What’s In Your 2013 SEO
Playbook?
I’ve thought about writing my 2013 SEO game plan since I hit
the submit button for last year’s version. The problem is, since when my review
of 2012 came out last month, I’ve read numerous SEO in 2013 articles, and many
of them are quite good or complete.
I have to give special kudos to Paul Bruemmer’s Which Top
SEO Tactics Will You Focus On In 2013? That is a tough act to follow. I don’t
want to be redundant, so I am taking a different tact this year. While there is
no way to make this wholly unique, here’s what’s on my mind.
Change
How You Think About Search Engines
Search engine optimizers tend to think in terms of earning
top rankings and placements. Perish any thought we’re manipulating Google or
Bing, not to mention YouTube, App stores and directories, maps and review
sites, or all those other search results out there. Yet, the cold truth
persists, SEOs work to influence search engine results and we want them to
reward our work by behaving a certain way.
This year something changed, something every SEO must
confront during 2013. Search engines became both bold and adept at doing
whatever they want to do… or don’t want to do. They will reduce organic screen
space. They will change organic results to paid results. They will favor brand
popularity over quality. They will reserve analytics data for paying
advertisers. The list of changes (and complaints by SEOs) continues to grow.
Up to 2011, the test of a good SEO was wrangling search
engines into behaving the way we wanted them to. During the last two years, it
all ended. The vision search engines endorse, and their ability to enforce and
execute that vision, grew dramatically closer. And, while the search engines’
algorithms evolved, so did their internal analytics, which means they can make
more data-driven decisions.
Google and Bing are still far from perfection, and we will
continue to see their mistakes, especially as they roll out new features and
products. But, they aren’t pushovers anymore, not even for the most talented
search optimizers.
Not being pushovers does not make them bullies. Get
frustrated. Challenge questionable changes. Fight for more transparency and
data access. Become an activist. But, don’t condemn the search engines. Without
them, we would not have such tremendous opportunities. Understand the search
engines’ goals, then use that knowledge to achieve your own business goals.
Symbiosis is the mindset to adopt for 2013.
Go
Enterprise
When we think of enterprise SEO, large sites with thousands
of pages come to mind. Even if your site has only a few dozen or a few hundred
pages, you need to embrace an enterprise approach. Large websites have long
development cycles. They have to make smart decisions upfront because they have
to live with them for a long time.
Get your navigation, internal linking, site performance, and
page templates set-up and optimized now, then forget about them. Optimize the
content you already have, then move on. If you’re constantly tweaking or
changing these things, ask yourself whether you are creating impactful change
or are frustrated because nothing else seems to be working?
Focus on new content. Create it. Evangelize it. Teach. If
you’re not writing and publishing content yourself, provide topic and keyword
guidance to those who do. Train your copywriters to optimize as they compose.
Arrange to SEO review everything before it gets published.
This goes hand in hand with my next
point.
Become
An Online Brand
Search engines make it easy for major brands to rank well
across lots of queries. They seem to give Fortune 1,000 and Global 2,000
companies leeway and forgiveness that small and mid-sized businesses do not
enjoy. Right? Then, why do hundreds of lesser companies seem to enjoy the brand
bump? Because they dominate their niches with great content and communication.
Content is king. This was the mantra at the beginning of
SEO, and it is still true today. The difference is your content must perform
triple duty.
·
Keyword targeted and optimized
·
Link worthy
·
Social media worthy
Adding frequent, fresh content creates additional
opportunities to rank well, but only if that content enjoys the necessary
search engine authority, from either direct offsite links or internal links.
This doesn’t mean everything you publish has to be link or social worthy, but
you need successes and the occasional home run. It’s better to split time
between creating content and promoting it than to keep churning our page after
page.
Keyword
Targeted & Optimized Pages
When it comes to SEO, if a page is not optimized for queries
people search for, even the longest of long tails, it really isn’t optimized.
Use keyword-research-generated ideas for fresh content and run keyword research
on your ideas. It can go both ways.
Keep in mind, not every single page has to be keyword
targeted. I contend you can always find one or two; but, if you have a great
piece of content that you cannot match to any keyword, publish it and promote
it. Every link adds to domain strength.
Link
Worthy Content
Strive to create content that is so awesome other websites
will be compelled to link to it. Make it interesting. Make it high quality.
Create linkbait.
Did I write create linkbait? Linkbait has become an ugly
term. Don’t buy into it. Read what Google’s Matt Cutts says:
Linkbaiting sounds like a bad thing, but especially if it’s
interesting information or fun, it doesn’t have to have negative connotations.
I hereby claim that content can be both white-hat and yet still be wonderful
“bait” for links.
Matt Cutts – http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-linkbait-and-linkbaiting/
Linkbait strategies are approaches to writing content that’s
psychologically primed to attract links. Let’s trash the negative connotations
and bring back linkbait in 2013. If you want to learn more about linkbait, read
The Link Baiting Playbook: Hooks Revisited by Todd Malicoat.
Social
Media Worthy Content
Can you summarize your content in 100 characters plus a
shortened link and make it compelling enough for people to click? In a
nutshell, this is what social-media-worthy means. Please don’t equate
social-media-worthy with popular. If George Takei and I made the same post on
Facebook at the same time, I might get a dozen likes while Mr. Takei would get
anywhere from 10,000 to 80,000 likes. Creating social media worthy content and
posts is only the first part.
Social media for SEO must be accompanied by audience
development, especially when you don’t have enough followers to create a
critical mass of activity. This is where influencer marketing, community
building and lots of other social media buzzwords come in.
I’ll refrain from explaining the flywheel analogy and just
return to what I wrote earlier; take time to promote the content you create.
Also, take time to participate, build relationships, promote others, and
reciprocate. If you are doing social media for SEO, this is a good place to
spend a chunk of your time.
Social
Media For SEO
Do not confuse social media for SEO with social media for
conversions. They can overlap, yes, but often they don’t. You want to identify
and foster an audience that will follow, like, share, retweet, etc. If the
people who make buying decisions do not congregate together online, you need to
find an audience that does, one you can engage. This is often the case in B2B.
If your social media program does not create search engine ranking authority,
you need a separate social media for SEO campaign.
The
Third Screen
There are three types of screens: desktops, pads, and
mobile. Most people use pads as second screens inside their homes or offices.
Smart phones are largely used outside of the home and office when a larger
screen is not handy. You can be sure the search engines are tracking what types
of results users select on these different devices. As they get more and more
data, I expect the results to become increasingly customized by device type.
Hopefully webmaster tools will add pads as a device type this year.
Structured Data
Google’s new WYSIWYG tool for identifying structured data is
an interesting development. As sites use this, it will provide the search
engine with a wealth of new data it can apply to create or tweak algorithms
that identify “structure-able” data on any website, and then influence both
Google’s search results and presentation. I imagine this type of application is
a ways off, but it does signal Google’s interest in identifying and using
structured data. If you haven’t yet, add RDFa or Schema.org markup into your
pages and templates.
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