Liveblogging BlueglassFL SEO For Enterprise

November 2nd, 2010

Up next is the SEO for enterprise level business part of BlueglassFL. I’m looking forward to this because it related highly to what I do at ZAAZ.

  SEO for Enterprise Level Business (11/02/2010) 
2:45
Up next is SEO for enterprise with
Dennis Goedegebuure, director of SEO at ebay
Katy Collins, senior SEO analyst at AOL
Anne Cushing, director of search at Blueglass
Tuesday November 2, 2010 2:45 
2:46
@rustybrick is streaming. Here’s the URL: http://ustre.am/gqiZ
Tuesday November 2, 2010 2:46 
2:47
seo for large sites:
complex technology, scaling factors, large number of people involved with limited knowledge of SEO.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 2:47 
2:48
Worries: technology, analytics, politics
Tuesday November 2, 2010 2:48 
2:48
Ebay builds leverage through scale, brand, technology, and data.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 2:48 
2:49
iPhone4 is ebay’s top keyword.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 2:49 
2:50
Having access to ebay’s search data could prove very valuable. Thinking I need to chat up dennis later.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 2:50 
2:52
“ugly christmas sweater” will be a huge term this year.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 2:52 
2:53
Twitter
localseoguide: 

“ugle christmas sweater” is going to be a huge search query this Xmas #ebay #blueglassfl [via Twitter]
Tuesday November 2, 2010 2:53 localseoguide
2:53
Twitter
RyanJones: 

@seoaware is way too happy to se a star wars keyword used an example here. #blueglassfl [via Twitter]
Tuesday November 2, 2010 2:53 RyanJones
2:54
Ebay looks for keyword trends, seasonable keywords, high converting keywords
Tuesday November 2, 2010 2:54 
2:54
Ebay copied functionality from WP plugins. Referrer Detector, Redirection, Custom Title & Meta Description
Tuesday November 2, 2010 2:54 
2:57
after 90 days ebay items expire and return a 404. What should they do with links to those auctions? Several auctions get tons of links.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 2:57 
2:58
Unique products generate a lot of link juice that disappear after the item expires.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 2:58 
2:59
think: virgin mary grilled cheese sandwich. Ebay can leverage those pages to rank for terms if they put a page there instead of a 404.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 2:59 
3:00
Ebay has a custom old auction URL redirection system built in. They can hand pick them. This is relevant to discussions we’ve had about handling old model vehicles.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:00 
3:03
Twitter
Thos003: 

The story sells the link bait. Take the information that you have and tell a story. #blueglassfl [via Twitter]
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:03 Thos003
3:04
Interesting graph of young keywords vs old keywords. Although for this example they all have the same trend line, so I’m not sure it’s very useful.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:04 
3:05
Up next is Anne Cushing from BlueGlass
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:05 
3:07
Anne is talking about enterprise linkbuilding strategies. In my experience, most enterprises don’t do a lot of link building.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:07 
3:07
That’s not because they’re lacking, it’s just that most big brands don’t need to build links as much as smaller sites do.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:07 
3:09
Clients come to blueglass in a panic and want more links for a specific term. It helps to first step back and take a look.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:09 
3:11
Use open site explorer and majestic to build your link profile
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:11 
3:21
anne is going into detail on researching your link history, provie, anchor text, and velocity. I’m still not sold on the the value of link profile analysis for enterprise SEO. Most larger sites like Ebay, AOL, have little control over how people build links.

This is all useful, but I’m struggling to find actionable insights strictly relating to enterprise SEO.

This would be better if were its own session on Link Building.

Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:21 
3:24
Comparing number of links with anchor text to number of unique domains linking can provide a good ratio for spam busting.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:24 
3:27
Anne is talking about SEMrush. I haven’t played with this tool, but I need to make a note to check it out.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:27 
3:34
you aggressively monitor rankings, but do you also monitor bounce rate and conversions the same way? You should.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:34 
3:35
narrow it down to low hanging fruit. Arm yourself with the data, but don’t overload the client with 3,000 keywords.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:35 
3:37
too much of a good thing is not a good thing. Brute forcing tons of anchor text doesn’t work anymore.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:37 
3:38
Up next is Katy from a company called AOL. I seem to remember hearing about them, but I never thought they were a search company.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:38 
3:38
Katy works with AOL autos and autoblog.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:38 
3:39
What are the secrets to winning at enterprise SEO?

Team buy in.
Baseline your traffic and organize your pages
Priority and Stategery.

Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:39 
3:40
there’s no one man shows. YOu have PMs, developers, analysts, qa, IA, etc. Everybody needs to work together for SEO to work.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:40 
3:40
Make SEO part of your product roadmap. Give your SEO a voice. Make sure stakeholders are involved.

If you don’t have a voice, find an executive to champion for you.

Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:40 
3:41
Propose test to the right team members. Share results (good and bad) with data. Cheer your SEO wins, and let others share in them. It’s ok to distribute your SEO wins.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:41 
3:42
Find the metrics that matter.

Visits, unique visitors, pageviews, conversions, leads, subscriptions, etc.

Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:42 
3:43
Create buckets for your site. Products, categories, etc.

Also bucket keywords (head, body, tail)

Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:43 
3:45
use keyword buckets to cross link content. example “city state combinations” apply to various terms. cross link them.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:45 
3:46
buckets should show:
traffic, average # of links
average ranks
keywords driving traffic
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:46 
3:47
It’s useless to look at traffic to ‘autos.aol’ instead look at traffic to ford content on autos.aol
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:47 
3:48
focus on high level opportunities.

pages match user intent.
content is keyword focused.
internal linking?
architecture.

Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:48 
3:48
Twitter
RyanJones: 

If you’re not linking to your own pages internally, how can you expect others to? – Katy. #blueglassfl [via Twitter]
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:48 RyanJones
3:49
Matching keywords to intent: transactional, navigational, informational. Interesting that AOL considers “cars” as navigational. I can tell you from experience it’s definitely not transactional.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:49 
3:50
Twitter
Thos003: 

Your site is your own authority…. What does your site tell the SERPs about what pages are important? #blueglassfl [via Twitter]
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:50 Thos003
3:52
AOL ranks #26 for the keyword “ford” Ford ranks #1,2, and 3 with wikipedia #4. Looks like Katy and I are competitors in SEO. Good luck Katy.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:52 
3:53
Create a developer checklist. HTML validation, keywords, no parameters, consistent URLs, external javascript, compress files, no flash/iframes/ajax.

These are the battles we all fight every day.

Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:53 
3:53
These things are easy for AOL with their content sites, but on brand sites some of these things can’t be done easily.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:53 
3:54
Create browsepaths. Use breadcrumbs. Create logical categories.
Tuesday November 2, 2010 3:54 
4:07
AOL heavily uses canonical. Use when sorting, sessions, facets, tracking codes, and pagination.

301 works better for facets than canonical.

Katy suggests different levels of training for different levels inside your organization.

Tuesday November 2, 2010 4:07 
4:09

 

 
 
 

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