1. Editorial SEO Best Practices Drew Broomhall | Head of Search HCM

2. What (some) enterprise C-level management think SEO is “It’s putting lots of keywords on all our pages” “It’s tricking Google into making our pages rank above everyone else” "There is no doubt that certain websites are best described as parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the internet." "We're going to stop people like Google and Microsoft and whoever from taking our stories for nothing."

3. What (some) journalists think SEO is http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/weekinreview/09lohr.html

5. ? “The Database of Intentions is simply this: The aggregate results of every search ever entered, every result list ever tendered, and every path taken as a result”

6. What is SEO for media companies? CONTENT  Content is created to a plan that meets business objectives  Content is written to appeal to an online audience  Content is published in a timely fashion to capitalise on market trends  Writers and editors are trained to write content that appeals to readers and is highly relevant to search engines MARKETING  Actively promote content via distribution channels such as aggregators and bloggers  Promote content via social media to reach new readers  Create some content with goal of maximising reach (linkbait)  Make offline marketing and PR work for online benefit by aligning strategies and sharing objectives TECHNICAL  Websites must be fast and technically sound  Navigation must be clear and consistent  Websites must not breach search engine guidelines (e.g. spamming)  We optimise all our content - video and images also deliver strong traffic STRATEGIC  We measure everything. Capture data, focus on actionable insights  Focused reporting for key team members e.g. news traffic reporting  Always balance commercial and editorial objectives  Anticipate threats, evaluate competition, and always plan ahead

7. The enterprise SEO machine PR Sys Admin

8. What it actually looks like EDITORIAL PR MARKETING WEB DEV SYS ADMIN Writing content Writing advertorial Blogger outreach PR for linkbuilding Planning content Information Architecture Offline PR activity Front end code Hosting issues Performance optimisation Social media management Pure linkbuilding Web design Publishing content Microsites Keyword research Email bulletins Strategic partnerships Site analytics PPC Reporting Events Marketing plans Usability testing

9. Keyword overload RESEARCHING KEYWORDS  Start with existing keywords if site is in play  Use subject domain experts in organisation for seed keywords  Use business owners to set commercial angle  Never trust just one keyword source, and use horses for courses PRIORITISING KEYWORDS  Triage your keywords to refine a large list  Use conversion, bounce rate, pages viewed or your preferred metric to attribute a value TRACKING KEYWORDS  Tracking at enterprise scale can become expensive  Track for benchmarking before you implement a change  Track on a per project basis PREDICTING KEYWORDS  Build out calendars for seasonal trends  Use your insider knowledge to predict big trends, big products  Don’t forget that people use temporal qualifiers all the time

10. How this would work for Clinical Advisor “Keyword research is really user research that details how your customers are using language to describe your products, services, and content. Make sure you use the language that they are accustomed to.”  Build definitive list of medical conditions that core CA user should be able to diagnose  Build list of keyword modifiers – “diagnosis”, “how to identify”, “in children” and more  Pull current known rankings from SEO tools  Augment with site search data  Seek out real user behaviour data  Create master keyword list containing all conditions and all modifiers  Generate keyword lists for each variation  Get keyword popularity data for each term  Balance popularity against the needs of the audience  Factor in keyword difficulty to see which terms are ‘low hanging fruit’ and which are hard to win  Decide which keywords can be addressed through templating and IA, and which through ongoing editorial  Build an editorial plan around relevance, demand, opportunity, seasonality

11. The defining characteristics of keywords HEAD TERMS: ‘lyme disease’ High volume means high competition, hard to rank for, usually battling established competitors MID-LEVEL TERMS: ‘diagnosing lyme disease’ Good regular traffic volume, high competition but easier to rank, require systematic approach to content LONG TAIL TERMS: ‘diagnosing lyme disease in children pictures’ Low traffic but endless variations drive volume. Harder to plan for, but very easy to produce content and rank

12. Targeting all the keywords that matter

13. Keyword tools you should use

14. Getting more out of existing ranked keywords

15. Analyse the competition

16. Learning to be a definitive resource

18. Content that wins Commodity news Exclusive news Brand initiatives Brilliant features Amazing reviews Bad long- Tail content Original product

19. The worst words an SEO can hear… “I’m launching this product next week. Could you SEO it for me?” HOW TO RESOLVE THIS  Involve SEO stakeholders early in development process  Have a shared development and SEO roadmap  Build red flags and approvals into development process

20. Build SEO security into your processes

21. The end of SEO 101 DEVELOPMENT  Crib sheets and Wikis for SEO standards  Workshops to cover common issues  Train product owners and project managers as well  Put milestones and flags into project plans MARKETERS  Focused keyword training using appropriate tools  Train on the relationship between SEO and social media ANALYSTS  Define advanced and specific SEO metrics  Create analysts who can share their knowledge  Track on a per project basis WRITERS  Quickfire keyword research for busy journalists  Copywriting and headline writing for people AND search engines  Teach writers how to market their own content GENERAL ADVICE  Bespoke training using specific and relevant examples  Build tools and workflows that simplify processes

22. Prevention is better than cure

23. A word on Authorship

24. One methodology for getting quick results 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11+ Improve clickthrough by adding structured data Rewrite generic page title and description rules Create custom titles and descriptions for tricky pages Focus text Work on manual internal linking Work on automatic cross linking Fix problem IA issues Build links via partners Build links via likely linking sites (fansites) Develop social media contacts to widen reach All the above and more…. SERP

25. Thank you drew.broomhall@haymarket.com @drewbroomhall