One does not simply get to the top of Google - a Journey through SEO. Lucas Diamond presents to the Wellington Web Content Meeup.

1. A Journey through SEO

2. What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation
“ Is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the
amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the
search results page of a search engine (SERP)”
It’s a digital art form of constant change. Its goal? - acquiring visitors
and improving customer relationships.

3. In the beginning……..
Early 1990’s all search engines are edited by Humans
1994 Brian Pinkerton creates the first WebCrawler and
it creates a list of the top 25 websites 

4. In the beginning……..
1996 Excite grows to number one spot and buys Webcrawler
1997 Lycos Grows to 60 Million listings it is the largest Search Engine to date
1997 Larry Page and Sergey Brin launch Google Beta
◦ First Crawler attempts “break the Internet” by acting like a DOS attack
1998 First ‘doodle’ launched

5. In the beginning……..
1999 First SEO symposium launched by Danny Sullivan
1999 Search Engines run into issues with updates. The most popular Search Engine
at the time, Altavista, changes its algorithm and millions of listings
disappear.. This was known in SEO circles as ‘Black Monday’
2000 Although existing on the fringes for some time Google launches its new Paid
Clicks CPM (model) and calls it “AdWords”
SEM is truly born.

6. In the beginning……..
2003 Google Bombing (link bombing) makes Google mad….. And ruins search for
everybody
2004 Search King launches a market place for Text Link Ads, Google penalizes
SearchKing ad de-lists them… the age of google banning begins.
2004 Googles ‘Florida’ Update turns SEO on its head as 90’s SEO practices are
banned and the NoFollow (to prevent Spam linking) tag is implemented by MSN
and Yahoo as well - Google will now update its search Algorithms regularly

7. In the beginning……..
2006 the SEO dark times… ‘SEO is Dead’ articles follow each Google update
as SEO marketers have to start from scratch.
2006 Google bans BMW for “Cloaking” it lasts 6 months.
2006 Yahoo re-brands with a Google like look and launches ‘My Yahoo’ –
the first hint of search sentiment is widely ignored
2008 The Big 3 battle for market share, SEM is now Channel
marketing becoming a game of numbers.
Previously unthinkable amounts of money are now spent
on SEM and SEO

8. In the beginning……..
2009-2010 Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves fade into the back ground
Google now has nearly 70% of the market
Microsoft launches Bing to replace MSN and Live Search
2012 Rumors of google encrypting search terms is proved to be
true, in 3 months “Not Provided” listings grow to 40%
Bing Grows to the number 2 slot at nearly 20% out stripping
Yahoo

9. So What’s It About
1990’s -2005 Keywords, Links, Anchors
2005 – 2012 Content Relevancy, Cool links, Popularity, Keyword
Affinity, Social Media
2013- ……. Customer Affinity

10. A few words about SEO and SEM

11. SEO and SEM a partnership
◦SEM = Search Engine Marking or Paid/Sponsored Links
◦ SEO and SEM go hand in hand bringing together both sides of Internet marketing
◦ Working these together can help show any overlap, as well as gaps, between your SEO and
SEM campaigns and improve your overall marketing reach.
◦ Target Keywords accurately, improve the success of these campaigns by driving traffic to the
right place!

12. SEO and SEM a partnership
◦ SEO and SEM strategy can team up in terms of improving the quality score of a landing page,
and therefore decreasing the overall SEM cost
◦ Drive Customers to your Site with Quality SEO
◦ Convert Customers on your Site with Quality SEM
◦ SEO AND SEM make good soup!!

13. Making SEO better - Keywords
Have you done your homework?
◦ Mine your keyword research sources
◦ Word Tracker, Keyword Discovery, and yes Google Analytics
◦ Keyword Affinity, what goes best ‘Car Toyota’ or ‘Toyota Car’
◦ Is that Keyword relevant? Does it really match your site goals, or you customers
intent?
◦ Who is your Competition? The internet is a noisy place.

14. But what about encrypted search?

15. But what about encrypted search?
Nielsen 2015
Google 67%
Bing 18%
Yahoo 11%
Thank you notprovided.com

16. But what about encrypted search?
Google Webmaster Tools
Has Search Queries but it
has limitations
Lack of Comparison metrics
Was limited to a 90 day
history

17. Making SEO better – Relevant Content !!
"While secure searches may seem frustrating to many SEO marketers, this is actually a great
move for our industry.
Great SEO today is great content with powerful digital endorsements from relevant
and authoritative websites, which results in business results that transcend the keyword
conversation.

18. Making SEO better – Relevant Content !!
Aaron Aders, Co-Founder, digitalrelevance:
"SEO marketers need to be focused on raising organic traffic as a whole, achieving business
objectives like online sales and lead generation, growing branded communities, and earning
brand mentions.
This move by Google will force SEO marketers to focus on
business results rather than keywords
-- which is where the focus should be anyway."

19. Making SEO better – Relevant Content !!
Content Quality: Providing a real reason for people to spend time reading your content
AKA “Link Bait”
Content Keywords: Do your research, match to your content and build around this
– think “answers”
Content Engagement: Bounce rates, stickiness (time on site), likes and popularity, engagement metrics
Content Freshness: MMMmmm tasty fresh content ……..
……… But seriously QDF is real “Query Deserved Freshness”

20. Making SEO better – Relevant Content !!
Don’t’ forget A+B Testing for your landing pages
◦ or Multivariate
Trial content or new directions – be careful how you do it!

21. Making SEO better – Its not about CTR
Use the OOB metrics but develop specific goal based KPI’s for Search, look for depth
of visit, look for conversion – trace it back to SEO aquistition
Think Conversion, not Visits
Think Site goals not Page Views
A 100% increase in CTR or Visitors is not going to help you if they are one hit visits
Lucas - mention O2

22. Be Kind to the Bots…..

23. Making SEO Better – Don’t forget the
basics
◦ Submitting site maps, One for user one for bots
◦ Using description tags and Good titles
◦ Breadcrumbing
◦ Robots.txt or NOINDEX?
◦ NOFOLLOW and CAPTCHA
◦ Tools like googles WebMaster Tools can help!
◦ Try incognito browsing for your keywords

24. Ok…. What not to do
Cloaking (Caching)
Meta Keywords – be careful
Link Markets
Title Stacking
Doorway Pages (Content
spoofing)
Beware the SEO expert!
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769#quality_guidelines

25. Affinity
The ”Nirvana”
of search and engagement

26. Affinity
Expressions of affinity:
Def#
• A desire to find/connect with people or products
• It’s a Catalog of your customers tastes and preferences.
• Also Known as Sentiment Analysis
Keywords change quickly over time, usually each search.
“Affinity” is usually static over time…
I <sadly> like little model aero planes now… I’ll like them in 6 months time

27. Affinity
Ok its not Really a new idea, Sentiment and Segmentation have been around for
a while
But there is SOOOOOOOOOOOOO much data now!!
What is an SEO marketer to do

28. Combine ALLyour data sources
Twitter
Facebook Newsletters
Google+
Sales
POS
Webdata
Signups
Brochures
Blogs walk-ups

29. I Like Big Data And I Cannot Lie

30. Your Puny tools are no match
GA even GA Premium gives you less than half the answer,..
But it will check your results!
Tableau
SPLUNK>
Kibana- “Elastic Search”
Look at your customers/audience holistically - understand them

31. Smarter Dynamic SEO Analysis

32. Smarter Dynamic SEO Analysis
If you knew everything about your customer what would you
do with this data?
Talk to them?

33. Thank you
I could use a beer