3. Search Currently Orbits Social Media
Search
Search
Social Search
Media
Search
Search Marketers treat Search and Social as two separate beasts only leveraging social
as a way to push out messages.
4. Search Should Integrate with Social
Social
Search
Media
Search Marketers would be better served using Social Media to inform strategies that
target people. Think beyond Search to be better at Search.
5. STOP CHASING THE ALGORITHM
Search is about fulfilling a need for a
person. Search Quality is about better
fulfilling the needs of people.
SEO needs to be less about the
manipulating the algorithm and
more about fulfilling needs.
6. In other words…
Search needs to be less about WHAT
and more about WHO and WHY? Here
are my data-driven approaches.
7. Use Social Media to Your Advantage
Hundreds of
Millions of people
are telling you
their every
mundane thought
everyday; use it!
8. Invest in Social Listening
Scout Labs
Alterian SM2
For my shoestring
budget hustlers
Social Mention
Scout Labs & Alterian SM2 are extensive and expensive social listening tools but
you can grab a decent data set for free using Social Mention.
9. Invest in Quantitative Analysis Tools
Invest in sites like ComScore, Compete or Quantcast to identify a demographic
by industry and to get a preview of their search behavior.
10. Develop Personas
Develop Personas to understand your users
and to inform Search and UX.
See Vanessa Fox’s presentation on Personas for an in-depth how-to:
http://www.slideshare.net/optify/using-personas-to-boost-online-marketing-and-seo
11. Target Humans – Not Search Engines
Build for Humans and the Search
Engines will follow. They must in order
to stay relevant.
12. Great SEO is the Price of Admission
None of this is to say that you can
ignore SEO. Combining these practices
with great SEO amplifies your
message.
13. Social and Search Will Continue to Integrate
I predict that Google will use rel-me and rel-author as ways to connect people to
content and apply a sliding scale of value to links based on algorithmically
determined authority of the writer to help solve search quality issues.
BUILD YOUR NETWORKS NOW.
Read: Google’s Heading for Life after Link Trust – Here’s How to Prepare by @simonpenson - http://seogadget.co.uk/life-after-link-trust/
15. Who is Your Target Audience?
Before you do anything you need to
identify who you are trying to talk to.
16. Building Personas
Building personas is a process of guess and check. Use social
listening and educated guesses to identify 4 core groups of your
audience. Test all assumptions.
Music Moms Happy Raging Rock stars Involved Instructors
Typically uninformed gift givers Typically professional musicians at Typically professional musicians
looking for information on the Hobbyists various stages of their careers that and thought leaders/content
right guitar for their happy Typically students or tend to spend more time creating creators who talk about new
hobbyist or raging rockstar. amateur musicians content with their guitars only techniques and have strong
These people enter the looking for the latest tips consuming content as new guitar opinions about instruments and
conversation when they are and tricks for playing their technology is released. These are brands. These tend to be quite
looking to make a purchase. guitar. These tend to be the influencers of the happy active in the acoustic guitar
the most active content hobbyist group. conversation.
creators in the acoustic
guitar conversation.
17. Find Out Exactly Who They Are
It is now also possible to find out data
on every person that comes to your
site.
18. Keyword-Level Demographics
Search Keyword-Level
FB:Admin Demographics
Referrers
Use the keyword-level demographics data to test your
hypotheses and potentially identify new personas
Read and get code to do this at: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/keyword-level-demographics
19. Privacy?
If you are concerned with privacy you
can encrypt user IDs using md5 hashes
or model the persona in the code and
only push the persona name to
analytics.
123456 e10adc3949ba59abbe56e057f20f883e
An md5 hash is a 128-bit
encryption of a string. You
can compare users without
saving their user IDs
20. Pzyche
Pzyche allows you to get demographics data on visitors in real-time
requiring no opt-in.* http://www.pzyche.com
*I asked Pzyche where their data comes from they said their sources are “proprietary”
21. Other Data Sources
LinkedIn and Google+ are both options
for data mining the people that come to
your site but keep in mind that with
signed in G+ users you will not get
Search Referrers.
Read: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/making-search-more-secure.html
22. Dynamic Targeting
Using the demographic data user experiences can be tailored
dynamically to reflect properties of the persona when they visit.
What Normal Users See What Curious George Sees
Curious George
• 18-32
• Male
• Loves indie rock
• Wishes he had a beard
(Dramatization)
23. Give People What they are Looking For
Does your content fulfill the need
associated with the search intent?
Does it give the person the compelling
experience they are searching for?
25. Filter Keywords through Social Listening
Informational, Navigational, Transactional
classification is not enough to truly
understand intent.
Identify need states and use vocabulary in a
way that people expect.
26. Case Study
Motivation Decision-
Research Booking Pre-flight Travel Post-travel
to travel making
How do I crystallize
Need States
I want to collect new What is out there that Who’s going to help What do I need to do my travels so that
Of the options Who can I rely on to
experience, add to would be fun and me fine tune and to activate my trip so they are easy to
available, what is help me make the
my personal story, interesting to do make the plan that it’s as easy as share, and provide
feasible given time & most of my trip?
and create special alone and/or with the possible? possible? inspiration to me and
budget constraints?
memories people I care about? others evermore?
Occasion: Get Ideas: Search for: Search for: Locate: Connect: Organize:
Examples of What‟s happening
-Season/Holiday Key trip info: -With local info -Memories/events
From Activity and experience -Cheapest flight options
-NY’ eve -Luggage rules -With resources -Evidence you’ve been there/
friends, family,colleagues, ext options at different based on timings
-Valentine’s D -Check in time (guides, gurus) Memorabilia
ended social media destinations - Cheapest flight options
-Honeymoon -Terminal to go to -Activity ideas -New ideas
network, bloggers, TV based on destination (look for
-Birthday gift personalities, movies, activity promos and time suggestions) -Currency exchange
-Anniversary groups & forums -Ways to and from airport
-Stag do Compare: -Travel tips
Package:
-Reunion Destination options based on Record:
-Accomplishment timings, costs, and ease of Compare: -Experiences Trip takeouts so as to extend
-Time off Search for: getting there Time options vs. budget Book: -Memories the benefits gained from the
trip
Occasion or experience across key providers -New
-Car hire ideas, contacts, knowledge
sought on
-Accommodation
Experience: google, publications, forums,
-Airport bus
-Broaden horizon
social media groups,etc
Commit: Share:
-Hobby/skill To a scenario To build on and showcase
-Well-being/R&R
-Adventure
Manage: who you are
-Landscape (sea, mountain, Info updates, efficient and
plant) easy task completion
-Weather (sun, snow, wind)
Research Commitment Experience
Inspiration
27. Case Study – Semantic Grouping
Motivation Decision-
Research Booking Pre-flight Travel Post-travel
to travel making
Occasion Activity Destination Offering Simplify Connect Remember
Core Semantic Groups We identified the need
Flights
state matched the client‟s
business goals and
mapped them to semantic
groups to dictate the
information architecture.
Country/Region Logistics
Timing
City/Airport
Cheap Flights
28. Case Study – Keyword Research
Identify what people want and present it in a way that matches
their expectations using the language they expect in order to
provide the best user experience to your target audience and
improve conversion.
29. UX that Reflects Needs
Navigation and sub-
navigation reflect
need states
UX and content
developed with the
concerns of our
personas
We built a user experience indicative of these considerations
30. Case Study
Bookings
Organic Traffic
We improved rankings and conversions dramatically by marrying these
concepts.
32. Co-Relevance
Combine 2 or more concepts that
typically don’t go together to create
memorable content.
33. Co-Relevance Example
An interactive timeline of modern music that looks like a game of Guitar Hero
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/interactive/2011/jun/11/history-modern-music-timeline
34. Co-Relevance Example 2
The periodic table meets SEO Ranking Factors and Typefaces.
http://searchengineland.com/introducing-the-periodic-table-of-seo-ranking-factors-77181
http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Periodic-Table-of-Typefaces/193759
35. Co-Relevance Example 3
Link from the Legend of Zelda‟s Link Building Strategy Guide
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/throw-away-your-form-letters-or-5-principles-to-better-outreach-link-building
36. Co-Relevance Example 4
The evolution of airline consolidation as a genealogy chart
http://www.historyshots.com/airlines/index.cfm?s=cirk
37. Co-Relevance Example 5
The Organic Path of Music presented as flight paths
http://www.thomson.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/infographic/interactive-music-map/index.html
38. Co-Relevance Example 6
The History of Oprah meets CandyLand
http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1105/oprahland/flat.html
40. Co-Relevance Example 8
Conversion Rate Optimization Explained by Mr. Men characters
http://unbounce.com/funny/mr-men-guide-to-landing-pages-and-conversion/
41. Co-Relevance Example 9
Proper.
The Twitters said you guys wanted Hammer at SearchLove.
Who am I to deny you?
42. People Tweet the Same Things they Search
Use Trendistic to get keyword trends on Twitter
http://trendistic.indextank.com/
There is a direct correlation between Twitter activity and Search Demand.
Exploit it for co-relevant content creation ideas.
43. GoFish
GoFish is a real-time
keyword research tool
that leverages Twitter to
find out what people are
talking about related to
your keyword right now.
http://ipullrank.com/tools/gofis
h
44. GoFish Methodology
Input
Keyword
n-grams
Identify top highest occurring
Validate users using Klout Scores
n-grams sans stop words
Pull latest 200 Tweets
containing your keyword
Validate search volume using Adwords
Top 10 Keyphrases
related to Keyword
Using Social Media to Get Ahead of Search Demand
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/using-social-media-to-get-ahead-of-search-demand
45. Wait… What’s an N-Gram?
N-gram ’en’gram noun
A collection of N consecutive words. For example a
bi-gram or 2-gram is a keyphrase comprised 5-Gram
of 2 words. This is the basis for a search engine’s
determination of semantic value and relationship
SearchLove NYC MC
Hammer Dance
4-Gram
Downtown Brooklyn
Apartment Rentals
3-Gram
GoFish only looks for 2
Michael King SEO
through 5-grams.
46. Application of GoFish
Combine concepts that people
are talking about now to create
a unique piece of compelling
content with a built-in
audience.
Michael
Jackson
Jackson Trial
South Park
?
47. Michael Jackson Trial South Park Edition
Seed the content
you create to
influential Twitter
users identified by
GoFish.
48. SEOGadget Method
The guys over at SEOGadget have a very similar tool that runs on ImportXML for
Google Docs. This method pulls data faster and from various social sources.
Read: http://seogadget.co.uk/using-google-docs-to-generate-hot-content-strategies/ (@dbseo)
50. THROW AWAY YOUR FORM LETTERS!
The guy sent a form
letter to Avinash
Kaushik for a link.
Do Not be a Jordan Hogenson; tailor your outreach link building to your audience
52. Twitter Before Email
Twitter is made for inane and unsolicited
conversation. Start your outreach link building there.
53. Use the SEER Method for Link Prospeting
I absolutely love the SEER Interactive method of using Twitter and Open Site
Explorer together to identify link prospects!
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/using-twitter-and-backlinks-to-build-links/2011/07/28/
55. Issues with the SEER Method
The Simply Measured tool gives you URLs with shorteners and Open Site Explorer
exports only give you up to 10k links.
56. So I made a tool…
Upload your Simply Measured Export and get an SEOmoz Site Intelligence
API and it will exhaustively prepare a link prospect report as an Excel
workbook. I don’t have a name or UI for this tool.
57. How Does it Work?
All shortened URLs All Root Domains Data is exported to
are expanded are pulled from an Excel Workbook.
Open Site Explorer One sheet of
prospects, one
sheet of people
already linking to
you.
60. Have a Persona for Link Building
People will most likely check out your timeline so fill it with
cool relevant content and conversation. Build an authentic
separate persona and use it for your link building.
61. Personas are the Key to Scalability
TARGET INFLUENCERS
Curious George Gamer Film Purist Tech Geek
This group represents people Gamers talk about their 3D This conversation revolves This group talks about the
considering buying a 3D TV gaming experience and the around use of 3D in film. They technical details of their AV
components and games they talk about 3D in a broad way, setup. They treat their TV’s like
use. and occasionally touch on a racecar driver treats their car.
3DTV specifically.
Personas help you identify how to find your link prospects and how to
start a conversation with them once you do.
Read: http://outspokenmedia.com/seo/content-based-outreach-for-link-building (@justinrbriggs)
62. Do Your Research
Create mental models of
your link prospects by
spending 5 minutes to view
their Social Media profiles
ProTip: A lot of people use the same username for many different
social networks. Put it in Knowem and find out what they are about.
63. Use Followerwonk with Scraper
FollowerWonk doesn‟t have an export feature so install Scraper for Chrome
Read: http://justinbriggs.org/quick-link-prospecting-with-scraper-extension (@justinrbriggs)
64. kloutSkout
kloutSkout is tool I made for grabbing the Twitter and Klout data quickly. It will pull
up to 100 user’s klout and twitter info. Use with Followerwonk to get a good sense
of who your prospects are.
Use it: I will tweet the link to this later on today. Follow me @ipullrank.
65. Link Prospecting by Persona
Personas help define the type of people to reach out to for link prospecting.
66. SiteSkout
ProTip: Use
with Screaming
Frog
SiteSkout allows you to quickly identify popular content and topics of sites by pulling the social
metrics of all the URLs on the site and the main idea using natural language processing.
Read: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/speedy-site-prospecting-using-social-metrics-natural-language-processing
Use it: http://ipullrank.com/tools/siteskout/ Note; Requires an API from http://www.textwise.com
67. Talk to People Like People
Outreach Link Building should be fun. If you
approach it with a genuine interest in people
you will increase your hit rate and not think of it
as such an fruitless task by having actual
conversations.
68. Make Your Message Stand Out
Use Short Subjects Converse with Context
Use Natural Subjects Do NOT Just Tweet a
Link at a Prospect
Do NOT Use “Link
Request” Escalate Quickly
(“Follow So I can DM”)
Send Emails as an
Actual Person not a Participate in the
Company or Team Subject’s
Conversation
Include a Natural
Salutation Ride a Relevant
Hashtag
69. Offer Value
Value does not mean always mean incentives.
Show the person that it interacting with you is
valuable by being entertaining or a resource by
sharing other relevant content or information.
70. Dangle the Carrot
If you have nothing more to offer or can’t spend
the time use incentives. Couple incentives with
campaigns to draw links in a one-to-many
fashion.
71. Maintain the Rapport
After you close a link continue to engage with
your link prospects over time on Twitter or G+.
Add them to private Twitter lists and Google
Plus Circles.
72. Real Life Examples
@ipullran
k
If at least 100 people in this room follow me on Twitter right now I will share
examples of my outreach on my blog (http://ipullrank.com) over the next month.
74. Measuring People
Using personas allows you step away from
abstracts and identify insights in terms of
people and their needs.
Almost didn’t look
like a watermark,
right?
75. Rankings
Push your rankings to your Analytics for viewing in context with
personas, localization and conversion goals
Read and get the code for this: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/gettings-rankings-into-ga-using-custom-variables (@dohertyjf)
76. Keyword Ownership
Once a statistically significant dataset is compiled it can be
determined which demographic and/or persona is more likely to
convert for a given keyword and develop messaging that focuses on
that group to further improve conversion.
OWNER
Curious George Gamer Film Purist Tech Geek
• 18-32 • 18-32 • 22-40 • 22-40
• Male • Male • Male • Male
• Loves indie rock • Loves all music • Loves film soundtracks • Loves Techno
• Wishes he had a beard • Wishes he could move • Wishes he could live in • Wishes you would stop
out his mom‟s the movie Avatar invading his online
basement privacy
• 5000 Searches Monthly • 600 Searches Monthly • 1000 Searches Monthly • 100 Searches Monthly
• Conversion Rate 5% • Conversion Rate 2% • Conversion Rate 0.5% • Conversion Rate 0.2%
77. Keyword Arbitrage
Initial Conversion Persona Keyword Subsequent Conversion Keyword
Keyword Rate Revenue Keyword Rate Revenue
Sneakers 5% Curious George $50 Sneakers 40% $50
Sneakers 5% Curious George $50 Windbreakers 60% $100
Sneakers 5% Curious George $50 T-Shirts 20% $20
Windbreakers 3% Curious George $100 Sneakers 32% $50
Windbreakers 3% Curious George $100 Windbreakers 5% $100
Windbreakers 3% Curious George $100 T-shirts 80% $20
T-shirts 2% Curious George $20 Sneakers 50% $50
T-shirts 2% Curious George $20 Windbreakers 40% $100
T-shirts 2% Curious George $20 T-shirts 75% $20
Tracking keyword demographics also allows the attribution of future
purchases to the original keyword and will give way to keyword matrices that
will inform you where to put your money initially to get more future sales.
78. Subsequent Conversion Prediction
Curious George
60% of these users that
buy sneakers from the
keyword “sneakers” come
back and purchase
windbreakers
These keyword matrices will allow the prediction of what the persona is likely to
buy next so you know which people to aggressively pursue through retargeting
and other channels such as email.
79. Annual Keyword Value
Based on how often an initial keyword leads to future conversions of
subsequent keywords businesses will be able to measure the annual
value of a keyword and react accordingly.
Keyword Price per Keyword
Earnings
Ratio Annual Earnings
per initial click
Annual Earnings
Keyword per initial click
Earnings
Yield Price per Keyword
84. Why Does it Matter?
You’re not hiding anything with JavaScript.
Google can access anything as it is actually
rendered for an end user.
85. Proof – Instant Previews
There is absolutely no way Google is doing this with a Text-based crawler.
86.
87. Google Makes POST Requests via Ajax
You can‟t do this
with a text-based
crawler.
Read: http://www.thumbtack.com/engineering/googlebot-makes-post-requests-via-ajax/
