Conference Buddies

Do you have a large site with more than a million pages? If so, you should definitely attend this session. This panel will look at the special issues and challenges surrounding giant sites and discuss some of the greatest practices used by large companies to handle their mega site optimization.

Moderator: Joe Laratro

Speakers:
Matt Craine, VP of Online Media, Catalogs.com @mattcraine
Dan Perry, Director of SEO, Turner Broadcasting @danperry
Catfish Comstock, Senior Search Strategist, BusinessOnLine @SEOCatfish
Melanie Mitchell, SVP of Search Strategy, Digitas @melaniemitchell
Derrick Wheeler, Senior Search Engine Optimization Architect, Microsoft @DerrickWheeler

Melanie Mitchell @melaniemitchell

Link building, content, on-site, technical

Understand Your Site Strategy

• What are your goals?
• Keyword research – specificity wins
• Create a spreadsheet
  • Keywords
  • Destination URL
  • Avoid page competition

Keyword Research: Most Important Step

• Google Trends
• Adwords Tool
• SEO Book
• MS AdCenter
• Trendistic.com
• Quintara

Get Your Content Crawled and Improve Ranking

• Make sure every page has a link to it
• Clean URLs
• Avoid session IDs and mandatory cookies
• Allow meta content to be managed
• Semantic search

Boost Your Traffic / Ranking

• Organize site in an orderly hierarchy
• Improve page layout
• HTTP Status codes 200 301 302 404 500
• Internal linking
• Back-link Widget
• Make navigation and promotion contextual – Flash and JS are useful to promote unrelated content

Measure Your Performance (Analytics)

• Page views, unique/visits, search referrals
• Track pathing / recirculation
• Understand Keywords & Queries (ie. where are we winning & where are we not)
• Competitive Analysis
• SEO compliance
• Training

Rinse and Repeat (ongoing)

• Site Strategy
• Break out Assets (every content asset needs own page)
• Get content crawled
• Boost ranking
• Measure your performance

Dan Perry @danperry

The larger the company, the less SEO work you do (selling SEO in the company)

Where to Start

• Take stock in yourself
• Introvert vs. Extrovert
• Can you be an SEO evangelist
• Is that something you want to do?   Can’t be an introvert.

Get in the Meetings

• People at all levels need to know you
• Importance to long-term business goals
• Feed off ego

Research the Competition

• Find strengths/weaknesses
• Pain points (the terms the company wants to rank)
• Show opportunities

What’s worked for me

• Departmental training  (80% department data, 20% SEO data)
• Build it into the process
• SEO superstars (recognize and embrace)
• SEO Wiki (internal links to content give to people)
• Take Great Notes

SEO Analogies

• SEO is like Golf: be patient and think long term
• Making a Cake: more like flour rather than icing
• Baseball: requires a team effort

Take Aways:

• Take stock in yourself
• Details are everything
• Own it

Matt Craine @mattcraine

Creating Natural Linkbait

Examples:

• Who What Where When Why?.com (i.e. what do lizards eat)
• Let’s Talk Style (bring bloggers in)
• Content such as, “how to restore mustang”

Creative Linking

Interviews i.e. South Florida Business Journal then press release

Entice Sites & Visitors

Contests ie. Tools for Teaching Contest  (essay from teachers on what they need) .edu teacher websites, etc.  (then press release goes out)

Share with Transparency

• Using Website Optimizer with Google Anlytics – Case Study with Catalogs.com (PR 7 link back from Google’s blog plus thousands of other links)
• Saving $$$ by not relying on PPC or affiliates
• Over 90% of traffic from natural search for catalogs.com

Catfish Comstock @SEOCatfish

Site Wide Optimization Recommendations

• Most site wide issue due to complex, unfriendly CMS systems
• 302 redirects STILL cause problems (can be   – big daddy updates
• 404 pages should be converted to 301 redirects
• Make global navigation or important content is not block by java script or flash (&strip=1 track in Google cache)
• Include rel=canonical on all pages
• Eliminate URL arch that allows for duplicate content
• Use Google Webmaster tools new parameters exclusion feature to acct for tracking URLs or duplicate URL paths

On Page Optimization Recommendations

• Create keyword map to track targets (targets versus keywords)
• Compare the KW map to your current ranking to note disparities
• Auto-populate lower level page titles based on reverse breadcrumb: Product -> Sub-Cat – Cat – Home
• Avoid auto-pop keyword pages, better to leave them blank unless you can ensure each is unique (title of page is relevant for internal linking)
• Include “long tail words” in your optimization whenever possible.
• Look for patterns in keyword data that you can exploit.

Off Page Optimization – Internal Linking Recommendations

• Check navigation template using FirstLinkChecker.com  (only first link counts)
• Ensure your global navigation structure is KW focused (a link is a vote)
• Image based navigation (alt tag 4 to 7 words) can be very effective
• Have a usability professional review your information architecture
• Internally link blog content to relevant pages within the main content section of the site
• Internally link from blog content to main product and services pages
• Most recent and also most popular posts (links from other blog pages)

Off Page Optimization – External Linking Recommendations

• Evaluation all business partners for link opportunity
• Search for unlinked mentions and contact for potential links
• Your blog is a great link acquisition tool
• Leverage social media to promote blog
• 404 and 302 converted to 301

Data Analysis Optimization Recommendations

• Track micro-conversions and have a well defined conversion funnel
• Measure long tail success
• Check www.catfish.cc for Excel Example
• Separate Keywords into groups for conversion analysis: company | brand | general 1,  etc.
• Integrate analytics with your CRM tools
• Tie acquisition cost to lifetime value of customer in order to justify larger Ad spend
• Leverage view through data to understand multi-click attribution: businessol.com/forms/view-through-gaining-insight-data
• How many conversions came from social media?
• Measure long tail success, download excel template example from: www.catfish.cc

Derrick Wheeler @DerrickWheeler

SEO is the process of influencing the Structure content and authority of a website to increase the number of rankings and improve the quality

The hardest part about SEO at Microsoft, was to get it implemented.  After SEO recommendations, not enough budget to allocate for SEO implementation.

Microsoft.com is a collection of thousands of “websites” that share one domain name

• Microsoft has 1.2 Million URLs
• Each website impacts all of the other websites’ success
• Websites are managed individually
• Websites are published using various content management systems
• Legacy SEO Barrier Reduction
• Ongoing process utilizing FAST crawler technology

Top 5 Barriers:

1. Duplicate and undesirable pages
2. Excessive use of redirects  (office.microsoft.com, fetch URLs)
3. Improper error handling
4. International URL Structure
5. Low quality page titles and meta tags

Engage with “violators” to reduce barriers, enable work-arounds, implement Big/quick wins, and/or on-board to our Site-specific programs

Excel

• Organize in Excel
• URLs total, URLs crawled,  total redirects, 404, 301, 302 200

Preventative

Include SEO at Level1. Standard Int’l URL structure for websites built and managed in CSP

SEO integration with CSP

• Include new SEO guidance into CSP developer guide
• Auto validation of SEO rules
• XML sitemap

Consistent URL structure

Site-Sec SEO Program Phrases

1. Business outcomes and metrics
2. Keyword research and selection
3. Structural and technical audit
4. Content editing for keyword intent
5. Link building strategies and tactics
6. Ongoing optimization

Measure Goals

A single source of data

SE -> Paid or Org -> KW Phrase -> Entry URL -> Visits -> Path of Pagview -> Success Events

Final Points

• Content is NOT king/queen in Mega SEO, it’s a prince/princess
• Develop an overall SEO approach based on how YOUR organization works
• Define business objective & metrics then implemting your measurement plan FIRST
• Choose your battles, don’t sweat the small stuff
• Let co-workers & partners be wrong sometimes
• Don’t be afraid to say NO to low-priority projects
• Teach others to Advocate for SEO in every meeting for every project that impacts any web page that links to, redirects to, or lives on your site

This presentation is of a more technical nature looking at site architecture challenges of today’s websites. Discussing what works, what doesn’t and how websites can be geared towards attracting a greater audience, and consequently, greater leads.

Moderator: Christine Churchill

Speakers:
Scott Polk, Director of Operations, Search & Social Media @scottpolk
Ted Ulle, Senior Search Analyst, Converseon, Inc. @TedUlle
Michael Martin, SEO Director of Project Management, Internet Marketing Inc. @googleandblog
Lyndsay Walker, Director of Online Marketing, Canada’s Web Shop @lyndseo

Ted Ulle @TedUlle

Don’t Build a Franken-Site!

Top Priority:

Your Marketing Goals! (even before keyword research)

• Optimize your keyword selection process
• Menu Labels & Navigation
• Content and Sales Copy
• Conversions

Clarity from the start

Marketing Purpose is #1 ALWAYS!

1. Keyword Strategy (user intent, who is your target)
2. Content 1 – can be placeholders (draft content)
3. Information Architecture
4. Back end metrics
5. Content 2 – full copy (final)
6. Graphic Design
7. “Web” Edit – finalize in HTML

Document Every Decision – Align the team

Menus & Navigation

• Menus labels are content
• Where am I?
• What can I do here?
• Single words or longer phrases
• Can be the “call to action”
• Too many choices equals no choice (7 is the limit for the main menu)

Final Web Edit

• Content Interacts with Layout
• CS is web typesetting
• You can kill good content or boost weak content with typography
• Study centuries of knowledge on typesetting

Showing Off

Works against business and marketing

i.e. Graphic Design, Fancy Programming “Features”, AJAX run amok

IT Folks are Writing Copy:

• Search Results
• Error Pages
• Auto Response

Examples of IT writing content:

• Failed Log-in Message “Search produced no results”
• Link for a 6-Figure Software Video “Open Demo” as a starting link
• Yahoo Directory Submission error message “Invalid Payment Instrument Data”

Things will go wrong

Thou Shalt Not Kludge:

• Better Late than Lousy
• Expect to Make trade off
• Keep your priorities straight

Michael Martin @googleandblog

Setting Your SEO Foundation

First Pillar: Canonicalization

• Resolving web content that has more than one possible URL
• You arbitrate to remove confusion from user and search engines
• Purpose is not so much preventing duplicate pages but link dilution
• Choose www or non-www and explicitly go with either
• Resolve default and index pages to the end slash
• Have a uniform link ref internally and externally
• Use 301 redirects

Second Pillar – Robots.txt

• Your site’s ground rules for SE
• Prevent “discoverability” of private pages or section
• Reduce spam
• Reduce bandwidth
• Identify sitemap.xml location

Third Pillar – Webmaster Tools & Center

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Bing Webmaster Center
• Yahoo Site Explorer

Have a Strong “C R We”

Canonical, Robots, Webmaster tools

Lyndsay Walker @lyndseo

Goals

1. Redesign site with minimum Search Engine Optimization wrinkles
2. Redesign with usability in mind
3. Don’t break stuff

Early Considerations

Web Host

• Server location

Server Platform

• Check Current apps and forms

Review the Existing Site

• Create a map of basic navigation
  • Level 1, 2, 3, 4 (use excel)
• Gather some data
  • Use Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer and Bing Webmaster Center
  • Check the SERPs for the top ranked pages o key terms
  • Use your Analytics to find top performing pages

Verify Your Redirects

• www or non-www, default home page, etc.

Remap your Navigation

• Organize your content
• Check logs for user and spiders
• Card sorting (use cards to sort your content)

Transition – Card Sorting

• Cards with name of pages, 1 each
• User groups cards based on their perceived logic (by normal, adv, and SEO groups), look for patterns
• Repeat
• Review and look for patterns
• Decide on new navigation

Transition

Determine file names – keep or change, file type, and file naming strategy

• Hyphens vs. Underscores
• Use keyword (but don’t stuff)
• All lowercase

Prepping the New Site

• Custom 404 pages
• Use site template
• Put calls to action on this page!
• Update Robots.txt (what was block before)
• Run a link checker i.e. Xenu

After Launch

• Resubmit Site Maps to Search Engines
• Stalk your analytics!! (track your 404 pages)

Scott Polk @scottpolk

Data Organization

• Treat like database
• Flexible
• Logical
• Familiar

URL Structures

• Theme aligned
• User Exp / Conversion
• Keywords
• 1-2 directories deep max
• Use file extensions

HTML

• Content Stacking
• body, H1, textual content, related links, navigation link/header/footer

Internal Linking Structure

• Links should be related to topic
• Theme aligned
• Anchor text
• Control the flow of link equity (pass to top of theme)
• Technology

We have had two years to adjust to the major search engine results page changes. It is clear those links that searchers first see aren’t at all what they used to be. The SERPs are more complex, and that means optimization is more complex, too. This session will examine search engine results pages with the images, videos, stock quotes, weather and other snippets included, and address the changes that marketers must make.

Moderator: Christine Churchill
Speakers:
Amanda Watlington, Ph.D., Searching for Profit @amandaw
Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay, Inc. @bruceclayinc
Brian Combs, Principal, ionadas local @BrianPCombs
Scott Polk, Director of Operations, Search & Social Media @scottpolk

Amanda Watlington @amandaw

Clues from News Articles:

• Focus is on scale
• Better local, such as more UK sites in UK results
• Fresher and faster results

Clue 1: Scalability

• More efficient crawling
• Test Scalability: YSlow or other speed tests
• Use robots.txt and parameter handling settings in webmaster tools to avoid duplicate content
• Keep Sitemaps up-to-date

Clue 2: More Localization

• More local results by country
• Claim your push pins through local business center
• Optimize for local searches
• Multi-nationals, now is the time to reconsider how you are going to search market

Clue 3: Fresher Results

• Very rapid indexing is in the future
• Old, unvisited content will not do the trick
• Better, harder working content
• Keep content up to date
• Expire old, dead content
• Mind your link rot
• Look to social media as an adventure for getting marketing results

Clue 4: More Precise Results

• Use experience when searching
• Real long tail queries often are unique
• Head queries are imprecise pizza
• The fat middle is “pizza del las vegas’ chase the more precise results

More Precise Results

• Optimize all kinds of files and watch traffic grow
• Images – avoid dsc10257.jpg, rename it into something more meaningful
• Video – provide complete info, consistent best practices
• Product images and price alone won’t do
• PDF – optimize them fully

Bruce Clay @bruceclayinc

Engagement Objects

• Image Indexing
• Video Content Indexing
• Content is not just text, it’s video, images, maps, etc.

Bruce took a newspaper article, scanned as an image, then put into PDF, now that will rank for works in that image. This means Google now is starting to read text in images.

Bruce took a video, transcribed the audio and put back into the video as a separate audio track. Google has audio indexing, and can pull up the audio where it appears in the track. This means Video content can now rank and add to SEO. This also means you now have to write scripts for video presenters with SEO in mind.

Remember Video is content, therefore you need to optimize content for SEO if you want to rank.

XML Sitemaps for Google

• No XML file for Images
• You can create an XML file for Video
• More info can be found here: http://www.bruceclay.com/newsletter/volume67/xmlsitemaps.html

Key Points:

• Google can scan images and audio for keywords
• Content is not just text, it’s video, audio, images, maps, etc.
• Google is redefining what is content

Brian Combs @BrianPCombs

Google Maps

• Rank higher than natural listings
• Less competitive

Step 1:

• Claim your listings
• Use your keywords and locations within your listing
• Don’t overuse them (penalty)
• P.O. Boxes may be depreciated
• Upload images and/or videos
• Encourage happy clients to write reviews (on google, city search, yelp etc.)
• Tag your business with Google My Maps

Step 2:

• Optimize your Website
• Optimize for locations as well as keywords

Step 3:

• Citation Building
• Citations are similar to links
• Trusted pages that list company name, home number, and address
• Link not required!
• Get listed in major IYPs
• Local directories
• Vertical directories

Google Maps Developments

• 7-Pack listings replaced the 10-Pack
• Cleaned up the interface
• Provides space for local listing ads (current testing in 2 markets SF and San Diego)
• Still lots of bugs
• Implied local intent

Scott Polk @scottpolk

• Populate your content (meta cafe, YouTube, Flickr)
• Put onto your own site
• Build links to your content to build authority

Some of the best SEOs in the game will be on this panel. This is an expert-level session. There will be brief coverage of on-page items such as titles, tags, text and URLs. But the focus will be on the real money of SEO: off-page criteria. Links, links, links.

Moderator: Carolyn Shelby

Speakers:
Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay, Inc. @BruceClayInc
Scott Polk, Director of Operations, Search & Social Media, LLC @scottpolk
Jill Sampey, Director of Search Marketing, Blast Radius @uberjill
Jill Whalen, CEO, High Rankings @jillwhalen

Bruce Clay:

Key Points to Linking:

• Unidirectional = inbound links
• Direct links = followed
• Aim for supplemental / complementary content sites
• Do NOT go for javascript links
• Do NOT go for flash links (at least not yet)
• Paid Links – should be kept under the radar
• Link life – should be random  (1mo, 1yr, but if all links last exactly 6 months, then must be bought, vary up your footprint). If most of your links last exactly 6 months, then they must be bought, vary up your footprint
• PageRank – should be natural
• Random IP – should be varied
• Link Begging is a waste of time
• 100:1 link magnets vs. link begging (100 more links per hour of work with link magnets)
• Link Magnets – should be content that attracts links
• Social media – indirectly results in links
• International – ccTLD specific links
• Local – local region specific links
• Sequence matters – First link on that page anchor text counts, text over image – ALT, first counts, nofollow kills target, link stop words (next, back, home).   All other links on the page becomes nofollows.    Robots.txt can disallow iframe or other sections as nofollow.
• Make sure you have the right anchor text first on the page.

Jill Sampey @uberjill

Leveraging current assets

1. Logfiles

• 301/302 strings (find the one that don’t lead to a 200 response)
• 404 Pages
• Links without traffic

2. Optmizing for Conversions

• If it doesn’t convert, you don’t need it – generally ;-)
• Test before optimizing

3. Re-Use Past Sucesses

• Seasonal
• Revolving Product Line
• /2009-Holiday-Specials/   -> Use this instead /Holiday-Specials/
• /Madden08/ /Madden09/  -> Use this Madden-NFL (Archive under this)

Develop New Assets:

1. Listen and Learn

• Set-Up Listening Tool  (radian 6, google alerts, blog search engines, etc.)
• Engage in Industry
• Engage on Brand
• Engage on Competitors

2. Link Opps

• Twitter
• Domains  (buy links, acquire small sites)
• Partnering

3. New Social Strategies

• Off-Site, Unbranded, Comical, Satirical  (create microsite)
• i.e. GetyourBasketBallon.com
• Theleroysmith

Jill Whalen @jillwhalen

Who Checks Rankings?

• Users are served different content depending on some of the following:
• If they’re logged into google/yahoo/msn or not
• Their previous search history
• Their browser settings
• Their location
• Chrome and IE8 – whether or not if they use an incognito window (for less tracking)

What does this mean?

• Everyone sees something different
• Must know your target market
• Cater your site to them
• Go above and beyond others in your niche
• Use analytics
• Learn which words convert
• See where your buyers are located
• Measure success on more targeted visitors and conversions

Misc/Q&A

Bruce:

• If you nofollow 1 URL on a page, and have the URL 5 times, all 5 will automatically be treated with nofollow.   If you have 5 same URLs it will still be in the denominator and lower your score slightly (but not add value).
• First in first out, as encountered by the spider
• You can buy links for traffic / advertising, don’t buy links for SEO
• If you buy a link that is suspect, then all your links may be in jeopardy in being suspect or scrutinized – you’ll lose score and not know it
• Social Media works: The Will It Blend Video using the iPhone, outranked ATT for keyword iPhone

In-House SEO

If you have a do-it-yourself attitude, then you’re probably relying on your own skills for your site SEO. Our panelists are veteran in-house search engine optimizers, and will reveal the best tips, tools and techniques for doing SEO in house. Learn all about the challenges and complications that might arise and the best way to deal with them in order to meet your SEO goals.

Moderator: Melanie Mitchell

Speakers:
Ash Nallawalla, Traffic Manager, Yellow Pages, Sensis Pty Ltd, @ashnallawalla
Chris Hooley, Owner, MCP Media, @ChrisHooley
Alex Bennert, In-house SEO, Wall Street Journal, @seosylph
Jessica L Bowman, Founder & President, SEOinhouse.com, @jessicabowman

Chris Hooley, Owner, MCP Media, @ChrisHooley

Key Areas for Scheduling Work Flow:

• Content generation schedules
• Content distrubtion schedules
• Time link acquisition goals
• Room for “emergencies”
• Getting SEO involved in inter-department duties
• Approval Processes
• Incentives

Key Takeaways:

• Almost every piece of content your company produces is a link opportunity!
• Find the right talent, don’t rush it
• People and jobs can be optimized

Listening to Alex Bennert, In-house SEO, Wall Street Journal

Keys to In-House SEO

• Always “Train Often”. There are multiple departments in your organization (IT, Content Developers (Bloggers, Journalists, Features Writers, Editors, Video), Management, Design, Business Development). So there is plenty of opportunity for training.
• Maintain a regularly scheduled SEO workshop session (20 minutes max)
• Use examples relevant to your audience
• Even if only one person shows up, do the presentation
• Include industry trends and changes
• Develop a presentation specific to each department, only tell them what they need to know

  For IT it may include:

  • Google webmaster tools, duplicate content, etc., Use 301s vs 302s, if it’s something we can’t do don’t harp on it.

  SEO for Biz Dev & Marketing may include:

  • Vendor review, site search, link equity syndication of content
  • Evaluate vendor product (site search, power listings)
  • Integration (cnames, iframes)
  • Assessing SEO value and link equity of potential partner sites or acquisitions
  • Microsites

  SEO for Content Development may include:

  • Title Tag, Meta Description headers
  • Linking, anchor text, nofollows
  • Writers (features – Keyword research, Google Insight for recurring events
  • Bloggers (QDF, trends, adjacent subjects for competitive terms)
  • Journalists (basic headlines, on-the-fly KW research)
  • Analytics (What’s there, how to use it, alternatives)

Ash Nallawalla, Traffic Manager, Australian Yellow Pages, Sensis Pty Ltd (senis.au)

Key Points:

• Size of website matters
• Budget matters ($20K consulting is a lot, but not compared to a full time employee)
• The economy matters
• Structure, Processes and Politics matter

SEO skill set

What skills should the in-house SEO have?

• Marketing
• On-page SEO (basic web design implied)
• Off-page SEO (linking)
• Web server knowledge (at least one platform) (i.e. apache)

Bonus skills:

• PHP/mysql (or msft)
• Javascript
• Java (rop. evn)
• Graphics

Jessica L Bowman, Founder & President, SEOinhouse.com

Common Misconceptions:

• SEO is just code tweaks
• SEO is about keywords in text
• It’s about links
• I don’t need to worry about SEO

Reality Check:

• SEO is unlike any other function in your company
• SEO is both a highly technical and a highly marketing function
• You can’t easily predict SEO like other marketing channels
• One conversation with SEO doesn’t cut it
• SEO isn’t always high enough in the org chart to get what they need
• 2-6 months = honeymoon stage
• Most in-house SEOs get disappointed in reality stage

You Need to Start with a Scope Doc (project charter)

• SEO success facors, SEO traffic, etc.
• Requirements Gathering – Meetings
• Project Plan
• Back End dev on as needed only
• QA Testing
• SEO pubic relations plan (12 mont)
• SEO checklist  (give bizcard)

Other Key Points:

• Distribute the SEO duties / work load and give accountability through out the organization
• Create SEO Champions/ Ambassadors
• Everyone Needs to Make SEO a Success:  The Execs, Prod Mgr, Project Mgr, Usability, Progammers, QA Testers, etc.

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.

Moderator:
Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz
Laura Lippay, Dir. Technical Marketing, Yahoo
Marty Weintraub, President, aimClear

• How much does that H1 tag really matter, versus the number of links pointing at a domain?
• Do “authority” sites always have an advantage over other sites with less reputation?
• Is brand recognition now a bigger issue?

This session looks at on-the-page and off-the-page factors that influence web search, to understand what remains useful and what new signals are growing in importance.

Speaker: Rand Fiskin

Rand presented data based on 70 top SEO survey respondents plus data correlations based on several hundred real search results (Feb-May 2009).

Keywords used in the title tag and root domain had the highest impact on SEO ranking

On page factors:

• Header Tags (has a low correlation) – H1, H2, H3 less than 1% impact
• Alt Text (higher correlation)
• Keyword in URL (very high correlation)
• Keyword Location (closer the better)

Top Factors:

1. URL
2. Title Tag
3. Domain, path, query, sub-domain

Other Factors:

• Number of linking domains
• Link popularity
• Page content

Speaker: Marty Weintraub

Is my page strength comparable for a specific keyword query in light of keywords, page, or domain attributes?

Page Strength & SERP competitiveness in charts takes hours

Brands are now ranking higher due to Google cranking up authority score

Search Engine Optimization 301 – Miva Merchant 2009

Speakers:
Nikki Patrick, Tampa-SEO.com
Gillian Muessig, SEOMoz.org

Inner Linking for SEO success

Nikki Patrick
Nikki@Tampa-SEO.com

If Content is King then Linking is Queen

Inner linking is taking keyword rich text and linking to to another page on your site with the content of your website. This allows the Search Engine spider to easily spider all the pages of your site.

Don’t over do it! You want to add a few links withi the content of each page that link to other pages that may be related. Only do this if it makes sense.

Google doesn’t like to see more than 100 links per page, including your navigation.

Inner Linking:

• Search engines place more value on links within the content than links from your navigation
• Use the bold tag around your anchor text to add value to the link, do not style it in the CSS. Don’t overdue it on the same keyword.
• Your home page should have links to category pages to push link juice to them.

Add a SEO friendly site map to your website. Use both HTML and XML
www.xml-sitemaps.com
www.sitemappro.com

A well structured inner linking campaign will give you those indented listing in the SERP’s as well as the internal pages

Page Sculpting

Page sculpting is the art of pushing link juice or value to certain pages of your site for increased rankings. Each link is assigned a certain amount of value.

The search engines don’t need to index every page of your site. Add the rel=”nofollow” tag inside of a link if you don’t want the search engine spiders to follow it.

You want to “nofollow: pages like

• shopping cart, checkout pages
• abous us, contact us, company info

You DO want to follow category pages, product pages, resource pages, affiliate pages, and the home page

You can also add rel=”follow” to tell the spiders to follow those links

Be careful when page sculpting. It is an advanced technique that can hurt your rankings if not done correctly.

SEO Tip: Use the no follow tag for “more info” link and buttons to give more link juice for keyword rich anchor text

Advanced Linkbuilding

So Juicy, You’ll Need a Napkin!

Gillian Muessig
SEOMoz.org

Pull Marketing
Push Marketing (Ads to your website)
Mold the two

How to perform searches that will result in high quality link acquisition targets:

The Obvious:

Seek permutations of keywords from top 100 ranking sites:
snowboard equipment (with quotes, no quotes, etc.)

Reciprocal Linking Tactic that Works

• Email sites or people you want to trade links with
• Offer to link to a piece of conte on their website an articel a grpph a tool a blog post
• In exchange, ask them to find something they like about your website,
• Write something review to them and visa versa

Creating a mobile stylesheet has more than just usability benefits. There are hundres of directories on the webs that list mobile/PDA-friendly websites

Image links on Steroids

Use a CSS image replacement so the link looks like HTML

Tickle the Blogger

• Compel bloggers
• Comment
• Write about them, then alert them

Unbelievable link sources:

Certain blog sections at Amazon
Check out pages examples on Amazon like:

• Jennifer Wilson Witch Books
• Blogging with MSN Saces
• How to Profit from Art

Search Engine Optimization 201 – Miva Merchant 2009
Speaker: Mark Simon, Miva Merchant

Where on miva to put SEO?

Overview:

• First complete your keyword research
• Identify page for each keyword
• Focus on one keyword phrase per page
• Where to put keyword on your page
• Domain considerations
• Adhering to standards
• Avoiding penalties

Keyword Placement:

• Meta tags – Title, Desc, Keywords
• Header tags – H1 to H6
• URLs & Filenames
• Content – Text on the page (CSS content before image. 400 words min.)
• Links to the page from other pages on your site
• Links to the page from other sites (deep linking)
• Links to other sites
• Alt tags (alt and title tag on images, title tag on links, used for accessibility)

YellowTee.com examples:

1. <title>&mvt:store:name:; &mvt:product:name;</title>
2. <title>&mvt:product:name; - &mvt:store:name;</title>
3. <title>&mvt:product:name; - Custom Catchy Title With Keywords</title>

Have product name first then catchy title with keywords.
Use Miva code to dynamically pull in category and product names for keywords
#3 will render the product name and keywords into the product page title.

Use hyphen, then underscore, bar/pipe, but avoid commas in title tag (harder to read and screws things up)

Similar code for H1 Tags too

Miva:

Product Code & Category Code = If possible (if it doesn’t break any of your business practices) put in keyword (i.e. corporate-golf-tees). 50 character limit.

In Miva Admin Interface:

To create SEO friendly links in Miva Merchant: Global Settings -> Domain Settings -> SEO settings

Domain Considerations:

• WHOIS information: Domain age, expiration (at least 2 to 3 years out), owner, IP
• Sitemap – HTML and XML sitemap
• Custom 404 page – Helps people robots find your site from bad links (link
• Who else is on your IP and IP block

Evaluating Your Site – Standards

• Is your site accessible & crawlable?
• Are you subject to duplicate content?
• Are you a good neighbor?

Avoiding the Penalty Box

• Nobody Likes Spam – Even the Search Engines
• Keyword Stuffing
• Multiple title tags, meta tags, h1 tags (use only 1 h1 tag)
• Hidden content & invisible text (don’t use invisible text)
• Cloaking, Redirection (don’t fool or spoof the user)
• Large spike in links

Resources:

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Yahoo! Site Explorer Tools
• Live Webmaster Tools
• Whois.DomainTools.com
• Sitemappro.com
• Ranksense.com
• SEOMoz.org
• MivaMerchant.com/blog
• W3c.org

301 Redirect long URLs to new URL
Change links in templates

Example:

Polyvore.com customer example site on fashion / user generated content (fashion collage)

<mvt:if expr="1.settings:product:code XYZ">
<title> XYZ </title>
<mvt:elseif >
<title> XYZ </title>
<mvt:else >


Introduction to SEO – Miva Merchant 2009
Speaker: Mark Simon, Miva Merchant

Conference Notes/Descriptions:

I. How Search Engines Rank Pages

• Search Engine Rank Pages Not Websites
• What the Search Engines evaluate (Ranking Factors)
• Title
• Description (keyword and selling tool)
• Headline (Header tags, 6 tags, 1 to 6)
• Body Text (Write for your customers, write to convert, then plug in keywords later)
• Anchor Text (keyword vote for that page)
• Links
• File names
• Keyword

II. Keyword Research

• Target Markets & Demographics
• Customer lingo – may not be what you think
• Industry lingo – tribal speak
• Number of Searches
• Number of Competing Pages
• Competitor Strength
• Identifying Opportunity (lowest amount of competition for a keyword phrase vs. number of searches)
• Keyword Tools

III. Competitive Analysis (find keywords, find links, etc.)

• Getting into the Search Engines
• Measure Success
• SEO for the CEO

IV. Getting into the Search Engines

• Links from other websites
• Sitemaps – HTML and XML

V. Metrics – Measuring Success

• PageRank doesn’t matter

What does matter:

• Conversion Rates
• Average value of visitors
• Traffic Sources
• Ranking for highly converting keywords
• Inbounds links
• Bounce rate

Q&A:

What is the difference between Indexing and Caching:
Indexing (google bot) = spider your pages and stores the data in their database
Caching = last version that google has saved

If some of my page isn’t indexed how do I get them in there (site:website.com):

1. Sitemap
2. Interlinking top pages (link from top popular internal pages)
3. Social Bookmarking

Some tools and resources mentioned during the SEO session at Miva Merchant

• SitemapPro.com
• SEORecon.com
• Linkscape Tool from SEOMoz.org
• SEObook.com