Arts Marketing Association North-East Network Meeting: The Evolution of Search (What you need to know about technical and on-site SEO)

THE EVOLUTION
OF SEARCH
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT
TECHNICAL & ON-SITE SEO
Marty Hayes, Digital Director,
Venture Stream
@MartyHayes
www.venturestream.co.uk

ABOUT US
VENTURE STREAM

WHO ARE WE
Vic Morgan
Founder & MD
Extensive ecommerce & digital
experience as entrepreneur &
consultant in the US & UK.
US-UK cross ponder, Boston
Red Sox fan and aspiring park
ranger.
Andy Robinson
Creative Director
10 years experience in omni-channel
ecommerce design
and creative marketing with
multi-million pound brands.
Dog-loving newlywed with a
penchant for shiny gadgets and
American beer.
Marty Hayes
Digital Director
Managerial consulting
experience in leading digital
agency and client-side
ecommerce.
Drum-playing, jumper-loving
family man and coveter of VW
campervans.

OUR DIGITAL MARKETING APPROACH…
Conversion Rate Optimisation
SEO PPC Email Affiliates Social Content
Strategy Leadership
Analytics

WHO WE WORK WITH

PARTNERS

A LITTLE ABOUT ME

LET’S GET CRACKING…
WHAT WE’LL COVER

WHAT WE’LL COVER
• A (brief) history of search
• Key algorithm updates and what they mean for
you
• What does technical SEO mean?
• How to check, audit and improve your technical
SEO
• What does on-site SEO mean?
• How to audit, research and optimise your on-site
content
• How technical & on-site SEO can combine forces
for search supremacy

FIRST UP…
A (BRIEF) HISTORY
OF SEARCH

PAGERANK
• One of the first algorithms used by
Google (named after one of the
founders – Larry Page)
• According to Google…
– “PageRank works by counting the
number and quality of links to a
page to determine a rough
estimate of how important the
website is. The underlying
assumption is that more important
websites are likely to receive more
links from other websites”
• This ‘voting system’ led to
underhand tactics and spamming

ACQUIRING LINKS
• Link A
• Link B
Website 1
• Link A
• Link B
Website 2
• Link A
• Link B
Website 3

"If there is a link selling site and they get
caught for selling links, and they just happen
to be linking to you, the value of that link that
the site was providing, it just goes away”
» Matt Cutts, Head of Webspam, Google

EARNING LINKS
• Link A
• Link B
Website
1
• Link A
• Link B
Website
2
• Link A
• Link B
Website
3
• Link A
• Link B
Website
1
• Link A
• Link B
Website
2
• Link A
• Link B
Website
3

“This is the beginning of the
journey to brands becoming more
like publishers”.
» Hamish Priest, Global Media Categories &
Partnerships, Dove, Unilever.

NEXT…
KEY ALGORITHM
UPDATES AND WHAT
THEY MEAN FOR YOU

GOOGLE PANDA UPDATE: FEB 2012
• “Cleaning up the web”
• Panda seemed to crack down on thin
content, content farms, sites with high
ad-to-content ratios, and a number of
other quality issues. Panda rolled out
over at least a couple of months, hitting
Europe in April 2011
• Panda 4.0 – May 2014
– impacted 7.5% of English-language
queries
• Panda 4.1 – September 2014 (actually
the 27th iteration of the update)
– Thin content / affiliate crack-down
– Low dwell time / high bounce rate
– Keyword stuffed, doorway pages
– High ad content / deceptive ads
– impacted 3-5% of English-language
queries

GOOGLE PENGUIN UPDATE: APRIL 2012
• After weeks of speculation
about an "Over-optimization
penalty", Google finally rolled
out the "Webspam Update",
which was soon after dubbed
"Penguin." Penguin adjusted a
number of spam factors,
including keyword stuffing
• Rewarding high quality sites –
penalising link-farms and
unnatural link-building
• Penguin 3.0 – October 17,
2014

SO…..

WHAT WAS TO COME NEXT…?
MORE BLACK AND WHITE ANIMALS?

NOPE…
THE BIRDS

GOOGLE HUMMINGBIRD UPDATE
• September 2013 – Google
officially unveils the first major
algorithm upgrade in 3 years
– Previous version, ‘Caffeine’ was built
to better index websites in search
results
• Hummingbird affected about 90%
of Google searches
• Targeting longer, more complex,
conversational search queries
• Google attempting to understand
intent and meaning
• A shift in the landscape

THE IMPACT OF HUMMINGBIRD
Pre-Hummingbird
• Individual keyword targeting
possible
• Little evidence of context
• Little correlation between
search query intent and
video
• Keyword / index focussed
Post-Hummingbird
• No longer optimise solely
for key words or phrases
• Context is key
• Content needs to be
created to meet user intent
• Audience focussed

GOOGLE PIGEON UPDATE
• July 2014
• Aim to make more useful, relevant
and accurate local search results
• Dramatically altered some local
results and modified how Google
handles and interprets location
cues
• Impacted local search results
rankings and some local
businesses may have noticed an
increase or decrease in web site
referrals, leads and business from
the change

MOZ ALGORITHM CHANGE HISTORY
http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change

SO…
WHAT DOES TECHNICAL
SEO MEAN?

LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS FOR SUCCESS
Search Marketing
Technical SEO

WHAT DOES ‘TECHNICAL SEO’ MEAN?
Site
Architecture
URL
Structure
Webmaster
Tools
Sitemaps
Meta Robots Pagination
Geo-
Targeting
Response
Status Codes
Site Speed
Image
Optimisation
Rich
Snippets
Authorship

WHAT NEXT…
HOW TO CHECK, AUDIT
AND IMPROVE YOUR
TECHNICAL SEO

THE CONSULTANT IN ME SAYS…

BUT…
THERE’S A LOT YOU CAN
DO YOURSELF, WITHOUT
HAVING TO GIVE ME A
CALL

GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS

GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS
• Structured data
• HTML improvements
• Manual actions
• Index status
• Remove URLs
• Crawl errors
• Crawl stats
• Fetch as Google
• Robots.txt tester
• Sitemaps
• Security issues
• PageSpeed Insights
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

MOZ
• Crawl diagnostics
– High
– Medium
– Low
– Notices
• Open Site Explorer
• On-Page Optimisation
– Grade a Page
• Crawl Test Tool
• Link Analysis
• Free 30-Day Trial
• From $99 / month
https://moz.com

SCREAMING FROG SEO SPIDER TOOL
• Site Crawler – emulates
search engine spiders
• Client & Server Errors
• Redirects
• URI Issues
• Duplicate Pages
• Page Titles & Metas
• Canonicals
• Anchor Text
• Images
• XML Sitemap Generator
• Free Download (with 500 URI
crawl limit and limited
functionality)
• £99 / year licence
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

ONCE YOU’VE
EXHAUSTED THOSE
TOOLS (OR YOUR SELF)
THEN GIVE ME A SHOUT!

HOW ABOUT…
WHAT DOES ON-SITE
SEO MEAN?

WEBSITE CONTENT: 2 DISTINCT TYPES
Page Elements
(Meta)
URL
Page Title
Meta Description
Page Content
(Body)
H1 Heading
Body Content
User Generated
Content

PAGE ELEMENTS (META)

PAGE TITLE
Your Page Title should be unique to that page
and reflect the key themes of it. Keyword
research should be undertaken to optimise
Page Titles as they are a key ranking factor.
Each one should be around 65 characters in
length.

PAGE TITLE
length.
URL
This includes your domain name and page
name. It should reflect the content of the page
accurately, and be search-engine friendly.

PAGE TITLE
length.
URL
This includes your domain name and page
name. It should reflect the content of the page
accurately, and be search-engine friendly.
META DESCRIPTION
Although not a ranking factor, a meta
description has the potential to encourage
users to click on your site via a well-written,
unique, conversion-optimised description. It
should be fewer than 150 characters, include
your USPs and a clear call to action, where
appropriate.

PAGE CONTENT (BODY)
BODY CONTENT
Each page should have an
appropriate amount of well-written,
informative body
content in order to answer
user questions and encourage
them to find out more
SEO should be your
secondary concern, with user
experience and conversion
optimisation your primary
H1 HEADING
One of the most important on-page
SEO ranking factors
Should be a single, unique,
well-optimised H1 Heading
per page
Keyword research should help
to inform the wording of the
H1 Heading
.
USER GENERATED
CONTENT
Search engines (and users)
value user generated content
as it provides freshness to
pages in the language of site
users
Examples of UGC include:
Reviews
Questions
Answers
Comments
Images
.

THINK BACK TO THE GOOGLE PANDA UPDATE.
DON’T PRACTISE KEYWORD STUFFING
DON’T HAVE THIN CONTENT.
DO CONNECT USERS WITH UNIQUE,
AUTHORITATIVE, VALUABLE CONTENT.

WHICH LEADS US ON TO….
HOW TO AUDIT, RESEARCH
AND OPTIMISE YOUR ON-SITE
CONTENT

STEP 1: AUDIT
• Use a tool like Screaming
Frog SEO Spider to visit
every page on your site
(you could do this
manually for smaller
sites)
• Record key elements on
each page:
– Page Title
– H1 Heading
– H2 Headings
– Meta Description
– Body Content

STEP 2: RESEARCH
• Use a tool like Google’s
Keyword Planner to
research key words and
phrases associated to your
on-site content
• Include landing page,
category and product /
service
• Choose relevant, niche
keywords with appropriate
search volume
https://adwords.google.co.uk/KeywordPlanner

STEP 3: OPTIMISE
• Page Title: 65
Characters
• H1 Heading: Single,
unique, optimised
• Meta Desc: USPs –
about 150 Characters
• Body Content: Unique,
value-add, informative,
engaging content – FOR
USERS
http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html

IF YOU GET STUCK
DURING ANY OF THOSE
STEPS THEN GIVE ME A
SHOUT!

FINALLY….
HOW TECHNICAL & ON-SITE
SEO CAN COMBINE FORCES
FOR SEARCH SUPREMACY

A HANDY
SUMMARY

• Search has evolved over the years to better connect users and their
intent with websites and their content.
• Technical SEO & On-Site SEO are two areas that you should
control, or at least influence. Build internal resource and knowledge,
and seek expert help.
• Lay the foundations for search success with a website that search
engines can access, index and infer authority to, and a one that
users can gain insight, value and knowledge from.
• As long as you keep those things in mind, then algorithm updates
and tactical changes shouldn’t matter – provide search engines and
people with what they want and they will love you for it.

RIGHT THEN…
ANY QUESTIONS?

VENTURE STREAM
ONLINE – venturestream.co.uk
EMAIL – marty@venturestream.co.uk

Arts Marketing Association North-East Network Meeting: The Evolution of Search (What you need to know about technical and on-site SEO)

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