Distilled – SearchLove 2011 Conference Videos
Salepage : Distilled – SearchLove 2011 Conference Videos
Archive : Distilled – SearchLove 2011 Conference Videos Digital Download
Delivery : Digital Download Immediately
Having been lucky enough to attend both of this year’s incredible Searchlove conferences in London and New York, I’ve been entrusted with summarizing all of the sessions for the Distilled blog (which you’re now reading).
Every day, a slew of actionable suggestions was thrown at the crowd, and the top ones from both London and New York are included here.
I’ve got a double cappuccino, a Spotify premium subscription, and a whole working day ahead of me. “Letsa go!” said a renowned fictitious Italian plumber.
London (24-25 Oct)
Rand Fishkin says that having supporters makes everything simpler (SEOmoz)
Rand discussed the principles he gained from developing a successful and sizable community at SEOmoz. Rand believes that communities are powerful because of the simplicity with which they can be used to establish links and social signals, create long tail content, and build brand recognition and trust.
Rand goes on to say that, while there are other venues for developing communities, such as forums, Q&A, curation centers, and social networks, most communities will revolve on a blog.
Some suggestions for creating a community include, but are not limited to:
Create a community that isn’t solely self-serving. Make your primary goal to benefit the community.
Find a shared interest with the community – for example, a handful of SEOmoz’s postings are about their goods.
Get feedback from early adopters and become acquainted with them.
Don’t launch an empty wasteland; instead of comment counts, show tweet counts on posts to make it appear more popular.
Be prepared to put in countless hours before you see any results.
Growing Points:
Create exposure outside of your site by tweeting positive remarks about your material, for example.
Make your profile a source of pride, for example. Dribbble is essential to a designer’s identity.
Contributors should be rewarded disproportionately.
Examine the material that encourages sign-ups and search for methods to replicate it.
Rand discussed employing a community manager, incentivizing content production and sharing, and some of his approaches to dealing with community issues, such as being merciless in removing trolls and providing clear boundaries. He finished with a list of 12 hacks, which included:
Dropping names in post titles for Google Alerts referrals
Obtain contributions from key industry players; they will share.
Make a common foe. In the case of SEOmoz, it’s black hat. Only an SEO invitation is a strong motivation.
Allow people to reuse, embed, and distribute material they’ve made for you on their own websites; they’ll typically link back.
Tom Critchlow, Big Business SEO (Distilled)
Tom mentioned investing in page types: how can you adjust your site’s structure or the way you distribute content so that every blog post or product page earns links and rankings instead of focusing on specific pages?
He also mentioned investing in data ahead of time so that when an event like the Panda update occurs, you have everything you need to make an informed diagnosis. He believes this might rescue your employment.
Organizational charts were reviewed, as well as how they frequently create a vacuum for a single point of contact for online material in order to work to a consistent approach when several teams contribute.
Other suggestions included tailoring your SEO training to meet the demands of specific job roles (for example, public relations), influencing change by introducing better processes, developing project management skills as a substitute for hustle, which is less effective in large organizations, and tailoring your language based on who you’re communicating with.
Tom also discusses actively pruning your site, as huge sites tend to yield low-quality pages such as incomplete profiles or Q&A threads with no responses. Use Webmaster Tools reports to discover and rectify issues and soft 404s, and establish a strategy for reviewing this on a regular basis.
Mat Clayton – The Next Level of Social Integration (Mixcloud)
Mat began by stating that “one in every seven individuals in the globe log into the Facebook ecosystem at least once a month,” illustrating the importance of developing your site around social, especially in the hottest areas such as Communications, Games, and Media.
Implementing the Facebook Insights meta tag on your site will provide you with demographics on visitors to your site (if they’re signed into Facebook when they do so), and Mat recommends it. He mentions other data, such as interactions, being available in the future.
Mat then discusses some of the nomenclature utilized, including People (users), Actions (sharing, like), and Objects (images, pages). When optimizing content for different audiences, tracking this using Facebook Insights coupled with demographic information will be highly helpful.
He discusses leveraging Facebook as a customization engine, as well as using Facebook’s data to boost user engagement. The most obvious example is displaying the profile images of the visitor’s friends next to material they have liked/shared, but Mat believes there are several additional possibilities.
Finally, Mat discusses Facebook’s Recommendation Bar (beta), an easy-to-install tool that slides out when you navigate through material and automatically recommends more stuff.
Will Critchlow’s current SEO toolset (Distilled)
Will’s lecture revolves upon SEOs needing to be able to put their own tools together and use them together in order to be as effective as possible, referencing Avinash Kaushik and Doug McIlroy.
The first example demonstrates how to use bash, grep, and sed to discover all Googlebot visits in a 22Gb log file. Many SEOs may not even know how to get to the command line, so Will created a video that walks you through the entire procedure from start to finish, which you can see on the Distilled YouTube channel.
Other examples include using prototype tools like Balsamiq to create mock-ups of site modifications, creating screencasts with tools like Screenr, and remaining organized using ticket management systems like Trello.
If you need to persuade your employer to make improvements to your website, utilize Smartsheet.com to create a poll similar to Google’s Panda update survey (more details from this Whiteboard Friay).
More tools and use cases include utilizing Excel to categorise URLs using nested IF() statements and Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider tool’s custom filters to detect pages on a site with outdated Google Analytics tracking codes.
Will describes his debugging approach, which involves the following steps:
Document (++verbosity) Reproduce Simplify Isolate
Sleep and showering (sometimes you just need to step away and come back to it).
Will demonstrated how to use the Hunch API with Python, how to get a list of email addresses from your wordpress blog comments using either a plugin or SQL, how to provide visualisations as part of a brief for a designer using ManyEyes, and how to use PhantomJS to grab a screenshot of your site every day to supplement analytics data.
Joost de Valk’s WordPress SEO (Yoast)
Unfortunately, Joost was unable to attend SearchLove due to a family emergency, but he did provide a brief video in which he discussed the new custom XML sitemaps in the new Yoast SEO plugin, using rel=canonical to point blog posts to product pages, using dynamic XML sitemaps, and recommending that all WordPress users implement rel=author.
Is it all about hustling in outreach? – Rob Ouseby (Distilled)
Rob began by emphasizing that outreach is a subset of link building and that the two are not synonymous. Outreach, for example, is merely one component of link development strategies such as infographics and guest blogs.
The following are the outreach priorities:
Create connections.
Obtain protection
Obtain links
To develop a successful outreach team, you must employ the ideal people, who are often clever, curious, creative, internet-savvy, and hustlers. Interview tips included the following:
Inquire about how they have overcome obstacles in the past to see if they have hustle and are able to get things done.
Inquire about the most recent item they’ve learnt to determine whether they can display a hunger for knowledge.
Setting tasks on a computer, such as locating contact information, to determine how efficient and web-savvy the candidate is.
Rob demonstrated his outreach approach, which begins with selecting prospects using tools like GroupHigh, Followerwonk, specialized directories, and sophisticated Google searches. This is followed by a gentle approach to targets via Twitter, retweeting, commenting on their blog, and other means.
Keeping successful relationships warm may make future outreach much more efficient, and identifying and prioritizing your VIPs (owners of several blogs or high authority sites) is a valuable tactic.
Rob concluded by addressing suitable metrics for outreach teams, such as unique connecting domains per hour, which may be paired with link quality data to provide further insights.
Wil Reynolds says that your content strategy is part of your link development plan (SEER)
Wil begins by expressing that he does not believe social indicators have as much of an influence on rankings as many people believe.
He shares various methods for monetizing broken links, such as paying for hosting for abandoned sites so that links are revived, or reconstructing a piece of content that has gone or relocated from a competing site and contacting connecting sites.
Microsites are commonly used by large businesses for brand marketing initiatives, and these domains are frequently abandoned once the campaign is complete. They may be located by performing a reverse IP domain check on prominent brands’ websites or looking for the email address associated with the WHOIS data.
Wil discusses how to create content when you’re stuck on ideas. Google Suggest can provide inspiration, particularly in product searches when suggestions differ from conventional searches. Other tools include the PostRank Chrome addon, which overlays stats on SERPs while looking for rival material, and Topsy. He suggests leveraging this knowledge in your guest post outreach to offer themes that have previously been effective for sites.
Finally, Wil discusses how to failproof your infographics by:
Having a solid marketing strategy
Identifying long-form items that people do not want to read and converting them into infographics
Contacting those who left comments or linked to the post
Sponsored postings on popular websites
Use Google Images to discover your infographic and see which websites are connecting to it. If they aren’t, get in touch with them.
Wiep Knol on Making Competitor Analysis Useful (linkbuilding.nl)
Wiep used an Excel display generated with data from Open Site Explorer and Majestic to offer practical link analysis suggestions.
Wiep recommends creating your own tools because many SEOs have special needs that only you are aware of. He explores technologies such as keyword and competitor discovery automation.
He discusses how data analysis is less about creating charts and more about knowing how to transform those charts into actions.
Wiep shows how to search for abnormalities in historical link data, categorize rival link kinds, look at average link quality with OSE data, and use Majestic’s data to look at link growth.
He concludes by emphasizing that every chart should have at least one action point – actions are better than charts.
Gamification is the art of convincing others to perform your work for you – Rich Baxter (SEO Gadget)
Rich discussed how websites may utilize gamification tactics to enhance engagement, activity, and traffic, and he provided several instances of both excellent and terrible gamification.
Examples include the Speed Camera Lottery, in which drivers who exceed the speed limit enter a lottery to win money collected from fines, and GetGlue.com, a checking-based platform.
Rich suggests using point systems to incentivize behaviour inside communities and discusses how this incentivisation might help a community thrive. StackOverflow’s points-based community, SlideShare and LinkedIn’s prizes for completing user profiles, and IMOK’s check-in system to assist parents keep track of their children are other examples.
Rich concludes that website owners should consider rewarding users for critical business behaviors, and that gamification APIs are available to assist them in doing so.
Case Studies in Link Building – Patrick Altoft (Branded3)
Patrick began by aiming to generate just enough links to push your customer to the top of the search results without putting them at risk of getting penalized. He also discusses the importance of website quality in a link building strategy and suggests that you begin by ensuring you have a respectable product.
He discusses increasing your long tail traffic by searching your referring keywords report for keywords that include “who”, “what”, “why”, and so on, and then creating content to rank for these keywords.
Patrick discusses utilizing Google Suggest and the Keyword Tool to generate ideas for altering your anchor text, since he feels that a healthy variation is preferable than perfect matches.
The wealth of advice that followed was almost too much for this blog, but some of the key tips included offering images to bloggers in exchange for image credit, creating WordPress widgets that can be updated by XML so that you can control the links from them, developing processes for determining the value of a link, and increasing trust in your site by getting links to your blog posts.
Link Bait’s Past, Present, and Future – Hannah Smith (Distilled)
Hannah’s presentation includes link-attracting information such as news headlines, ego-bait, industry accolades, and user contributions.
She discussed quantifying the cost of a link in order to justify the investment in link bait, and she provided other examples of link baiting strategies such as spoof campaigns, PR hooks, utilizing the term iPhone, survey data, and more.
Hannah concludes that extraordinary content is essential to obtain excellent connections.
What is a CRO expert’s favorite website? – Stephen Pavlovich (Conversion Factory)
Stephen recommended using Evernote to capture, store, and organize ideas. He discussed capabilities including labeling and categorizing, the Evernote mobile app, and searching using OCR. He suggests photographing everything uncommon that catches your eye as ideas for CRO enhancements.
Some of the key CRO tips Stephen shared included using a personal touch, allowing users to pay for a service without having to create an account, asking existing customers what they didn’t like about your site or what would prevent them from converting, and trying to find out why users who left your site did so if you have a way of contacting them.
Stephen discussed the importance of shipping in conversion rate optimization, since it is frequently a major worry for potential consumers. Other suggestions include tailoring your offers to certain categories of individuals, being mindful of how you express your product’s price, and adding quotations or testimonials to underline value.
Martin MacDonald discusses how brands should approach SEO (OMD)
Martin discussed the difficulties that major organizations encounter when attempting to execute SEO without the agility that smaller businesses have. He discussed the problems that pre-internet businesses had in outranking the likes of Amazon, eBay, Wikipedia, and so on – brands do not always rank immediately.
He shows off Intel’s museumofme, a clever bit of linkbait fueled by Facebook data. He discusses how to find and harness brand evangelists, similar to religious bible believers.
Martin concludes by inviting SEOs to join his fight to prevent Google from removing keyword referral data – http://keywordtransparency.com/.
New York City (31 Oct – 2 Nov)
Any New York speakers not covered below can be found on the London list above.
Dave Minchala is a local SEO expert who uses statistics to his advantage (Yodle)
Early in his presentation, Dave revealed some intriguing statistics: 35 percent of US adults own smartphones, 58 percent use maps and foursquare, and 90 percent utilize search for local info, with 87 percent taking action.
Dave advises utilizing Google Insights with caution when gathering data regarding local search because the data might be deceptive without some digging. He discusses several strategies that may not work for sites attempting to rank in local, such as developing massive amounts of content, video pages, link bait, and infographics, and gives the example of the flying automobile to demonstrate that it’s a waste of effort building something that no one wants.
Dave suggests filtering your keyword lists so you know where your high-value best customers are, who your worst customers are, and who your regular customers are. You should not overlook your regular consumers because they are what keep a firm functioning.
He discusses utilizing Factual.com for local data and the Local Search Toolkit, which provides more information than a Google search.
Dave concludes by summarizing his local SEO tools, which include American Fact Finder, Factual, Local Search Toolkit, Whitespark, and SEO Tools Plugin.
Laura Lippay (How’s Your Pony?) on using social data for SEO and profit.
Laura begins by emphasizing the significance of competitive intelligence before explaining her competitive intelligence toolset, which includes market research foundations, popularity and sentiment research, feedback data, and a grab bag. Use the tools to determine who is speaking and where they are speaking.
Laura displays some of the findings from her study on the used automobile market (e.g. Autotrader, cars.com). These include the necessity for a comprehensive search tool, high-quality trustworthy editorial material, forums as a place to ask questions, and the fact that non-buyers like browsing, therefore look for ways to exclude track and monetise them separately.
She suggests digging through your rivals’ social media presences to see what works well for them and what doesn’t. She also mentions utilizing Open Site Explorer to evaluate up to five sites, which is especially useful now that the tool incorporates social analytics.
Finally, she explains how she does sentiment analysis. She gives an example of comparing TMZ and E! Online using data from NetBase. Use this information to provide your readers with more of what they want and less of what they don’t. She discusses utilizing Amplicate and looking at your competition on Get Satisfaction to figure out what customers desire.
Rob Millard on the Past, Present, and Future of Linkbait (Distilled)
Who is this individual? That’s right, it’s me. I discussed the present situation of infographics and the blogosphere’s scorn for poorly conceived or made images.
I then went over some of the prior link bait mistakes I’d made, such as employing it when it wasn’t fit for a site’s SEO goals, going over budget, controlling the amount of individuals engaged, and underestimating the outreach necessary.
This might be remedied by taking visualisation more seriously, employing reliable data, adopting a procedure for making link bait, and following some suggestions for outreaching infographics.
I concluded by highlighting some of the elements we hope to add into our link bait, such as interactivity, personalization, and real-time data visualization, but stating that form is not as essential as a compelling hook.
Human Prey – Michael King (iPullRank)
It’s certainly worth noting that Michael appeared on stage dressed as MC Hammer and danced to U Can’t Touch This.
Once everything were up and running, Michael discussed the sweet spot where Social and Search connect, and advised us to use Social by investing in listening tools like SocialMention and quantitative research tools like Quantcast and Comscore. Based on this data, you may create personas for your clients and personalize your content to their specific requirements. He cites Ovation guitars as an example, with characters such as music parents, cheerful hobbyists, furious rock stars, and involved teachers. Implement Open Graph so that you may obtain Facebook data when people who are logged in visit your site.
Michael discusses privacy concerns, the usage of hashes to encrypt user IDs, and additional data sources such as Pzyche, LinkedIn, and Google Plus. He then discusses how to leverage the personas you’ve created to create dynamically tailored sites that speak to the user.
Michael discusses personal outreach and the need of creating an honest online presence since the people you reach out to will look at your timeline. He cites a variety of outreach tools, such as KnowEm, Followerwonk, and his own KloutSkout and SiteSkout.
Rhea Drysdale on Reputation Management in an Instant World (Source: Outspoken Media)
Rhea discusses how user produced material is a significant barrier for reputation management, particularly off-site with sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, PissedConsumer, and Ripoff Report. She mentions utilizing Google Instant results as a fast assessment of a company’s attitude, albeit it can be controlled or manipulated and hence is not always accurate.
Rhea presented an anonymous customer as an example; Googling their identity had several negative consequences. An SEO service had put up a domain for their name with a low quality page that just repeated the term about 100 times – this is a bad quality result. There were no registered social media profiles, which would have been a better use of resources.
She suggests employing unique material across social media profiles and cites various ways to rank for names such as industry publications, references in other people’s profiles, speaking engagements, Wikipedia pages (but don’t edit from your IP), and referring favorable news pieces.
Rhea concludes with two more ORM case studies, giving advice on being proactive rather than reactive, as well as dominating SERPs for brand phrases.
Why I’m now wearing a white hat – Bob Rains
Bob’s first pro tip: On an elevator, if you hold your floor and the door shut button, it will travel directly to that floor. Bob goes on to explain how gaming search engines were much simpler before the year 2000 – sponsored search was so crucial to them that companies like Yahoo would fly publishers down to Vegas and drink and dine them in order to get you to give more traffic to their search engine.
He then discusses black-hat strategies such delivering sponsored clicks to affiliate URLs, cookie stuffing, and cloaking. Marketers jumped from one black-hat approach to the next since there were no consequences at the time and the potential benefits were so great.
When Matt Cutts was
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.