Fundamentals of Findability

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Fundamentals of Findability

• Troy Wise
• Principal, TreefrogSEO.com

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Overview

• What is Findability?
• How does Search work?
• SEO
• Analytics and PPC
• QA Session

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What is Findability?

• Find-a-bil-i-ty (n)
• 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.

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Exercise Where are my?
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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 cant find what Im looking
  for?
• Go back!

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Findability and the Web

• Who has a search engine as their home page?

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Findability and the Web

• Search is integrated in browsers, phones, our
  cars, operating systemseven in televisions and
  some refrigerators!

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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.

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The Big Three Engines

• Yahoo! Winner of the first round
• Decreasing share of search, key demographics are
  primarily female, 30 or older, and looking for a
  search/news/entertainment portal.
• Bing Upstart evolution of search
• Currently a 7.8 share of search (quickly gaining
  on Yahoo!), some forecasters are predicting 20
  by year end. Microsoft has replicated Googles
  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.

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What is Googles Objective?

• Googles goal is to organize the worlds
  information
• -Larry Page, Google Co-Founder

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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!

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SEO 101 What is SEO?

• SEO (n)
• Search Engine Optimization
• Strategies undertaken to lift the organic rank
  of a website or online content in SERP rankings
  for given keywords.

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SEO 101 Understanding SERP Rankings

• Relevance!!!
• Factors include
• Text Content
• Page Title
• H Tags (Content in lth1gt, lth2gt, and other lthxgt
  tags
• A Tags (Link text)
• ALT Tags
• Page Rank
• Incoming Links
• Filename
• Title and Keyword Tags
• Content and Site Popularity
• Flash Data Framework
• Etc.

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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.

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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

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SEO 101 Practical Page Rank

• In which of the photos below does Robert Downey,
  Jr. appear more credible, and why?

Sheriff vs. Wife
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SEO 101 Practical Page Rank

• Page Rank depends on the Page Rank of the sites
  that link to your site.
• Its about the company you keep, and how credible
  they appear and MAKE YOU APPEAR.
• Page Rank is a logarithmic scale
• 1x102
• 2x103
• 8x109

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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!

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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!!!

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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.

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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?

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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.

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SEO 101 Elements of Optimization

• META Keywords Help to describe the main thrust
  of the content on the pagethese should be
  matched to individual pages and should be in
  order of importance
• PRO TIP Keywords should be lt1024 characters and
  do not repeat specific words consecutively.
• Low importance, but every page you want to show
  in SERP should have em!

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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.

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SEO 101 Elements of Optimization

• H Tags Headlines are the topic of news
  stories, describing contentthese 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 kingmake your copy relevant to
  the search you expect will arrive at the page.

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SEO 101 Keyword Cannibalization
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SEO 101 Final

• Start with researched keywords and keyword
  phrases that are used in real-world searches
• Create relevant content with proper technical
  structure and in cooperation with the objective
  of the search engines
• Place yourself in good company

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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!

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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 KordestaniSenior VP-worldwide sales
  business development, Google

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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

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SEM PPC Success

• Determine what you want out of your PPC program
• Branding? Keep your message on-target and go for
  impressions over click-through (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).

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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!!!

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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 GoalsThen
  Repeat!
• Track Your Results!!!

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Questions?
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Thank You!

• TreefrogSEO
• 938 George Street
• Lake Geneva, WI 53149
• http//www.treefrogseo.com
• p 262-436-9501