1. SLIDE MASTER β COVERPAGESearch Engine Optimization:
Understanding the Engines & Building Successful Sites
Rand Fishkin β August 2010
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Content in this Presentation
β’ The Search Landscape
β’ How Search Engines Work
β’ Building Accessible Sites
β’ Conducting Keyword Research
β’ Link Building Strategies
β’ Social Media & the Webβs Influencers
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Local Results
Probably doesnβt get traffic
like most β#1β results
Completely different ranking
algorithm than standard
search results
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Technically, Every External Link
βLeaksβ PageRank
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Nofollowing or Removing Links Can
Alter the Flow of PageRank
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Or, at least it used to...
www.seomoz.org/blog/google-says-yes-you-can-still-sculpt-pagerank-no-you-cant-do-it-with-nofollow
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Google Says they use PageRank to Crawl
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Search Friendly URLs
www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/african-elephants
Single domain
Shallow folder structure
with relevant words
Keywords in page name,
separated by hyphen
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Search UN-Friendly URLs
Xyz3.nationalgeographic.com/a/?q=31z&mg=vv7z&sd=8
Unnecessary
Subdomain Dynamic URLs donβt perform as well
as static and engines recommend
against more than two parameters
No keywords in the URL string
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Using Tools & Processes to Ease the
Challenges of Link Building
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Tools for Competitive Link Research
β’ Yahoo! Site Explorer & Link Commands
β’ Open Site Explorer
β’ Top Pages
β’ Google Blog Search
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Yahoo! Site Explorer
Directionally indicative
within ~50%
Not necessarily followed & in
a somewhat random order
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Yahoo! Link Commands
Less βaccurateβ than
Site Explorer
Lots of cool, useful modifiers
available
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Yahoo! Link Commands
Full list available in PRO Guide to Advanced Search Operators:
www.seomoz.org/article/the-professionals-guide-to-advanced-search-operators
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Open Site Explorer
Highly Correlation w/ Rankings
Data updates monthly from the
Linkscape web index (approx. 60% the
size of Yahoo!/Google/Bing)
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Open Site Explorer
Poor Anchor Text Spells Opportunity
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Link Intersect
Link Intersect uses the same principle β sites
w/ links in common that donβt point to you.
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Top Pages
Find which pages are
earning links (your
own & competitors)
404s? Reclaim them!
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Metrics for Evaluating a Linkβs Value
β’ Numeric (Objective) Metrics
β’ Subjective Metrics
β’ Attainability and Effort
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Numeric Metrics for Link Valuation
β’ # of Linking Root Domains to URL
β’ # of Linking Root Domains to Domain
β’ Homepage PageRank vs. Domain mozRank
β’ URL PageRank vs. URL mozRank
β’ # of Links to the Page (Yahoo!, GG Blogsearch, Linkscape)
β’ Twitter mentions (Backtweets.com)
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Numeric Metrics (Backtweets)
Results count
(in a weird location)
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Subjective Metrics for Link Valuation
β’ Brand name reach/recognition
β’ Quality of other links on page/site (Bing - Linkfromdomain)
β’ Attainability and Effort
Jumping through Hoops (via WKA on Flickr)
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Scalable Link Acquisition Processes
β’ Written Process + Checklist
β’ Tools + Metrics for Quick Analysis
β’ Training & Incenting Link Builders
β’ Building & Refining a Link Acquisition Funnel
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Written Process/Checklist
Checklist (via adesigna on Flickr)
β’ Run through the link building process yourself
β’ Document every step thoroughly
β’ Pass it on to others (w/ some training time)
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Tools for Quick Analysis
Get usable metrics
quickly as you surf
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Training & Incenting Link Builders
Training Camp (via Gil Searcy on Flickr)
β’ Do link building together
β’ Create consistent metrics
β’ Reward like a sales team
β’ Record reasons why links
didnβt happen (like objections
to sales) and work on these
(things like design
quality, affiliations, language,
etc. will come up)
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Building a Link Acquisition Funnel
Visit Link-Targeted Content
Grab Link Code
Link to the Site
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Social Media & the Webβs Influencers
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Algorithmic Ranking Factors
You have to do these
right, before you can
do these right
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