‘Improve Your SEO’ LexisClick’s vision

The digital marketing experts for ambitious SMEs on their journey to becoming market leaders Introduction to LexisClick

We help our clients’ marketing succeed through the power of Easy online technologies and communities A pleasure to find to use through services including: • SEO Services A growing • Online Advertising business needs to be... • Email Marketing Services • Social Media Marketing • Web Design The first to Regularly return to • Marketing Services recommended To make them... Introduction to your presenter

Lead Digital Marketing Consultant at LexisClick, 2007 – present.

Started working in online marketing, designing and building websites in 1997 – when he designed and built British Steel’s first website from the delights of Scunthorpe.

Followed by 10 years working in London in digital marketing across a variety of industry sectors both within business and as a consultant – with 6 years spent at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) as a digital marketing consultant. Stephen Bavister Managing Director LexisClick Today’s objective & agenda

To help you understand the latest SEO thinking and developments in a connected, mobile-first world.

8.30 – 9.00 Part 1

9.00 – 9.10 Worksheet 1

9.10 – 9.15 Break

9.15 – 9.45 Part 2

9.45 – 9.55 Worksheet 2

9.55 – 10.10 Q&A

10.10 – 10.30 Networking & Finish What is SEO? What is SEO?

It is all about getting here Why is Google so important? UK Search Engine Market Share Google’s market share January 2014

Google Bing

88.71% Yahoo Others

UK Search Engine January 2014 share (%) December 2013 share (%) Change

88.71 88.74 -0.03

6.26 6.03 +0.23

3.3 3.29 +0.01

Others 1.73 1.94 -0.21

http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-GB-monthly-201301-201401 SEO used to be relatively easy… Don’t get caught out… • Meta keywords tag • Keyword stuffing • Manual submission • Link building with poor quality links Google Panda

• Introduced early 2011 • To stop sites with poor quality content from working their way into Google’s top results

• Focuses on quality • Content is King • Cracked down on sites with duplicate content and sites with a high ad-to-content ratio Google Penguin

• Introduced mid 2012 • To adjust web spam factors like keyword stuffing, low quality backlinks and keyword-rich anchor text

• Rewards quality content and ethical link building processes Google Hummingbird

• Introduced end of 2013 on Google’s 15th anniversary

• Improved semantic search

• Better understanding of the intent and contextual meaning of total phrase used in a search query

• Progress fits in with the increasing use of voice search queries Going Forwards… Mobile

• You need to understand mobile-user intent

• According to Google, 69% of mobile users expect businesses to be within 5 miles of their location, and 55% of mobile users want to purchase within the hour

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2320360/6-Essential-Elements-for-Mobile-SEO-Success-in-2014 Semantic search

• This aims to better understand a searcher’s intent, making search more personal and meaningful

• You need to ensure your pages possess proper semantic markup (using HTML to reinforce the content of web pages rather than simply to define the site’s appearance) Multi devices

• User experience is very important, regardless of whether a user is searching on a desktop, tablet or mobile device

Check your site on multiple devices to ensure a great experience Personalisation

• SEO has become a detailed and personalised experience

• 43% of Google’s queries are ‘local’ which means they are related to location or carry a local intent

http://www.bancmedia.com/seo-in-2014-what-to-expect/ Social sharing

• Having an active, consistent and valued social media presence will increase your credibility, reputation and also SEO results

• Google is of course encouraging users to get more active on their Google+ profiles because Google+ posts are crawled and indexed almost immediately Let’s look at a search for PIZZA…

A lot of pages pop up as results, but no pizza.com (which does exist). Why is this? Because of Google’s 2013 changes.

The results served to you will be: • Locally relevant (Westover Road, Wimborne Road, Lansdowne, Christchurch etc)

• Contextually relevant (news articles about pizza and pizza trends)

• Knowledge relevant (nutrition facts and Wikipedia data) Things to take into account

So what does this mean if you are a local pizzeria? You need to realign your SEO in accordance with these concepts… LOCATION: 1) Get listed on Google Local Places and claim your Google+ profile. Ensure the data is correct and keep it up to date with valuable, visual and interesting content

2) Are you rating highly in reviews such as Trip Advisor?

3) Include a 360 interior view in your map view on Google so that customers can see inside your business before visiting CONTEXT: Build strong customer lists and make 1) Include the right information on your shareable content landing page – contact details, menu and any offers / delivery options. Is this visible on mobile and other devices?

2) Google will determine whether your site is effective so make sure you have clear social media page links which offer customers interesting information and offers

3) Build strong customer lists and make shareable content available on your social media pages KNOWLEDGE:

1) Demonstrate your expertise through content. Provide details about your business, and further details about vendors, suppliers, partners and local groups

2) Are you offering gluten free and vegetarian options? Blog about it and share it on social media Building Your Strategy Discovery We see search marketing strategy as a cycle that begins with the DISCOVERY phase in which you need to develop a deep understanding of your Strategy objectives, market, customers, Strategy Development Feedback search terms, targets /Refinement and opportunities.

Following this, the STRATEGY Action Planning can be developed, as well as a reporting framework for you to review and refine your activity. Measurement Actions The Foundations of SEO – What We Do?

• Understand your business, objectives, priorities and the customers of the business

• Map the user journey on your website

• Research the primary search key phrases and target market

• SWOT site analytics review (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)

• Undertake a thorough technical audit on your website to identify issues and fixes

• Cleanse backlinks – these are any sites linking back to yours, which Google may deem unnatural

• Set-up SEO reporting system Attracting Customers The New Way

• You need to go beyond purely thinking of first page rankings

• You need to focus your attention on the foundations and objectives of your marketing, and what message you are putting out there The Technicalities of SEO

According to SEOmoz, the key search ranking factors are:

• Page link authority features • Page keyword usage • Domain level anchor text • Brand metrics • Page level social • Page keyword agnostic Place Page Signals (19.6%) Review Signals (10.3%) Domain keyword usage • External Loc. Signals (16%) Social Signals (6.3%) • Page level anchor text On-page Signals (18.8%) Behavioral/Mob. Signals (6.1%) • Domain link authority features • Domain keyword agnostic Link Signals (14.4%) Personalization (8.3%)

http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors Meta data

• Meta description tags are important in gaining user click throughs from search engine result pages • They are HTML attributes that display preview snippets for a given page, roughly 155 characters • They are a webmaster’s opportunity to advertise content to searchers and let them know what the page contains Duplicate content

• If your site just repeats itself over and over again, then this will end up having a negative impact on your search engine visibility

• Scraped or plagiarised content will get you nowhere – Google is getting stricter at determining the original source of the content and degrading the rankings of sites, which ‘borrow’ or ‘steal’

Slower page response time Site speed results in an increase in page abandonment • The speed at which someone can view the content from a search result is a search ranking factor Page abandonment increase as a percentage • Slow-performing sites are 50% penalised in rankings because they give poor user experience 25%

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Page load time in seconds Worksheet 1 Name: Worksheet 1 Company:

I strongly I strongly How are you doing? disagree agree 1 2 3 4 5

1. I have an SEO strategy in place for my business.

2. I have KPIs and targets in place for the website.

3. I invest time in producing quality content for my website.

4. I have looked at my website on a mobile and other devices.

5. I have an active and consistent social media presence for my business.

6. The content on my website sets me apart from my competitors and demonstrates my expertise.

7. I have mapped the user journey on my website and also the user journey before arriving to the website.

8. I have researched the target market for my business.

9. My site has little or no duplicate content.

10. My website provides a good quality user experience. Part 2 Design is crucial

• Google’s guidelines clearly state “Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.”

• Most sites can more easily double sales by doubling conversion rates than by doubling traffic, and design is a crucial part of that

• Great user experiences ultimately turn into repeat sales

• When you earn popularity (rather than manufacture it), you end up expending fewer resources to bring in the same number of sales

• Good design earns natural links Mobile Search

• When it comes to design, we have a new saying – ‘mobile first.’ It’s extremely likely that the first device customers will view your site on, is their mobile / smartphone • When you need to look something up, we bet you don’t turn on your laptop, you use your phone or tablet. That goes for everyone, from kids to OAPs • According to The Content Marketing Institute, 77% of mobile searches are performed whilst at work or home – areas where a PC is more than likely to be available. However, mobile visitors have a higher bounce rate of 9.56% An error free site

• No missing product descriptions • No 404 pages • No redirects other than 301 • No long title tags • No missing meta descriptions • No poor internal linking • An up-to-date robots.txt • An up-to-date sitemap On-site Optimisation The “Perfectly” Optimised Page (for the example keyword phrase “chocolate donuts’)

On-page factors are the aspects of a web page that influence search engine rankings.

These include: Content of page The content of a page is what makes it worthy of a search result position. Good content must supply a demand and must be linkable.

Title Tag These are required for all HTML/XHTML documents. You should aim for title tags containing less than 70 characters.

URL Structure Your URL needs to reflect the hierarchy of the information on your web page, helping the search engines to understand relative importance. Landing Pages

Landing pages focus information targeted towards a particular user and are optimised specifically to encourage a user to do something. Convert more of your visitors by asking yourself these simple questions:

1. Are your primary headlines 6. Are ‘next clicks’ consistent? aligned with your intent? 7. Can users share what they’ve found? 2. Are you matching content type 8. Ultimately, can users find what they with query intent? need from obvious choices? 3. Can users perform a quick scan 9. Have you segmented traffic to answer who, what and why? by topics? 4.  Is it obvious what they should 10.  Are you tracking first click queries do next? for optimised pages? 5. Are there on-page modification options? Content Marketing

• 45% of companies say content marketing is ‘highly integrated’ with their SEO strategy • In 2014, organisations are more likely to integrate content marketing with their SEO strategy than any other digital marketing discipline

http://econsultancy.com/blog/64239-10-interesting-digital-marketing-stats-we-ve-seen-this-week-60 Content Marketing

• 73% of B2B content marketers are producing more content than they did one year ago • 64% of B2B marketers are planning to increase their content marketing budgets over the next 12 months

Growth of Content Marketing

http://econsultancy.com/blog/64239-10-interesting-digital-marketing-stats-we-ve-seen-this-week-60 Content Marketing

By now you’ll have probably heard the popular marketing phrase ‘CONTENT IS KING!’ But what does it mean to you and your business?

1. Good quality content is key to driving inbound traffic and leads 2. Search engines reward businesses that invest time and effort into their content 3. Good content shows your customers what you are made of 4. You’ll be more likely to win if you’re the best. Does your content show your expertise? Blogging

• Businesses that blog regularly receive 55% more web traffic than those that don’t

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/5014/Study-Shows-Business-Blogging-Leads-to-55 More-Website-Visitors.aspx

• Blogs provide interesting and informative content to your audience

• Time spent writing a good blog post will kill two birds with one stone – you’ll be able to share it on social media later

• Set targets – how many blog posts will you do a day or per week? Will it be a group effort among the team or will one person be held to account? Rocking all Articles/Reviews over the world! • Add value to your site with topical and user-driven reviews. Enable comments to be made on blog posts and allow the public to post reviews

• Make sure you have time to monitor reviews and comments

• Be wary of spam comments – you might get a lot of people commenting on articles to try and promote themselves Lists/Checklists/How To Do

• Provide useful content and advice from those in the know

• Bullet point checklists

• This style of content helps customers find the information they are looking for simply and easily Videos and Podcasts

• Podcasts are a great medium for content creation. Most people consume podcasts while on the go, just the same as listening to music

• The internet is flooded with content. Set yourself apart with video marketing. It’s thriving more than ever before – YouTube is within the top 3 most used websites

http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/most-popular-websites

• Video is projected to take up over 90% of the online content pie

http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/10/thriving-video-content-scene-types-brand videos/ Apps Perfect for keeping • There are over 2 million mobile apps up-to-date while in the major app store, it’s an area on the move not to be overlooked

http://blog.kissmetrics.com/app-store-optimization/

• Smartphones enable easy and convenient access to the app world Link Earning

Are you creating linkable assets?

• Forget link building… think LINK EARNING!

• This is the practice of building relationships and creating high quality content that is informative, useful and likely to be shared on social media

• Today, it’s all about natural links and links that are earnt… i.e. no short cuts! Link Earning

• People will want to link with your content if it is original, interesting, timely and informative

• Assert your business as an industry leader, providing industry-relative content that other websites will want to link to

• Blog your content to create organic links back to your website

• Keep an eye out for opportunities to play on trends or events. People are more likely to share topical and quick-off-the-mark memes. A good example is Oreo, who really packed a punch with their tweet during the Super Bowl’s power outage. Their witty graphic was re-tweeted over 15,000 times within one hour Social Media Marketing

• It’s a personal platform to connect with customers

• It provides direct engagement which allows relationships to develop

• It increases brand awareness

• Adds personality to your company

• Provides regular interaction and activity alongside other services you offer Invest in your Google+ presence to confirm a solid SEO ranking. Focus on:

• Establishing Google Authorship by tying published content to your Google+ account • Google Authorship differentiates the leaders from the thought leaders • Give your online identity a boost by investing time updating your Google+ page on a frequent basis! SEO Measurement & Useful Tools

• In September 2013, Google’s move to make 100% of search keyword data “(not provided)” forced SEO marketers to rethink their strategies

• Since Google discontinued providing keyword data in Google Analytics, it has become much harder to track SEO keyword success

• Now in a socially connected and content-driven world, focus less on rankings and more on KPIs like content performance Useful Tools:

• Google Webmaster Tools This estimates search impression against click, broken down by query. It will help you to identify and understand any on-site errors and check your site map • Google Adwords Paid and Organic Report This new feature shows paid and natural results side-by-side, as well as showing CTR performance • Google Analytics Understand the user journey by clicking content > site content > all pages. You can see the number of unique page views and average time spent on a given page • Bing Webmaster Tools Rival search engine, Bing allows users to measure traffic that includes keyword search data – almost completely missing from Google Analytics • Wordpress plugins • Paid for specialist SEO systems How can LexisClick help you?

• SEO • Adwords Management • Social Media Strategy and planning • Content Marketing Strategy and planning • Email Marketing • Website design and development • Google Analytics • Webmaster Tools Worksheet 2 Name: Worksheet 2 Company:

I strongly I strongly How are you doing? disagree agree 1 2 3 4 5

1. My website is optimised for mobile use.

2. My content supplies a demand and is linkable.

3. The landing pages on my website focus information targeted towards a particular user and encourage them to take action.

4. Users can share the content they have found quickly and easily.

5. I invest time and effort into all content that is published on my website / blog / social media profiles.

6. I am regularly blogging and providing readers with interesting and valuable content.

7. I join in with social media events and #trends, where appropriate.

8. I have Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest marketing strategies in place (or have considered them).

9. I have linked my Google+ account with my blog to establish Google Authorship.

10. I use SEO tools on a regular basis to monitor how content is impacting lead generation and whether leads are translating into revenue or not. Action plan

Name: Company:

Date: Total Score:

Action Priority By When Assigned To Thank You For Attending

See you at the next seminar Easy to find A pleasure to work with The first to return to Regularly recommended

www.lexisclick.com • [email protected] • 01202 788333