ArenaFlowers.com An experience delivered

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ArenaFlowers.comAn experience delivered

• Battling To Get To The Top Of Google

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Contents

• What I wont talk about - flowers tricks
• Who?
• Why?
• SEO so what?
• Some SEO chat
• History
• Vocab
• Basics
• Finesses
• Good work
• Challenges
• Discussion

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Questions ( Apologies)

• Level of SEO understanding
• Marketing vs other roles?

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Who?

• ArenaFlowers.com launched Sept 2006
• Now operate ArenaFlowers.com, ArenaBloemen.nl,
  ArenaBlumen.de and Prestat.co.uk websites, with
  more to come
• Team of 40, working in UK and NL
• Number 1 independent and top 5 in flowers
  category (only multiples/supermarkets ahead)
• We are not a relay organisation. Quality. Value.
  User Experience.
• Won a number of awards. 5/5 from customers is our
  favourite

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Why?
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Why?
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Why?
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Why?

• 99.99 of customers have found us online
• 35 of our daily orders are repeat business

NB we had been doing SEO for c 6 months prior to
launch SEO SEM are complementary SEM is entry
point to internet marketing with low barriers to
entry
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Who - Part 2 Disclaimer

• Ive never worked at Google or any search engine
• Im not a professional SEO and never have been
• The ever changing face of SEO means advice today
  may be out of date tomorrow
• Its Google index and they can do what they want,
  when they want.

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Who Part 2 Learning SEO
Matt Cutts
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Who Part 2 Learning SEO

• www.SEOMoz.org

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SEO Is A Piece. Its Not The Puzzle

• Product
• Price
• Quality
• Service
• Personal touch
• Sales generation
• Multiple channels, of which SEO is just one
• Conversion is king. Traffic ltgt Sales
• We sell flowers, not SEO

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Why SEO IS Important

• Getting harder all the time as rules evolve
• More difficult to catch up
• Land grab in the virtual marketplace

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SEO Basics - Vocab

• SEO / organic search / natural search
• SEM / paid search / PPC / CPC
• SERPs
• Authority / PR / Page Rank
• Links / Google Juice
• Paid links
• Nofollows vs Hot links
• Anchor text / ALT text
• White hat, Grey hat, Black hat
• Conversion rate

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SEO History 1/3 Onsite

• How search engines used to work (in brief)
• Whats on your site
• Thats what well rank you for

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SEO History 2/3 Googles Idea

• What you dont directly control about your site
  is more insightful than what you do
• Links from other sites to your site are votes for
  your site
• The clickable wording of the links is important
• Links mean Page Rank (PR)
• Therefore SEOs in Googles early days should
• Get links any way they can
• Do onsite optimisation too
• Then get some more links

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SEO History 3/3 Now

• Not all links are equal any more
• Now over 200 ranking factors vs original basic
  PR

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A Note About Google

• Its their search engine and they can do what
  they want with it
• They dont care about SEO, they care about
  relevant search results
• Their dominance means that what they care about
  dictates what SEOs have to do
• The spam battle builds in barriers to newcomers
  and gives an opportunity to incumbents to
  entrench their lead further

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Golden Rules 1/3 Structure

• Page Rank isnt everything, esp the green bar
  toolbar PR -gt
• Title tags are crucial as theyre the first thing
  a search engine sees
• If at all possible, it should take only 3 clicks
  to reach every page
• eg BBC
• Subfolders rather than subdomains
• http//www.ArenaFlowers.com/blog vs
  http//blog.ArenaFlowers.com
• Search friendly urls
• http//www.arenaflowers.com/flowers/occasion/engag
  ement_flowers
• Vs
• http//www.arenaflowers.com/catid?234.asp
• Keywords in anchor text
• Flower Delivery vs Policies
• Concentrate each page on a small number of
  keywords only
• Eg a particular product line
• Use Google webmaster central (esp to define
  location and see crawl errors)
• Black Hat is risky
• Eg BMW getting pulled from the index

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SEO Golden Rules 2/3 Content

• Image search

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SEO Golden Rules 2/3 Content
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SEO Golden Rules 2/3 Content

• Blogging works for SEO, though its value is far
  far greater than just SEO. Personality, depth,
  information, customer feedback and more
• NB dont be spammy!

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SEO Golden Rules 2/3 Content

• Community eg Dell or Trulia
• Participants can help build rich, relevant
  content

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SEO Golden Rules 2/3 Content

• Link out to articles about your brand

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Golden Rules 3/3 Link Building

• Links are the key but its getting harder and
  harder to build links
• Google doesnt like the buying or selling of
  links to pass PR
• Economist PR penalty
• Directories
• Many are now discounted completely
• Reciprocal linking
• Thought to be of limited value
• PR and online PR
• Newspapers and online media can be quite stingy
  with links
• Steve Jobs has cancer fake story garnered
  links
• Blogs vs splogs
• A soon as something works for SEO, spammers
  descend
• Link bait
• What flower are you?
• Social media
• BT Tradespace
• Key is editorial links by people, for people.
  Not by computers, for search engines
• Be creative but be good(ish)

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Future?

• Nofollow a continuing issue
• BBC having to give out clean links
• Businesses are under no such pressure
• Spam
• Rules and layers keep being added, making SEO
  harder
• Search engines focus on local search a challenge
  for national businesses
• First in is better than last in
• All subject to
• Changing algorithm
• Googles index and they can do what they want
  with it
• Online buying behaviour and search as the portal

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Summary

• SEO isnt hard
• Its just hard work and time consuming
• There are some basic things you must do right
• There are some opportunities to be imaginative
• Its getting harder and lead times are longer
• But SEO is a key part of the virtual landscape
• It should be part of anyones online strategy
• But dont forget that your product is far more
  important! Traffic is useless without a good
  product to sell

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Blatant Attempt To Get A Link

• This presentation will go on our blog at
• www.ArenaFlowers.com/blog
• Ill add a resources and links slide (sorry
  thats not there already it is Saturday morning
  after all!)
• Please feel free to link to it. ?

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Blatant Attempt To Get A Link 2

• 15 off your first order
• Promo code Link
• Tell your friends (and put it on your blog)
• www.ArenaFlowers.com
• www.ArenaBlumen.de
• www.ArenaBloemen.nl
• www.Prestat.co.uk

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Key Resources For Learners

• SEO Moz is a superb SEO resource. Best bits
• Summary of key search ranking factors
• Whiteboard Friday SEO tutorial videos
• SEO blog
• SEO tools
• Google Webmaster blog
• Google Webmaster Central
• Google Analytics
• Matt Cutts blog
• Vanessa Fox article on Page Rank

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Questions