Architecture/Navigation– Etc.
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ROI – Eating a Much Larger Elephant
• Proving ROI in larger organizations– Natural search attribution
amidst– Paid Search efforts– Traditional media outreach– Press releases– Social Media
• Scaling SEO activities across 100K+ page sites
– Content Optimization– Link acquisition– Indexation– Canonicalization– Code optimization– Usability– Architecture/Navigation– Etc.
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The bigger the pie doesn’t translate into bigger pieces
Ever-Present Budget Challenges
SEO
Marketing
Dev
IT
Facilities
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The bigger the pie doesn’t translate into bigger pieces
Ever-Present Budget Challenges
SEO
Marketing
Dev
CMS
IT
Sys Admin
Facilities
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The Changing Search Landscape
• Have you tried to do keyword research lately?
• What percentage of your keyword traffic is “Not Provided?” Are you at 100% yet?
• How’s that link-building going?
• … in fact, how is guest blogging, producing infographics, publishing press releases, and building widgets going for you?
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Change is the only Constant in SEO
• 400+ algorithm changes per year at Google
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These changes are killing traditional SEO
• “SEO Copywriting” is dead. Panda.
• Link building is dead. Penguin.
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Post-Visit Insights are Threatened
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Infographics/Micrographic Link Value Declining
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Evolve or Become Extinct• As the accepted methods of SEO
change, enterprise, SMB, and agency tactics and strategies must change– Revenue is at risk– Reputation is at risk– Jobs are at risk– Risks increase by order of magnitude
with company size
• Here’s the secret: – Don’t focus on what you’ve lost.– Focus on the tools and tactics you
can still use– Move along and keep sane
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Scaling SEO
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Paul Bruemmer’s Guide to Building a Search Marketing Team – 2013
SVP, Marketing
Director of Search
SEO Manager
SEO Analyst
SEO Analyst
SEO Analyst
SEO Analyst
Paid Search
Manager
Paid Search Analyst
Paid Search Analyst
Paid Search Analyst
Paid Search Analyst
Paid Search Analyst
Social Media
Manager
Social Media Analyst
Social Media Analyst
Social Media Analyst
Social Media Analyst
Social Media Analyst
Search Guru
Business Intelligenc
e
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The Problem with Multi-Touch Environments
Content StrategistDevelops content strategy to promote new products and services
Content WriterResearches product and integrates keywords into copy
SEO AnalystProvides keyword research, search volume estimates, and SEO recommendations.
SEO AgencyProvides infographics, guest posts on external blogs, blogger outreach, etc.
AnalystReviews natural search volume, keywords that receive traffic, etc.
Social MediaPromotes content via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
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The Problem with Multi-Touch Content
Content StrategistDevelops content strategy to promote new products and services
Content WriterResearches product and integrates keywords into copy
SEO AnalystProvides keyword research, search volume estimates, and SEO recommendations.
SEO AgencyProvides infographics, guest posts on external blogs, blogger outreach, etc.
AnalystReviews natural search volume, keywords that receive traffic, etc.
Social MediaPromotes content via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
What a Director or Business Owner Sees
$$$$
$$$$
$$$$
$$$$
$$$$
$$$$
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Shift From Limited SEO-Concentration…
SEO
IT/Dev
Content
Marketing
Design
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…because as unlimited growth isn’t sustainable or cost-effective…
SEO
IT/Dev
Content
Marketing
Design
Content
MarketingIT/Dev
Design
Content
Marketing
Design
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… to an organization where SEO is everyone’s responsibility
SEO Knowledg
e Base
IT/Dev
Content
Marketing
Design
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The Solution – Democratization of SEO
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Embedding SEO Best Practices Globally
Content Strategist
Site Architect
SEO Governance
Marketer
SEO Educator
IT Director
Coder / Developer
Content Writer
Social Media
SEO Compliance
Public Relations
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The SEO as an Educator
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Brown-bag Lunch & Learn Series
• Great option for small-to-medium businesses
• Repurpose your link-building budget for paid lunches. ;-)
• Schedule monthly and plan your curriculum accordingly– Developers’ Lunch
– Best coding practices– Best architecture practices– New tags– Data Markup
– Writers’ Lunch– Keyword Research– Engaging readers
– Social Media Lunch– Etc.
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Establish Search Curriculum
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Integration of Search Requirements into IDPs
• Individual Development Plans (IDPs) can tie on-going education and extra activities to performance bonuses, end-of-year reviews, etc.
• Items like search certification, active blog posting, social media engagement, etc. can be included in IDPs.
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Creating a Social Army – SMaC U
• If you want to create raving fans outside of your organization, foster the fans inside.
• Provide social media training, along with Brand training to ensure that the right messages are getting out there.
• Build a great product and trust that your employees will be your best cheerleaders.
• Offer specific training per social media outlet (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, G+, etc.)
• Establish guidelines and safeguards for the outliers.
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Content Writing Best Practices
• Provide CMS Training
• Train in Brand Strategy
• Plug into the content lifecycle
• Provide training in SEO practices – keyword research, proper linking strategies, H1/H2 usage, etc.
• Writing for Scanners
• Proper labeling for media assets (images, videos, etc.)
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Technical SEO Training for Devs/Architects
• Specialize training for coders and architects– Get really specialized if you
need to and offer to provide training for specific groups
– Reiterate why their jobs can and do impact the site’s ability to rank and attract traffic
– Encourage input. Less of the “you need to do this” approach and more of the “how can you help build a better site?” approach.
• Go over site standards, best practices, industry tips, etc.
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Ongoing Work
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The SEO as Search Governance
• Meetings, meetings and more freakin’ meetings…
• SEO should sit in on core Development meetings
• SEO should be included in the initial scoping of projects
• Sign-off by SEO should be required for all user-facing site changes
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Establish site-wide Standards and Guidelines
Codify SEO best practices into a living document (i.e. electronic)
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Don’t Reinvent the Wheel - Repurpose Industry Documents
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Engaging SME’s
• You have people on staff who are experts in your products and/or services.– Provide incentive for
engaging in social media, blogs, forums, etc.
– Enable rel author and rel publisher tags to help promote them and to associate your site with them
– Provide brand, social, and SEO training
– Encourage outside speaking engagements
– Engage your social army to help promote them
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Reiterate Basic SEO Copywriting Skills
• Addressing Page Elements– Page Titles– Meta-Descriptions
• Writing for Scanners
• Writing Kickass Content
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Encourage Socializing Content
• You have your Social Army – Deploy it!
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PR/Marketing
• Not much to say here. (Google has recently reduced the benefit of exact anchor text and followed links from press releases.)
• Review linking guidelines (i.e. no anchor text, limited dofollow, etc.) and verify that you are in compliance
• Encourage them to keep promoting the brand and the company. The bigger the brand, the better the domain strength, and the stronger each page is.
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Planning
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The SEO as a Prophet and Prognosticator
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Ongoing Site Audits
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Ongoing Site Audits
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Look for Trends
• Omniture, Google Analytics
• Google Trends
• MozCast
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Hypothesize, Test, Measure, Conclude
• Find the time to test hypotheses.
• Look for trends in analytics and try to find correlations and causations.
• Measure the positives and the negatives.
• Conclude what the best practices are going forward.
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Keeping Apprised of Changes in the Industry
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Google Algorithm Updates
• We’re fairly blind to this now. Thanks, Google, for taking yet one more insight away from us.
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Revelation or Obfuscation?
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Chatter on Webmaster Forums
• Monitor the chatter and see if you detect any trends that might affect you
• Get ideas for applying Matt Cutts’ “statements” into action
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Correlation Studies
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Blog Posts and News Sites
Blogs and Sites I Visit Daily/Weekly
• SearchEngineLand.com
• Moz.com
• SEObytheSEA.com
• WebmasterWorld.com
• Google Webmaster Central Blog
• SearchEngineJournal.com
• SearchEngineRoundtable.com
• Search Engine Roundtable
• seoClarity.net Insights
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Conclusion
Conclusion
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Be Mentally Flexible
• Let’s reiterate the obvious: change is the only constant in SEO
• Mental flexibility allows you to see new opportunities for traffic acquisition
• Listen, question, experiment and find each truth as it manifests
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Be Operationally Nimble
• Help your organization understand the shifting nature of SEO– Be the reed not the oak– Changing course mid-course is merely a course-correction based
on environmental factors. Don’t panic, and don’t discount all of SEO because of it.
• Avoid getting into the habit of saying, “Well, what we’re doing now works.”
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Keith Goode’s Obvious, but Somehow Meaningful, Tautology of the Day
It works until it doesn’t.
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Always Be Learning
• You’ve established yourself as the Search expert. Make sure you stay that way.– Attend conferences (Congratulations! You’re here.)– Engage your local SEO’s via meetups and lunch meetings– Watch the Twittersphere and other social spheres– Read blogs … lots of them– Engage your support team at seoClarity
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THANK YOU!
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Backup Slides
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Devs and Architects
• Codified guidelines and standards can address technical issues before they occur– Establish administrative controls over elements related to SEO
– On-page elements (H1, H2, …, alt, title, etc.)– Meta-tags (title, meta-description, meta-keywords, noindex, etc.)– Robots.txt and Sitemaps– Rel tags (canonical, prev, next, nofollow, etc.)– Internationalization (HREFLANG)– Regionalization of URLs
– Provide Internationalization Guidelines– I18N-readiness in markup– Using :lang() pseudo-class – Content direction control for right-to-left languages
– Stress the importance of clean code and script– Establish standards for page size, page speed and site speed
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Architecture/Navigation
• Stress the importance of the free flow of “link juice” through site
• Crawlable Navigation– Links should point to your
most important pages and categories/departments
– 3-Click Rule– NO JAVASCRIPT!!– Respect the crawl budget
• Crawlable Breadcrumbs
• Related Product Links – Don’t be spammy!
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URL Structure
• Standardize URL structure, canonicalization, and naming conventions
• Establish rules around ccTLD and subdomain usage
• Provide guidance for integrating and/or sunsetting acquired site URLs and domains
• Reiterate the importance of:
• Character limits
• Proximity of page filename to the root domain
• When to use hyphens vs. subfolders
• Truncating file extensions (*.html, *.aspx, etc.)
• Canonicalizing domain structure
• Localization of terms
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Internal Links
• Amazon is a great example of how a site can use Related Product links and “Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed” links to distribute domain and page strength
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Enabling Contextual Links
• Wikipedia also does a great job of providing links to related articles
• They also have perfected contextual interlinking between their pages
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Enabling Socialization
• If you’ve got great content, make it shareable!
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Narrative Science’s singularity
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Inbound Marketing vs. Interruption Marketing