SES London 2013 - Paul Madden - Social Media and SEO

Paul Madden formerly blackhat SEO @SEOIdiot now SEO and in building guru based in the UK http://www.paulmadden.co.uk/ gave some great tips on link building post penguin.

I didn't take many notes having been a little stuck in the moment of listening however I did take some notes and hopefully caught the gist of what he was trying to get across.

Things to remember when link building;
- Links don't expire you have to take these off.
- Link data is a must!!!!
- Understanding the sites you get links from don't just say yes

GET A MONTHLY LINK AUDIT PROCESS IN PLACE!

Signals that should tell you your site is at risk;
-Far higher % of on anchor text
- site wide links are a no no
- stay away from suspect Cctlds
- Remove links that have died check BACKLINKS and if the sites still exists or not

% of link anchor text is the answer
GOOGLE IS BASED ON LINKS, don't forget this!!!

What you need to ask yourself when you are measuring link metric value;
What is the cctld
What is the purpose of site, is it of value?
Check for Banned words
Does the site have Links to bad places (use Xenu Link sleuth)
Commercial anchors
No interaction on site, comments, tweets, reviews
No social activity on site

TOP 4 things to remember when building links;
- audit link profile
- make sure the guys know what they're doing
- don't stop building
- watch link profile

Basically, measure, measure , measure and then keep track!!!
Link building is NOT dead, it's just getting tougher.

Link Building in a post Penguin era by Kevin Gibbons (snippets from SES London)

So I think the great way Kevin started this chat off was by defining the difference between Penguin and Panda updates from Google. I don't think that everyone quite has this one bedded down and defined just yet. To be honest it's pretty simple though;

Penguin penalizes links.
Panda penalizes content.

That's it!!!

I think the reason a lot of these discussion we're based around post penguin updates really comes down to;

People needing clarity on how to clear penalized sites.
How to actively engage your sites backlinks and effectively monitor or prevent this from happening again.
How to build links without raising any flags

So, what is a rubbish site that Google finds spammy?
Websites that have no links, no comments, no activity or shares! I also think sites on dodgy tld's I.e. .info sites

How does Google identify crappy link building?
Your site has over optimized anchor text
Your sites link profile consists of social links, directories, article submission sites and blog comments
You have a totally one sided link profile I.e. great links from great sites with nothing else
You push links heavily and then stop and do nothing for months

With Author Rank becoming more and more prevalent and relevancy playing a huge part in everything were doing these days it is essential to start using Google plus.
You must have a plus page
You must link your plus page to your blog
Dont believe me, straight out of Eric schmidt's mouth, look it up.

Become a recommended author!!! That's the goal.

TIPS FOR SEO companies;
Use Rss subscribers
Watch your Bounce rates
Monitor Average number of links per post
Monitor Average number of social shares
Ask yourself, What would Matt cuts do?

What can I do to keep track of BACKLINKS

Download BACKLINKS from majestic SEO.
Track % of anchor text distribution.
Analyze links vs. referring traffic.
Find out what number 1 competitor is doing and what his link profile looks like.
DON'T CHANGE ANCHOR TEXT - rather remove link.
Focus on audience and topical relevancy to build a natural link profile.
If content is not generating links its not natural is it?
Don't publish rubbish.
Remove links with no value to users.
Replicate link models of top sites.

However, the most important Thing to remember with seo and link building moving forward for 2013 is:

Create scalable content marketing strategy and focus on audience, social thinking!!!!

SES London Day 1 keyword research training by Bill Hunt

After having spent an entire day at a fantastic SES London conference opening today I decided to look back at yesterday's training session will Bill Hunt, ex IBM search guru and head of SEO and relate what I thought were some very good and valid pointers with regards to understanding keywords for both paid and organic search and how these two relate.

Apologies for the brief pointers but it's pretty late and if i don't write this post now I'll never do it.

The moral or message that i really want to get across is that you need to identify keyword opportunities and what you are spending trying to rank or convert these opportunities.

So its a closely debatable topic and one that paid department and organic departments often debate internally. The problem is its not a debate it's a discussion that needs to be had.

If I rank 1st organically and I'm bidding on the same keyword is it really necessary?

- if you are ranking for both paid and organic you need to get people to recognise that both are same company. Otherwise you compete with your own rankings.
- 53% click on first organization listing
- 81% of paid listing don't have organic rankings
- 90% of users for travel are using mobile

What this has to do with the topic at hand, no fucking clue but the stats are cool.

IDEAS

- Segment by intent or interest
- Segment by content type
- Segment by device

KEYWORD SEARCH

Google keyword tool is not enough to do the research data you need to use multiple tools. Raventools have a great bit of software that pulls from everything.

WORK OUT

Cost of missed SEO.
Cost of paid search.
How much would it cost to get x number of clicks on paid vs seo and which is more profitable for you.

KEYWORD RESEARCH!!!

Use google suggest.
Über suggest.org great tool.
Identity seo and paid keyword terms.

Start by asking questions when doing your keyword research;

Make a list of products, services and categories
What do people search for when finding your products
When you search for your own site what do you search

With B2B searches - add the word strategy cause thats what management searches for.

identifying missed keyword opportunities;
Total, inspiration, discovery, design, purchase, relationship(5 phases of the buy cycle)

GOOGLE COMING OUT WITH NEW VERSION OF SERCH API! This is for all those seo agencies out there.


It is imperative that you separate landing pages based on the phase of the search cycle that they are in:

Learn, shop, buy, get, use...
Research, buy or returning...

Live person is a brilliant way to find what people are searching for by asking them what their jobs are. This would work really well for insurance.

NB : SALES PITCH
identity how many keywords you should be ranking for.
Give top 10 competitors.
Identify opportunities
Show them % of traffic being missed
Revenue that they are missing out on

BACKLINK TIP Match up "organic keywords" to social media tracking. Find website back link opportunity. Using social media to help identify what people are searching for in your industry and then use that in Adwords.

Facebook knowledge graph tool is available to find people's interests.

As I said this post was pointers from the conference so not the best English but hopefully useful.

From SES I'm out!D