Doug Cook's pre at the 2011 Wine Writers' Symposium

1. An Introduction to “Search-Friendliness”Wine Writers Symposium, 2011 Doug Cook Founder, Able Grape

2. Overview Fundamentals Why does search matter? The Long Tail and what it means Defining Success “Search 101” How search engines work Implications for how you build your site Practical Considerations & Tools Measuring and Fine-tuning: Analytics Q&A

3. Why Does Search Matter? Way everyone finds everything on the internet Used even instead of “obvious” URLs (!) 3 2010 Top Searches Worldwide, ComScore, 1/2011

4. Why Does Search Matter? Massive pie, growing quickly* 131 billion searches per month 46% growth year over year Size of the pie, and growth, means two things: Huge opportunity Fierce competition Understanding search is a necessary skill 4 * ComScore 2009 Worldwide Data, 1/22/2010

5. THE “LONG TAIL” “The Web is not kind to generalists.” –Bruce Schoenfeld

6. The “Long Tail” (aka Zipf’s Law) Number of Times Seen Individual Words

7. The “Long Tail”(aka Zipf’s Law) Relatively Few Common Words (30% of text) Number of Times Seen Individual Words

8. The “Long Tail”(aka Zipf’s Law) Relatively Few Common Words (30% of text) Number of Times Seen Relatively Rare Words (70% of text) Individual Words

9. The “Long Tail”(aka Zipf’s Law) Relatively Few Common Words (30% of text) Number of Times Seen Relatively Rare Words (70% of text) Extremely Long Tail (not to scale)! 40-60% of individual words occur only once (hapaxlegomena) Individual Words

10. The “Long Tail” of Search “Popular Searches” < 25% of area “Rare” searches = 75% of the area Number of Times Searched Specific Searches

11. The “Long Tail” of Search Facebook Facebook apps Number of Times Searched How do Facebook apps make money Facebook apps for business Android Facebook apps Apps Facebooklil farm life gifts Specific Searches

12. “Long Tail” applies to any topic… Robert Mondavi Cabernet Robert Mondavi Number of Times Searched 2004 Robert Mondavi Cabernet 1997 Monddavi I Block Sauvingon Blank Parker Score ’04 Mondavi Cab Reserve Time in Oak ’04 Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon ’04 Robert Mondavi CS Reserve Specific Searches

13. “Long Tail” applies to any topic… Searchers are infinitely creative! Many ways to search for the same thing Number of Times Searched 2004 Robert Mondavi Cabernet ’04 Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon Specific Searches

14. Myth #1:“People will come to my homepage and browse to find what they want” How will they discover you in the first place? Even assuming they know your brand, “long tail” debunks this People find information mostly by very specific searches Expect these to take them directly to content of interest Ex: Only 18% of “Mondavi” searches were for homepage Implications: Your site must be “search friendly” or your (potential) users/customers will end up on another site Every page should be a complete experience, and a compelling introduction to your site

15. Myth #2:“I have to rank highly for some popular query to get lots of traffic” Don’t try to be #1 for “cabernet” Too much competition Only very top results get any user attention “Cabernet” is but a small slice of “cabernet”-related pie Only 7.5% of all queries mentioning cabernet! It is not the traffic you want Won’t result in a meaningful interaction unless you truly have the world’s best general resource for Cabernet information Put yourself in the shoes of the searcher The search engines will!

16. Myth #3: “More Traffic is Better” Two fictitious examples Humblevino.com: 1000 search visits/day Spamovin.com: 10000 search visits/day Which site is more successful?

17. Myth #3: “More Traffic is Better” Let’s say Humblevino.com is user-focused: 35% meaningful interactions (conversions) …and Spamovin.com is traffic-focused: 2% meaningful interactions Then Humblevino is more successful: More (350 vs 200) users engaged each day More likely to have repeat users, and grow search traffic Spamovin is: Potentially tarnishing their brand At higher risk of losing their search traffic

18. Defining Success Connect with all the people who are interested in what you have to say, and nobody else Maximizes meaningful interactions Define and measure your “meaningful interactions” Similar analogy can be made for Twitter, Facebook, etc.

19. The Long Tail: Summary The world is made up of people with very specific information needs “Optimal” traffic comes when you have the world’s best page for some very specific information need Each of these generates a tiny bit of high-quality traffic Make it up in volume! Have lots of specific, useful content on your site In practical terms: Wineries All wines, specific vintages, past and present, with detailed information Blogs Post often! Encourage comments Use tags Must be accessible to search engines Must be organized so “infinitely creative” searchers can find it

20. Search ENGINE 101

21. How a Search Engine Finds Content Crawler (robot, spider) fetches pages from the web Parses (picks apart) page, extracts the links Goes to new pages found among links, and fetches them (Lather, rinse, repeat).

22. Implications Crawler must find a link to your page Dynamic technologies (Flash, Javascript) problematic Content generated in response to user input (navigation by search/option menus) problematic Sitemaps (XML or HTML) can mitigate Crawler must be able to fetch/parse the page Flash: difficult/impossible to parse Age verification: is a crawler old enough to drink? Sites depending upon registration: bad Sites depending upon cookie from home page: bad Crawler doesn’t visit the homepage first! Blogging platforms OK, winery sites often problematic

23. How a Search Engine Searches Looks for all the search terms at least once in the combined: Document body Title Inbound link text (“Anchor text”) Document URL Long tail implications: Your great post about Natural Wines of Minervoiswon’t be found by that creative searcher looking for Low Sulfur Languedoc Wines unless those words are present somewhere*

24. Search Engine RankingNot all Text is Equal What is this page “about”? Key signals: Title, especially at the beginning Inbound link text Section headings? Does the text contain exact phrases from the search, or are the words scattered around? Does this look like properly constructed, useful writing? Is the page mostly focused on this topic, or is it about a lot of different things? In some cases may be worth splitting a page (e.g “Wines”)

25. Links are Crucial “If people bothered to link to this, it must be useful, interesting or authoritative” Quality Matters Are these links from independent sources? Do authoritative sites, especially within the topic of interest, link to this page? “Free links” are usually ignored (nofollow) Text of links is very important Independent descriptions of what page is “about” 25

26. Choosing Titles and Links Choose your title carefully: should be complete yet concise description of topic Missing words = missed opportunity for “tail searches” Long titles have less weight, can bring irrelevant traffic Choose link text exactly as you would a title for that page (Is that page really titled “click here?”) Don’t miss opportunities to make links Link back to related topics in future posts Think about “long tail” variants you can use Use keyword research tools to decide which variants might have the most value

27. Example Blog post: mrwinehead.com Last night I tasted the 2007 Hugel Gewürztraminer and it was good. A Great Wine I Tasted Click hereto read a wine review of the ‘07. Hugel’sGewürz is not bad. Mr Wine Headreviews the 2007. Hypothetical “long tail” searches: 2007 Hugel Gewürztraminer: will show up somewhere, not rank highly 2007 Hugel et Fils Alsace Gewürtztraminer: nope (But for “click here” this page will be the billionth result!)

28. Better Version: mrwinehead.com Last night I tasted the ’07 Gewürz from DomaineHugel in Alsace, and boy, was it good. Tasted: 2007 Hugel Gewürztraminer Check out a wine review of the 2007 Hügel Gewürztraminer. Hugel’sGewürz is not bad. Mr. Wine Head reviews the ’07. Hypothetical “long tail” searches: 2007 Hugel Gewürztraminer: yep 2007 DomaineHugel Alsace Gewürtztraminer: yep

29. PRACTICAL TOPICS

30. Want Links? Essential Have something unique and interesting to say Build Relationships Social Media (Twitter, Facebook) Get visits, build relationships Controversy (“Link Baiting”) - sometimes Tools to ease sharing/linking Identify sites you want links from, and ask! Be patient Links, especially from high-value sites, must be earned Be careful if you change sites or move pages Done the wrong way, you will lose those hard-earned links

31. Learn from Successful Sites!a.k.a. Competitive Analysis Who do they link to? Who links to them? How much traffic do they get? Where from? For what search terms? What are other similar sites? What kind of people visit? Tools: Google Trends for Websites Alexa, ComScore, Quantcast 31

32. Keyword Research: Exploring the Tail Given a topic or a website, understand what related topics have most value Estimates of searches, competition for rankings Free, but with limitations: Google AdWords Microsoft adCenter Subscription tools Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery (Trellian), … 32

33. Keyword Research: Exploring the Tail 33

34. Image Search 34

35. Image SearchWhy? Fewer searches, but opportunity to “connect” may be higher? For a compelling picture, being top result matters less May be blended into main search results 35

36. Image Search Use high-quality picture! As with text: Title, Links, Section Headings Use a descriptive filename reclaimed_wood_coffee_table.jpgvsDSC0032.JPG Use descriptive alt tags Text around picture should contain the key terms related to the picture (think “long tail”) 36

37. Duplicates Search Engines work very hard to remove near-duplicates from results Never copy content without permission! Be careful about licensing your site’s content to others Modify it, or require links back to original version You have rights if someone copies your content! See “DMCA takedown notice” Paged blog comments can even cause issues 37

38. WordpressPlugins Google Analytics plugins Tag Clouds Related Posts Tools for sharing Whatever you try, you should measure it 38

39. Webmaster Tools Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Central: sign up! Host of information about your site who links to you How many pages indexed crawl problems Allows you to report spam Site verification required Easy with Wordpress; search for “Webmaster Tools” in support Wealth of good documentation, including videos! Almost any topic covered here: Duplicate Content, Image Search 39

40. Analytics If you want to make something better, you must measure it

41. Analytics How do you know your changes are working? Where do you get inspiration for other changes to make? Track your traffic Where is it from? If from a search engine, what searches are they using? What pages are users visiting?

42. How do users respond to your site? Bounce rate Am I connecting with people who land on my site from a search? Time on site Where do your users go after the landing page? Optimizing is about learning from your users and evolving your site. NB: Google tracks these things too! Sites with high bounce rates may rank lower

43. Defining Success, Revisited Easy to get overwhelmed by data Define what “success” means for you Post a comment? Subscribe to RSS or email list? Purchase something? Follow me on Twitter? Read a second post? (i.e. bounce rate) Google Analytics allows you to define goals 43

44. Analytics Platforms Blogging platforms often include basic analytics Google Analytics – free, much more sophisticated Any of several WP plugins provide the tiny “code” to track pages Number of commercial packages (Omniture, etc)

45. Experiment! Don’t be afraid to try things, as long as you measure the results A/B tests can be very useful Surprising things can matter Fonts, colors can affect clickthrough rate of links Position/size of RSS link

46. Summary Produce unique, useful, interesting content! Understand the implications of the long tail Make sure your pages are findable/fetchable by search engines Make sure your content, especially titles/anchors, are well-chosen Build trust and community to get links Understand the tools available to you Measure your results and tune

47. Resources Required! Google Webmaster Guidelines Books Enge, Spencer, Fishkin & Stricchiola. The Art of SEO, O’Reilly, 2009 Jones, K. Search Engine Optimization: Your Visual Blueprint, Visual Publishing 2011 Halligan, B. Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs. Wiley, 2009. 47