Transcript Fundamentals of Findability

Fundamentals of Findability
Troy Wise
Principal, TreefrogSEO.com
Overview
What is Findability?
 How does Search work?
 SEO
 Analytics and PPC
 Q&A Session

What is Findability?
Find-a-bil’-i-ty (n)
1.
2.
3.
The quality of being findable.
The degree to which a particular object
or piece of information is easy to
discover or find.
The degree to which a particular
system supports navigation and
retrieval.
Exercise: Where are my…?
Exercise: Where are my…?
Step 1: What do I need?
Step 2: Where to start looking?
Step 3: What are my criteria?
Step 4: What if I can’t find what I’m
looking for?

Go back!
Findability and the Web
Who has a search engine as their home
page?
Findability and the Web
Search is integrated in browsers, phones,
our cars, operating systems…even in
televisions and some refrigerators!
Findability and the Web
Search has been established as the
central necessary function on the
Internet.
 With the maturity of the personal web
(iGoogle, My Yahoo!, etc.), the power
of search ranking will increasingly be
placed in the hands of the search
consumer.

The “Big Three” Engines

Yahoo!: Winner of the first round


Bing: Upstart evolution of search


Decreasing share of search, key demographics are
primarily female, 30 or older, and looking for a
search/news/entertainment portal.
Currently a 7.8% share of search (quickly gaining on
Yahoo!), some forecasters are predicting 20% by year
end. Microsoft has replicated Google’s model, then
added morphing focus as users drill down their search
criteria to specialized results sets.
Google: Reigning Heavyweight Champion

Still over 80% of search market.
What is Google’s Objective?
“Google’s goal is to organize the world’s
information”
-Larry Page, Google Co-Founder
Search: Understanding the
Environment

Provide relevant search results to
users’ search requests.

The biggest mistake online marketers
make:
Working against the search engines!
 Working against the searcher!

SEO 101: What is SEO?
SEO (n)
1.
2.
Search Engine Optimization
Strategies undertaken to lift the
“organic” rank of a website or
online content in SERP rankings for
given keywords.
SEO 101: Understanding
SERP Rankings
Relevance!!!
 Factors include:













Text Content
Page Title
H Tags (Content in <h1>, <h2>, and other <hx> tags
A Tags (Link text)
ALT Tags
Page Rank
Incoming Links
Filename
Title and Keyword Tags
Content and Site Popularity
Flash Data Framework
Etc.
SEO 101: Understanding
Page Rank

Page Rank is a measure of the
authority (or importance) of a specific
page on the Internet.

More precisely, Page Rank represents
the statistical likelihood of arriving on
a particular web page from any
random starting point on the
Internet.
SEO 101: Actual Page Rank
The Page Rank for any page (pi) can be expressed as
the dominant eigenvector of the entire Internet
within an adjacency matrix where d = the residual
probability of random clicks, L is the number of
outbound links on a given page, M is the number of
pages that link to pi , and N is the number of web
pages on the Internet (or within the system under
consideration) where pj is any other page in the
system being measured. In other words:
SEO 101: Practical Page Rank

In which of the photos below does Robert
Downey, Jr. appear more credible, and
Sheriff
why?
vs.
Wife
SEO 101: Practical Page Rank

Page Rank depends on the Page Rank of
the sites that link to your site.

It’s about the company you keep, and how
credible they appear and MAKE YOU
APPEAR.

Page Rank is a logarithmic scale:



1x10=2
2x10=3
8x10=9
SEO 101: Algorithms

Mathematical formulae that rank relevance
automatically for each search engine

Elements (keywords, keyword density,
page rank, etc.) remain the same

Relative importance of elements is
constantly changing and different for each
search engine

Algorithms are not published!
SEO 101: How do I Optimize to
Improve My SERP Rank?

Standard elements can be optimized
to increase relevance and importance
to the search engines for keywords
and keyword phrases.

These keywords and keyword phrases
MUST be researched and relevant
TO THE SEARCH AUDIENCE, NOT
NECESSARILY TO YOUR
MARKETING PLAN!!!
SEO 101: Relevance to the
Search Audience

What terms are significant to your
target audience?

Are they actually doing searches on
these terms?

Research tools like Keyword
Discovery can answer these
questions.
SEO 101: Relevance to the
Search Audience

If your site shows up at #1 for Blurite Ore
Processing and you make snowshoes, does
the SERP ranking matter?

If you get one million visitors per day for
Blurite Ore Processing, does the traffic help
build your snowshoe brand or bottom line?

If you rank #1 for cardboard snowshoes
and nobody is searching for cardboard
snowshoes, does it matter?
SEO 101: Elements of
Optimization

Robots.txt: Tells search spiders (or “bots”)
what to index and what NOT to index

Sitemap.xml: Provides a map for the
search spider to follow in crawling and
digesting your site.

META Description: Keyword-rich phrase
that will help search users to understand
your content before clicking through to
your site.
SEO 101: Elements of
Optimization

META Keywords: Help to describe the main
thrust of the content on the page—these
should be matched to individual pages and
should be in order of importance
 PRO TIP: Keywords should be <1024
characters and do not repeat specific
words consecutively.
 Low importance, but every page you
want to show in SERP should have ‘em!
SEO 101: Elements of
Optimization

Title Tags: Page titles should also be keyword-rich
and relevant to page content
 Keywords first, then company name!

ALT tags: Parameters within other HTML tags
(images, links, etc.) that provide an alternate
description (keyword rich!) of content.
SEO 101: Elements of
Optimization

“H” Tags: Headlines are the topic of news stories,
describing content—these are weighted more
heavily than standard-level content.

“A” Tags: The text that you choose for your links
is also weighted for both the linking page as well
as the content to which it links.

Page Content: The king—make your copy relevant
to the search you expect will arrive at the page.
SEO 101: Keyword
Cannibalization
SEO 101: Final

Start with researched keywords and
keyword phrases that are used in realworld searches

Create relevant content with proper
technical structure and in cooperation with
the objective of the search engines

Place yourself in good company
SEM: Pay-Per-Click

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) are “sponsored results”
that provide a means for low page rank
sites and services to enjoy SERP primacy
based on a pay per click model.

Positioning of PPC ads (at least on Google)
is not based solely on bid!
SEM: Pay-Per-Click
"Millions of users around the world rely on
Google's objective search results to find the
information they need. AdWords brings the
same quality and relevancy to Google's
sponsored links that our users have come to
expect from our non-commercial search
results. This combination of unbiased and
commercial results provides an even more
valuable search experience for our users.“
Omid Kordestani
Senior VP-worldwide sales & business development, Google
SEM: PPC Success

Choose relevant, searched keywords that
echo your site content

Develop pertinent landing page(s) that
include strong calls to action

Set realistic, incremental goals that lead to
intended objectives

Write on-target, engaging ads that pull
qualified searchers
SEM: PPC Success
Determine what you want out of your
PPC program:
Branding? Keep your message on-target
and go for impressions over clickthrough (Impressions are “free”!).
Consider image/audio/video ads if
budget allows.
 Sales? Traffic? Anything else? Ensure
strong calls to action and direct to
message appropriate (and well-linked)
landing page(s).

Fundamentals of Findability

Analytics will tell you how everything is
working

Set goals within Analytics

Understand your audience through diving
into Analytics records
 Keywords
 Geographical Location
 Browser Specification
 BOUNCE RATE!!!
Summary
Relevance, Relevance, Relevance
 Understand how your audience is
searching
 Share and Support the objectives of
the Search Engines
 Content is King
 Set and Measure Against Attainable
Goals—Then Repeat!
 Track Your Results!!!

Questions?
Thank You!
TreefrogSEO
938 George Street
Lake Geneva, WI 53149
http://www.treefrogseo.com
p: 262-436-9501