SMX - SEO for Web2.0 Sites

Session Info

Moderator: Vanessa Fox (Features Editor, Search Engine Land)

Speakers:

• Nathan Buggia
  Live Search Webmaster Central, Lead Program Manager, Microsoft
• Tom Critchlow
  Head of Search Marketing, Distilled
• Mikkel deMib Svendsen
  Creative Director, deMib
• Dave Naylor
  Owner, Bronco

Content: Let’s say SEO 1.0 is about ensuring that 1990s-era web design techniques such as tables and frames are adjusted to minimize search engine ranking issues. Well, now the Web 2.0 design world is firmly upon us, bringing with it CSS, AJAX and other dynamic design techniques that can give search engines fits. SEO 2.0 is all about ensuring that Web 2.0 sites are as search engine friendly as Web 1.0 sites.

Session Inhalt

• 10.51: case study - arbor snowboards; web2.0 fancy website, but if you look in the inside, the title is “Arbor: Home” on the whole website > not good.

• 10.52: impact on search results
  • google: #1 arbor
  • yahoo: #1
  • live search: #3

• 10.53: snowboards #49, #80, #128

• 10.54: search problems with web2.0
  • can’t read the page: ajax, flash, silverlight
  • don’t know what content is on the page
  • one url for many pages
  • customers can’t link directly to resources within your site
  • search engines can’t discover content on your site

• 10.55: a simple landing page
  • all html/css
  • login control
  • links to all your content

• 10.56: compeling content for your audience
  • content is king
  • everyone should have a blog (subfolder)
  • best sales content about your products (include UGC)
  • viral, social media
  • videos, how to, backgrounds, boarding guides
  • instrument to track conversations

• 10.58: refactor functionality & content
  • any modern developer will only put flash where it is needed, not the entire site.

• 10.59: create a down-level experience
  • provide flash and html version

• 11.00: sitemap is important
  • standardize your urls (w/ or w/o www.)

• 11.01: Tom: why does web2.0 pose challenges to traditional SEO thinking?

• 11.02: web2.0 is about content, comment, pictures > user generated content

• 11.03: you have lack of control sometimes

• 11.04: leveraging UGC for fun & Profit
  • search queries are UGC too
  • how to identify opportunities & actionalbe insights
  • advice on building an information architecture for web 2.0 sites
  • encouraging social media engagement for web 2.0 sites

• 11.05: example of embedding search queries
  • search queries is data that people put on their website
  • scribd pretty much all of it is ugc
  • they embeded a bunch of search queries “LATEST SEARCHES LEADING TO THIS DOC”
  • long tail phrases are mentioned on this page, helps ranking on those additional terms

• 11.07: use internal metrics to find missed opportunites
  • take internal ratings from website, bookmarks
  • make internal algorithm and identify hot pages and products
  • which of those pages are getting good traffic from search engines
  • merge the two information, and optimize the hot pages for the search engines

• 11.10: using data to drive internal linking
  • most listened
  • top selling
  • highest rated
  • most viewed
  • popular
  • hot right now
  • people who bought this also bought

• 11.12: 392 internal links. 120,000 listens
  • last.fm as example, the more plays a song gets, the more links
  • gives link juice
  • johnny cash page has 29 million listens and got 67,600 internal links, ranks #4 for johnny cash on search engines.

• 11.14: align internal vorting with external voting
  • two distinct group of people.
    1. who share, but don’t use the star rating
    2. star rate, but don’t fav it or share

• 11.16: Dave: i couldn’t decide so i asked my twitter followers

• 11.19: davidnaylor.co.uk it’s been hacked, this ended up with the blog not ranking for anything
  • fix hack and shout at everyone in the office for a while
  • moderate the blog

• 11.20: a petition website, often gets pages removed from google, had to re apply for adsense, lost trust on the home page

• 11.21: moved new petitions to a moderated status, set up banned words list, took control of the homepage learnt a little about french law.

• 11.22: web 2.0 it’s like the wild west
  • keep control of your website
  • look at your site like a spider would
  • because you’re web2.0 doesn’t make you bullet proof

• 11.23: keep control of everything you do!

• 11.28: Dave: I was spending more time fixing web2.0 sites than creating

• 11.30: what is important about web2.0?
  • new types of applications
    no new technologies - just new use of the old ones
    ajax - a new trend in interfacing
  • a deeper interaction with users
    turning visitors into active participants and community members
    this is where all the fun begins
  • the paradox of web 2.0
    on one hand embracing the true web and the power of user genereated content
    on the other hand isolating itself from existing standards and interactions

• 11.32: what is ajax? (AdaptivePath)

• 11.33: why AJAX sucks (most of the times)
  Jakob Nielsens, http://usabilityviews.com/ajaxsucks.html

• 11.34: AJAX breaks the standard
  • flash, frames & ajax all share a comon problem: you can only link to the application - not to the “page”
  • you can script the URL after the #-mark, but search engines do not recognize it as unique page URLs
  • you can reload the page for every click, but then what’s the point of ajax?

• 11.36: Tips about AJAX
  • so should you not be using ajax at all?
    yes, just not as much as some people will tell you to
  • ask yourself “why”?
    how will ajax improve your business?
  • let ajax be an option - not the default
    do not turn away users (and engines!) that do not support ajax
  • error trap links
    set up proper 301 reidrection of wrong linking to the ajax application
  • let the pros do the work
    do not let happy script kiddies and html-amatuers destroy user experience and jeopardize security with poor ajax applications!

• 11.39: user generated content is great for SEO
  • original content is expensive - loyal user write it for free
  • you don’t have to do keyword research - users write (just as bad) as they search
  • miss-spelling are acceptable
  • user generated content improve the freshness

• 11.40: would you like to have 20,000 SEOs?
  • turn your active users into SEOs
  • do what you can to stop spam activities!

• 11.42: teach and support your community about SEO
  • send a regulare SEO newsletter to your community members with relevant and actionable tips
  • don’t try and teach users all about seo - just what they need to know to accomplish your goals
  • the one page - one link strategy
    - it is not that hard to get on linke to one good piece of information
    - teach users where and how to get that one link - and make it the goal to get that one link for every contribution
    - with just 1000 contributions a day - that’s 30,000 new links a month!