Acrolinx Conference 2013 - “Using Acrolinx SEO Rules as Part of a Search-Based Content Strategy”...
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Transcript of Acrolinx Conference 2013 - “Using Acrolinx SEO Rules as Part of a Search-Based Content Strategy”...
Building a Search-driven Information Experience
Robert Lee
Sr. Manager
Content and Search Strategy Team
Find
Trust Share
What do you do when you’ve documented every feature and your customers still can’t find the answer?
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How to topics
KB articles
Product PDFs
Videos
Training modules
Webinars
Podcasts
Forum posts
Marketing collateral
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Publishing more content doesn’t always help
• 163,000 KB Articles
• 90,000 How-to articles
• 5,500 manuals
We were publishing as fast as we could and customers still couldn’t find answers!
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So why doesn’t search work?
• Search engines are supposed to find the best answers
• My content has the best answers
• We must need smarter software or hardware to make the search engines work better, right?
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What Content Teams want an SEO tool to do
• Automatically apply secret code to topics
• Not make them change their lovingly crafted prose
• Work for both external search (Google, Bing) and internal search engines
• Run once and make search work better for the life of the document
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Need to start with a different set of questions
Wrong questions:
Why doesn’t our content show up Google?
Why doesn’t the search engine they use on our site work right?
I published 12 manuals last quarter and got 100 hits. Is that good?
More helpful questions
How do I find out the phrases that my audience is using when they search for answers?
How do I optimize my content so that search engines give me maximum relevance for target keywords – without penalizing me for being spammy?
How do I track the performance of my content?
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You never needed all that content
• Frequently Asked Queries: The majority of customers face the same small set of issues.
• Promote the Short Head: By promoting content that provides answers to the most common issues, we allow more customers to self-serve.
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# Topics #
Hit
s
Long tail
Sho
rt H
ead
The top 10% topics typically get >80% of the total traffic.
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How search works
Customers search for
content using their own language.
Search engines look for these
phrases in their search indices (not the actual
sites)
Search engines determine
which pages have the most relevance on the subject
Search engines provide a set of ranked results for both paid
and free search
Customers click on the results
that they believe are the best matches
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The real problems that you need to solve
Determine what content your customers are searching for
Use customer language in the most strategic places – and manage that language over time
Use as many relevance factors as you can without being spammy
Ensure your content is indexed by search engines
Make your content look like the best choice in the search results
Track your results
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Determine what content your customers are searching for
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How to Find out what issues/themes customers care about
• Check technical support call and chat logs
• Check the most popular community forum posts
• Ask your training department what questions are most asked in classes
• Find out which videos about your product are most popular on YouTube!
Themes and customer intent analysis
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How to Find out what language customers use when describing the problem
• Look at text that customers use when posting to forums
• Check text chat support logs
• Use Google Adwords and Insights to check which search queries are the most popular
Keyword research
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Using Google AdWords keyword tool
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Relevant new keyword ideas:
remove
removal tool
uninstall tool download
manual uninstall
uninstall password
CleanWipe
Seed terms help you find new keywords
Try different match options to tune results
Optionally exclude specific terms Tune these settings: Locations=All, Language=English,
Devices=Desktops and laptops
https://adwords.google.com/select/keywordtoolexternal
Using Google Trends tool • Free keyword research tool that reveals search trends
• Go to: http://www.google.com/trends/
• Type in your search phrase and click Explore.
• Let’s you view interest over time and region– Is there seasonal demand? Who is the main audience?
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Use customer language in the most strategic places – and manage that language over time
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How to optimize your topics so that they contain your target keywords in the right places
• Hire an SEO expert to tune your page
• Use Acrolinx SEO rules to automatically suggest the best places to place keywords
On-page optimization
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Use a tool like Acrolinx SEO rules to manage your on-page optimizations
More efficient to have one or two SEO experts do the keyword research and have authors tune the content
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Use a tool like Acrolinx SEO rules to manage your on-page optimizations - continued
• SEO rules change all the time. Using Acrolinx SEO rules means your authors don’t need to stay on top of those changes.
• Acrolinx SEO Rules can help prevent your authors from over-optimizing, which can result in search engines penalizing you
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• Publish optimized content the first time. Publishing and fixing, can set you back months in building relevance.
Acrolinx SEO rules pilot at Symantec
• Ran Sept 2012-January 2013
• Use browser-based tool
• Tested on 6 documents
• Keyword research was done by two SEO experts
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Acrolinx SEO rules pilot at Symantec
• Recommendations from SEO rules were consistent with those of our experts
• Authors were comfortable adding optimization tasks to their authoring process because they were already Acrolinx users.
• We can get more pages optimized because SEOs don’t need to fix every page
• Running next pilot with XMetaL plug-in soon
Results
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Ensure your content is indexed by search engines
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Make sure your content is getting indexed
Common reasons why content doesn’t get crawled:
• Robots.txt file is telling search engines not to
• Content hidden in graphics or code
• Crawlers can’t get to all of your site
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How to determine if your content is being crawled
Use Google “cache:“ operator to see if a given page is found in the search cache.
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How to determine if your content is being crawled
Use a search engine emulator and view the results
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Use as many relevance factors as you can without being spammy
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Use relevance factors to help your content rank higher Links
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On-site content External links for promotion On-site content
BAD EXAMPLE • No external links
• All topics link to each other
• All topics contain same set of keywords
• All topics competing with each other
GOOD EXAMPLE • One-way links from external sites pass “juice” to a
single target topic • Internal links also pass “juice” to a single target • Result: search engines know that one topic is more
important
Use relevance factors to help your content rank higher
• Including video and rich media improves your search relevance.
• Google and Bing search results highlight pages that have content with video and rich media so users are more likely to click on them.
Videos
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Use relevance factors to help your content rank higher
• Use target keyword phrases in your URL and filenames.
Search engine friendly URLs
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Use relevance factors to help your content rank higher
• Use target keyword phrases in your URL and filenames.
Use keywords in site navigation UI like breadcrumb trails
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Use relevance factors to help your content rank higher
• Use target keyword phrases in your URL and filenames.
Use keywords in H1 and H2 headings
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Use relevance factors to help your content rank higher
• Use target keyword phrases in your URL and filenames.
Use keywords in first 100 words on the page – don’t stack ‘em
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Make your content looks like the best choice in the search results
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Make your content look like the best choice in the search results
• Top places in paid and unpaid search
• Text has call to action
This text is set with the <meta name="description" content=” tag
Use text that tells customers your content is the right choice
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Track your results
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Tracking progress
Conversion tracking: a call to action for each media type:
– Download a white paper
– Play a video to 80%
– Respond to feedback form
How to determine if you’re succeeding
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Tracking progress
Other success criteria
• SERP placement
• Backlinks
Also track
• Keyword trends
• Hits and click-through
How to determine if you’re succeeding
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Suggested tools
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Task Tool URL
Keyword Research • Google Adwords Keyword Tool
• Google Insights for Search
http://www.adwords.google.com http://www.google.com/trends/
On-page optimization • Acrolinx SEO Rules http://www.acrolinx.com/seo.html
Search Engine Result Page rank
• BrightEdge www.brightedge.com
Backlinks • Moz (formerly SEOmoz) www.moz.com
Spider Emulation • SEO Tools: Search Engine Spider Simulator
http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php
Site metrics and surveys
• Adobe Marketing Cloud http://www.adobe.com/solutions/digital-marketing.html
Summary
Focus on finding out what content customers really want, not documenting every feature.
Use customer terminology in your text – and use a tool to manage it!
Make sure you site can be crawled by search engines.
Use as many relevance factors as you can, such as linking strategies.
Track your content performance over time.
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Thank you!
SYMANTEC PROPRIETARY/CONFIDENTIAL – INTERNAL USE ONLY Copyright © 2012 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.
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The Symantec Information Experience
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About Robert Lee
Robert Lee has managed Content Strategy and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) projects for over five years at Symantec. A former InfoDev manager at Symantec, Bob also managed documentation projects at Microsoft and Intel. @imyeruncle
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