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Performing a complete website redesign is a lot of work and a daunting process. Whether you want to keep your existing rankings and targeted search engine traffic, or you are using your redesign process to get started on a new SEO campaign, there are a number of best practices to keep in mind.

The situation: changing URLs / navigation / site architecture

Very often during a website redesign, the backend platform and/or content management system (CMS) will be changing. When that happens, it often means that every page of the website will have a new URL. For instance, if you change from a .asp platform to a .php platform, your URLs will now end in .php instead of .asp which in SEO terms means that the search engines will have completely new URLs to index and all the old URLs that are indexed will no longer be valid.

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"We need to get an SEO effort underway immediately. How much does it cost?"

Congratulations, you’ve just set yourself up for a bad experience!

As much as the SEM industry is responsible for creating some bad experiences (such as clueless people calling themselves "SEOs"), the prospect that sets the table with this "urgent" SEO inquiry is an active participant in developing of a poorly devised SEO strategy.

To enjoy the fruits that SEO can provide, you need to be well organized and develop a plan. Develop a successful SEO effort the same way you would develop any other successful initiative. Know what you’re doing, where you want to go, what it will take to get there, how much it will cost, and the expected ROI.

To help you to better organize this process, here are some questions you should ask yourself and your SEO provider (in-house or outsourced) so that you can set the table for success.

What Are You Doing?

Goal creation: If you’re hiring a SEO firm to "get higher rankings," this is a bit myopic. "Higher rankings" is pretty general. What really matters is the organic search traffic increase you realize from the efforts and how this traffic develops into leads and sales.

Know SEO: If you’re hiring a SEO (in-house or outsourced), don’t go blindly into this. You need to be educated about proper SEO so you can manage it. For small business owners who are short on time and looking to commit to SEO, it’s a coin flip if you outsource this as to whether you’ll find a provider that will really deliver. It pains me to say that about the SEM industry, but it’s a fact. You’re much more likely to see results if you’re well educated on the subject and are able to stay engaged in this project and ask the difficult questions.

Where Do You Want to Go?

If you know you want to get search engine traffic from a given set of keywords, then get a realistic view of what it will take to rank (and get traffic from) those keywords. A keyword list with the five most popular keywords could be shortsighted. While ranking for that "one special keyword" could really move the needle, you should diversify and "spread the risk" among several keywords.

Remember: SEOs don’t completely control the search results. You should find those key vertical areas of your business and make sure that you have plenty of content to support the search engines believing that you’re an "authority" within your given subject matter.

What Will It Take to Get There?

This is where the "urgent" request for proposal is most problematic.

If your SEO provider doesn’t take the time to digest what you’re trying to achieve and ask the hard questions to determine if you’re ready for the commitment necessary to achieve the results, then any amount of money that you have paid (the initial "setup fee" or if you’ve hired someone full-time) may be wasted.

Listen closely: SEO is not "black magic." Search engines want to rank quality Web sites (sites with great content that other Web sites link to because of the great content). Now, it could be that you already have a Web site that people love and link to. Perhaps you only need to make some technical changes to the Web site (SEO friendly design, URL rewriting, content additions, title tags, whatever).

But, what if you determine that your IT department is unwilling to make the necessary changes? You must have the commitment from everyone who might be involved with the Web site to ensure that nothing will inhibit your ability to properly optimize the Web site.

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Whether you’re a CMO - or someone who needs to educate, advise or influence one - this session will educate you on the 10 critical important concepts surrounding search marketing and its role within the entire marketing mix that CMOs must understand in order to be successful. A panel made up of senior level search marketers across a variety of industries, business models, and sizes will share their experiences, advice and perspective on these 10 critical truths and how understanding them has influenced their CMOs.

Moderator: Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land

Panelists:
Michelle Stern, Client Services Director, iProspect
Willie Fernandez Director of Marketing, World Travel Holidays
Jennifer Doss, eCommerce Marketing Manager, Hat World and Lids
Jill Nortman, SEO and Web Analytics Specialist, Allegis Group
Jen Miller, Manager, Delta.com Online Content and Marketing

This session is sponsored by iProspect.

1. SEO is an ongoing process.
Why do CMOs need to pay attention? Search marketing should be an integral part of an entire marketing strategy. It’s difficult to communicate the right issues. Enable 360 degree communication.
Jill: SEO is really less of a function and more of a process. It’s ongoing - you can’t set it and forget it. You need to be involved because the Internet industry is constantly changing. Recently, social media sites are being indexed. Having a presence there is very important, especially to articulating that to your CMO. Blended results are also a new phenomenon - if you aren’t keeping up with those changes, you’re missing the boat.
Jen: SEM is an ongoing process. Delta marketing is separate from content production. When she manages paid search, she was working with the content group on how to optimize the website. But then they realized that content and marketing are one so both organizations have been combined. It’s been a lot more beneficial for them. It’s a front-end process. From an organizational standpoint, it was successful, but it took a long time.

2. Being #1 isn’t everything and sometimes is not even possible.
Willie: Being in the cruise space today, the #1 term you would want to rank for is the term "cruise." However, from month to month, being #1 not only was causing them to reach their budget quickly but the word wasn’t converting well. They decided to scale back and found terms that should have been #1 but weren’t. They saw that their budgets were not being stretched out as much and they were finding those other words convert better. In a 4 month exercise, they analyzed 2,000 and scaled back to the point that there was a positive ROI on words that were losing money month to month.
Michelle: In paid search, revenue is really key. Being #1 is not always where it’s at. Analyze your keywords and determine what value your keywords are based on ROI. That will allow you to afford the keywords that ought to be in position #1.
Jennifer: We have a very extensive keyword list and a dozen of those are the most efficient. We do rank on those keywords, but like cruises, hats is a keyword that can’t necessarily be #1. Look at the multi-keyword phrases and you can rank higher. Because they are specific, they convert at a higher rate. 70% of all clicks come from the first page, so concentrate on getting on the first page and then work your way up. Being #1 isn’t as profitable, so looking at where you’re ranking and your spend and if you’re meeting your ROI goals, maybe the lower positions are a better place.
Jen: You may want to optimize for a one-word phrase but it’s too competitive. Think about the top converting/clickthrough keywords instead.

Chris: How much of a challenge do you find addressing ego - "we have to be #1!"?
Jen: It’s about education, trying to share strategy and saying that it’s about integration with other channels and how they play against each other.
Jill: With PPC, you have to pay to play. Being in position #2 can save you a lot of money. As long as you can remain on page 1 or above the fold, that’s something you should also strive for.
Jennifer: Education is a primary element. Directors in our department will ask why we’re not #1, but we have to explain budgets and resources to them.

3. The long tail is your friend.
Michelle: Long tail keywords give you more qualified traffic. Also, there’s less competition and that increases chances of being visible on those terms. That feeds into the third benefit which is when there’s less competition, that equals less costs.
Jen: Mine through the data to see what people are searching for and bid on them.
Willie: We expanded our keyword base by about 10,000 keywords, if not more. We saw that people are searching for something but then they’ve decided what they want. For example, "christmas cruises from New York" or "carnival cruises from miami" has proven to be very successful.
Michelle: You need to start broad and develop more long tail terms over time based on clickthroughs.
Jill: The importance of analytics is critical before you start bidding on keywords.

Chris: So it seems that analytics and tools are really key.

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In an earlier post, I solicited questions for Google about local search. My intention had been to present them at the What’s New in Local Search panel at SMX East this morning. But I didn’t get my act together to distribute them at the session. Google’s Eric Stein, who was on the panel, coordinated the response to the questions.

Here are the unedited, verbatim questions and answers:

Q: Are there any techniques for tracking clickthroughs from the 10-pack, 3-pack, or authoritative OneBox in Google Analytics (or other tracking programs)? The current URL strings only seem to show them as organic clickthroughs.

Google:: Local Universal results are organic results and there is no plan to separate them.

Q: It is considered a best practice in all of Google’s other properties (Adwords, Organic Results, News, Blogs, Images) to include keywords in titles. Why does Google consider local results to be an outlier in this ecosystem? Does Google have plans to stop bolding keyword matches in Local Business Titles? If not, why not, as there have been plenty of studies that show that a keyword match dramatically increases clickthrough rate?

Google:: On Google Maps, our mission is to show users the proper names and addresses of physical businesses. The Business Title is not the title of a website - it is the title of the actual business. Adding keywords to this field moves away from giving users the proper representation of the businesses they see on the map.

We have no plan to stop bolding keyword matches in titles. Bolding matches in titles and categories for example helps the user understand why we’re showing the result.

Q:: Can you tell us about authoritative sources in Google local? If a user makes a comment or requests a change, vs. a business owner, vs. a competitor, vs. a validated business owner, vs. a third party submission site (yellow pages, Yelp), whose content takes precedence? For us that is the biggest problem because it appears that Google takes that information and somehow creates a listing…not using the business owners listing.

Google:: A business owner’s verified listing trumps all other sources in terms of fields displayed. LBC-verified listing is the most authoritative source. The least authoritative is a single reference on an unverified web page. Everything else is in between those two ends of the spectrum. In terms of creating the listing, we distinguish between the “listing” and the “cluster.” We display the “cluster” which is composed of the union of one or more listings. When the fields in a listing overlap, the listing with the highest authoritativeness trumps the others; but it doesn’t block additional fields (like cuisine, parking, etc.) from being associated with the cluster.

Q:: Are you penalized for submitting your data on a weekly basis? Or should you let your data mature?

Google:: No; however if you’re making changes to your listing that prevent us from recognizing that it’s the same business as the one referenced by other sources in the cluster, then there is a risk that your listing becomes “orphaned” from the cluster and thereby loses the associated content and any positive ranking from that content.

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The term black hole SEO is inspired by the virtue of black hole. A recent experiment on black hole has remarkable increased its public awareness. So, the setbacks of black hat SEO are being exposed with the title black hole SEO. The recent press conference from pioneer online SEO service provider company mindgenies was truly eye opening. Let’s find out the gist in this PR.

Recent experiment in the city ‘Cern’ based on black hole has made huge news and the black tag of black hole honored to ‘black hat SEO’. This remark upon black hat SEO work may looks a bit funny but the premier SEO company seogenies.com has taken it seriously. In its recent press conference, it has revealed almost all possible aspects of black hat SEO. Spokesperson also mentioned the similarity between black hole and black hat SEO.

Black hole SEO or black hat SEO is an unethical technique. Often low graded SEO companies use this method for achieving high ranking in search engine but it works like bubble of water and in long term leaves an unfavorable impact on the site.

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