MPPR-881-01: DIGITAL MARKETING April 7, 2015 @kwatier SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION 1

KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR SEO SUCCESS 1. There are “rules” to follow • Google rule or best practice • Bing rule or best practice • A rule based on human online behavior research 2. All online content is personalized to the end user 3. Search changes daily and future focused marketers are most unaffected by those changes. 2

SEARCH ENGINES 101 3

Google and Bing create their listings automatically. They use “spiders” or “bots” to "crawl" links (or social shares) to web pages and social profiles and add those web pages & profiles to their index. When a human visitor puts in a keyword phrase into the search engine, the search engine is focused on serving relevant, fresh, quality content that the engines think matches the searcher’s intent & is personalized for the user. 4 Keyword Phrases LET’S COVER THE BASICS

FOUR ASPECTS OF SEO 5 1. Technical SEO 2. Targeted Quality Content 3. Link Building 4. Online brand building

1: TECHNICAL SEO 6

TECHNICAL SEO REQUIREMENTS • This is just an example, a full list of SEO requirements here: http://www.seerin teractive.com/blo g/craziest- internet- marketing-audit- checklist-on-the- interwebz

TECHNICAL SEO CASE STUDY 8

2. TARGETED QUALITY CONTENT 9

GOOGLE’S PANDA 10

GOOGLE & BING RULE: KEYWORDS “Think about the words a searcher might search for to find a piece of your content, and make sure your site actually includes those words.” - Google 11

THE ADWORDS KEYWORD TOOL HIDES DATA • It’s not build for organic search, so it will limit the data you see. • Some words/phrases will not show initially because the tool is for paid advertising THE IMPORTANT LESSON: • Running discovery-focused searches in AdWords may not show you all the valuable/high-volume keyword phrases connected to a word/phrase. • First, run discovery searches in Google Suggest with wildcards, then use Adword tool to find volume of exact phrase

KEYWORD RESEARCH PROCESS 1. Complete the keyword brainstorming process 2. Look at your analytics to find terms you might be imperfectly targeting 3. Run Google Suggest with wildcards 4. Then use http://keywordtool.io/ and http://ubersuggest.org/ and SEO Chat’s free Bulk Search Suggest keyword tool. 5. Check Twitter to see how real life people are talking about your topic. filter real Twitter conversations: [#hashtag -filter:links] 6. Run Adwords keyword tool like usual, save options. 7. Run Adwords keyword tool with those new exact keyword suggestions, save options. 8. Select target keywords and concepts that make sense based on client’s business 9. Run Moz’s Keyword Difficulty, eliminate keywords if your content doesn’t “fit” with what is already ranking 10. Finalize keyword and concepts list

USING FINAL KEYWORD LIST FOR WRITING 1. Group target keyword and any supporting keywords together 2. Look at what is ranking for the target keyword to determine type of content needed. 3. Think about what would be unique and/or no one else has made it before, and if others would actually share it. Ideally you ask your target audience here if they would share it before you create the content… 4. Write the copy to fit the need and double check your writing based on Google’s content quality questions 5. Optimize meta title and description. Use your target keyword 1-2 times, use supporting keywords to organize your subtopics.

GOOGLE’S RULES: CONTENT QUALITY QUESTIONS • Would you trust the information presented in this article? • Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature? • Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations? • Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines? • Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis? • Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results? • Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend? 15

GOOGLE BEST PRACTICE: ONLINE READING 16

3. LINK BUILDING 17

GOOGLE PENGUIN 18

LINK BUILDING AND MAINTENANCE • Each page that you want to appear in search needs it’s own inbound links. • To compete, you need around the same number of links “votes” as other URLs that are appearing in search for that term. • Links must appear natural, don’t obsess over “exact” anchor text. • Unnatural links will result in loss of search rankings/potentially being dropped from Google • SEOs must monitor inbound links and work to remove/disavow those that are built which are detrimental/not semantically related. 19

GOOGLE & BING RULES: ONLINE PROMOTION Google: 20 Bing:

4. ONLINE BRAND BUILDING 21

Google Hummingbird 22

GOOGLE HUMMINGBIRD • Google’s move from keywords to understanding what real world things are. They are doing this by building a database of things. • Ability to start to understand mobile/voice queries and return relevant results. • Matching the meanings of phrases with concepts rather than just text with keywords. Impact on online copy: • You need to understand your potential visitors possible intents. • Address content to specific wants and needs. • Create in depth content that answers comprehensive questions. 23

MOBILE SEO • Google’s Mobile algorithm update • Deep App linking • use information from indexed apps as a factor in ranking for signed-in users who have the app installed. As a result, we may now surface content from indexed apps more prominently in search. • Google’s Mobile SEO Guide 24

PERSONALIZE SEARCH (WHY SEARCH RANKINGS ARE MISLEADING) 25

THE MOST IMPORTANT TRANSITION 26 From keyword based results → Entities and connections based results Cartoon on left by Peter Steiner © 2012

GOOGLE – POWERED BY YOUR GOOGLE DATA

PERSONALIZED SEARCH 28

PERSONALIZED SEARCH 29

ENTITY POWER

GOOGLE+ IS THE NEXT GOOGLE (GOOGLE 2.0) Google+ is the official profile with the world’s largest search engine. You are giving Google data: • About you as a company • About who your company is connected to • Identifying your customers (if they follow your page) • Highlighting what other social media networks you have Google is using that information to ensure that they are showing your online content to the people who are looking for you. They are also using it to discover who is an authority based on the content they write and who interacts with it.

WHAT IS THE SEMANTIC WEB? Teach a machine to think like a human

STRUCTURED DATA - SCHEMA.ORG http://schema.org/

GOOGLE’S FUTURE: 34 “With your permission, you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches….we don’t need you to type at all. We know who you are We know where you’ve been We can more or less know what you’re thinking.” - Eric Schmidt, Google

No content

USING GOOGLE WITHOUT SEARCHING 36 http://backslidden.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Dyson86237596.jpg Google asks: “What did you want to know recently?” “ It will know at a semantically deep level what you’re interested in, not just the topic... [ but] the specifi c questions and concerns you have. I envision some years from now that the majority of search queries will be answered without you actually speaking. ” – Ray Kurzweil

37 FIGHT BACK BY PLAYING THE GAME

TARGET YOUR CUSTOMER 1. Use personas 2. Target content to your audience 3. Build social relationships 4. Know the signals and use them 5. Measure it to see if it’s working 38

STEP 1: CREATE PERSONAS • Demographics (male/female, marital status, age range, income) • Job level/Title (if B2B) • Pain points • Objections to attitude change • Routine for a typical day • Level of sophistication with technology • Online information sources/social networks • Keyword terms • Mobile use * http://www.makemypersona.com 39

STEP 2: TARGET CONTENT TO YOUR AUDIENCE Create content that is focused on their: • Personas • Needs • Desires • Emotional Motivators • Burning Questions • Formatted in a way that drives sharing 40

STEP 3: BUILD SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS • Be engaged in social. Find them by doing social media listening for your key terms, the solution your product fills, and your brand name. Build out a presence and engage where they are. • Storing the data around those relationships. • Determine who is your largest influencer by content focus and engage them. • Measure to see if your message is “breaking through” and reaching your end consumer. • Track social back to web goals (traffic, links, conversions) and measure trends across social. 41

STEP 4: KNOW THE SIGNALS & USE THEM • Stay up to date on the changing personalization tactics via search & social blog updates. • Follow the published “rules” each social media platform/engine publishes related to their personalization process. • Use schema, Google+, and social media optimization (Open Graph), to send additional signals. 42

STEP 5: MEASURE TO SEE IF IT’S WORKING 1. Google searches/mo. compared to your overall organic traffic. 2. Social media monitoring to view an increase in volume around your brand name and products. 3. Increase in social media & target referral traffic per month. 4. Website conversions from organic search. 5. Search focus group studies. 43

PARTING THOUGHTS…. Know Your Customer • Use their language • Have them test your message • Create search personas and measure against assumptions • Provide online content that is quality and shareable • Build social communities around your brand – especially utilizing Google+ • Store and leverage influencer data • Coordinate all messaging including paid to create a “surround sound” • Leverage social and web data to refine personas and outreach

ADDITIONAL LEARNING RESOURCES Google: How Search Works: http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/thestory/ Moz’s Beginner guide: http://guides.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-optimization Full list of SEO technical requirements: http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/craziest-internet-marketing-audit-checklist-on-the-interwebz Staying up to date with online marketing: www.SearchEngineLand.com and www.MarketingLand.com Google’s SEO Guide: http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/ Bing’s SEO Guide: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/webmaster-guidelines-30fba23a http://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/2009/09/03/search-engine-optimization-for-bing/ 45

KATHERINE WATIER ONG VP ONLINE MARKETING AND MARKET INSIGHTS KETCHUM 202-729-8355 @KWATIER WWW.LINKEDIN.COM/IN/KATHERINEWATIER GPLUS.TO/KATHERINEWATIER WWW.WATIER.ORG/KATHERINE CHECK OUT MY THOUGHTS ABOUT KNOWLEGE GRAPH IN A NEW EBOOK! HTTP://PROPECTA.COM/THE-KNOWLEDGE-GRAPH- AND-THE-FUTURE-OF-SEO 46 Stay in touch!