Day 1 of SEOmoz Pro Training was like being at a race track. The course careened from clicks to conversions and from search results to landing pages. The audience watched 9 speakers drive their search marketing race cars at speeds faster than fingers can type. Given the finger-breaking speeds, it was fortunate all SEO fans were well fueled - beginning with a healthy breakfast buffet, mid-morning energy bars, lunch (more all-you-can-eat) and a scrumptious mid-afternoon pit stop with fresh cookies and treats. After everyone was fed each time, it was off to the races.
Todd Freisen was in the sports booth service as emcee, host of ceremonies, referee, judge and time keeper. The event was like a well-oiled machine. Maybe that's why they call Todd, "Oilman."
When I said "yes" to attending the Mozinar on a Press Pass, I didn't realize I was going to be covering a sporting event. GoodNewsCowboy asked me how I was going to recap and condense this "wild ride." I realized there was a lot of horsepower on-stage and that we were at the SEOmoz Training Raceway.
Mozinar fans experienced exhilaration and gleaned insights as we watched performance race car drivers present their seminar presentations. The following race highlights are condensed from 32 pages of notes. I strongly suggest you buy the Pro Seminar DVD when it's produced so you can see under the hood for yourself.
From Clicks to Conversions with Local, Social, Analytics and SEO in Between
1st up: Rand Fishkin had pole position and drove a car with a most unusual name, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad SERP."
The results we are seeing in blended search results are even more unusual, starting with changes of the past 2 weeks. For those who attend SEO races regularly and are watching Google, this may be old news. For others, brace yourself. A branded search can have more than 2 results. Rand explained:
- You have to be seen as a brand.
- You have to have lots of links pointing to those pages with the brand name.
- You need to have a high volume set of people searching for those terms, so off-site advertising and media buys can influence the SERPs.
Changes to Image SEO was next, and guess what? Google has a new image search interface.
- Image results don’t always match image SERP's order, i.e. images for the artist "manet."
- Understand, and be prepared. You will not always get the same position in the blended results, leading to frustration.
- Image SEO value is reduced by the new overlay.
The image below results from clicking on one of the images for the artist "manet" and clicking on an image
Tip: Write some JavaScript that breaks the overlay to avoid having the image overlay. Not only does it produce the longest, ugliest URL, but "it’s just an invite to right click and steal this image."
Rand covered 10 Tips for Image Rankings. (Since we are in race synopsis mode, we'll speed through this.) One quick takeaway was the minimum image size:
Image Pixel Size - If you go smaller than 400x300 pixels your chances to show in image search are dramatically decreased.
So you don't have to remember any formulas, basic on-page SEO factors for image SEO include page title and surrounding text.
Video SERPs
It’s or easier to get into video SERPs than to get into the regular SERPS. There is lower competition than ordinary results (most of the time), so take the opportunity. Follow this inclusion process to enter your video race for top ranking:
Step #1: Embed Video Content on Your Pages
Step #2: Create Thumbnail Images for Videos
Step #3: Build a Video XML Sitemap & Submit
Step #4: PROFIT $$$
See Google Webmaster Tools for Video to learn more.
Rand's foot stayed pedal-to-the-metal as he showed how to produce Rich Snippets in the SERPs. Why is this important? This is where you get most of your clicks. His closing remarks were retweeted with fervor:
"If you can stay on top of this, you will have a big win. It demands full-time SEO."
2nd up: David Mihm was full-speed as he raced through "Ranking in Competitive Local Results." He explained:
Straight from Google’s mouth:
Local intent is 20% of total search volume (April 2010)
And who would imagine that local results could equal 100% of page 1? Try a search for "dentist chicago." (If it's not 100%, it's close.)
Google organic results are not, however, the dominate factor for local search. Neither are results from Yahoo! or Bing. Local search is now:
- Craigslist
- Citysearch
- Google Products
- Mobile devices
- Garmin GPS
- Wikipedia
- Virtual Augmented Reality
Understand that local requires a different mindset from traditional SEO, because the ecosystems vary:
- Traditional SEO is about optimizing websites.
- Local SEO is about optimizing locations.
Takeaway:
"It is essential to have a holistic local search marketing strategy."
"Even if all your boss cares about is that friggin' 7-pack!"
Resources to claim your listings:
"The Big Three" major data providers:
Citations - David recommended a new citation finder tool by Darren Shaw & Garrett French: Whitespark.ca Citation Finder
Find local SEO resources on GetListed.org.
3rd up to race: Dan Zarrella racing in the "Science of Twitter" car. Dan warned us he talked fast. Pro Seminar attendees listened attentively, but given the subject was Twitter ... many tweeted insights into how one can get clicks and retweets.
Dan's takeaways were in 140. Below are my fave top three:
Takeaway: Don’t talk about yourself so much.
Paraphrased: If you want more followers, stop talking about yourself!
Takeaway: Try to stay positive.
If you want to get bummed out, people can go on the News. Even if talking about the oil spill, stay hopeful.
Takeaway: If you want people to click your links, Tweet slower.
Don't "go Oprah" on your Twitter account, moderate.
Improve your "retweetability" factor by including a combination of the following Top 20 Most Retweetable Words:
Timing for retweets:
Links posted on the weekend and at the end of the week have a higher click through rate.
Tip: Want to see how well a bit.ly link is doing, CTR?
- Put a bit.ly link in the browser.
- Type a plus sign after it;
- Hit enter to see how many times it’s been clicked through.
- Retweeting is an elegant viral mechanism.
Alright ... one more Twitter insight before we close ...
He had noted that women follow a lot more people and tend to tweet more. They are more social. (We already knew women talk and socialize more, but now Dan's numbers confirm it.)
Dan covered a lot of geeky ground focused on the science and study of social media, use of FourSquare and more.. I have 5+ pages of notes from Dan's presentation alone. But I'm concerned this blog post will get too long to be readable.
Check out Dan's set of social media tools.
4th up and last race of the morning was the "Presentation Off" between Will Critchlow and Rand Fishkin.
I'll expand on that race in a follow-up post. Do you want to guess who won this year? Will went into the race with a 2-year winning streak.
Wow Dana! That is a great recap. What a herculean feat you've accomplished, distilling the day into a single post.
Not having been able to go in person, I uber appreciate that you shared all this. It was a lot easier to assimilate than the tweet storm!
Great post Dana! I have no idea how you could keep up with the amount of information that was given out yesterday, my head is still spinning....
Thanks a ton for sharing the knowledge and information.
It is a great help for all of us who could not attend this great event.
Today, we cannot just talk about SEO, its a complete blend of all online presence potential put together. SEO involves images, video, content and all the other search options available on a search result page. If your presence is felt on all the options only there is a possibility of complete online visibility and online presence.
Social media is surely again the next big medium on which people want to interact, communicate and discuss personally and professionally.
Social media buzz is surely going to affect the conversion factor as this buzz influences the visitor. Whether he comes to the site as a result of organic search and then he goes to the social media sites to catch up with what people are saying about the brand or whether he comes to know about the brand through social media sites and then comes to your site does not matter.
The main point is the social media buzz is an influential factor. Though currently there is still a lot of noise there but surely will get filtered out and the fittest will survive.
Its time we started speaking in terms of complete online presence packages rather than only SEO packages and pricing.
Very well said. I often use SEO as an opportunity to explain how organizatons must optimize their full online footprint for online visibility.
I hope to get notes from the 2nd half of day 1 up tomorrow, but the day ended with discussion of conversion rate optimization. After sending all this traffic from multiple sources, you need to convert them once they hit the site.
Yes, it's a blend, for sure.
Looking forward for the notes from the 2nd half of the day .
Thanks again.
Thanks, this is only the 1st half of the day!! Now that it's Day 2, and Todd said we screamed past this morning.
Next, however, it to summary the 2nd half of Day 1's race takeaways.
Think of how much you'll retain from the mozinar Dana. Having to parse so much info into such tiny posts (tiny compared to the volume of info that was coming out) means you'll be thinking and rethinking the content. Which means you'll really be steeped in it. Which will be a great thing for yoyoseo!
PS - I like your sites new look.
Yes, you must have included 20 actionable takeaways in just this first post. Very useful. Thanks for a good post Dana.
Awesome! I can see why you chose the car racing metaphor, that amount (and diversity) of information is dizzying! Looking forward to the recap of the Presentation Off...
I have a question about clicks to conversions. Is it better to have your ad's landing page be the contact page, or the homepage - or an info-type page?
I think that virtually every page of your site is a landing page.
Ideally, depending on the subject, the homepage can be good... if designed to be a landing page (that mean not overloaded with infos).
But the best way is to create an done-just-for landing page, that would have to contain a mix of commercial and infotainment language. And a hiperclear call to action
I agree with Gfiorelli1 petrosianii. If possible, have a specialised page to handle your ad traffic that will have clear "calls to action" to maximize your ad spend value.
Next best is the product page. If you have no definite product page that fits, homepage is the logical choice.
But to reiterate what G. said, every page on your site should be able to act as a landing page. It should be able to point to a clear call to action.
Thanks, GoodnewsCowboy.
Yes, typically we've used the "contact us" or other clearly call-to-action page as the landing page for ads and that has worked fine. This post just happened to make me think about this subj. and I realized I'd never really given it much thought. I'm going to be running some tests along this line now :)
Yes, every page is a landing page for SEO. Many landing pages for paid search may not be visible for SERPs.
Your calls to action should relate to the audience for that page, i.e. if you are a lead gen site, then you want your home page to speak to audience in all 3 stages of the lead-gen buying cycle. Your contact form would speak to the audience in the later stage of the cycle.
Wow, lots of great takeaways, and image size as a ranking factor is a new one to me!
Thanks for the update, this is a lot to take in. Really appreciate the detailed video tips!
Super
Nice post. Interesting to know that women are more "sociable" than men when it comes to Twitter, however it probably is more likely perhaps that with the ability now to tweet from phones as well as laptops and pcs, the availability of it has become more attractive. Didn`t know that about tweeting at the end of the week, good spot.
Really awesome post here and it seems there was a lot to take in at the seminars.... mozinars? LOL
Intersting points are the list of 20 most retweetable words to use in Twitter posts (Or perhaps even buzz posts now...) great stuff there
and image dimensions. I tend to lack on using images in my posts. will upgrade myself and use them more often I think.
This post was great for us not able to attend, though I still feel a little jealous, especially after reading the flurry of other tweets, and posts here on the blog. Was planning on attending too, but things got way too busy for me to get away this time around. Thanks for keeping us abreast along the way.
Thanks for sharing this informations, I didn't know for the images size !
Part of the first day! Couldn't believe that. So much information and so many new things for me to learn here. All your presentations are really great Dana!Thanks for the helpful post. :-)
Any idea when the DVD will be available for purchase? This is something I'd like to get my hands on at a fair price.
I highly recommend purchasing the DVD when it comes out. I attended the event 2 years ago and missed last year. I purchased both DVDs and watch various session often. Pure gold!
Waiting and longing to purchase the DVD.
Hi Dana,
I liked that recap very much. At least a small consolation not to be there.
One item struck me the most (not only here): All the time I read about major data providers for Local Seach - US based.
I would be the happiest person if someone could give me this information about the European market - especially the german speaking market in interesting for us.
Petra
Here it is Petra (straight from my arsenal) and it includes Germany too:
https://www.davidmihm.com/blog/local-seo/citations-in-continental-europe/
I like Dan's take on Twitter realm. It still surprises me that a lot of businesses shun the idea of Twitter. It's a relationship building tool that if used properly and positively can yield great results. Not only gaining you more followers but a more positive and friendly presence online as well. Like he said, if I want negativity I'll turn on the news.
Twitter is a tough nut for a lot of companies to crack. If you treat it like a broadcast medium, nobody will listen and it's ineffective. But if you try to communicate and your target demographic isn't inclined to talk about you/your products or doesn't use Twitter, it's like being at a party wearing a funny hat and having nobody to share the cake with.
Sometimes I feel like we all suffer from low self-esteem and think that what we sell/offer isn't really interesting enough to discuss online, be it on a blog or on Twitter. The truth typically is that there are people out there interested in everything (it's a big world!) but trying to think of something "engaging" feels like trying to solve world hunger.
I always make the example of Six Feet Under... who was humanly thinking a series about a family working in a funerary was going to be such a success?
Yes. Also, Twitter needs someone full-time on it for companies to use it properly. It's easy enough to auto-tweet your latest blog post, far more time-consuming to engage with people and build relationships. So that makes it difficult for some companies to justify.
Very interesting article !
Haven't really thought much about images and image search before (except the "alt" text related to each image).
The "Top 20 Most Retweetable Words" list was a bit sad, and likewise the Twitter takeaways from Dan Zarella...140 characters doesn't give much room for insight....
Haven't really though much about Local SEO either; thanks for the info !
I've seen some of Dan's presentations before, and they are really good. Let me help you a bit by explaining what you should take from the list:
1) People on twitter like to talk about "twitter" and "social" "media". Not so surprisingly, people on Facebook tend to like stuff that has Facebook in it too.
2) Call to actions really work- the best way to get a retweet is to say "please retweet."
3) The same thing that gets diggs, stumbles, links, etc works on twitter too. "Top" "10" "How to" "Free" are ranked high due to their content. "Check out" "blog post" "new blog post" all have to do with content. People retweet content- especially stuff that sounds cool! In fact, I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that more than half of RTs including links come from people that did not click on the link.
Try this: "please retweet- free top 10 list of how to help social media efforts through twitter- new blog post LINK" should leave you with about 10 chars after a bit.ly link :)
Thank you for the summary explanation Sandro!
No thank you for this awesome round-up, looking forward to the rest of them!
I love it!! I have really been having success with Local Search and I think I have been noticing google is serving it up more often.
The only thing I don't like is the increased amount of fake reviewers. I love clicking on a review and seeing they reviewed 7 car dealerships in 7 different states in one day. :)
The Local Search Ecosystem picture was great!
Nice post Dana. Can we have videos soon to view ?
Really nice post this is new for me that Image SEO value is reduced by the new overlay
Can someone post the10 Tips for Image Rankings that Rand spoke about?
+Rep to whoever provides the Javascript code to break the Google images overlay :)
Your wish is granted. Here is the javascript code:
https://stefanjuhl.com/2007/dont-lose-image-search-traffic/
Image seo value is no longer reduced by overlay.
As usual!!! A great tip once more. I needed it now and a lot of thanks for that. :)