Below is live coverage of the The Periodic Table Of SEO: 2012 Edition panel from the SMX Advanced conference.
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Barry Schwartz:
7:01:26 am
Starting soon
Barry Schwartz:
7:02:05 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:04:39 am
We introduced the Periodic Table Of SEO last year at SMX Advanced. Since then, new elements have been discovered, such as a penalty for pages top-heavy with ads or boosts for being in Google+. Meanwhile, Google warns that an “over-optimization†penalty may be coming.
Barry Schwartz:
7:04:52 am
Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land (@dannysullivan) Q&A Moderator: Jonathon Colman, Internet Marketing Manager, REI (@jcolman) Speakers: Jeff MacGurn, VP of SEO, Covario (@yerrbo) Mark Munroe, Senior Director, SEO, Reply (@markemunroe) Kristine Schachinger, Founder/Consultant, SitesWithoutWalls.com (@schachin) Chris Silver Smith, President, Argent Media (@si1very)
Barry Schwartz:
7:05:09 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:06:15 am
Chris Silver Smith, President, Argent Media (@si1very) is up first
Barry Schwartz:
7:06:36 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:08:13 am
Google is hard to predict
Barry Schwartz:
7:08:36 am
200+ signals, multiple analytics processes, human evals, combinations of those signals, UX components and more
Barry Schwartz:
7:09:09 am
Ranking factors may be changed based on query types
Barry Schwartz:
7:09:33 am
Quality and trust scores can be accessed separately from prominence, kinda like AdWords Quality Score
Barry Schwartz:
7:09:45 am
examples, PageSpeed a factor on both
Barry Schwartz:
7:10:42 am
Google looks at quality and trust factors now
Barry Schwartz:
7:11:34 am
Trust factors might include sites that have “about us” pages
Barry Schwartz:
7:11:50 am
Thin poor content sites do not have “about us” pages
Barry Schwartz:
7:14:02 am
Trustworthy sites have contact us pages, have physical addresses, they have executive team profiles, phone numbers, terms and conditions pages, they have copyright statements, they will have current dates, etc.
Barry Schwartz:
7:14:57 am
Other signs of authority, stories that have author bio-lines and photos, author profile page, author social media, authorship markup
Barry Schwartz:
7:15:38 am
He then zooms into the privacy policy and says it can be a quality signal, a machine readable version as defined by the W3C
Barry Schwartz:
7:16:54 am
Truste badges and trust seals could be a sign of quality sites.
Barry Schwartz:
7:17:40 am
Spelling and Grammar mistakes can be a sign of low quality
Barry Schwartz:
7:18:36 am
Low quality writing can be a sign of low trust
Barry Schwartz:
7:19:32 am
Above the fold and page width is possibly a factor
Barry Schwartz:
7:20:24 am
Google has a browsersize.google.com
Barry Schwartz:
7:21:42 am
There is the page layout algorithm
Sico de Andrés:
7:23:47 am
http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/
avi:
7:23:55 am
http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/
Barry Schwartz:
7:24:07 am
Thanks and now this tool is in Google Analytics, as of yesterday
Barry Schwartz:
7:24:34 am
You should look into doing user interface testing and UI research
Barry Schwartz:
7:24:39 am
That is about it
Barry Schwartz:
7:25:53 am
Next up…
Barry Schwartz:
7:26:01 am
Jeff MacGurn, VP of SEO, Covario (@yerrbo)
Barry Schwartz:
7:26:10 am
He is talking about micro formats
Barry Schwartz:
7:26:17 am
He shows recipes rich snippets
Barry Schwartz:
7:26:29 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:26:41 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:26:51 am
Users are more likely to click on them
Barry Schwartz:
7:27:06 am
There is a trend for richer snippets across all of Google
Barry Schwartz:
7:27:14 am
More information is better in the SERPs
Barry Schwartz:
7:27:26 am
Search engines better understand your pages because they have this data
Barry Schwartz:
7:27:43 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:28:07 am
Looks, they take over and there is a filter on the left
Barry Schwartz:
7:28:32 am
If you use the filter on the left, search results without micro-formatting will be eliminated from the results
Barry Schwartz:
7:28:57 am
He said rankings will improve and traffic will increase
Barry Schwartz:
7:29:06 am
Now he is talking about Links
Barry Schwartz:
7:29:39 am
They did a test, created 5 domains, optimized for 4 nonsensical keywords and created links to a page on each domain
Barry Schwartz:
7:29:56 am
Here are the results
Barry Schwartz:
7:29:56 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:30:04 am
Wasn’t much a difference he said
Barry Schwartz:
7:30:45 am
Nofollow isn’t really a nofollow, it doesnt mean it doesnt pass anything. There is some benefit he said.
Barry Schwartz:
7:31:31 am
Social Signal Test: created and optimized 7 different domains for nonsensical keywords, simultaneously created 6 different social accounts, and they sent a different social signal and monitored on Google
Barry Schwartz:
7:31:49 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:31:59 am
Google+ shot up right away, Facebook like did nothing
Barry Schwartz:
7:34:06 am
Example: – Created an orphan page – Hosted an application (interactive HTML5) – Promoted on social platforms – Results were tens of thousands of visits, tens of thousands completed interaction with the app, thousands of stumbles and FB likes, hundres of FB shares, comments and tweets and within 2 weeks ranked #12 for competitive keyword
Barry Schwartz:
7:34:58 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:35:00 am
Pinterest study
Barry Schwartz:
7:35:46 am
Final Case Study
Barry Schwartz:
7:38:41 am
He shows how the SOPA blackouts internet stories spread
Barry Schwartz:
7:39:17 am
Craigstlist might have lost 800k in one day for blacking out but maybe the links and press mentions were worth it?
Barry Schwartz:
7:39:43 am
They looked at over 10,000 pieces of content on this sopa stuff and less than 15% became popular and only 0.3% went viral
Barry Schwartz:
7:40:26 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:41:00 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:41:51 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:44:34 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:44:42 am
Here are key takeaways, sorry – got lazy
Barry Schwartz:
7:44:56 am
Finally, don’t make it look and feel like spam and it has to be compelling content
Barry Schwartz:
7:45:32 am
Mark Munroe, Senior Director, SEO, Reply (@markemunroe) is next up
Barry Schwartz:
7:45:48 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:46:19 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:46:41 am
SEO in the past was not hard, now it is really hard
Barry Schwartz:
7:46:48 am
Google’s goal is?
Barry Schwartz:
7:47:38 am
Google wants more money, challenge Facebook with social (Google+), improve search results, want answers right on the results and defend their position
Barry Schwartz:
7:48:16 am
They want to give people the most relevant answers, it is relevance and trust
Barry Schwartz:
7:48:30 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:48:53 am
He is mostly going to talk about quality
Barry Schwartz:
7:49:15 am
Each of these have thresholds
Barry Schwartz:
7:49:33 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:50:19 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:50:27 am
User behavior metrics is missing from on page and off page
Barry Schwartz:
7:51:14 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:51:43 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:52:16 am
Would they use Google Analytics? He says no because it is a poor absolute metric
Barry Schwartz:
7:52:41 am
Would they use Chrome or Toolbar? Probably not he said
Barry Schwartz:
7:53:36 am
Bounce Rates: The problem is they change, it is a timing measure, technology changes bounce rates (i.e. ajax) etc, so he doesnt think it is a factor
Barry Schwartz:
7:54:01 am
A new metric, Search User Experience (SUX)
Barry Schwartz:
7:55:27 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:55:40 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:56:49 am
Google knows stuff about our site that we don’t know, they know if the search is being satisfied or not, plus blocked site feature, short clicks, search refinements, alternative clicks, preview and rejection, etc
Barry Schwartz:
7:57:39 am
You need to bridge the gap by optimzing the search experience
Barry Schwartz:
7:58:11 am
Every keyword, every page is its own unique experience
Barry Schwartz:
7:58:31 am
Goals may different between internal company goals and user/searcher goal
Barry Schwartz:
7:58:44 am
Everything starts with a question
Barry Schwartz:
7:58:56 am
content can not be judged on it’s own, only as a response to a query
Barry Schwartz:
7:59:13 am
Some engagement tools help if they are a response to the search query
Barry Schwartz:
7:59:32 am
Here is the process
Barry Schwartz:
7:59:32 am
Barry Schwartz:
7:59:42 am
to optimize the SERP user experience
Barry Schwartz:
8:02:28 am
Last up: Kristine Schachinger, Founder/Consultant, SitesWithoutWalls.com (@schachin)
Barry Schwartz:
8:04:19 am
So she starts with correlation vs coausation
Barry Schwartz:
8:04:33 am
Barry Schwartz:
8:05:03 am
In every causation there is a correlation but not every correlation equals a causation
Barry Schwartz:
8:06:25 am
Barry Schwartz:
8:06:37 am
(telling you, taking pics of slides rock)
Barry Schwartz:
8:06:51 am
Often correlation is MISTKAN for causation
Barry Schwartz:
8:08:38 am
We could make assumptions based on old ideas or incorrect perception. SEO changes every day, every week
Barry Schwartz:
8:09:46 am
There are also spurious correlations
Barry Schwartz:
8:10:22 am
So this happened when Penguin launched and Panda also updated. People thought they were hit by Penguin when they were hit by Panda
Barry Schwartz:
8:11:32 am
So this is why you have to test.
Barry Schwartz:
8:13:52 am
Barry Schwartz:
8:14:04 am
Almos tall SEO is correlated
Barry Schwartz:
8:14:33 am
That is why when you put 10 SEOs in a room, they all have their own opinion
Barry Schwartz:
8:14:41 am
Point is, TEST TEST TEST
Barry Schwartz:
8:15:01 am
If you want to be an authority, you need to get a guy who can do scientific testing
Barry Schwartz:
8:15:23 am
That is all – I dont think we have Q&A Time
Barry Schwartz:
8:15:29 am
That is all
