© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Website/SEO 101 presented by Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts.

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Today’s Agenda  7 Steps to Higher Rankings –Get Your Site Fully Indexed –Get Your Pages Visible –Build Links & PageRank –Leverage Your PageRank –Encourage Clickthrough –Track the Right Metrics –Avoid Worst Practices  Build a Search Optimized Website Fast with WordPress

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Search Engine Optimization  6 times more effective than a banner ad  Delivers qualified leads  80% of Internet user sessions begin at the search engines (Source: Internetstats.com)  55% of online purchases are made on sites found through search engine listings (Source: Internetstats.com)

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com SEO is NOT Paid Advertising  SEO – influence rankings in the “natural” (a.k.a. “organic”, a.k.a. “algorithmic”) search results  PPC – paid search advertising on a pay-per-click basis. The more you pay, the higher your placement. Stop paying = stop receiving traffic.  SEM – encompasses both SEO and PPC

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Google Listings – Your Virtual Sales Force  Savvy retailers making 6-7 figures a month from natural listings  Savvy MFA (Made for AdSense) site owners making 5- 6 figures per month  Most sites are not SE-friendly  Google friendliness = friendly to other engines

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com What Are Searchers Looking For?  Keyword Research –“Target the wrong keywords and all your efforts will be in vain.”  The “right” keywords are… –relevant to your business –popular with searchers

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Keyword Research  Tools to check popularity of keyword searches –Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool (http://inventory.overture.com) –WordTracker.com –Trellian’s KeywordDiscovery.com –Google’s Keyword Tool –Google Trends –Google Suggest

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com WordTracker.com  Pros –Based on last 60 days worth of searches –Singular vs plural, misspellings, verb tenses all separated out –Advanced functionality: keyword “projects”, import data into Excel, synonyms, …  Cons –Requires subscription fee ($260/year) –Data is from a small sample of Internet searches (from the minor search engines Dogpile and MetaCrawler) –Contains bogus data from automated searches –No historical archives

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Trellian’s KeywordDiscovery.com  Pros –Full year of historical archives –Data is from a large sample of Internet searches (9 billion searches compiled from 37 engines) –Singular vs plural, misspellings, verb tenses all separated out –Can segment by country –Advanced functionality: keyword “projects”, import data into Excel, synonyms, …  Cons –Access to the historical data requires subscription fee (~$30/month) –Contains bogus data from automated searches

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Google AdWords Keyword Tool  Pros –Free! (Must have an AdWords account though) –Data is from a large sample of Internet searches (from Google) –Singular vs plural, misspellings, verb tenses all separated out –Can segment by country –Synonyms  Cons –No hard numbers  Augment this tool with other free Google tools: –Google Suggest (labs.google.com/suggest) –Google Trends (www.google.com/trends)

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com 7 Steps to Higher Rankings 1) Get Your Site Fully Indexed 2) Get Your Pages Visible 3) Build Links & PageRank 4) Leverage Your PageRank 4) Encourage Clickthrough 6) Track the Right Metrics 7) Avoid Worst Practices

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com 1) Get Your Site Fully Indexed  Search engines are wary of “dynamic” pages - they fear “spider traps”  Avoid stop characters (?, &, =) ‘cgi-bin’, session IDs and unnecessary variables in your URLs; frames; redirects; pop-ups; navigation in Flash/Java/Javascript/pulldown boxes –If not feasible due to platform constraints, can be easily handled through proxy technology (e.g. GravityStream)  The better your PageRank, the deeper and more often your site will be spidered  http://searchengineland.com/stephan-spencersmaking-sense-of-googles-new-dynamic-url- recommendations-111.php

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com 1) Get Your Site Fully Indexed  Page # estimates are wildly inaccurate, and include non-indexed pages (e.g. ones with no title or snippet)  Misconfigurations (in robots.txt, in the type of redirects used, requiring cookies, etc.) can kill indexation  Keep your error pages out of the index by returning 404 status code  Keep duplicate pages out of the index by standardizing your URLs, eliminating unnecessary variables, using 301 redirects when needed

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Not Spider-Friendly  GET http://www.bananarepublic.com --> 302 Moved Temporarily  GET http://www.bananarepublic.com/browse/home.do --> 302 Moved Temporarily  GET http://www.bananarepublic.com/browse/home.do?targetURL=htt p%3A%2F%2Fwww.bananarepublic.com%2Fbrowse%2Fhome.d o&CookieSet=Set --> 302 Moved Temporarily  GET http://www.bananarepublic.com/cookieFailure.do --> 200 OK

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com 2) Get Your Pages Visible  200+ “signals” that influence ranking  “Title tag” is the most important copy on the page  Home page is the most important page of a site  Every page of your site has a “song” (keyword theme)  Incorporate keywords into title tags, hyperlink text, headings (H1 & H2 tags), alt tags, and high up in the page (where they’re given more “weight”)  Eliminate extraneous HTML code  “Meta tags” are not a magic bullet  Have text for navigation, not graphics

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com 3) Build Links and PageRank  “Link popularity” affects search engine rankings  PageRank™ - Links from “important” sites have more impact on your Google rankings (weighted link popularity)  Google offers a window into your PageRank –PageRank meter in the Google Toolbar (toolbar.google.com) –Google Directory (directory.google.com) category pages –3rd party tools like SEOChat.com’s “PageRank Lookup” & “PageRank Search”  Scores range from 0-10 on a logarithmic scale  Live Search and Yahoo have similar measures to PageRank™

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com 4) Leverage Your PageRank  Your home page’s PageRank gets distributed to your deep pages by virtue of your hierarchical internal linking structure (e.g. breadcrumb nav)  Pay attention to the text used within the hyperlink (“Google bombing”)  Don’t hoard your PageRank  Don’t link to “bad neighborhoods”

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com 4) Leverage Your PageRank  Avoid PageRank dilution –Canonicalization (www.domain.com vs. domain.com) –Duplicate pages: (session IDs, tracking codes, superfluous parameters) –In general, search engines are cautious of dynamic URLs (with ?, &, and = characters) because of “spider traps” Rewrite your URLs (using a server module/plug-in) or use a hosted proxy service (e.g. GravityStream) See http://catalogagemag.com/mag/marketing_right_page_web/

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com 5) Encourage Clickthrough  Zipf’s Law applies - you need to be at the top of page 1 of the search results. It’s an implied endorsement.  Synergistic effect of being at the top of the natural results & paid results  Entice the user with a compelling call-to-action and value proposition in your descriptions  Your title tag is critical  Snippet gets built automatically, but you CAN influence what’s displayed here

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com 6) Track the Right Metrics  Indexation : # of pages indexed, % of site indexed, % of product inventory indexed, # of “fresh pages”  Link popularity : # of links, PageRank score (0 - 10)  Rankings : by keyword, “filtered” (penalized) rankings  Keyword popularity : # of searches, competition, KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Indicator) scores  Cost/ROI : sales by keyword & by engine, cost per lead

Link popularity tool – www.netconcepts.com/linkcheck

ROI – Sales by keyword

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Avoid Worst Practices  Target relevant keywords  Don’t stuff keywords or replicate pages  Create deep, useful content  Don't conceal, manipulate, or over-optimize content  Links should be relevant (no scheming!)  Observe copyright/trademark law & Google’s guidelines

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Spamming in Its Many Forms…  Hidden or small text  Keyword stuffing  Targeted to obviously irrelevant keywords  Automated submitting, resubmitting, deep submitting  Competitor names in meta tags  Duplicate pages with minimal or no changes  Spamglish  Machine generated content

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Spamming in Its Many Forms…  Pagejacking  Doorway pages  Cloaking  Submitting to FFA (“Free For All”) sites & link farms  Buying up expired domains with high PageRanks  Scraping  Splogging (spam blogging)

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Not Spam, But Bad for Rankings  Splash pages, content-less home page, Flash intros  Title tags the same across the site  Error pages in the search results (eg “Session expired”)  "Click here" links  Superfluous text like “Welcome to” at beginning of titles  Spreading site across multiple domains (usually for load balancing)  Content too many levels deep

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com What Next? Conduct an SEO Audit!  Is your site fully indexed?  Are your pages fully optimized?  Could you be acquiring more PageRank?  Are you spending your PageRank wisely?  Are you maximizing your clickthrough rates?  Are you measuring the right things?  Are you applying “best practices” in SEO and avoiding all the “worst practices”?

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Case Study: Homestead.com  What worked –Comprehensive SEO & usability audit –Intensive on-site training sessions with their IT and marketing teams –6 months of support  What didn’t work –No significant changes to the look of the home page were allowed for political reasons, significantly reducing the options available

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Case Study: Homestead.com  Results –Within 8 weeks of launch of some preliminary optimization work, on page 1 for “website hosting” in Google –With our audit as a blueprint, later that year launched an internally built site redesign which landed them the #1 Google position for “website hosting” –Consistently held #1 position for 2 years

Build An Optimized Site Fast  WordPress isn’t just a blog platform – it’s a content management system (CMS)! –E.g. Netconcepts.com – a corporate website powered by WordPress  WordPress is search engine friendly “out of the box”, but not search engine optimized  To optimize

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com SEO with WordPress  So easy a child could do it  Chloe started at 15  Passive income: ~$1000/month from Google AdSense  Effort required: 1 hr/month  Thank you, Google! My daughter, SEO-in-training

#5 for “neopets” #3 for “neopets cheats” #6 for “neo pets” etc.

Optimizing on WordPress  Optimize title tags using the SEO Title Tag plugin (www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin)  Use rel=nofollow on low-value pages (like “Email this page”, date-based archives, etc.) to spend your PageRank wisely  Don’t have multiple “homes” for your blog. Use 301s.  Display unique “Optional Excerpts” on all but permalink pages to minimize duplicate content

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Optimizing on WordPress  Add keyword-rich intro copy to category & tag pages with “sticky” posts (WP-Sticky plugin)  Optimize URLs (short, keyword-rich, no ? & =, not too many words, not too many directories)  Multiple RSS feeds w/ keyword-rich titles & descriptions  Own your blog & feed URLs (no blogspot.com or feedburner.com)  Use keyword-rich anchor text when linking internally

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com In Summary  Focus on the right keywords  Have great keyword-rich content  Build links, and thus your PageRank™  Spend that PageRank™ wisely within your site  Measure the right things  Continually monitor and benchmark  Leverage WordPress as a CMS

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com Q&A!  For a white paper on blog SEO & a seminar video recording on WordPress SEO, an ebook on Google power searching, SEO checklists & worksheets, and audio recording, executive summary & transcript of an SEO thought leaders teleconference, e-mail your request to seo@netconcepts.com  To contact me: stephan@netconcepts.com

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Website/SEO 101 presented by Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts.

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© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Website/SEO 101 presented by Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts.

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