SEO and big websites. What to do?

Seoing, measuring and tracking big websites can be a daunting task.

Unlike most marketing efforts, the bigger you are, the harder search marketing is. We know that in marketing, size has inherent advantages. The bigger the budget, the more advertising you can buy, the more free media coverage you can coax, the better a public relations person you can hire, and on and on. But search marketing is different.

Amazon may rank well when a searcher searches for “sony dvd player”—possibly even higher than Sony’s Web site.

Ecommerce and content-management based sites can have hundreds of thousands to millions of pages, products, and keywords.

Understanding search engine behaviour and how to sample and measure search engine data will lay the groundwork for effective rankings management and tracking.

Ranking and Analytics

A large e-commerce site can easily be targeting thousands to millions of keywords phrases, but it is not possible to run a ranking report with that many keywords.

Search engines do not allow for it, and the report would be indecipherable. To make such a task manageable, you must establish a structured process incorporating rankings, trends, and reporting.

Step 1: Setting up ranking categories

The primary goal is to determine keyword rankings and their baseline information, as well as your search engine traffic and its baseline information, by setting up ranking categories or levels. Whether you have an ecommerce site or a content management system, there are generally levels of pages on your website. Using Amazon.com as an example, this type of ecommerce site usually has four levels:

• Level1: Home Page
• Level2: Category pages
• Level3: Subcategory pages
• Level4: Product pages

The primary level is the Home Page.

While it can rank for thousands of keywords, it is optimal to track 25-100 keyword phrases there, some of which will be duplicates from category pages. Since the homepage is the most trusted and authoritative page of a website, it is important to include all pertinent keywords. Keywords that Amazon.com are likely to track at the home page level are “amazon”,  “books”, “electronics”, etc.

At the category level, recommendations are to track 5-10 primary keywords phrases on each category page. If your site has 10 category pages, you may have 100 primary keyword phrases you’re tracking across all categories.

Examples for Amazon.com are: “new books”, “digital camera”, “hd dvd”, etc.

The third level is the subcategory level. Depending on the size of your website, you may have 20, 500 or 5,000 subcategories. This extensive range affects the strategy used to identify keywords to track. If you have a small number of subcategories (20 or less), track 5-10 primary keywords for each page – the same strategy as the category level.

If your website has over 30 subcategories, use a sampling approach.

Group the subcategories in three groups

• High popularity
• Average popularity
• Unpopular

Next, identify 150-250 keyword phrases from each group. Keep in mind that it is important to have sampling data established to measure the overall visibility percentage for this level. Examples of keywords Amazon.com may track at this level are “science fiction books”, “point and shoot digital cameras” and “new dvd releases”.

The fourth and final level is the product level.

Most ecommerce sites have anywhere from 50 to millions of products. Since it’s nearly impossible to monitor every piece of product, use the same sampling strategy recommended for the subcategory level. Group your products into 3 categories:

• High popularity (30-50 keywords)
• Average popularity (100 keywords)
• Unpopular (100 keywords)

The ideal is to define 250 keywords or less. Use this sampling data as representation of your overall rankings. Examples of keywords Amazon.com may target at this level are “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” and “Canon powershot pro series digital camera”.

Step 2: How to configure and interpret reports for big websites?

Now you know how to set up keywords, identify categories, and create sampling data, let’s understand how to determine your rankings in each area, which will help you understand your website’s trust level.

Using ranking report software is preferable, since manual preparation would be extremely time-intensive, taking a week or longer to complete (try : http://www.advancedwebranking.com/or http://www.webposition.com/product/webpositionpro/features.asp ).

First, you begin creating different projects using the software’s utilities. Treat each category you defined at the subcategory and product levels as an individual project. Run, monitor, and evaluate each project independently every week or two.

Google, Yahoo and Bing are the main search engines to query. No need to include some others (example AOL), as it is powered by Google and it shows almost the same results.

Let’s assume you have now implemented an on-page and off-page SEO strategy.

Once you are running reports, examine your average rankings growth. Be sure to configure data in a readable format so it’s easy to analyse on Excel.

Step 3: Baseline and managing analytics

Analytics is another essential tool in determining your website’s performance. If you have not implemented an Analytics solution, I’d highly recommend Google Analytics as one of the best solutions available (and it’s free).

Also, as a suggestion, please remember to check your server bots for further information.

Although analytics will include data about all search engine traffic to your website, concentrate on organic traffic numbers for this purpose, since the number of visitors gained on paid search ads does not help determine SEO success.

Once you examine the organic traffic volume for your site, the strong and weak keyword phrases will become obvious. It is essential you ensure your baseline branded vs non-branded keywords.

Note: At  The Online Circle we see SEO as more than simple rankings. We focus on effective SEO that brings value for your business. We use different measures for different needs. One of the measures we use is the increase of users using more than branded names to find your website over time. It’s a way we guarantee that your website is not just being found using your brand keywords. The idea behind this is that once search engines start to present your website with relevant generic keywords, this demonstrates that your website is becoming more known and popular.

Example: if we were to look at the Amazon.com report, their number-one referring keyword is likely to be “amazon”, while the second and third most popular are likely to be “amazon.com” and “www.amazon.com”. Internet users often search this way to find websites with good brand recognition.

Keywords that include your brand will likely already rank well because search engines organically rank your brand well.

Optimising and Maximising results

After the reports are organised and completed, begin to use the data. Pinpoint keywords and phrases that need better rankings and traffic. Discover what categories and sub categories are invisible to search engines and dedicate resources to those areas.

This information will guide your SEO strategy. Implementing your recommendations properly and effectively will help to increase organic traffic and website profits.

Step 1

Someone is responsible for making changes to your site. Good business practice dictates you discuss the importance of search marketing with IT resources to make sure they understand what is coming and what you want to accomplish.

If they know they are helping to improve company sales they will also know their value to the company also increases. People do their job best when they know the strategy and know they can proactively contribute to the bottom line.

Also remember to conduct regular checks on your recommendations and the related implementations. Creating and completing a checklist with the action items to be fulfilled is an effective technique.

Step 2

Implement on-site SEO, page by page and site wide changes.

Assess your website page by page when working with webmaster tools or putting together recommendations. Address the homepage, category pages and, if possible, subcategory pages. As with determining keyword categories, define the needs specific to each area to help organise and prioritise optimisation efforts.

If you go beyond subcategories, site wide changes are needed to modify the way titles, description tags and content blocks are created and displayed on the website.

Cheers

Lucio Ribeiro

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