Sitecore Sym NA: Leveraging SEO to Drive Measureable Customer Engagement

Here to hear Ted Prodromou talk about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Any tidbit that I learn that can help us is important.

  • Good Old Days, SEO 1.0, was easy back then
    • Meta fields, repeating terms, keyword stuffing, and links all USED to work well
    • Meta Titles still works well
    • Meta Description is useful because it will show-up in the Google result (helps people choose your result)
  • Panda and Penquin (monthly) updates to cut down on cheating
  • Thriving in current SEO world

    • Find out through social media and searches what people are looking for
    • Create that content, complete with quality assurance, and then place it where it can be found
    • Then broadcast/launch it
    • Measure the results and start listening for the next opportunity
  • Need a team now, need everyone to contribute content
  • Need to define your business goals
  • Study your market: Who are they? What do they want? Create the library of research. Leverage keywords in the content, but in a quality way
  • Now not just content, but quality content
  • Develop personas (profiles of target audience)
    • Target content at personas
    • Develop a full profile and make sure the content creators understand the personas
  • Google wants fast website response time, good design, natural linking (share this), social media activity, quality content
  • Linking seems to be gettig diminished. All the old factors still work, but to much lesser extent as emphasis is added to the new items
  • If an audience is on a social site, Google doesn’t matter because people are sharing your content through other methods
  • Google Webmaster Tools and Blog are useful and free
  • Match keywords to the cycle
    • “What is…” should direct to awareness products
    • “What is the best” for consideration
    • “How much does it cost” for Pricing/buying
  • Google Keyword Tool to determine what words people were looking for and to try and determine what your competitor may be ranking for
  • Bing Webmaster Tools are better than Google, but they have lesser volume
  • SpyFu is a paid service, as is KeywordSpy
  • Quality of visit is important than Quantity. If the page doesn’t lead to the desired action, then there is not a lot of value. Can use Executive Insight Dashboard
  • The suggestions when searching on Google, Bing, or Yahoo give you potential keyword phrases
  • YouTube is 2nd most popular search engine
  • Right-Angle Marketing, find related interests so you can tie it together
    • The process of setting-up an ad in Facebook, or other tools, can help you see what people are interested in,
    • Facebook Recommendations app
    • Facebook Open Graph
    • Wisdom App gives good information for Facebook for free (now)
  • Google Insights (formerly trends)
  • Measuring your progress is important
    • Track your keywords
    • Measure your competitors so you can compare. Some good tools at SEOMoz.org
    • Open Site Explorer is another good tool
  • Google Analytics seems to be restricting the data they show on their website

I think I need a week or two to work on this. Lots of good stuff. Next, the Product Roadmap.

Disclaimer

All information in this post was gathered from the presenters and presentation. It does not reflect my opinion unless clearly indicated (Italics in parenthesis). Any errors are most likely from my misunderstanding a statement or imperfectly recording the information. Updates to correct information are reflected in red, but will not be otherwise indicated.

All statements about the future of Sitecore products and strategy are subject to change at any time due to a large variety of factors.