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5 common mistakes in SEO

(and 6 good ideas!)

Maile Ohye

Developer Programs Tech Lead

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Mistake #1: No value prop

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Why would a user select my site in search results?

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Make your product or service compelling -- be your creative self!

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e-commerce Differentiators

  • Low prices
  • Free shipping
  • Great customer service
  • Detailed product descriptions
  • Availability in certain languages or locales
  • <your value prop here!>

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Mistake #2: Segmented approach

Instead approach online strategy holistically -- aligned with larger business goals and every department communicating

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Consider SEO in entire user experience: from marketing campaign to conversion�

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Car Company’s Business Strategy�

Bring TV viewers to example-edityourown-video.com

Marketing Team goals

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Target keywords to bring users to main site

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SEO Team Goals

Goals are not aligned

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Mistake #3: Time-consuming workarounds

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Mistake #3: Time-consuming workarounds

Avoid rel=“canonical” for each component page in a series…

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Instead, use new rel=“next” and rel=“prev” markup for paginated content!

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Mistake #3: Time-consuming workarounds

  • New rel=“next” and rel=“prev” markup for paginated content

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  • Submit new/updated content to be crawled through “Fetch as Googlebot” in Webmaster Tools

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Mistake #4: Caught in SEO trends

users

search engines

websites

The old days…

search engines

search engines

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Now running two separate races?

users

search engines

websites

search engines

Brings me sadness

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Unfortunate SEO trend of yesteryear

What’s the optimal keyword density for my content? Not a great focus, just write compelling stuff!

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Mistake #5: Slow iteration

Aim to be agile.

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  1. Define metrics for success
  2. Implement improvements
  3. Measure impact
  4. Create new improvements
  5. Prioritize improvements based on market and personnel

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Repeat.

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2009: Rich snippets

Cool!

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Rich snippets: Events

Very nice!

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Video Sitemaps

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SEO instructions

  • Do something cool
    • Include relevant keywords in your copy
    • Be smart about your tags and site architecture
    • Sign up for email forwarding in Webmaster Tools
    • Attract buzz and natural links, votes, +1s, follows 
    • Stay fresh and relevant (social media sites, accessible on new devices)

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