Conference Buddies

SEO/SEM

Speakers:

Rhea Drysale: Outspoken Media
Stephen Spencer: Net Concepts
Brett Tabke: WebmasterWorld, PubCon
10/16/2009, 4pm – 5pm

SEO/SEM Tools

• seo-browser.com: scans websites for SEO content. Tells you what type of redirect it is.
• Yahoo Site Explorer: free tool, log in to get comprehensive data, exclude internal links, only inbound links from other sites, lists not all, but most of your inbound links
• getlisted.org to claim your business on several local search engines & see how your business is listed at Google, Yahoo, and other top local search engines

SEO/SEM Tips

• Duplicate content is never going to rank as well as original content
• Keyword research: Google Adwords, sort by search volume, use it to base content around those words or phrases
• Every time you get a redirect, you lose a little value. (www versus non-www). Always stick with the same thing.
• Website problems: Lack of 301 redirects, too much duplicate content, http versus https, default is 302 redirect, broad keywords, title tags & body copy should be used, in “description”, title matters.
• Site:yourdomain on Google search. Checks the site for www versus non-www redirects
• Use this at the end of “Site:yourdomain”: &start =990&filter=0
• Shorter, keyword-rich content is better for your page rank and click thru rate
• No index (for Google: don’t index, don’t include in data page) and disallow (page is not accessible), no follow (don’t link the page rank, i.e. all your social buttons so you don‘t hemorrhage on page ranks), don’t vouch for sites that are not relevant to you
• Google webmaster central: verify your website, tell them what pages you want included & not included, lists your back links, have multiple people verify for you to find 404 errors, never use the removal tool because you can’t change your mind for six months,
• SEO Title Tags: a plugin for WordPress. Related words in title tag, but not in the post title, mass edit your title tags, get custom title tags for your various pages and posts without going into each page for editing, they do not conflict
• Blog posts: Use the more tag after the first paragraph, links back to your articles, don’t use your home page, use a tiny URL, (some services do not use a 301, always use one with a 301, NOT a 302) or use a hand-crafted optional excerpt, define that with a code to display the unique content.

• Complete most SEM project by 20th of each month
• Good book to read: Getting Things Done – by David Allen
• Check email 2 to 3 times a day and turn off the email notification. Don’t do email first thing in the morning – you will be fighting urgent fires rather than focusing on strategic projects

I attended the SES conference in San Jose. Here are key notes from the conference that you may find informative:

Summary: Omniture – 5 Things No One Will Tell You About SEM

1. Discussion on long tail keywords

• Increasing search traffic for brand keywords and 1-2 keyword phrases. People are more trained on using the web to search from brands and for navigation
• 3-4 long tail keyword phases are diminishing
• Due to Google quality score, really long tail keywords are not getting the same high quality score (panel theory)

2. Discussion on content network

• Search is people seeking for your services / Content is you seeking for that customer
• 90% content are poor traffic
• Break content network campaigns into new account so not to mix with search performance
• Use different success metric for content vs. search

3. Broad match

• Google is pushing Broad Match, Campaign Optimization, and YouTube/MySpace
• Most of this stuff is a joke / No solid return at this time
• Depend on client

4. Stay focuse

• Focus on the Search Engines and campaigns that are bring in the most return
• Before branching out to new search engines, campaigns, or doing many long tail keywords – evaluate the performance return. The time needed to optimize these additional campaigns may not be worth the value returned.
• Optimize what is working until you can not anymore