SEO Presentation for Convention and Visitor Bureaus

Opportunities in Search Engine Optimization March 27, 2009 Agenda • About The Search Agency • SEO – Why You Should Care • SEO Strategies and Tactics for Convention & Visitor Bureaus – SEO Architecture – SEO Content – SEO Linking – SEO and Social Media 2 Proprietary and Confidential Company Background • History and Team – Founded in 2002 – Management Team has over 30 years Search Marketing experience • Large Investment in Technology & Service – 32 FTEs in R&D • • Proprietary Technology Fully Accessible to our Partners 4 Person Account Management Team Structures – 60 FTEs providing First Class Service • Long term focus on clients – Partner retention rate greater than 90% annually – 50%+ of new business derived from referrals from existing Partners • Member of Google, Yahoo! And Microsoft Advertiser Councils – – – – One of 4 Alpha testers for Panama One of 3 Alpha testers for adCenter Yahoo Elite Technology Partner (1 of 4) Regularly alpha and beta test new features with Search Engines 3 Proprietary and confidential Agenda • About The Search Agency • SEO – Why You Should Care • SEO Strategies and Tactics for Convention & Visitor Bureaus – SEO Architecture – SEO Content – SEO Linking – SEO and Social Media 4 Proprietary and Confidential Search Engine Results Page Paid Search Organic Search 5 Page 5 Proprietary and Confidential What is Organic Search? 6 Proprietary and Confidential Who Are The Major Players In Domestic Search? Google represents the majority of searches on the web, followed by Yahoo! Search Share - December, 2008 Yahoo! 21% Google 63% Microsoft 8% Ask AOL 4% 4% 7 Proprietary and Confidential Search Is Global Global Search Share, December 2007 Baidu 7% Microsoft Sites 4% NHN 3% Ask Network 1% Time Warner Network 1% Source: comScore Networks, Lehman Brothers Yahoo Sites 17% Google Sites 67% 8 Proprietary and Confidential Search Engines Drive Traffic Search has the potential to drive significant traffic to your website. 9 Proprietary and Confidential Why Do Search Engine Optimization? • • • • • Its where the traffic is Don‟t have to pay for clicks – its free! Capture users by intent People are searching for help Organic gets approx. 70% of clicks vs. 30% paid 10 Proprietary and Confidential Agenda • About The Search Agency • SEO – Why You Should Care • SEO Strategies and Tactics for Convention & Visitor Bureaus – SEO Architecture – SEO Content – SEO Linking – SEO and Social Media 11 Proprietary and Confidential Three Core Elements to Good SEO Architecture Content Linking Optimization 12 Proprietary and Confidential Agenda • About The Search Agency • SEO – Why You Should Care • SEO Strategies and Tactics for Convention & Visitor Bureaus – SEO Architecture – SEO Content – SEO Linking – SEO and Social Media 13 Proprietary and Confidential SEO Site Architecture – The Basics • Ensuring that nothing is in place that impedes the progress of the search engine spiders – Java Script Navigation – Flash – Log-ins • Optimized URLs – Keywords – Number of directories – Usage of parameters 14 Proprietary and Confidential SEO Site Architecture – Flash / Java Script Site: Visit Long Beach http://www.visitlongbeach.com/ Content is 99% in flash 15 Proprietary and Confidential SEO Site Architecture – Flash / Java Script 16 Proprietary and Confidential SEO Site Architecture - URLs • Non-optimized URL http://www.anaheimoc.org/member_details/listview.asp?cat=6460 • Optimized URL http://www.gayot.com/restaurants/best-losangeles-ca-top10italianrestaurants_2la.html 17 Proprietary and Confidential SEO Site Architecture – URL Directories With the content 4 directories deep, Google may deem this information not important/relevant. 52nd result in Google for term: “Seattle Facts” 18 Proprietary and confidential Architecture Best Practices – The Basics • Ensure site content is spider-able – On page content – Reduce / minimize usage of java script, flash • URLs – Use keywords in URL instead of code – Keep directories to a minimum – Reduce / eliminate usage of parameters 19 Proprietary and Confidential Agenda • About The Search Agency • SEO – Why You Should Care • SEO Strategies and Tactics for Convention & Visitor Bureaus – SEO Architecture – SEO Content – SEO Linking – SEO and Social Media 20 Proprietary and Confidential Content Best Practices When it comes to website content, the following Content Optimization Best Practices are key: • Title Tag • Keyword Focus • • Each page should be focused around one primary keyword or phase Primary keyword selection should be based on keyword search volume research • 6 to 12 words long • Keyword focused • Keyword used at beginning of tag • 12 to 24 words long • Keyword focused • Keyword used towards the beginning of tag • 24 to 48 words long • Keyword focused • Keywords should be grouped in related clusters • Meta Description • Keyword Usage • • Primary keyword should be used within all page elements and significantly within body copy Keyword usage should be based on average usage within top search engines • Meta Keywords • H1 Tags • Content Depth • Each page should have a significant depth of body copy content in relation to the topical focus (approx. 200 – 600 words) • Only one H1 Tag per page • Keyword focused • Should not be duplicate of Title Tag 21 Proprietary and Confidential Site Content Which site wins? Site One – 5 Pages Site Two – 30 Pages Beatles Beatles Take Away: Build topic expertise by increasing the depth of content on your topics 22 Proprietary and Confidential Case Study Current Client: Engagement: Optimize site content for improved ranking. 23 Proprietary and Confidential Improving the Site Optimization plan includes the following: • Creating Meta Data formulas to help improve the Title Tag, Meta Descriptions, and Meta Keywords of the pages • Identifying keyword focus for and optimizing the content on existing pages • Creating new content to take advantage of keyword opportunities Page 24 Proprietary and Confidential Content Analysis When we analyzed the website content of AnaheimOC.org, we discovered the following strengths and weaknesses: Strengths • Majority of content is focused from a topical standpoint • Majority of pages have unique Title tags • Category/subcategory pages have established and unique H1 tags Page 25 Proprietary and Confidential Content Analysis When we analyzed the website content of AnaheimOC.org, we discovered the following strengths and weaknesses: Weaknesses • Not all pages have unique Meta Description tag content and a good portion are missing. • Majority of pages have the exact same Meta Keywords tag content. • Merchant pages are missing an H1 tag • Subcategory pages could use additional content to help secure subcategory keyword/topical focus. (Not an H1 tag, but should be) (Text here) Page 26 Proprietary and Confidential Content Strategy • Focus efforts on one section of the site: 27 Proprietary and Confidential Keyword Analysis Keyword research is very important to successful SEO. The goal is to find a keyword that has search volume (i.e. people search on frequently) AND relates to topical focus of the page you want to optimize. Here’s the standard procedure for selecting a keyword: • Identify the specific topic/focus of the page you want to optimize Page 28 Proprietary and Confidential Keyword Analysis – Search Volume Using a keyword search volume tool (like Wordtracker/Google AdWords Keyword Tool), find a keyword that has decent search volume that relates as close to your topical focus as possible. Page 29 Proprietary and Confidential Keyword Analysis – Current SE Rank Check in Google to see if your website (specifically the web page you want to optimize) is currently ranking for that term. (#59) Page 30 Proprietary and Confidential Who‟s Ranking? Analyze who is ranking for your term: • Keyword density • Title Tags • Body Content • Meta Content 31 Proprietary and Confidential OC Airports Page Based on this analysis, we built a new OC Airports page • Original page had 1 paragraph of text and links to the airport websites: – Orange County Airport – John Wayne Airport – LAX – Long Beach Airport Here is the new page: Page 32 Proprietary and Confidential Proving the Concept – Creating New Content In addition to optimizing the existing Orange County Airports page, we also built out individual pages on each of the 4 airports. (Turns out that there was search volume for each of them as well) Page 33 Proprietary and Confidential OC Airport Pages 34 Proprietary and Confidential OC Airport Pages 35 Proprietary and Confidential CVB Content Strategy • Leverage the local focus of your site – Include location and names of local attractions on all relevant page elements • Meta content • Title Tag • H1‟s • Body Content • Etc. 36 Proprietary and Confidential User-Generated Content • Reviews on CVB sites – Hotels – Restaurants – Attractions – Events • Why? – 1 out of 3 internet users seeks out user-generated content to help them make their decisions – Allows you to exponentially increase the word count and page count of your site • Typically keyword rich content – Free content 37 Proprietary and Confidential Agenda • About The Search Agency • SEO – Why You Should Care • SEO Strategies and Tactics for Convention & Visitor Bureaus – SEO Architecture – SEO Content – SEO Linking – SEO and Social Media 38 Proprietary and Confidential A Link is Like a Vote A link is like a vote. Although links from important 'authority' sites carry more 'vote weight', ultimately, total 'link/vote score' is one of the heaviest algorithmic factors considered in rankings. 39 Proprietary and Confidential Linking Pyramid 40 Proprietary and Confidential Importance Of Linking Words “Click Here” do not appear on this page 41 Proprietary and Confidential CVB Linking Strategy • Inbound Linking Strategy – Leverage existing relationships with 1000‟s of businesses in your region. Local Company 4 Local Company 5 Local Company 3 Local Company 2 Local Company 6 Local Company 7 Local Company 1 CVB.com …etc 42 Proprietary and Confidential CVB Linking Strategy • Deep Linking Homepage Things to do Restaurants Italian restaurants 43 Proprietary and Confidential CVB Linking Strategy • Integrate linking practices into your everyday business • How to do it: – Train your staff about linking basics and the importance of linking • Relevance, deep linking, etc. – Build linking into your standard agreements with local businesses and vendors – Train your procurement staff to include linking in all negotiations • Why do it: – Programmatically acquire large volumes of relevant, topic specific links into pages of your site 44 Proprietary and Confidential Additional CVB Linking Strategies • Actively acquire in-bound links from „authority‟ websites – .gov sites • Local government • State government • National government – .edu sites • Local universities – Attraction websites • Example: Disneyland – Local large businesses • Travel directories • DMOZ (http://www.google.com/Top/Recreation/Travel/) • Yahoo Directory (http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/U_S__States/) 45 Proprietary and Confidential Additional CVB Linking Strategies • Make your content easy to share – Add functionality for people to share content with their friends and colleagues. • Increases inbound links 46 Proprietary and Confidential Agenda • About The Search Agency • SEO – Why You Should Care • SEO Strategies and Tactics for Convention & Visitor Bureaus – SEO Architecture – SEO Content – SEO Linking – SEO and Social Media 47 Proprietary and Confidential Examples of Social Media • Blogs: “Web logs” like Gizmodo and Tech Crunch • Instant messaging: Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk • Forums: Websites for open discussions about specific topics. (Something Awful, Digital Spy) • Media sharing: Flickr, YouTube • Social bookmarking: Users recommend headlines and stories to one another (Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon) • Social networks: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn • Twitter: Real-time micro-blogging • Wikis: Wikipedia, WikiHow 48 Proprietary and Confidential Social Media usage is growing Interaction and adoption of social media has increased over time. Source: Universal McCann 49 Proprietary and Confidential Social Network Users Analysts have forecasted online social networks to grow to 105 million Users in 2011. US Online Social Network Users, 2006-2011 (millions) 110 100 90 80 70 60 50 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 Source: www.strategyanalytics.com 50 Proprietary and Confidential Social Media For SEO Basic concept of leveraging Social Media for SEO: Post useful information on your site Announce your content People will come to your site People will add links Social Media Ground Rules: • Spaces are very personal • Have a culture of giving, not taking 51 Proprietary and Confidential Social Media For SEO Post useful information on your site • Content should be: – Interesting – Unique – Compelling Examples Anecdotes Tips Top 10 Lists Specials 52 Proprietary and Confidential Social Media For SEO Announce your content • Presumes you have an „audience‟ • Step one: Develop an audience – – – – Collect email addresses on your website Connect with like-minded, travel related people online Form relationships and contribute to online spaces Comment on other‟s content • Step two: Announce your content – Twitter, community blogs, your email list, etc. 53 Proprietary and Confidential Social Media For SEO People will come to your site People will add links • One natural outcome of compelling and unique content is that people will: – Want to link to it – Comment about it Leads to more, relevant, high quality links into your site = Better ranking in search engines 54 Proprietary and Confidential Summary • SEO – You should care! • Architecture – Reduce usage of flash / java-script – Optimize your URLs • Content – Focus on best practices and content depth • Linking – In-bound links from local merchants – Make in-bound linking a part of your everyday business • Social Media – Join the conversation and add value 55 Proprietary and Confidential Thank you! Corey Quinn corey@thesearchagency.com 56 Proprietary and Confidential