Graham Wilkinson, Client Performance Director at Columbus, presented on Search Engine Optimisation at the second of the Digital Communication in Government series on December 10. The series focuses on improving digital capabilities across the Victorian Public Service and promoting best practice. http://dpc.vic.gov.au/index.php/resources/communication/digital-communication-in-government-series

1. Search – The Possibilities
Graham Wilkinson – Client Performance Director

2. Content
 Search: What and why?
 SEO: A constant evolution
 Search result formats: New and improved

3. Search
What and why?

4. Search starts with the web
IT’S MADE UP OF OVER
30 TRILLION
INDIVIDUAL PAGES
AND IT’S CONSTANTLY GROWING

5. Google navigates the web by crawling
In other words, Google follow
links from page to page.
Site owners choose whether
their sites are crawled.

6. Everything is tracked in the index
It’s over 100 million
gigabytes.
Pages are sorted by their
content and other factors.

7. When a search takes place
Algorithms look for clues to better
understand what your search query
means.
Google
Instant
Query
Understanding
Autocomplete
Search
Methods
Synonyms
Spelling
Based on these clues, relevant
documents are pulled from the index.

8. The results are then ranked
How trustworthy, reputable or authoritative is a source?
•
What is the most recent version of news and information?
Where is the user and what is their search history?
•
What are the users language settings?
•
User
Context
•
•
Freshness
Site & Page
Quality
How can image, news, maps, video and personal content
be blended best to provide the best results?
Translation
Over 200 factors are considered by the algorithms.
Universal
Search

9. The results
This happens in 1/8th second.

10. What is search engine marketing?
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Paid Search
(PPC)
“The act of
obtaining position
within the paid, or
sponsored listings
via a paid media
placement on a
search engine
results page.
(SERP)”
“The act of marketing a website via search
engines, whether this be improving rank in
organic listings, purchasing paid listings or
a combination of these and other search
related activities.”
Organic/Natural
Search (SEO)
“The act of enhancing or
optimising a website to
obtain top placement within
the organic listings on a
SERP.”

11. The power of search marketing
Proactive Consumption
Mass Customization
Consumers seek out and
indicate an active interest in
specific content, products
and/or services
Marketers can display a
different listing to each
consumer based on perceived
intent of his/her query
Instant Direction
Consumers are instantly
directed to a specific
destination based on the query
they entered
Performance Pricing
Marketers name their price in
real-time and pay only for actual
traffic delivered to their website

12. SEO
A constant evolution

13. Major changes to the Google algorithm
BRANDY & AUSTIN
UNIVERSAL SEARCH
SOCIAL & INSTANT
PENGUIN
LSI, anchor text
relevance, link
‘neighborhoods’,
invisible text, META-tag
stuffing
News, video, images &
local introduced into the
SERP
Social signals, review
sentiment and realtime search results
Penalties for overoptimised pages,
keyword stuffing and
poor page layout
2004
2005
2006
Personalised search, nofollows, XML sitemaps,
duplicate content,
low-quality link
BOURBON & JAGGER
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012 2020?
Suggested search
terms in a dropdown
Increased branding
emphasis and real-time
search including Twitter
feeds, Google News and
fresh content
Poor content practices,
Schema.org, search
query encryption,
content freshness
GOOGLE SUGGEST
VINCE & CAFFEINE
PANDA & +1

14. SEO in 1998
Search the web using Google
SEO
Technical SEO – Just being visible
Linking – Very spammy low quality links
Content - Relevant & Authoritative
On Page Optimisation – Stuffing as many keywords as possible
Success - Keyword Position & Rankings

15. SEO in 2013
Technical SEO
www.technicalseo.com.au/TechnicalSEO
Page speed and site architecture
Linking
www.linking.com.au/Linking
High quality links for the updated algorithm
Content
www.content.com.au/Content
Fresh, authoritative and diverse
Social
www.social.com.au/Social
Rating: 4 – 500,000 votes
Social signals and authorship
Success
www.success.com.au/Success
Traffic and holistic search performance
Social profiles
100,000 followers on Google+
Recent posts
Do your social profiles stack up
against your competition and are you
making the most out of them?

16. How to think about SEO?
OLD SEO: How do I rank for this query?
NEW SEO:
How do I best answer the
questions that my users have?

17. PAID
ORGANIC
Search result formats
New and improved

18. Revamped ad formats
Yellow ad labels replace the previous shading that distinguished paid ads

19. Branded search

20. Local search results

21. Google hotel finder

22. Points of interest

23. Video and image in search

24. Product listing ads

25. Ratings and reviews in search

26. Thank You