Industrial Strength SEO Richard Baxter UK SEO Manager Cheapflights 19 th May 2009
Organisational SEO Make a large website succeed with the right international team, planning, documentation and tools
Common issues What issues do you face as an in-house SEO? 1) Recruitment / internal organisation 2) Scarce resources / winning resource 3) Internal departmental structure hampers requests for changes 4) SEO's lack of internal recognition 5) The extreme rigidity of the corporate CMS and lack of SEO features 6) Inability to implement 301 redirects, use of 302 redirects frequently 7) Lack of global strategy SEO s work slightly differently 8) Bugs introduced along the development process
Hire the right team Great SEO Starts with the Right People Aptitude and attitude over experience Work with an agency to train and knowledge transfer How to recruit an SEO: http://bit.ly/kqcdw Find a recruiter that really understands SEO How to get a job in SEO: http://bit.ly/6gakw
Build an SEO team in-house Onsite technical Onsite content Offsite SEO Metrics / Analytics / Reporting Organise your team SEO Manager Offsite SEO / Links team Onsite / Technical SEO team Analytics / Reporting Onsite content SEO
Define a quarterly delivery strategy Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Onsite technical SEO Onsite content SEO Offsite SEO KPI s / Metrics / Analysis Define success metrics eg: X% increase in site visibility Site traffic growth Revenue
Global SEO Multiple SEO Teams on many TLDs Meet weekly and get in sync Group items Local Maintenance items Local Strategic development Assess and Prioritise Assess global applicability as a wider team for local strategic development Prioritise 2 Local Maintenance items for each TLD weekly Agree on global initiatives to drop into development queue Deliver Specifications are created for strategic development One pagers are created for smaller items s are sized and delivery dates estimated
Write Specifications for SEO New web developments won t self optimise Get on the project sign off list Categorise your specifications: On page (header strategy, page templates) Back end (supporting SEO tools, meta manager etc) Server (canonical redirects, response headers) Reference your tools, resources and recommend books!
Produce an SEO Timeline Important when reviewing the impact of your work / justifying new spend Record every initiative / tweak idea you find Record your changes Score development effort vs. likely traffic impact Measure the impact of everything you implement, including date, change in ranking, increase in traffic by keyword SEO Timeline
Technology team Monthly technology / SEO team get together Discuss developments in search Technical best practises Present a problem and work together on the solution
Show and tell get buy in Explain Keyword research How to use Google keyword tool data Identify seasonality Identify search categories and subtypes How does KW research impact SEO strategy? Share keyword strategy, create a diagram if necessary Get people excited about opportunity Keyword opportunities (low rankings keywords you get traffic from) Understand conversion and revenue by search engine Build a database of value keywords / rankings Conversion % by content type
Weekly summary Provide a commentary on site performance Can be brief covering the main points Suggested metrics: Search engine visibility % Conversion by search engine Conversion by content type +/- % Month on Month growth
THANK YOU! richard.baxter@cheapflights.com Blog: http://seogadget.co.uk Twitter: @richardbaxter