Category Archives: SEO Tools

Posted by Kate Morris

civil war n. A state of hostility or conflict between elements within an organization.

Alright, so search marketing isn’t really an "organization" but there is a certain hostility within its ranks. It’s the war of the acronyms and funding. For years there have been articles, studies, and conference panels surrounding the debate of paid search versus organic search. That rivalry is rather ancient now considering the new kids on the block: CRO, SMO, and LPO. Who will win the war? Simple. If any one side wins the war in your organization, you are the loser. 

What is CRO?

Did you recognize that term? It’s the newest kid on the block. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is simply focusing on the conversion as the core metric when optimizing any particular page. I personally see this as an offshoot of Landing Page Optimization (LPO) and is sometimes seen as just another way of saying LPO. Most people see LPO/CRO as just for PPC campaigns, but anyone that assumes that is missing some great information they could be using in their SEO efforts.

There is a CRO Chat once a week on Twitter, run by Ion Interactive. Ion is a tool provider and their main product, LiveBall, is a system to allow marketers within your organization to develop and test landing pages without involving IT. It is a nice system set up and Ion’s team members are champions for CRO. They invited me to participate this week, and the topic was SEO and CRO.

Some of questions posed were:

• In what ways do #CRO and #SEO help and/or hurt each other?
• When #CRO and #SEO hinder each other, how do you prioritize?
• Who should drive your #CRO and #SEO strategy? One person, or multiple people working together?

Conversion Rate Optimization and SEO

My own answers seemed to center around one thing: CRO and SEO should never hurt or hinder each other.

SEOs focus is typically ranking for targeted queries in search engines. In the big battle of PPC vs SEO, remember that what is learned in PPC about what queries are most searched for and highest converting can be applied to SEO efforts. Just like PPC, the information gleaned from CRO testing should be applied to SEO optimization. This would ensure that the page the user lands on is focused on giving them the right information for conversion. Comparing these any two parts of online marketing and optimization is (forgive me) like comparing apple and oranges.

SEO is a long term, slow moving process based on rules that are constantly changing. SEO should always be a priority because it is the foundation of your website. Without an SEO optimized site, you will be constantly paying for traffic through offline marketing or paid online sources. You can’t benefit from a site that no one can find!

Onsite SEO has two basic parts: code optimization, which has little to do with what the user sees, and internal structure which can only be aided by CRO. Internal structure is optimized for the search engines (SEs), but the SEs are looking for simple structure that users will respond to (read: what makes them convert). Search engines are becoming increasingly about the user experience on your site and therefore so should you.

Now, SEO (onsite and general link building) alone is not going to produce immediate results in most cases. It takes time, and much of the work in SEO is very backend code based. While a good SEO knows to balance focus on search engines and users, there are still plenty of sites out there that are missing the point that if the site isn’t converting, the site/page optimization was a waste. Which led to this statement during CROchat:

Blanket statement I know, sorry. Please note that this is said for most businesses that see a conversion as a form, a sale, or a link. The conversion can be anything, as long as it’s your business’s goal. There are businesses in which traffic is their "conversion" because they make money off of impression based advertising (as pointed out to me by Sandra Niehaus).

I would assume then that their conversion would be time on site or bounce rate. There is always a metric to focus on when testing that can be used as the conversion. In fact, if you are using Google Analytics, there is an option to use Time on Site as a goal.

Links can even be a conversion. One topic that was discussed was Linkbait vs Conversion-bait content. If you are doing link bait, the conversion is to get a link, so these two are one and the same. A piece of link bait that drives traffic, but no links is a failed campaign. Links are an integral part of SEO, and the more organic the better. Traditional methods of linking are slowing becoming more discounted as they are exploited. This is why social media (SMO) and CRO are so important to SEO efforts. SEO can no longer stand on its own, and neither can any other part of online marketing. Everyone has to work together on a combined strategy for the best results.

Applying CRO to SEO

"Great" you say, "but how do I use CRO for SEO?"

Talking about holistic marketing is one thing, performing it is another. Not every searcher is created equal and the searcher that clicks on an ad is not always in the same frame of mind as the searcher that clicks on an ad. In the same breath, I will also say that not every user is created equal in terms of demographics and internet usage. Everything we do is based on what the metrics tell us on the whole.

So I’ll give you a few examples that I hope will spur ideas for your own campaigns.

Scenario 1: Day Care and Education

You are running a test of landing pages in your PPC campaign. Testing has identified that users are searching for "day care" but want to see information about "early childhood education" because they want to give their child the best education possible while they are at daycare. How do you change your day care page on the site that is ranking #1 for "day care" in your area to include information about early childhood education without hurting your ranking?

CRO Solution for SEO: First remember that there are a few key parts of a page when it comes to onsite SEO. Title tag, content, and internal links. There is also the issue of inbound link anchor text. If you users are searching for "day care" – focus your link building efforts on that term as well as the title tag. Give them what they are looking for initially.

As for internal links, test it with your paid traffic. Do visitors click on a link called "day care" more than "early childhood education." I’d guess the former, but only your visitors can tell you. I’d keep those focused on "day care" since testing showed that searchers look for day cares that are focused on early childhood education.

The main change will be to the text. Change the text to focus on early childhood education but keep the balance with "day care." Give the page a headline based on education, but the title tag and internal links should stay focused on day care.

Scenario 2: Flash vs SEO

The Marketing team has done some testing on their own and has gotten approval from the executives to change the site into flash due to a higher conversion rate in paid search testing. As the company’s SEO, you don’t want them to ruin your work in the search engines. After doing a presentation that explains the issues with search engines and flash, and how much traffic comes in from the search engines, the VP of Marketing has tasked you with keeping your rankings and implementing the new design changes.

CRO Solution for SEO: First, breathe. Think this doesn’t happen? It does all the time. This can work and make both sides happy.

Pieces of a Puzzle

Nothing in this line of work is easy. Understanding the complexities of paid search, the different platforms, and all the levers you can pull is tough, not to mention expensive if you get it wrong. SEO is tough because we are not mind readers, understanding what users and search engines want is not easy. Getting it right on one page and getting it to rank is even harder. CRO/LPO is a big guessing game with huge rewards if you have the patience and know what to test. And social? There are scores of people that still don’t know what to do over there.

My point is, the next time you rant about PPC getting a bigger budget, or the SEO person changing everything around on you, take a step back. Remember that you all have a different focus. But in the end you are on the same team. Take your online marketing partner out to lunch and see what it is they can do for you with their knowledge, and what you can share with them.

You can split the big bonus check later.

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cro, seo, sem, industry, conversions, search engine

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Posted by great scott!

Real-time search is all the rage right now, but how can you turn your real-time content into SEO-Friendly material for your sites?  All of those tweets, chats, feebs (that’s short for facebook status updates–let’s make it happen, people), etc. add up to a lot of content…unique content that belongs to you.

For instance, if you don’t somehow reclaim those couple thousand tweets you’ve made, all of that content stays with Twitter and gets lost in their archives (which don’t rank) . However, if you figure out how to turn that content into topic-related pages on yoru own site, then it becomes useful to you.  Watch this week’s video to learn some strategies for taking your real-time content and making it work for you.

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Posted by Danny Dover

Update: Happy April Fools day everyone! Thanks to all of those who played along and everyone who participated (willingly or not ;-p). Hopefully this made you or a friend smile as much as everyone here at the office. Until next year, Cheers!

 At SEOmoz, we have always striven to be at the forefront of understanding digital search. As web search has become an increasingly solved problem, some of our researchers have begun to switch their focus from Google to Facebook. Facebook is unique in that it is able to data mine social patterns between real life friends. This is increasingly critical data because as our lives become more busy, automation of simple tasks like social networking become more necessary.

Based on these trends, I am proud to announce our brand new tool, Facebook Status Optimizer.

Facebook Status Optimizer (FSO) automatically posts status updates on your behalf that are algorithmically written to ensure your status updates beat the competition and appear at the top of your friend’s newsfeed. SEO was largely about making money, so we are happy that Facebook Status Optimizer’s focus is aligned with what really matters in life – being popular online.

Key Benefits:

Automate talking with your friends with data from your actual behavior!

Computer learning algorithms learn from your friends’ popular status updates

Your friend’s popular status update:

Your automatically generated message:

Your friend’s popular status update:

Your automatically generated message:

Your friend’s popular status update:

Your automatically generated message:

FSO posts statuses that are algorithmically determined to get you more attention!

Share helpful product reviews with those that you care about!

Start using Facebook Status Optimizer today!

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Posted by richardbaxterseo

Today’s post is inspired by a brilliant question that came up recently in Q&A. The question was based on targets and objective setting for SEO’s and it went something like this:

"What metrics should an SEO’s monthly objectives be based on?"

Having spent a good portion of my SEO career managing SEO teams in-house, this question really reminded me how interesting the topic of organisational SEO can be, and how underserved it is on all but a few SEO industry blogs. In this in-house SEO focused post, let’s take a look at general KPIs for people and teams who do SEO.

Search Engine Visibility (Rankings)

While the value of measuring individual search engine rankings is a topic under frequent debate in our community, achieving consistently high rankings for target keywords is ultimately the reason we’re all doing SEO. In competitive markets, particularly, there will be key phrases that SEO teams will be expected to show progress towards gaining rankings for. Making search engine visibility a targeted metric provides a way for the SEO team to focus on the overall performance of the site in question. There are, however, two problems to solve with search engine visibility as a metric, the measurement of rankings and choice of keywords to be monitored.

In my previous in-house role we developed a keyword selection methodology based on data from Hitwise UK, our own analytics platform and the Google Keyword Tool. As travel SEO’s, we knew that demand would change seasonally for certain destinations and their corresponding keywords. Using a little historical knowledge of our industry and plenty of data, we would always have a clear idea of seasonal demand for the top 200 industry terms.

Measuring rankings on a daily basis allowed us to calculate a percentage based visibility score. What was really fascinating about the whole process was that because the keyword selection methodology remained consistent over a long period of time, we were able to compare visibility scores in year on year increments. As the activities of the SEO team continued to succeed, overall visibility increased from around 60% to 85% over a few years.

If you’re interested in developing a similar methodology, you could consider using Advanced Web Ranking to capture rankings data and calculate the visibility score. The beauty of having a search engine visibility score as a KPI is that the metric acts as a key driver for all SEO based activity. Ultimately, as an SEO Manager you have to evaluate how all of your actions contribute to improved visibility, and therefore traffic.

Search Engine Traffic

Many companies in competitive niches will make use of models to predict traffic levels for the coming year. If you’re lucky, a business analyst will take care of the production of the model itself, leaning on your SEO expertise to help predict how forthcoming trends and planned initiatives may impact overall traffic levels on the site. Your role, as an SEO Manager or in-house SEO is to achieve those traffic levels through maintaining and growing search engine visibility, deploying technical SEO enhancements to grow all important traffic in the long tail and of course, building links!

Link Building

There’s no doubt that link building is critical to search engine visibility and traffic levels on your site, so it might make sense to create volume targets for a link builder. Unfortunately, deciding exactly how many links a link builder can build is a complex and frequently restrictive process because output depends on the person, the market and the method of link acquisition chosen.

In my last in-house role, I found that creating small, seasonal link building projects for my team based on a few key phrases per person worked extremely well. Giving your link builders the creative freedom to design their own strategies based on their own projects and the resources available to them can yield far more valuable results in the long term. The KPI, therefore, may be measured on our new friend search engine visibility on the terms selected by the link building project.

Conversion

Getting the opportunity to have an input on your site’s conversion rate is a wonderful opportunity to learn a new skill, or improve an existing one! A word of caution, though – only sign up for KPI’s that you can control or heavily influence. In the case of conversion you’ll need a lot of business wide buy in and commitment to conversion rate optimisation projects. If you don’t have the tools or support for that, conversion might not be a great primary KPI to be assigned.

Personal Development Goals

As a search engine optimisation practitioner, you’ll have spent a fair amount of time learning your trade and perfecting your skills. When you’re managing an SEO team, don’t forget that it’s a good thing to assign some personal development time for each of your staff. I used to set a target of one presentation a quarter on a subject of choice (SEO related, of course). I still think the personal development targets are the best KPI’s of all. If you’re learning, you’re having fun.

Of course, every organisation is slightly different and you may have different KPI’s to the ones above. Tell us about them in the comments below!

This is a post by Richard Baxter, Founder and SEO Consultant at SEOgadget.co.uk – a niche UK SEO Agency specialising in helping people and organisations succeed in search. Follow him on Twitter and Google Buzz.

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