Showing posts with label SEO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SEO. Show all posts
You’ve just heard about the latest and greatest website technique. Everyone is doing it you should try it too! Right?
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Well, you might or you might not.
Too often, sites pick up a technique just because another site uses it, thinkingawesome, that’s cool for me, too!
However, just because someone is doing it, even the biggest, baddest, coolest someone doesn’t always mean you should as well.
Here are some of the most commonly overused site techniques and why they're bad for users, SEO, and conversions.
1. Infinite Scroll
Sure this is a great technique for some sites, just not all sites or even most.
Infinite scroll is great for sites like Facebook where you have linear information that is best delivered in a never-ending story, but is this true for all sites or site pages? Definitely not!
Before you start laying out your page into long-form scrolling bottomless wells, ask yourself the following questions:
- Do you have a story to tell?
- Does the scroll make you want to keep going or do you feel tired?
- Does your information naturally lend itself to a listed format?
- Is there a reason your users might be better served by pagination?
- Are you proposing using it where it shouldn’t be used (e.g., your homepage)?
Never use infinite scroll on your homepage! Sorry Mashable this even means you. Your endless scrolling homepage is a nightmare for usability. Why?
- Homepages are used to direct users to information inside the site. Endless scrolling defeats this purpose.
- They are bad for SEO.
- Too much information, no direction.
- They are very heavy and in this case, can overload the browser with a 6 MB download (and that is where I stopped, bailed, and vowed never to return).
2. Sticky Nav
A sticky nav is one that doesn't move with the page. This can be a top nav, a footer or even a side nav.
Can anyone say frames? Maybe you're too young to remember when frames where cool (not) and why they went away. Sticky navs are no different, just a different way of implementing what used to be called frames. If you can bring back the Dodo, do you?
Sure, there are certain types of sites and implementations where it makes sense to take up 125-200 pixels of your top nav screen at all times with a navigation element that never disappears (oh and don’t make it disappear and reappear – just don’t).
However, a really good site search might be an even better method for quick site access. If ecommerce is your site goal, do you really want to lose that much real estate to a nav bar?
There aren't going to be hard and fast rules on when and when not to use a sticky header except that your site content is going to be your best determinant. Rule of thumb: if your users aren't going to use your nav on a regular basis once inside your site, don’t.
So how about a sticky footer? My advice? Don’t. Almost anything you put in a sticky footer bar is only good for your marketing department, not your users, but don’t take my word on it. A/B test.
In the case of the sticky navs, annoyance factors will be dependent on use case and audience.
However, always allow your users the option to disable the feature.
3. Auto-Sliders
Usability expert Jakob Neilsen just came out with a report on this technique for carousels and accordions. His advice. Just don’t. Well unless annoying your users is your goal, then please do!
4. Auto-Play Anything
Please never auto-play audio, video, or animation when users click on your site. It will only attract the wrong kind of attention from your visitors.
Visitors don’t want to hear the sound of a woman’s voice talking in the background on their computer while they scramble to find it and shut it down because it’s interrupting whatever else they’re doing at the time.
And animation? Well maybe yours is audioless, so you’re thinking you’re cool. Nope! Just don’t.
5. Banner Ads, Promo Boxes, Ads for Ads Sake
Ten or 12 years ago users used to click on those ads and even bought things. Today they are taking up valuable real estate and possibly putting you at risk for a Google ad space penalty.
Unless you're one of the lucky few who are making real revenues from these third-party traffic detours, best to leave them off your site or if you must have them replace them with internal ads to your own pages. This way you keep your visitors on your site and focused on your content.
Remember, for every cent you make for a click, you’re also taking users off your site. Is this really helping you make money in the end?
6. Pop-Up Anything
If it pops up, kill it. Whack that mole!
Seriously, with pop-up blockers almost no one is seeing it and with mobile devices you are just impeding the users ability to access your content. Now this is not referring to lightbox implementation or other styles of layered div techniques, just the actual popover or even pop-under.
Although, really? Is someone going to register to use your site if they have not gotten to the content yet? And have you tried it on a tablet or mobile device? A/B test these and see whether they are helping or impeding.
7. Websites as Apps
Your website is not an app! Repeat, in case your mind was wandering. your website is not an app, stop treating it like it is one.
Website users are a multivariate group with varying user intents, whereas the app user is looking for the app to take them quickly to definitive and finite goals. Don't confuse the two purposes.
Your website should offer all the same content on mobile and tablet that it does on the main desktop site, and your app should have 2-4 main user goals that your site data indicates are desired and needed.
8. Copy For Copy Sake
Yes, copy is all the rage these days. Non-SEO people discovered copy is good for SEO and suddenly 2012 was the year of content marketing and content development and content everything. New? No, but new to some.
So what is wrong with this? Nothing if your content is clear, consistent, and contextual.
But for many, content is about driving metrics such as pageviews and impressions and quality be damned as long as people are visiting. That isn't OK.
This type of content development, search engine trolling, is against Google’s TOS and bad for users. If it is bad for users, it is likely bad for your site. Just ask those who haven’t recovered from their Google “Content Trolling” slapdowns, well if you can find them.
9. Keyword Tagging
Keyword tagging originally started as a way to group content into sets of pre-defined keywords so users could find all articles under one topic. Now authors make up tags on the fly, are given unlimited tagging capability, and create multiple one off pages acting as topics giving the site duplicate content issues.
Your content tagging should be keyword appropriate, but limited, fixed and finite. Don't allow your authors to just make these up as you go along and don't have infinite topic creation. Keyword tagging should help find content, not drive SEO terms and unlimited topic page creation.
10. Vertical Scroll Sites
This site actually does it right. As does this one. These sites eliminate the perception of the page and allow their users to engage with the information at whatever point the page lands. These sites integrate the changes between top and bottom as a seamless flow without the need to stop at exact points.
This one is less successful. I have to try to stop it at the right stop points. This is more annoying than interesting and begins to equate to a negative user experience.
This one is a failed experience. Unless I'm on a tablet where I can easily control the stop points with my fingers or hand the movement of my fingers on my laptop pad or mouse move me past the stop point to awkward “dead spaces”.
When using HTML5 and CS3 for new styles of presentation, do not ask yourselves, why not? Ask yourselves why? If you cannot answer the why with very specific business goals supported by research and user data, then it is best to skip the “cool” and stay with the “what works”.
Oh and one SEO note, these types of sites are really bad for SEO, so if you need to be found in the search engines, don’t. Use this on a landing page or mini-site.
Why Oh Why So Much Bad UI?
Why do so many sites use these techniques if they really shouldn’t? We’ll first usually because someone in marketing or biz dev or even IT person thought hey – “THIS IS COOL! WE MUST DO THIS! PEOPLE WILL LOVE IT!” But herein lies the rub, testing shows, people don’t love it
But… But… It’s Cool!
I was speaking at an internationally recognized conference in Austin, when someone from a Fortune 100 came up to me to ask me why the landing page they just launched was not working. After all, it was so cool! They used HTML5/CSS3, vertical scroll, how could people not love it!
”Easy,” I told him. “Because people don’t care about your cool. They just want to the information and an easy way to buy if they are interested. If you do that, your page will convert.”
He then showed me a page that was converting and they could not figure out why, nothing flashy, some nice graphics, good information and a clear buy button. Well there you go, information and a way to buy, just as I had told him.
So I told him to A/B test and let me know what he found out. He did and every time the info page outdid the “cool” one.
People want to do what they came for, to get info, perhaps buy, and go home – same as if they were in your real world store. Imagine if in a brick and mortar you had to decipher how to get into the store just to get to the shoe section? But Everyone Else Does It!
“Well, Mashable does it, so we must be missing out on some sort of awesome!”
Slow your roll folks; does it seem awesome when you go to Mashable’s 6MB and growing, endless scrolling page? Or do you want to run away as your browser gets overloaded with bytes it slows to a painful crawl and you cannot find that one article you just heard about? Just because someone else does it, does not mean it is right, it is good or it even works.
In fact, just because someone else does it doesn’t mean anything. Too often today these decisions are made by marketing groups and business units, not the people who would tell you why it might be an endlessly bad idea to have an endlessly scrolling homepage.
We often don’t see these ideas perpetuated because they are good, but because we live in the age of resharing, retweeting, regurgitating and repurposing. So next time someone tells you to use what seems like a bad technique on your site, ask them what is the business reason? Where are our metrics? Why would we do this? Show me the A/B tests.
Granted, it may not stop the implementation of another notorious bad idea, but it might slow it down long enough for some other “hot idea of the day” to come take its place and maybe time to move on to something else.
Don’t Fail!
Don’t make it about you; make it about your users. They don’t care about your cool – well most of the time. Unless you’re in the business of cool, but how many of us can say that?
Eighty percent of shoppers will research online before making a purchase according to Google. This behavior expands to business customers. 93 percent of tech B2B customers research products on the internet, predominantly via search engines.
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Most who optimize know that optimization for brand, product/service, and location can greatly increase visibility in search engine results. However, many still struggle with connecting with consumer intent.
The 80/20 Rule
Non-branded search accounts for 78 percent percent of all search engine referrals, according to Google. This resonates with the theory that a well-optimized website should attract 80 percent of non-branded referrals, and only 20 percent of branded search referrals.
As the ultimate information destination for your product or service, your website can, and should, be the dominant authority for your solution by name. It should also be an authority on the problem the solution solves, how it compares to competing solutions, and offer compelling reasons for purchase.
Most brands find it easier to dominate search engine results for the name of their company, brand, product or service. The ongoing challenge for SEO professionals is to achieve visibility for non-branded keywords. This is easier to achieve when you can step away from the mechanics of SEO and think about connecting with your target customers.
Non-Branded Search
Promote non-branded search referrals by helping customers make informed decisions, while speaking their language. Resist the temptation to limit website content to industry jargon, internal language or sales copy. And, deliver the information customers seek, in context to where they are in their quest for a solution.
The 3 Phases in the Purchase Decision
Research, Comparison and Buy represent the three basic phases of online purchase behavior. Connecting the dots between the customer’s problem and your solution promotes search engine visibility, referrals, and paths to conversion.
Use Personas
Optimizing for the research and comparison phases will increase visibility to customers that have not yet decided what product or brand they wish to purchase. Optimization to promote conversion requires delivering of compelling offers that close the deal.
To improve your effectiveness, consider creating personas for each of your customer types, identify what “makes them tick” in each of the three phases of the purchase decision, create path for each, and optimize accordingly.
Phase 1: Research
Research is the first phase of the online purchase decision. Customers use non-branded keyword searches to find information, answer a question, or find the solution to a problem. Because these customers aren't yet loyal to a brand, they are essentially up for grabs.
Introduce New Customers To Your Brand
Whether your customers are seeking to treat health symptoms, get a better night’s sleep, find a new place to live, increase profitability of a business, reduce tax liability, find a destination for a wedding, or purchase a more fuel-efficient vehicle, you can greatly increase clicks to conversion by addressing the human element.
Identify the questions most frequently asked, and even those less frequently asked, to present answers in a logical, meaningful way.
Optimizing for the Research Phase of Search
In this phase, customers don't yet know what product, service or piece of information will best meet their needs.
Keywords entered into the search bar will focus on finding information that will ultimately solve a problem. The more they know, the more qualifiers they add to the search engine query. The more words they add to the search, obviously the more refined the results will be, reducing competition to reach those customers.
If you wish to reach these customers, your website should answer every reasonable question, and be optimized accordingly.
A research-based search query might look something like:
- stop snoring
- natural ways to stop snoring
- devices that stop snoring
- pillows that stop snoring
- best way to stop snoring
The example below demonstrates how search engine results resonate with customers conducting research on search.
Targeted content, FAQs, tools, guides, studies, forums, etc. connect the dots between the customer’s problem and your solution. This approach to SEO is much easier if you execute create content with a long-tail SEO approach.
These assets become powerful landing pages that should also be used to advance to the next two phases.
Phase 2: Comparison
Once customers identify possible solutions for their problem, the comparison begins. This phase can include non-branded and branded search engine queries.
Comparison will require clear articulation of your solution, as it compares to other solutions you offer, as well as solutions it may be compared to.
Optimizing for Comparison
One of the most powerful way to win new customers in this phase is to answer every possible question about your solution, as well as your competitors’ solutions, on your website.
Optimization should include authoritative coverage on versions, features, models, services, and include ratings, reviews and exposure to third-party endorsements and/or media coverage.
When possible, post blogs that spell out features, benefits of solutions, and how they compare to competitive solutions. Visual tools that spell it all out complement the written word, so be liberal with infographics, comparison grids, video, etc. to attract clicks. After all, it takes more than top search rank to win the click!
Comparison-based search queries might look something like:
- pillows vs mouth devices to stop snoring
- acme vs other brand comparison
- acme pillow reviews
- cost of acme vs other devices that stop snoring
- which anti-snoring devices are safest
Note in the screen capture below how top search results explicitly set out to help the customer make the decision.
Attract Natural Links
The more thorough you are about articulating why your solution is best, the more likely you will be to attract referrals (the kind of links Google favors), shares, likes, etc., all of which provide queues that search engines are inclined to recognize.
Phase 3: Buy
This purchase is where many SEO focus their efforts. Hopefully now you can see how providing the “backstory” within the research and comparison phases serves as a natural progress to the purchase.
Search queries during the purchase phase are different from the research and comparison phase in that they must seize the moment by providing a compelling reason to buy.
Today’s consumer is more savvy than ever. There are several mechanisms that attract conversion. Some are geo-local, some by reviews and ratings, some by brand recognition, and many by price.
Optimize for the Conversion
Your website should be the best possible destination to purchase the solution you promote – unless you aren't in the business of direct sales to clients and customers, or there are other factors that play into the dynamic between yourself and retailers, VARs, distributors, etc.
If another website is offering a discount on your product, find a way to match it on the website. Even better, establish a “we will not be undersold” policy. Take it to the next level and pre-empt others who will offer discounts, and be sure to create a landing page to attract those clicks.
Purchase-driven queries often look like this:
- acme pillow discount
- best price on acme pillows
- lowest price on acme pillows
- acme pillow free shipping
When optimizing website assets to appear in search results that promote conversion, make sure to create optimized landing pages to receive these visitors. Please don't drop them on the home page and ask them to find their way to the deal – you're likely to lose the conversion you were so close to winning!
The example below demonstrates how discounts, dates, and specific offers appear in search results to promote conversion.
Optimize, Assess & Repeat!
This approach toward optimization works best if you practice long-tail SEO.
As with any SEO effort, measurement, analysis and ongoing optimization will be required to fully realize the potential created within each of the three phases of the purchase decision.
Landing pages, content, and conversion reports will reveal how effectively the website is meeting the needs of your customers, and closing the deal.
On-site SEO discussions are typically dominated by technical debates about how search engines analyze and store HTML. For small business owners, the discussion is much more practical and alarming. Specifically, small business websites do on-site SEO poorly or not at all, leaving large amounts of search traffic and potential customers on the table.
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The lack of small business on-site SEO is more about discipline, time management, repetition, and know-how. Here is a simple four-step approach to building high-value traffic through on-site SEO that should be repeated twice per month (minimum) on every small business website.
1. Identify Demand
Every website page should be positioned to catch existing demand as SEO (generally) doesn't create demand. This means using keyword research to see how end users search in various categories.
When a small business is just starting, it's important to pick keywords that are easy to rank on until you see some results. Google AdWords will show the competition level in their keyword tool, as will many other tools.
The beginner should pick a keyword with no more than 300 searches per month (critical: UseExact match) and is marked as “Low” competition by Google. Also pick keywords on which the business has something valuable to share because it is important that these visitors stay onsite once they land.
2. Create Great Content
While small business owners are often the most knowledgeable in their fields due immense practical experience, the lack of strong on-site SEO means their websites often under-perform.
Great content comes in the form of videos, blogs, podcasts, discussions, infographics, white papers, webinars and articles – all targeted toward what the end user is searching for. This is an information exchange.
Regardless of the medium, the content needs to be compelling. Use any of the following tactics to create audience engagement:
- Humor
- Controversy
- Current events/news
- Politics
- How-to/instruction
- Technical explanation
- Scare tactics
3. Tune Content
The majority of on-site SEO articles focus heavily on this topic, and it is important:
- Review your keyword density (yes, this still matters greatly), title tag, URL, image alt attributes, and meta tags.
- Make the page attractive with images that complement the content.
- Add appropriate and informative links to other great on-site content as well as links to highly-authoritative websites. This will achieve SEO co-citation, but in a very natural and end-user-friendly fashion.
- Apply authorship code and schema.org attributes for any special features on the page such as video.
4. Track & Promote
All projects need to be measurable, and on-site SEO is no exception. Track new page performance in the SERPs.
If the domain authority is already high and a low-competition keyword was selected, the new content may jump to page 1. If so, wait 2 weeks and repeat.
If a page 1 ranking isn't achieved (which is more likely), apply off-site SEO promotion in the form of link building, content marketing, social media, syndication, RSS, guest blogging, infographics, and participation in appropriate discussions such as forums and blog comments.
Tracking and promotion on the newly launched page should continue indefinitely until page 1 is achieved, but shouldn't impede the next onsite SEO project.
Conclusions
Tuning on-site content receives the lion's share of attention from most SEO blogs because it is important. But small business owners have a bigger problem: A total lack of consistent onsite SEO content creation process.
The four steps above offer a simple path toward regular, high-quality, content creation and promotion that will improve rankings and prospective customers from the Internet. It should be repeated twice per month at a minimum to keep any small business website fresh.
Every year, somebody proclaims that SEO is dead simply because Google has made some changes to its algorithm. But don’t worry, this post won’t be declaring that SEO is dead, dying, or even coughing up blood.
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However, the days of SEO as a distinct, independent discipline are certainly numbered. SEO is fast evolving into a more creative, diverse, and challenging profession.
Over the last few years the changes to search algorithms and user behavior on the Internet have made “old” SEO almost redundant. It's even gotten to the stage where any so-called “SEO” who's still using the same techniques from 5 years ago will actually be doing more harm than good. These days, search engines and consumers want quality, engagement, and social proof.
The SEO landscape has changed, and the current shift can be defined by a single concept:integration.
Search Marketing Integration (SMI)
This is a term that we will start to hear a lot more in the world of search. As the search engines widen their gaze and perfect the techniques they use to measure content quality, brand sentiment and relevance, the optimization of a site for search will increasingly overlap with other marketing disciplines.
Over the next couple of years SMI will become a pre-requisite for a first-page listing on Google. SMI will revolutionize the entire organization's approach to sales, marketing, PR, branding and everything in between.
For an SMI practitioner, success will be tied to the ability to integrate SEO tactics across an organization's marketing department. Politics, leverage, and action will be equally as important as title tags, link building, and keyword themes.
Let's take a granular look at how SMI will impact the various areas of the marketing landscape:
New Ways to Search
Social search is in its infancy. Twitter’s integration into Google's results ended last year, and Google+ has since provided the antidote to that broken relationship. Just a couple of weeks ago Facebook also launched its own enhanced search engine. Things are evolving at an exciting rate.
I have no doubt that social-oriented search will continue to make headway. As a result, social signals will continue to exert influence on SERPs, and SEO techniques will have to be applied to social properties.
I also believe that social properties like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Quora will eat away at Google's market share ... or get bought up by Google itself. Imagine a search engine that incorporates the data from a platform like LinkedIn with the accuracy and scope of Google! Google… I hope you’re listening.
Branding
One key element in Google's Penguin update was the inclusion of an organization's brand reach as a factor in SERPs. This means that the greater your brand popularity, the higher the probability of achieving a first-page position. Therefore, an SEO must keep branding initiatives carefully aligned with an overall strategy.
Additionally, link building, which has historically been focused on individual product keyword phrases, must now include a healthy percentage of branded anchor text phrases to support branded traffic and incoming links. Savvy link builders will have strategies for building out natural link profiles with a sprinkle of brand, product, and SEO keyword links.
PR
SMI, or “new SEO,” will lean very heavily on traditional PR channels. Over the last few years most print publications have been busy trying to find ways to win back their share of the digital market.
Due to the reputation and authority that they brought with them from the print world, many of these publications have quickly gained great authority online. Due to this authority, the relationship that brands and organizations have with these magazines and newspapers will have a significant effect on search visibility.
Press releases, interviews, and relationships with magazines are a big part of SMI. As more companies wake up to the integrated nature of the new SEO and recognize the link-building potential of traditional PR opportunities, their value will only increase.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
The relationship between organic search rankings and paid ads is one that’s been debated for years. Though no concrete evidence shows us exactly how paid ads impact a site’s organic listings, we have seen website’s organic traffic increase when paid ads are running.
One possible explanation for these findings is the reported relationship between display, video ads, and branded search queries. A 2010 report by ComScore suggests that display and video ads can increase brand-related search queries by up to 3 times!
While this may seem like evidence enough that your organic and paid campaigns should be closely integrated, there’s more. A recent Google study suggested there’s a strong relationship between ad click-through rates (CTR) and the presence of an organic listing on the first page of results. Put another way: If you have a high organic listing for a particular search term, your paid ad for that same term is going to get a much higher CTR than if you didn’t.
Lastly, the intelligence gained from running SEM campaigns should be directly applied to organic. This includes which keywords generate sales, which landing page techniques create conversions, and identifying which trends are important by testing new phrases and products.
Video Marketing
Video is fast becoming one of the most influential factors in all aspects of digital marketing. Its influence now reaches deep into SEO territory.
One of the most influential search movements of the last few years has been the integration of different types of content directly into the SERPs. If Google sees it as relevant to a particular query, you’ll now see images and videos outranking the organic page listings and visually dominating the page.
This can be particularly useful if you’re targeting a long-tail query. If the query relates closely to a visual concept that could be better explained in a video than a blog post, you will almost certainly gain a better search position by producing a video.
A Forrester study from January 2010 showed that a webpage with a video on it was 53 times more likely to gain a page-one position in the SERPs. Additionally, 1 in 3 tech B2B decision-makers are turning to online video for information (Google). Viewers of videos are also 64 percent more likely to purchase after watching a product video. These figures show that search visibility and performance are directly improved by the integration of video and, as a result, video should be integrated into all digital campaigns.
Thought Leadership
Every industry, sector and niche has thought leaders to provide guidance, commentary and inspiration. Are you that person? If not, who on your team can fill this role?
If you are providing a service or product that delivers genuine value to those who buy it, youshould have people within your organization who have a capacity for producing informative, persuasive content. This content is the backbone of any successful SMI campaign.
Your ability to create compelling content will govern the success or failure of your SEO, social and marketing automation (MA) campaigns. Without it, everything comes to a stop.
You should produce content that lives both on your own site and elsewhere on the web. Everything you produce should be of the highest possible standard and be shareable, search optimized and link worthy.
Don’t just stick to a blog. Create videos, white papers, eBooks and online presentations. Then syndicate all of this content through your social channels and use it as part of your MA campaigns to help prospects through the sales funnel.
The Social Web
I specifically saved “social” until last. The social web has changed the game completely. Your social strategy should impact all your marketing channels and campaigns. With search engines increasingly using social signals in their algorithms and measuring “brand sentiment” more accurately by the day, the SEO world can’t ignore the importance of a well-managed social presence.
Social media should be the lynchpin for all your marketing, sales and after-sales activities. It’s an area which has an impact on everything from top-of-the funnel lead generation to after-sales service and customer retention.
Social media directly impacts search visibility and provides a primary channel for distributing your invaluable content. This impact is also trackable beyond just visibility.
Facebook’s conversion tracking capabilities can be set up in under an hour. Google Analytics can display social conversions as well. If you want to get your head around how SMI should be working for your organization, start with social.
Conclusion
Over the last few years a number of different factors have changed the way the Internet works. Old marketing techniques are irrelevant.
There’s no reasonable argument against the fact that all your marketing efforts should be integrated into one single, agile, engaging strategy. The tough question is how you implement this. Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer.
No two organizations are the same. You might use external agencies, have numerous internal departments and ever-decreasing budgets that all form challenging obstacles. Each organizational situation is unique.
One thing is for sure: When it comes to adopting the SMI model, there’s no time like the present!
Recruitment is a make-or-break activity for SEO teams. Recruit the right person, you’re golden; recruit the wrong person, and life becomes really difficult!
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There is a ton of advice on how to recruit the right people to your SEO teams:
But for me, these articles miss two of the biggest pitfalls:
- For SEO team leaders, the cost of hiring an SEO.
- For impressionable and ambitious candidates, the potential damage a move may do to your SEO career.
These two pitfalls of SEO recruitment can be laid at the door of “SEO specialist recruiters” (I use the term specialist loosely!). The classic SEO recruitment consultant operates a two-prong strategy: agitate mid-level SEO staff into moving jobs regularly, and coordinate with other recruiters to publicize and inflate the “standard” pay rates for various levels of SEO experience.
End result? SEO leaders are put off hiring because it costs so much in fees and candidates wage demands are out of step with their abilities, and a bunch of mid-level SEOs with terrible CVs that broadcast the fact they aren’t particularly loyal.
What follows is some hard-won advice. First, tips for employers, how to find a great SEO without paying a “search recruitment consultant” thousands of dollars! Secondly, for junior- or mid-level SEO professionals looking to move up the chain.
Hopefully you’ll be able to use them to make your next recruitment experience much less painful!
SEO Recruitment Tips For Employers
I used to think “it’s too much hassle to find staff myself”, but given the amount recruiters charge and the danger they will tempt the same staff on again in future, I now ask “can I afford not to find my own staff”? Here’s a few things I’ve learned:
- Have a staff recommendation scheme for vacancies that is attractive. Obvious, but worth investing in.
- Make recruiters earn your trust. Ask them some simple SEO-based questions over the phone before accepting their candidates for interview. If they can’t answer, you know they are going to send crap candidates. There are a couple of good recruiters (literally, I’ve met two in 5 years).
- Reddit is a goldmine for potential junior staff. People active on Reddit are perfect for SEO: they understand what makes great content! We have had lots of success advertising intern, assistant and exec roles in r/forhire.
- University job boards and careers services are a great way to get in front of prospective junior staff without agencies muscling in. Developing a relationship with just one academic institution could provide you with a steady stream of new staff for years to come.
- Develop contacts at smaller SEO blogs slightly beyond the mainstream SEO sites, which are read by real enthusiasts. Advertising a job role here should cost a lot less than a recruitment consultant’s fees and will ensure you get a good standard of candidate.
- If you’re concerned about recruiters agitating your staff think seriously about enabling anonymous call rejection on your employees phones – especially if they aren’t in an account management position.
- Start blacklisting recruiters, and let them know they won’t be invited to send candidates again! You can build this list in two ways:
- Offering small incentives to your staff to tell you about recruiters that frequently cold call them.
- Operating a three-strikes policy on recruiters you work with – if they send three poor candidates to interview, they’re out.
- Never be afraid to offer someone more responsibility in your team. If you have a problem with resources, it’s worth considering how you could move the strain on resources down the hierarchy of your team through offering increased responsibility to the people you know and trust. This helps you to get into a position where you can recruit from a bigger pool of candidates (there will always be more people applying to be an exec than a director) and subsequently the risk associated with the appointment is lower; handy for getting your HR people on-side.
SEO Recruitment Tips For Employees
- You gain an instant advantage if you introduce yourself to a prospective employer, rather than relying on a recruiter (primarily because you can be recruited with no fees). Research the agencies or companies you would like to work for, find out who runs the relevant department, and contact them personally.
- Go to as many SEO events as possible and network (become a member of meetup.com as a first step). Make contacts yourself, rather than having a recruiter you barely know introduce you to prospective employers. Get to know people on a similar level to yourself in other SEO teams; they could let you know when positions are becoming available. You’re likely to be ahead of the game if you have met people from a company before you turn up to interview for a position in their office.
- Don’t believe the hype: just because you are told you could earn more elsewhere doesn’t mean you would be truly better off. Honestly evaluate the additional skills you have learned since your last pay increase, and think about the benefits you receive – if you’re still unhappy give your employer fair warning; your pay package isn't a priority to them in the same way it is for you and they may not realize you are unhappy. Never ever give your boss an ultimatum over pay, even if you have a firm offer elsewhere: it is the best way to burn bridges.
- Have a think about how your CV will look if you switch roles. As someone who has recruited plenty of times I would want a detailed and convincing explanation as to why you might have held a previous SEO post for less than 9 months, especially if you are putting it forward as core piece of experience. You're at a big disadvantage if your CV shows regular (< 1 year) switching.
- Subscribe to the RSS feeds of the agencies/companies you want to work for. It's highly likely that a company will post a job description on their own site before speaking to recruiters.
- It’s often easy to find out who recruitment agencies are working for. Most job descriptions mention the clients of an agency, or give a boilerplate description of the company recruiting. Simple Google-fu and a process of elimination should reveal the actual recruiting company behind the recruitment agency and you can go direct (return to the first point for the benefits of this approach).
Conclusion
Don’t be a slave to the merry-go-round that so-called “SEO recruitment specialists” want you to be a part of – you could save your team big money and lower the risk of getting a poor member of staff.
I’d love to hear about your experiences (positive and negative!) with recruiters in the comments, or your tips for making a great SEO appointment.
For many years, Matt Cutts of Google has been providing a lot of helpful information on search engine optimization (SEO). In case you hadn’t noticed, his counterpart at Bing, Duane Forrester, has been pretty active himself.
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If you haven’t already, you should check out Bing’s Webmaster Guidelines, the Webmaster Center Blog, and – of course – his Twitter profile. What’s really unique about Duane is the fact that the guy comes to his gig at Bing from being an SEO practitioner.
Forrester carries the official title of Senior Product Manager – Webmaster Outreach at Bing and was kind enough to and share with all of us his perspective on a few items.
In my initial outreach to Forrester, I had tried to persuade him to share some hot tips for how to do well on Bing. Forrester was pretty persistent (insistent?) that we talk about what really matters…the high level stuff: content, promotion, and user engagement of content. These are what matter in today’s SEO.
Here’s my discussion with Duane:
Mark Jackson: Does Bing put as much emphasis on freshness of content as competitor Google?
Duane Forrester: Absolutely – searchers demand fresh content. This helps explain why we believe deeply in partnering with leaders such as Facebook, Twitter, Quora, etc. These partnerships help us bring in relevant, timely and topical information, enhancing our SERP results and helping searchers complete their tasks faster.
Crawling is also a high priority for us and as many have seen over the past year, we’ve continually ramped up our crawl pace and depth. Discovering new content is important. Discovering it fast is paramount.
MJ: How does Bing plan to leverage content from strategic partnerships with Twitter and Facebook as it relates to SERP rankings, and how much does social content influence rankings?
DF: It’s important for businesses to think of this in a broad context. It’s not like there is a number in play here – social helps rank by a factor of X, for example.
It’s important that business owners understand social is a broad communication medium in use by their customers. Whether a business participates or not in the social conversation, it’s happening. Better to be involved and seen as a supportive, inclusive business, than to ignore it and seem aloof.
This perception of a business can impact whether people engage with the website for the business, and we see that engagement, or lack of engagement. That’s a signal we can understand that helps us assign values to businesses.
Basically, if people love you, we’ll want to show you. If they dislike you, we may still want to show you, but it may coincide with negative searches about your business, reinforcing the negative side of things.
MJ: Are you referring to social engagement with the site itself or to their owned/controlled social profiles in other channels? Specifically, can you speak to whether or not you’re looking at comments on blog posts hosted on the site? RTs via Twitter? Likes? Everyone’s trying to get a sense of how much of this could be happening.
DF: How can you tell who is the SEO in the room? They're the one with the hair split 22 ways. Don't over complicate this.
Social is about people. If you walk up to the water cooler and everyone is talking about the great service they got at the local garage, you're more likely to try the garage. You go there, have a good experience and tell other people, the cycle of social sharing repeating itself. Not so different online.
Businesses need to engage their visitors - across the usual social spots, in comments on their own site, in enthusiast communities, etc. Ignoring these spaces can be seen by potential customers as a negative for your business, leading them to shop elsewhere.
I'll give you a personal example. I was shopping today for a new home stereo. I'm an audiophile, so I'm a bit picky. A local company came highly recommended, so I went by their shop. I walked into a warehouse, met the guys building the units, the owners of the company, got a hands on demo and watched them quality check my actual unit before I left.
Part way through the transaction, one of the senior guys tells me they don't sell from the shop. That I should have bought online. Luckily he completed the transaction, because by forcing me to leave empty handed and pay shipping for the box to cover 3 miles to my house, I'd have opted to spend my money elsewhere. Instead, I went home, set it up and immediately went online to tell folks in an online forum how great the company and product are.
It’s this positive reaction a business should seek out and make happen. It’s that positive experience I had that prompted me to share and sing their praises. They will succeed because they give great service and sell an excellent product. Not because they got more Likes or RTs.
With social, we watch everything – Facebook, Twitter, Quora, LinkedIn, Google+ and so on. It all helps us understand if, when we slot you in at the top of the rankings, will you bring searchers an excellent experience? That's what we need to meet – that bar for WOWing searchers is high.
You make excellent content, couple that with an excellent UX, social lights up favoring you and we take note of it all. We say, "I want me some of that action!" and rank you better to please searchers.
MJ: Bing’s attention to time on site vs. returning to SERP. Many talk about this as a Google indicator of content quality.
DF: This is referred to as dwell time. The amount of time depends on the individual and the content they see, but how we use it as a signal also varies.
For example, say you’re looking for today’s temperature. You do a search for “98033 weather”. Assuming you totally miss the temperature displayed in the search results, and click on the results you see, the amount of time it takes the human mind to see and process the number you’re looking for will be small. Thus, clicking back to the SERP in this instance quickly would be seen as normal.
Contrast that with a search for a review of a new product. You know you want an expert opinion, not a sales page. It’s a new product, so the major publications haven’t posted reviews yet and what you see are smaller sites, most simply selling the item – no reviews.
If your goal is to read a review, you’ll recognize the sales page and after a while start flipping through the SERP, clicking results, seeing a familiar pattern and clicking back to the SERP to try another result. It’s obvious (we see page size, text counts, etc.) to us you aren’t reading all the content on the page you just clicked on, so clearly that didn’t give you what you wanted.
This can help explain how fast movers – even unknowns – can gain an early ranking advantage over established brand names. In this example, small bloggers often have an edge in getting to publication faster.
In the long run, the brand names secure rankings through depth of content, trust in brand and user interaction (searchers clicking a SERP result and staying on their site because the site is trusted and answers the searchers question).
MJ: How does Bing combat duplicate content?
DF: We cannot get into the details of the process, but patterns are easy to spot, so we’re constantly scanning to understand if we already have the item or are aware of it. It’s important to keep in mind that not everything is worth indexing. Just because it’s published doesn’t mean anyone will find value in it.
MJ: Does quality of content equate to a large number of words for a page?
DF: Let me be clear about this – hell, no! Quality is quality.
If you bolted extra fenders onto a Mercedes, does it make the car a high quality product? No, it does not. Same thing happens in the world of search. More is not more, unless it’s more.
You ask me to explain how an airplane flies. I write an article explaining it. The wing moves through the air, the air on top of the wing moves faster creating a low pressure area, lifting the wing – and plane – into the air. In a nutshell, that’s how planes fly.
But to really do the topic justice, I need to not just write more words, but explain more related to the topic. Explain how the engine spins the propeller, which pulls the plane forward, moving the air over the wings. I need to explain how to change direction. I need to explain how temperature affects all these factors. So when someone comes to your site to learn “How does an airplane fly”, they get all the answers, not just some of them.
MJ: Google's Panda really hit a lot of site owners hard and some are in the mindset that they now need to be "content mills". Do you agree sites need to be content mills in order to compete in the SERPs?
DF: Absolutely not. Sites need to stay focused on the most important thing – and that’s not what the engines are doing. It’s what their visitors are doing and consuming.
Produce content that meets the consumer’s needs. Produce content that doesn’t just lead to more questions, but answers them as well. Build a user experience that’s so engaging it makes your visitors want to share it with friends.
Producing content just to publish something each week is not going to move the needle the way the business wants. The business wants traffic, page views, sales and revenue. Produce content that engages visitors and makes the visitor want to do business with you. If you WOW them, they will come.
MJ: What are some creative ways you've seen sites create fresh/unique content without churning out content for the sake of content?
DF: Some examples:
- Run an internal contest to identify content rockstars inside your company. These are folks who know your products/services inside out and have a great storytelling voice.
- Ask employees to tell a story about your products/services.
- Winners get (fill in the blank as you like) and they write the blogs for you, build the videos, etc.
- Build a community around their unique voices.
- Seek others to fill gaps and attract other people.
- Understand what “hooks” motivate people (ego hook, humor hook, contrary hook, detail hook, anger hook, etc.). Use these hooks wisely to motivate certain segments of users towards specific actions. Be careful with them – humor is great when everyone thinks it’s funny, but when it falls flat, well, it can be embarrassing.
- Create videos – people love to consumer reviews, news, funny stuff, etc. via video. Keep the videos short – 3 to 7 minutes or so. Create a familiar pattern with your videos: same location (or a variety of awesome locations); same flow or pattern of information coverage; same tone of voice; same presenter if desired, etc.
- The point behind all this is to uncover new voices to amplify your messages and new ways for visitors to engage with your content.
MJ: Everything else being equal (links/social, etc.), just talking about on-site…If website A has 1,000 pages of (unique) content indexed and website B has 500, will website A “generally speaking” outrank/outperform website B?
DF: Not necessarily. It depends a great deal on how searchers interact with the site. Sure, one site has more pages. But are they useful? Are they being used by people? Do users share them? Do they reference them? You don't win just by building a bigger house.
MJ: Is there an “authority” to having a deeper website? Do you look at how many pages they may have around a semantically similar topic to determine rank for “all keywords within that vertical/category”?
DF: The authority comes from people saying you're an authority. We don't assign authority because you have N number of pages.
MJ: Is it absolutely necessary that a page, that you expect to have rank, have links directly from external sources to do well on Bing?
DF: Nope, but without any links, there's a signal that no one values it – so why should we rank it? New content suffers from this, so there are dependent factors when ranking, obviously. We can't just say "There are no links to this brand new item, so it should never rank well..."
And while we're talking expectations, it’s smart to keep in mind that there is no guarantee for crawling, indexing, and ranking. If the content looks like it'll be useful, the site has a history of providing useful content, etc., then we'll crawl, index, and rank.
MJ: What are the content requirements/measurements for article placement within Bing news?
DF: Here’s the process and some suggestions:
- • Send an email to bns@microsoft.com
- Provide an introduction, historical background, and credentials of the site.
- Credible ranking of the site in its field, if any.
- Name the locale (or audience scope) the site's stories cover for. Provide the state/city names + ZIP codes or describe the groups of users.
- Provide statistics on the site.
- Is the site mostly news related? Please explain.
- Provide the URL of main news entry point as well as the entry points of major channels.
- RSS link to the site.
- Does the site follow the best practices outlined in the Bing Webmaster Guidelines?
Summary
When you take all this in, I think what Forrester is sharing is what many of us believe. SEO is leaving behind its history of being a bunch of “tactical executions” and becoming more of a high-level strategic affair in which you must think about “good marketing”, proper execution of creating meaningful content and promotion and driving visitors to a web presence that is sound in usability.
Both Google and Bing want to rank websites that are worthy of rank and have shown a history of providing a quality user experience for search queries that they may rank for.
It's interesting to think about Forrester's example above in which a quality offline customer experience can tie into signals for measurement of “quality” for SEO. I could write an entire column about this topic alone, but get acquainted with what Google is doing with Google Trusted Stores and the signals that could come from a quality customer experience.
To me, it seems like both Google and Bing are working toward the “algorithm of the future” which weights many more factors into what is determined as “quality” in the SERPs.