SEO Design Basics

Josh Patrice & Paul Bates IRCE Focus - Digital Design

March 16, 2015

SEO Design Basics

FENDER MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

•  Legendary Brand Founded in 1946 •  Today: the world’s leading guitar, bass & amp manufacturer •  The two most expensive guitars sold at auction were Fender

guitars (Bob Dylan’s - $965,000 & Eric Clapton’s guitar “Blackie” - $959,500 )

•  Fender was founded on a platform of product excellence & innovation through consumer engagement

MOVING INTO THE DIGITAL AGE

•  In 2014 – Social, Technology & Consumer engagement were a company focus.

•  Additionally, Fender became the 1st guitar manufacturer to sell direct to consumers.

Portent, Inc. is one of North America’s elite Internet marketing companies. Located in Seattle, WA., Portent is a full-service agency with in-house design, creative, and development teams including experts in paid advertising, analytics, SEO, content strategy/writing, and social media.

Greetings from the #smithtower

Ahead of The Horizon

SEO Design Basics Portent

SEO isn’t a tactic

It’s a result

SEO is getting more relevant traffic to your website from search engines.

Our Approach It’s All Integrated

PPC DISPLAY SOCIAL BLOG SEO CREATIVE

OWNED PAID EARNED

CONTENT

ANALYTICS

INFRASTRUCTURE

Channels

Elements

SEO Design Basics Portent

SEO is the result of all your marketing elements working together.

Oil & Water SEOs & Designers

Change

that!!

More Text

here!

Don’t have this!

Add nav

item here!

Make this

text!

What CMS is

this??

More CSS Sprites!!!!!

Get rid of this page!

SEO Integration

Timing is Everything

Integrating SEO early on

in the design of a site

leads to wireframes, title

tags, headings, img alt

tags, content,

navigation, etc. working

together.

SEO Integration

What’s Missing?

SEO Integration

Oh, there it is

SEO Integration

Proper SEO influences: Wireframes Information Architecture Marketing Strategy Content and even, Design

SEO – A COMBINED EFFORT

16

SEO

PIM

DEV

IT

Marke/ng Designers

People v. Robots

Text in Images

SEO Designs for Robots

Hey look at this totally relevant content!!!

What You See

What a Robot Sees

Sites Need to be Visible

…to robots

Sites Need to be Visible

not just humans…

Important

Less Important

Not Important

The LEAST Important

SEO Design Basics People v. Robots

Google Actually uses human factors to determine importance.

People + Robots

Cyborgs ? !

“We’ll add ‘the SEO’

after it goes live”

Compromising Design or Improving UX

Search Engines Look at 2 Categories to Determine Rankings

BE

HAV

IOR

BEHAVIOR: The clues PEOPLE give to a website’s quality

CRAWL DATA

BE

HAV

IOR

CRAWL DATA: The stuff COMPUTERS can determine, by crawling your website.

CRAWL DATA

CRAWL DATA

BE

HAV

IOR

RANKS #1

THEM: #1 YOU RANK #2

CRAWL DATA

BE

HAV

IOR

Only Address 1 Factor?

Behavior Crawl data

12

111

23

34

45

Behavior Crawl data

12

111

23

34

45

Strong behavior cues, and a great site

#1 for behavior cues, but many crawl issues

Behavior Crawl data

12

111

23

34

45

Lowest distance from perfect

Greatest distance from perfect

Crawlable Robots can find all pages

Robots can see all content

Robots can understand all the content

Distance From Perfect

Relevant Page is useful

Page is engaging

Page is trustworthy

Page performs

SEO Design Basics

Crawlable Infrastructure

Architecture

Code

Distance From Perfect

Relevant Design

Content

Page Speed

SEO Design Basics

SEO Fundamentals

On-Page elements Title Tag Headings Image alt tags Content

SEO Design Basics SEO Fundamentals

External Links

Image alt text

Headings

Oversized Images

SEO & Fender

WHY SEO AT FENDER

•  Fender launched a Direct to consumer business without: •  PPC

•  Display

•  Social Advertising

•  Google Product feed

•  And other traditional digital channels

•  SEO became a primary focus

WHY WE HIRED AN SEO FIRM

•  In 2014 we implemented an Ecommerce platform, a PIM & new CRM

•  Many of the moving pieces could have significantly impacted our SEO rankings

•  An after fact: Company wide we became more in sync with our SEO efforts between departments

THINGS TO CONSIDER

•  An SEO agency provides guidance. It still requires action on the client side.

•  Hiring an internal SEO guru you are limited by their skill set.

•  SEO is the most unpredictable area in Digital Marketing and there are many conflicting opinions.

SEO – Planning IT

SEO - DEVELOPERS

•  Code Compression

•  Account for CMS limitations –  www.fender.com/default/ was one of ours

•  Create Canonicals

•  Fix re-direct hops

•  Internal linking issues –  Example, our still duplicate menu (mobile & desktop)

•  Dynamically populating SEO info when none is available

•  Site Speed

SEO - PIM

•  Create new data fields in the PIM to support SEO

48

SEO - Marketing

•  H1’s •  Title tags •  Meta Description •  Image alt text •  Copy •  Vanity URLs •  Etc…

49

Re-Design Woes Top SEO considerations when re-designing or re-platforming

SEO Design Basics SEO & Fender

Losing High Authority Pages Changing URLs of Top Pages Decrease in Page Speed Increase in Code Bloat Creation of Duplicate Content 404 Errors & Broken Links Drop in Ranking Shift in Indexation CMS Behavior Template Issues (design, titles, etc.) Redirect Hops 301 Redirects Canonicalization Issues

Re-Designs


The Dream

Old Site

New Site

Re-Designs


The Reality

Old Site

New Site

Spider Traps


The Reality

Infinitely-expanding URLs like this mean search engines may get captured in ‘spider traps.’ They can spend all their time in these traps, instead of crawling other pages of your site. This is a long chain in which each page loaded adds one new page to the queue.

SEO Best Practices for e-commerce

Image Compression Image compression has a huge impact on load time. We’ve used compression to reduce load time by 50%.

The images at right show a comparison of 2 images that were compressed to almost 1/3rd their original size. Code Size Too much code can slow a page down dramatically. It can also be a flag to Google that your pages are ‘thin’ on content.

We aim for a content to code ratio of around 30%. Compression, minification, and using external files can save valuable seconds.

Page Speed

Product Pages

Page Title

H1 Tag

Image alt tags

Content

Schema

American Special Jazzmaster® | Fender Electric Guitars

Product Pages Page Title H1 Tag Image alt tags Content Schema

American Special Jazzmaster® | Fender Electric Guitars

Signals for Search Engines

•  “Jazzmaster”

•  “American Special”

Signals for Users

•  Price = $999.99

•  “Fine US Made” guitar

•  CTA – “Play One”

Product Pages

Signals for Users

•  CTA – “Play One” many guitarists won’t buy directly online. Leads them to a local dealer

•  CTA – “Add to Cart” able to buy it now for many products on Fender.com

•  CTA – “Add to Wishlist” for future shopping or gift suggestions

Category Pages

Page Title

H1 Tag

Image alt tags

Fender Telecaster | Vintage

Results

Before & After

•  Pre-Launch: 1,047,517 visit

•  Post-Launch: 918,506 visit • *** matching periods vs. previous year

Top Pages Before -‐ 2014 A3er -‐ 2015 % Change

Home Page 564,618 566,707 0.37%

/guitars/stratocaster/ 139,440 175,074 25.56%

/guitars/telecaster/ 90,118 115,370 28.02%

/guitars/ 92,551 100,413 8.49%

/community/guitar-‐tuner/ (moved) 87,560 44,953 -‐48.66%

/amps/guitar-‐amplifiers/ (moved) 66,961 34,803 -‐48.02%

***Matching ranges vs prior year, immediately post launch

Before - Fender

After - Fender

Most Redesigns

WHEN TO CONSIDER AN SEO FIRM

•  During a re-platform or re-launch

•  To review current content or structure

•  Technical advice (code ratios / speed / redirects / error page, etc.)

•  Content development

•  International expansion

•  Mobile expansion

•  Training staff

IN SUMMARY

•  A successful launch or review requires a lot of work, between many departments.

•  SEO requires forethought.

•  Prioritization of the structural elements is key. •  Our Top SEO efforts:

•  Our CMS required /default/ •  Multiple subdomain, refined to 2. Open task to combine. •  Maintaining High Authority Pages •  Avoiding duplicate content (Wishlist & Product variation issues)

Thank Portent, Inc. 506 2nd Ave. Suite 1700 Seattle. WA 98104-2354 | Tel: 206.575.3740

YOU. Fender Musical Instruments 17600 N Perimeter Dr #100, Scottsdale, AZ 85255 | Tel: 480.596.7195

Josh Patrice Director of SEO @Syzlak

Paul Bates E-Commerce Reporting Analyst

SEO Design Basics

Marketing

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