Enterprise SEO - Four Pillars to Making In-House SEO a Success

I began my career as an in-house SEO in 2006 and while I have worked in a few roles as Director of all of Digital Marketing for startups and for an agency. However, I prefer working as an Enterprise SEO in-house. While there are many pros and cons to working for agencies (which I covered in 2009 SEO Career - Agency vs. In-House SEO) I have really found my place and have had great successes in-house for enterprise organizations. One major factor in this decision is that I have just one client and (usually) one website to focus all of my energy and efforts on. In the case at Nordstrom, in which I was the SEO Manager, I had an entire team helping me manage many aspects of the site. As the site gets larger, more complex, more people and other teams to work with and more revenue generating it becomes imperative that there are more people involved with SEO that specialize in key aspects that make the channel successful for the business. The main reason is that there are four major pillars to making SEO a success in an enterprise organization. Those four pillars include:

1. SEO Mitigation - error management and/or technical SEO
2. SEO Analysis/Reporting - calculating assumptions and reporting on successes
3. SEO Project Management - determining growth and managing projects for SEO
4. Relationship Building for SEO - Championing SEO to stakeholders and other teams

Some larger enterprise organizations will have robust teams that support the big four, with addition of SEOs that have expertise in various fields (for example an SEO that is focused on local in the U.S. or perhaps outside the U.S. for a specific country, LATAM, EMEA, etc). Some medium sized corporations or startups will often just have one SEO Manager that acts as an individual contributor that will cover all four of the key aspects on their own until the organization supports bringing on more people to take on one or a few parts (that was me in my early years). Whatever the structure for the SEO or the SEO Team in a startup, medium sized company or enterprise organization the success of SEO within that company relies on managing all four aspects successfully.

I'll dive into each one a bit more to help explain how each plays a role in making an enterprise SEO successful.

SEO Mitigation - error management and/or technical SEO

Engineers will overlook what's best for SEO.
It's up to the SEO to mitigate any issues that might arise.

No matter how supportive companies are of SEO within the organization, there are always going to be issues that come up that will negatively affect SEO. Whether it be a video project that one team launches in which the videos are in an iframe with no JSON or Schema to support them or a set of pages that generate filter URLs causing duplicate content.. The issues not only need to be identified quickly before causing any possible damage or inadvertent spamming, but they need a solution that is fully acceptable (white hat) and prioritized with assumptions associated in order to mitigate the situation.

In my experience, Since SEO equals revenue for the business, I have found it best, in an enterprise situation, to get the teams responsible for key components of the website that effect SEO to become the bestest of friends to the SEO involved. In most cases the individuals responsible for these parts of the site value SEO and understand that if they play by the rules set by Google that they will be successful in their roles. The struggle they face, though, is that they just don't know what all of the rules are; and they shouldn't be expected to. While an SEO might not know what color a button should be and where in order to drive conversions; or what merchandise should appear on what pages linked to from top navigation that an expert hired does, those experts shouldn't be expected to understand SEO at the level that a highly technical SEO does. Therefore, those teams may have a difficult time understanding the impact some of their decisions can make both negatively and positively for SEO, and look to the SEO to help them understand.

The SEO tasked with technical SEO should insert themselves into meetings, gaining trust, and being viewed as an authority in SEO to help mitigate any potential issues within the enterprise SEO landscape. In addition, staying on top of the landscape of the site and how it pertains to SEO is key. Tools like Moz (for medium sized companies), Botify, Deepcrawl, Conductor and Brightedge  allows the SEO to really dig into the site to identify any issues. For smaller sites that don't have the large budgets for enterprise SEO simply using Google's Search Console is a great way to see into how Google is viewing the site. SEOs can manage parameters, identify server code errors (,404, soft 404, and 500), understand page indexing, incoming and internal links, schema markup and many important factors that Google takes into consideration.

Let's say an SEO identified a set of pages that are extremely valuable to the business in which they generate traffic from SEO but the average position is low as a result of issues with duplicate or very similar content, and even thin content (falling under Google's Penguin updates). Ecommerce websites are the biggest culprit of developing hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of URLs that are all similar to one another. Because of the way users browse of search for products in different ways, most product teams want to develop multiple touch points in which the user can access products. Let's use a simple heel shoe for example. A user that is searching for a specific shoe like a dress shoe with a thick block heel might search "block heel pumps" but they also might search "chunky heel pumps" or "block platform heels". Unfortunately you end up with search results that look like this:

All of these pages are from the same website that all have the same (or very similar) content on them because block heels, chunky heels and block heels for women are all essentially the same.

Most enterprise companies will have a dedicated SEO focusing on the technical side of the SEO, but smaller companies that don't have the budget for large teams will most often hire just one SEO in which that person should be spending a good amount of time monitoring and mitigating any issues that might come up.

SEO Analysis/Reporting - calculating assumptions and reporting on successes

Identifying growth for SEO and reporting on successes
 are key to gaining buy in from stakeholders.

Proper SEO should never be focused just on identifying issues and fixing them. A really good SEO and SEO Team will be more proactive than just reactive. In order to grow traffic and revenue from SEO a company needs to constantly innovate and add to it to grab new opportunities.

Keyword analysis plays a major role in identifying opportunity for SEO. Using a tool like Conductor or Brightedge allows you to plug in a few terms that are driving traffic to the site and suggest additional terms that the site may not show up for that are similar. By bucketing those terms you can develop a strategy around a set of high volume and additional long tail terms with a strong user intent to purchase that will grab searches you might not necessarily show up for. With these reports come average search volume that will give you an estimated number of how many times those terms are used in a search. By using these numbers, an SEO can calculate an estimated percentage of ranking that they believe the site could obtain the first month (and subsequent months as Google indexes and places the pages of site for these terms). This number with a break down from an estimated click through rate and conversion rate with average purchase number will allow the SEO to show what the value would be if a project for those terms were to be completed. A great example of this is a keyword analysis I had completed around search for car makes, models and the long tail high intent to purchase year make model (ex: 2012 honda accord). During my research I had identified additional terms around reviews, for sale, used, and more that all would provide value to the user, but the website wasn't generating much traffic from SEO for. Using this analysis in conjunction with a report on what traffic and revenue the site was generating for these terms I put together a presentation for the company's VPs and CEO. The numbers generated from this report were also used to report against after the launch of the project.

In addition to a Keyword analysis a good enterprise SEO will know how to draft up assumptions of revenue increase when any work around SEO is done. Even the fixes that are talked about above that mitigate SEO for issues. Using the duplicate and similar content mentioned before, knowing how to fix this isn't enough. SEOs know just by looking at the situation that the issue is a problem and by making the corrections there will be an increase in traffic. However, expressing what the increase in traffic will be when the issue is resolved is what is required by an enterprise SEO. By understanding how much the click through rate will improve with an average position increase the SEO can then calculate the current click through rate adding the percentage increase if the average position of those pages saw an improvement. From there the SEO would take the average conversion rate with average order value to show the estimated revenue increase if the correction were to be made.

The SEO isn't finished with estimations and assumptions. Most enterprise SEOs are asked "what happened with that project we did?" or "How did that fix we did impact the business?". Using tools like Google Analytics in conjunction with Conductor the SEO can then report against the assumptions originally set. Conductor even has a great tool in Searchlight for Business Cases in which you plug in your estimates and it will track performance for you. For smaller sites setting up custom reports in Google Analytics works, and monitoring average position for a set of keywords that include a common word (or a few) as well as pages in Google Search Console will work.

SEO Project Management - determining growth and managing projects for SEO

SEO isn't just about being reactive.
It's about being proactive with projects that capture new opportunities.

Using the keyword analysis an SEO will often complete a full evaluation of a set of terms that could potentially constitute a project. In my role at Classmates in 2006 I had developed two major projects around developing pages for schools (we called "affiliations") and a set of pages around people's names. The idea behind the two was to have a page show up in the search results when a user would search for their school or an old friend. We even set the pages up so that they would also show for users that would be trying to find an old friend from school in a specific city.

Knowing that we wanted to target those search terms wasn't enough for SEO. I was tasked with writing up a project brief that would detail out exactly everything that was needed in order to get any sort of results. With SEO, content is key so I had added requirements around content that was valuable to the user. Working with other teams we brainstormed what users might find valuable that the business would allow us to expose outside of being logged in. I even had our legal team in the room to weigh in on what was legally allowed to expose to the public. Unfortunately, there wasn't much we could use that was provided by users so we identified data driven content (ex: people with similar names from different schools, nearby schools, rival schools, etc)  that would provide value and would be unique to each page. Requirements around friendly URLs with a hierarchy (directory to file structure), breadcrumbs, etc all were added to the project brief. I was assigned a Project Manager who I worked closely with to ensure the project was moving along and all things SEO were being addressed.

At every enterprise company I have worked with in SEO I have developed major projects. From the names and schools at Classmates to location pages at usedcars.com and Nordstrom, and even the make model and year make model project from the keyword analysis example I mentioned earlier. Each and every one of the initiatives was set up with a Project Brief and managed through a Project Manager for SEO and overseen by myself.

Relationship Building for SEO - Championing SEO to stakeholders and other teams

Nothing will ever get done for SEO
if there isn't buy-in from other teams.

One of my favorite lines to say is "90% of an in-house SEO's success stems from relationships." I covered this a bit in my post in 2007 "In-House SEO Isn't Just Optimizing" in which I state:

But what I am most thankful for is the ability to communicate and work with other individuals within the company. While my main responsibilities may be to not only increase traffic to the website through natural search marketing, my success stems from the success of others.

I wrote that post during my time at Concur in which I was on a team that was extremely collaborative. We all seemed to help each other out with our roles even though we had specific responsibilities. There were a few people on the team that knew SEO and that I could bounce ideas off of. We would work together to come up with a plan. The team included the engineering team, designers, copy writers, and paid media channels. I specifically remember a project in which the directive came from above to create a community website around travel stories for our users. Using Eloqua as an email marketing tool we all sat in a room and developed a plan around user sign up with email touch rules that encouraged engagement. I was representing SEO, but was asked to provide ideas in all aspects, even the emails (which had nearly no value to SEO, though I snuck in some ideas around link sharing encouragement).

While I wrote my post while at Concur, my realization of how much the success in my role was reliant on others was years before while working at Classmates. I found myself in heated discussions with the head of engineering and often pushing the analytics team out of their comfort zone that wasn't getting me very far. I soon took the approach of  inviting key stake holders to lunch and even set up weekly happy hours every Thursday that the CEO would attend to help build relationships I needed to gain buy-in for SEO. I soon became everyone's closest friend and was able to work through issues identified without arguing. As a result, over 10 years later I am still very close friends with quite a few people I worked with and had the head of engineering speak at one of my conferences a few years back.

During my time at Nordstrom I set up the goals of the team around strengthening relationships with other teams and being viewed as one voice of authority around SEO. I encouraged each team member to communicate often and stressed the importance of grabbing a cup of coffee or inviting people on other teams to lunch from time to time. I even found by going to lunch with a few of the stakeholders they worked in conjunction with me to prioritize projects where the team had gotten empty promises or push back in the past. Had I not have built those relationships and gotten to know the people I would not have the friends I have now, nor the support that SEO needed during my time there.

I'm not quite sure how most enterprise SEOs structure their work, if they focus on the four key aspects that I mentioned or if they have other structures they have established that work for them. I do know that after nearly 20 years working in SEO that the success that comes from SEO stems from these four key parts. For without one or another SEO would be simply just rolling along relying on the brand that a company has established as authority. But to show actual growth in enterprise SEO outside of the usual industry trends and relying on social media or PR to do it, a successful SEO will have a keen ability to mitigate SEO issues,  analyse and report on SEO, develop and manage projects for growth and have strong relationships with others within the organization.

Domain, Subdomain and Subdirectory for SEO

I want a WordPress Blog for my Website

Whatever your business may be, chances are you have a website that is developed that promotes your business or, in some cases, is your business. More often than not, the website developed is managed by the development or engineering team, and to be able to add pages, edit content, or get any changes done for the website is a development process (whether it be a waterfall or agile project flow) that can take days, weeks, or even months to see any progress on. Even most content management systems reside on a server that doesn't allow for a blog like scenario that the marketing or public relations team can easily update quickly. This is where most companies will turn to WordPress. Wordpress is easy to install, fully customizable, easy to edit, easy to update, and is virtually impossible to screw up.

"You'll Have to Put It On a Subdomain" ...WRONG!

Bad for users - Bad for SEO

I have personally experienced the scenario of coming into a company that had already been through the discussion on setting up a WordPress website on another host than where the rest of the website exists. What the people involved at the time advised the company to do is set up a subdomain of their website and link to it in the top navigation. When users click the link in the navigation they go from www.thewebsiteinquestion.com to blog.thewebsiteinquestion.com. Sadly, when doing this, the blog will often look entirely different than the website. Not to mention that the content that is being written (often for SEO) is supporting just the subdomain and not the entire website.

A great example of a larger company using WordPress as a blog that looks completely different from the website is Twitter. Yes, the famous means of microblogging and staying connected with others through quick updates, images, videos, and links has a blog that resides on a subdomain and doesn't look anything like the website.
Not only is this a poor user experience, but the content on the subdomain is counted for the subdomain as it's own website, and does not support the main domain. One way to quickly rectify this for SEO is to have links from inner pages pointing from the subdomain to the website and from the website back to the subdomain where the pages all are similar to one another. Unfortunately, this just isn't the most ideal for the user especially when the website and the blog don't behave in a seamless way, and Google has been cracking down on linking both externally and internally. If not properly or carefully executed the website could inadvertently be flagged as trying to trick Google.

My recommendation, as with most white hat SEOs, is to have the blog reside in a subdirectory of the website rather than on the subdomain. In addition, the blog should look and act just as the website does.

Subdomains are aren't Fine for SEO

When you make the decision to have your WordPress blog reside in a subdirectory of your website you might get some push-back from developers or some of the people on the engineering (or possibly other) team. Working with one of my client's recently I was referenced the YouTube video by Matt Cutts (former Head of Spam Team at Google) in which he states that using subdomains for a website is just fine. My response was a bit of a lengthy one in which I cited a few trusted resources that supported the benefits that having a blog on a subdirectory have.

While most SEOs are familiar with the video of Matt Cutts, it is from 2012 (a few years ago). Rand Fishkin of Moz.com talked about this in his more recent video this year (2015):
https://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday

He states: "You're asking, "Should I put my content on a subdomain, or should I put it in a subfolder?" Subdomains can be kind of interesting sometimes because there's a lot less technical hurdles a lot of the time. You don't need to get your engineering staff or development staff involved in putting those on there. From a technical operations perspective, some things might be easier, but from an SEO perspective this can be very dangerous."

In addition he says "I can't tell you how many times we've seen and we've actually tested ourselves by first putting content on a subdomain and then moving it back over to the main domain with Moz. We've done that three times over that past two years. Each time we've seen a considerable boost in rankings and in search traffic, both long tail and head of the demand curve to these, and we're not alone."

An article I have found that supports the subdomain question:
https://iwantmyname.com/blog/2015/01/seo-penalties-of-moving-our-blog-to-a-subdomain.html 
...and yet another example of a site seeing improvement after changing to a subdirectory: ​http://www.bloggingflail.com/subdomains-vs-subdirectories-seo/

"I went from somewhere out of the top 100, and I know for a fact I wasn’t even in the top 200, to being number 57 in the SERP’s simply by changing from a subdomain to a subdirectory.  Everything else related to my site remained constant.​"

Championing the work through is usually 90% of the work when getting the WordPress blog into a subdirectory. As Rand mentions in his video it is much easier to just add a subdomain and point it to whatever is hosting the WordPress site. Unfortunately the implications of the WordPress blog residing on the subdomain rather than in a subfolder of the website is too great to take the easy way out. Using the above articles to help state your case and to continue to persevere through the challenges of those pushing back will get you to where you need to go, and the site will be successful as the end result.

Two Hosts - One Website

In the case where the WordPress blog has to be hosted on a different server and IP than the rest of the site, there is a process to take that will show a seamless website under the same domain. I have completed this task several times now and now have it down to a streamlined process (discussions to state benefits for SEO and all). I will tell you that if you do not have the technical background to understand some (or all) of this process, don't feel you should as it has baffled every developer, CTO, Engineer, and even some of the most genius of individuals I have worked with each time I do this.

Step One - Set Up WordPress Blog

Whether there is an existing blog that the website links to on a subdomain, or the blog doesn't exist yet, you want to set up a hosting account and install the WordPress blog under a subdomain. You will eventually point your new subdirectory to resolve to the subdomain, but for now you want everything on your WordPress blog to look and act as if it was a part of the website. A great example of a successful separate WordPress blog to website is the usedcars.com advice section. I worked for ADP managing the usedcars.com website SEO, SEM, Social, and Analytics from 2012 to 2014. Upon my first arrival the previous social media manager has worked with the agency to create a WordPress blog that the agency hosted and had designed. Unfortunately the WordPress blog looked nothing like the rest of the website, it resided on a server nowhere near ADPs servers, and it was in a completely different language from the rest of the site. You see, usedcars.com was/is hosted on Windows servers and written in .NET. WordPress is written in PHP using Apache.

This is what the usedcars.com homepage looked like in 2012

This is the blog that the user would go to when clicking the link in the top navigation of the site. 

The site had a lot more issues going on with it that were bigger than the blog being on a subdomain could solve. However, the strategy of moving the blog to the site and it being a part of the site was on my list of things to do for SEO.

In this case the idea was to have a sort of "advice" section with car buying tips, ownership tips, and so on. So we decided to have the URL www.usedcars.com/advice be the new home page of the WordPress blog.

In this case the blog had so very little traffic to it (we're talking just a few hundred a day) that I started work on developing a custom theme for the WordPress blog that looked and acted much like the website.

The usedcars.com homepage

The WordPress blog with custom theme

Now that the blog that was hosted on blog.usedcars.com looked just like the website it was time to get the blog to show up when someone would go to usedcars.com/advice, and all of the pages within to work under that subdirectory.

Note: in the case for usedcars.com we wanted the WordPress blog to be hosted on ADP servers where the site could be managed by the company and be more secure. So the process of moving the files needed to take place before rewriting the URL. Since this is not a usual case, I am skipping that part and going straight to the URL rewrite.

Step Two - Rewriting the URL

When discussing the strategy of rewriting the URL I often find myself having to explain how the URL behaves to those that aren't quite technically inclined, and find myself having to correct those technically inclined that it is not a redirect.

When working with others and to help you understand what a rewrite is let's first cover the difference between the two.

Redirect vs Rewrite - What's the Difference?

Redirect
When a user visits a website from a browser, that browser is hitting the server that the website resides on. The server will return a series of codes when that happens. Among those codes is the common "404" error you often see when you come to a page that doesn't exist, but more commonly is the "200" code that tells the browser it is okay and shows the page. The code we are talking about here is the "301" redirect code. This is telling the browser that the URL that is being accessed has moved to a completely different URL and then send the browser to that new URL. For example - click on this link: http://jennmathewsconsulting.com/that-301-redirect-goes-to/. Notice how the URL in the address bar changes to http://jennmathewsconsulting.com/301-redirect/

The redirect is what we call "client side" meaning that it is the browser on the computer of the user (or client) that creates the action, and the URL will always change in the browser as a result.

Other types of redirects:

• 302 – Found 
• 303 – See Other 
• 307 - Temporary

The page request flow goes like this:

1. The browser requests a page
2. The server responds with a redirect status code
3. The browser makes a second request to the new URL
4. The server responds to the new URL and displays the page

Rewrite
When talking about rewriting the URL the behavior of the page is completely different. A rewrite is on what we call "server side" side meaning that the response happening when the page is requested is happening on the server. With a rewrite the browser is going to a URL and the URL stays bringing up the files that reside under a different URL, but stays the same. For example take a look at our client's blog we created for them under https://health2.drinkhint.com/. When you click through the links you will notice that the subdomain stays the same. This is the subdomain where the WordPress blog resides. Then go to https://www.drinkhint.com/health/ and you will see that the homepage and all the pages are exactly the same. The https://www.drinkhint.com/health/ URL is rewriting to the files at https://health2.drinkhint.com/ telling the user and the search engines that the blog for https://www.drinkhint.com/ is located in the subdirectory /health/.

The page request flow for this works as follows: 

1. The browser requests a page
2. The URL Rewrite then rewrites the URL and makes the request for the updated page

Everything is happening on the server side, and completely friendly for SEO.

How to Setup an SEO Friendly Rewrite

There are quite a few steps to get to this point where the URL is staying the same while clicking through the site and the CSS, JSS and Images from WordPress are pulling in correctly.

1) Relative URLs - The first step in rewriting is setting up WordPress to have relative URLs for images and stylesheets. A couple of recommended plugins can make this job an easy one.

1. Relative Image URLs
2. Relative URL

You may also need to add a few lines of code to your htaccess file in addition to the plugins, but these should get you to where you need to be.

2) htaccess Rewrite - The next step is to add a few lines of code to your htaccess file on the server that your main website is hosted. It won't work if you add it to the WordPress htaccess since the URL that will be rewritten is the main domain and if you're reading this chances are your WordPress blog is not on the same hosting as your main domain.

The code that needs to be added to the main domain's htacces on the server:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^blog/(.*)$ http://blog.yoursite.com/$1 [P]

Note that the "^blog/" part of the code is the subdirectory you would like your blog to be on and the "http://blog.yoursite.com/$1" part is the subdomain that your WordPress blog is currently on. My two examples I used earlier are the http://blog.usedcars.com (usedcars.com is on a .net platform and WordPress on Apache) andhttps://health2.drinkhint.com (drinkhint.com is on an apache eCommerce CMS and the WordPress is on another hosting platform). You can read more about rewrites at apache.org.

3) Redirecting Traffic - the next step you will most likely need to make is redirecting traffic to your blog. Each server is different, and every blog is different, so explaining this part in detail is a bit more complicated to cover all of the different scenarios. Apache servers have a means to set up a proxy.

This part is best left to the experts to manage for you, or you can always ask myself and my team to help you through the process since we have done it a few times we can usually determine what steps need to be taken fairly quickly, or troubleshoot if needed.

4) WordPress General Settings - Lastly you will want to check your WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) in your WordPress Admin General Settings. The URL doesn't always need to be set, but in some cases just the Site Address (URL) will need to be set to your subdirectory. Once again, I suggest having an expert help you with this part as you can run into issues with redirect loops and/or URLs just not working.

If you follow each one of these steps and you are still having issues, or you need help with getting through the steps, you can always count on myself and my team to help you through the process. As you can see, the impossible task of getting a subdirectory to rewrite on a completely different WordPress host on a separate server is doable.

SEO

That's right, I am an SEO. So, what does that mean? It means that I optimize websites so that they show up on the search engines for certain terms. Those terms are usually focused on what your key audience might be searching.

Some Stats About SEO:

• 93% of online experiences begin with a search on Google, Bing, or Yahoo!
• Google owns 65%-70% of the market share.
• 70% of users will click on SEO results over paid.
• 70-80% of users ignore the paid ads, focusing on the SEO results.
• 75% of users stay on the first page of search results (1-10^th position).
• SEO beats social media by more than 300% in traffic for most content sites.
• Traffic from SEO has a 14% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) has a 1.5% close rate.
• For Google, 18% of clicks from SEO are on the 1st, 10% of clicks from SEO are from the 2 to 3^rd.

I primarily work as an in-house SEO, which means I work for large companies within the organization rather than an agency or as a consultant. I have, in the past, helped some companies out as an SEO consultant, but if it takes time away from my job and career I will generally offer to recommend someone else to consult. Most SEO consulting consists of myself reviewing the website and any possible issues the company is finding. I review the analytics looking at the SEO traffic as well as traffic from other sources. I also look at Google's Webmaster Tools data to gauge how the current SEO is doing for the site, and how the impressions for key terms look compared to clicks. Sometimes just a simple change to meta tags for a different title and description can increase the click through rate from SEO therefore increasing traffic. In most cases, a complete restructuring of the site along with basic SEO implementation is needed in order to increase rankings. After I review the site, I will come up with a list of recommendations along with how much effort it should take along with the measure of impact. Your report will also include potential traffic and current traffic from SEO so that the client can see where the biggest gaps are. At times the reporting for SEO that I send over can be pretty technical, but rest assured I spend time making sure all the data is easy to understand, and a clear direction is not only explained, but in full detail in the final recommendations. From there it is up to the client to decide on whether they can do the work themselves, hire someone, have it done by their current employees, hire an agency, another consultant, or have me do the work for SEO. Since I have a background in design and development any work needed for SEO or to simply just increase conversion rates from SEO traffic, are fairly easy for me to do, and can happen pretty quickly. It all depends on how much I have on my plate at the time the work needs to get done with my full time job.

If you're not sure you want to have me, or someone else, optimize your site for SEO, it's no problem. Most people can pick up on the basics of SEO themselves. I always like to see clients having some understanding of SEO before I work with them. If they don't have time to learn, that's perfectly acceptable, as I can explain how things work in ways most people understand and pick up quickly. The following is a check list I have come up with for SEO that will help anyone understand and get started in SEO quickly and easily. Of course, there are so many algorithms that Google and other search engines use to determine which site gets to show up for their respective terms, but this at least gets you on your way to understanding the basics of SEO.

1. Keywords – you can't do anything with SEO until you know what keywords you are optimizing for. Once you have your basic list, then structuring your site, and any work you do with the site, around them will all fall into place. I usually recommend one or two broad terms that describe a website. These terms should only be one work, and very rarely more than two. From there a few two to three word terms that might describe a sub-category will help you structure your plan and organize for SEO. Your longtail (as SEO's will put it) or exact match (as Paid Search people call them) are the phrases that are more specific. These phrases then to be the biggest payoff for SEO since they represent terms that users will use when they really know what they want and are ready to buy. Therefore they tend to convert a lot faster and higher. I talk more about this in-depth in my workshops, and in my book titled “Search and Social” that is currently in the works. So stay tuned for the book that helps you really understand SEO on a very detailed level.


Keywords in – Keywords should be in the following items for SEO.

• Keywords in title tag  - The title tag is what show up in the browser top. It is also what search engines use for the title in the “snippet” that displays in the results after a search has been completed. Having your keyword in the title tag not only helps SEO, but will aid in the click as the user will recognize the word they searched for within your title encouraging them to click your result over the other's on the page.
  
• Keywords in URL – Getting the key words in the URL is very important for SEO. Start with the broad terms in the domain if possible. If not, then in a directory with the category terms (2-3 word terms mentioned before) as a sub-directory, and then the exact match longtail terms as the name (or in the name) of the file. Your URL hierarchy is very important for SEO and having those keywords in there even moreso.
• Keyword density in document text – Listing out your keywords over and over again in a short paragraph will harm your SEO more than doing any good. A good way to explain how to watch your densities is to look at a page that has 3 paragraphs, each having about 150 words. Let's say you need to mention your keyword 9 times in order to get rankings. If you mention your keyword 9 times in your first paragraph and then not in the others that's bad. The trick it to distribute your keyword evenly among the three. So mention that keyword 3 times in each paragraph and evenly distribute it throughout each one of the paragraphs.
• Keywords in anchor text – The anchor text is the text that a user will click on within a page's content that sends them to another page. The text that links back to your website should include the main broad keyword that describes the site. The trick to this is to make sure that the page and the whole site linking to the site is relevant to the word in the anchor text. If the site linking to your site isn't relevant than that will actually get your site in trouble, and too many will cause you to lose rankings.
• Keywords in tags - The alt tag is the alternative text that displays in the rare case that an image doesn't show up. It's a simple line of code that goes in the html that generates the image. For SEO purposes, the alt tag containing the keyword is important, and will actually help rankings. Be sure to stick with only the words relevant on that page, and don't list all of the keywords out with commas. That will get a site in trouble.
• Keywords in metatags – Be sure to get your keyword in your SEO meta tags, that's the description, title, and keyword tag that resides in the background of the html.
  
2. Metatags – meta tags are (as explained above) the lines of code within html for SEO that describe your page. This includes the title, description, and keyword tag.
• meta description tag - The description tag should be no more than 150 characters, and include your keyword(s). Try to describe the page as much as possible for SEO while keeping in mind that the user will see this in the search results.
• meta keyword tag - Some SEOs will say that keyword meta tags don't make a difference. Google doesn't really pay attention to them, but the meta driven search engines will, and there are thousands of other search engines aside from Google. So, for SEO purposes, and to help keep the focus of the page of the site, I recommend listing out the keywords in the keyword tag with the broad terms first, then the category, and the longtail. You never know, it might actually help SEO.
• meta language - If the site is in English then adding the language meta tag will help the search engines know which language to display the site on. If you have other languages, then try to make sure the language is in the meta tag. In some cases it can really benefit SEO.
3. Links – Internal – Linking internally to other pages of the site that are related to the page you are optimizing can be quite important for SEO. Almost as much (if not more) than external links coming in.
4. Anchor text has key term(s) in links – As much as the links pointing to other pages, the keyword in the anchor text is important. I cannot stress just how important it is for SEO to have those internal links, and the keywords in the anchor text.
5. Content Around-the-anchor text is relevant - If a section of pages are relevant to other pages, the cross linking with a paragraph mentioning the page before and after the link is very helpful for SEO.
6. Content – content, content, and more content is the key to optimizing a site for SEO. Pages don't have to have large chunks of paragraphs, but can have words here and there throughout the page. Too many SEOs will put big blocks of content on the homepage of a website thinking that it will benefit it. Sure, it helps for SEO, but it looks horrible and users don't fall for it. A paragraph of 10 words at the top describing the site, and then perhaps another clock of text highlighting the value proposition of the product or service in blocks around the page are just fine. The trick is to search your term you are trying to rank for, look at the first few pages or sites ranking, and then look at how many words they have on their page with the number of mentions of keywords. Then, simply just do a little more. Once you have that content in place for SEO, you're on your way to rankings.
7. Unique content – Unique content is very key to making sure your SEO is in place. Not only do you need to watch out for other sites having the same content that you have, but look at other pages of your site. If a block of content is repeated on more than one page, then the content just won't be counted towards SEO. If a page has less than 15% content then it will even work against SEO and even get a site penalized. Sites that use tracking tags, parameters, or might have issues with validating URLs can often run into the issue of duplicate content, and really harm the work they have done for SEO without even realizing it.
8. Frequency of content change – A site that is recognized as a publication and pushes content several days a week (or even several times a day) will train the search engines to visit and see updates regularly. In this case SEO will work to their benefit with fresh content getting recognized and ranked quickly.
9. Age of document - If a site is a brochureware site that doesn't update content often, the search engines will visit less, but give more value to the pages the longer they stick around. Pages that are years old will rank better than new ones added. SO keep this in mind for your SEO and your site. Are you a publication that pushes out content frequently and needs to get rankings fast, or are you a site that holds true with valuable content that gets better with age?
10. File size – A page that takes a long time to load, or is extraordinarily large can be quite detrimental to SEO. So be wary of how big that file is that you are creating.
11. Content separation – As mentioned before breaking up your content throughout your page is more beneficial to SEO than blocking out whole paragraphs. If the site is a known publication, or the section is a blog or article section of a site then whole blocks of content is perfectly acceptable for SEO. But pages that go up and stick around a while with the purpose of providing marketing information, should have content broken up throughout for SEO.
12. Poor coding and design – This one gets overlooked a lot. Sure, search engines can't determine good design from poor design, but your user's sure can. If a user comes to your site from Google and then immediately bounces, Google will mark the value of that page for SEO down. Therefore, affecting your rankings. So pay attention to design, look at your bounce rate data in Google Analytics, and improve it as much as possible.
13. Duplicating Content = NO – DO NOT DUPLICATE CONTENT… Just as mentioned earlier, this is very bad for SEO. If one page has more than 80% duplicate content to any other page on the site, then it can harm your SEO. So be sure that the content on every page of the site has more than 80% unique content.
14. Invisible text = NO – Invisible text is content a site has hidden from users but allows the search engines to see. A div that is only on pixel high with the attribute to hide overflow, or white text on white background (both allowing search engines to see it in the code) is a huge no no for SEO and can actually get your site penalized. So don't do it!
15. Domains & URLs – Check you domain and URLs often. Look for your keywords, check to make sure the hierarchy is clear and set properly for SEO, and make sure that there are no funky issues like parameters, easily changed (by typing anything in), or redirects to some odd UR. Check your trailing backslash or file extenions as well to make sure it either 404s if wrong or resolves to the correct one.
16. Keyword-rich URLs and filenames – Watch for those keywords in URLs and filenames. Long URLs that mention more than one keyword will cause issues, so always check and double check the URL for SEO before going live.
17. Site Accessibility – In some cases having an accessible for those with disabilities. Whether it be sight, or even hard of hearing if you have video. It can actually help your SEO.
18. Sitemap – creating an page that links to all of your pages can ensure that all of your pages are getting crawled for SEO. Many times I have seen website have pages that they don't link to and wonder why those pages aren't getting rankings. If search engines can't crawl the page, then they don't know to rank it for SEO. You can also create an .xml file for Google, Bing, and Yahoo! site submission. But do remember that an xml sitemap alone just won't cut it, you have to have links pointing to pages from multiple locations. Otherwise it just won't do any good for SEO.
19. Website size - Keep an eye on the size of your website. Large corporate sites like Amazon.com and MSN.com are expected to have thousands if not millions of pages. If your site is a mall to medium size company and website, yet the search engines somehow crawl millions of pages, then you need to relook at your SEO. Check your paramaters, or other issues that might be causing more pages than your site should have.
20. Website/Domain age – The older the website the better. A brand new site that is loaded with pages and pages of content all in one day will get added to a sandbox as us SEOs call it. It will sit there for a few months before the search engines even give it the time of day. The reason for this is that search engines want to make sure the site is legitimate and not just a spam site there to just get rankings. To keep your site from falling under this category, having an older domain is key. If you have a new domain, then roll out your pages slowly. Push a section one week, wait a few weeks and push out another section. Having a blog is also good for SEO as you can add posts with content encouraging search engines to keep coming back regularly and learn that this site has something interesting and unique. Of course, the more traffic you can get in those first few months the better, so get your social media and advertising up and going.
21. File Location on Site – This falls under the URL hierarchy category. Watch out for where pages and files are located on the site. For SEO and for your uses, the structure and location should make sense.
22. Domains versus subdomains, separate domains – Watch out for the use of sub-domains for your site. Too many websites will put their blog on a sub-domain and not in a directory. This won't hurt your SEO, but it won't help either. What happens is that the search engines count the subdomain as it's very own website, and doesn't link the content with the rest of the site. It is more beneficial for SEO to have all of your content no matter what it is, on your main domain in a directory. Keep it out of the sub-domain unless absolutely necessary.
23. Top-level domains (TLDs) – A top level domain is the main domain for the site. Even in the case of a www.yoursite.com, the “www” is considered a sub-domain. Yes, a sub-domain… So try to use http://yoursite.com if you can. If the search engines already recognize your www.domain.com then leave it alone, and let Google know that you prefer to use your www. Vs. just the domain. You can do this in your Webmaster Tools.
24. Hyphens in URLs – For SEO, it is recommended that you use “-“ in your URL rather than “_” or even just a space (which ends up rendering to %20). Search engines just happen to prefer the hyphen to underscore or space.
25. URL length – For SEO purposes try to keep your URL under 2000 characters, but really the shorter the better. Pay attention not to have more than 3-4 parameters, or a URL that has a really long sentence.
26. IP address – Your IP address should reside in the country your website is ranking in. US and English should have an IP located in the US. French and Canadian, should have an IP in Canada.
27. robots.txt – Blocking irrelevant content in the robots.txt will really make a difference for your SEO. It has been recommended in the past to block external css and image directories, but now Google has said they would like to crawl them. Search engines are getting more and more sophisticated to where they can decipher all of the code and really get a good idea of what the whole website is about. Some only block pages and content you really don't want search engines to crawl.
28. Redirects (301 and 302) – For SEO, redirecting an old URL to a new URL will usually pass the old URLs value to the new URL. But be careful to use 301 redirecting sparingly. I personally have witnessed and dealt with sites that had issues with too many 301 redirects causing rankings to drop.
29. Social Actions – Social actions like Facebook ‘like's, tweets, shares, Google +1s, and so on will really add  lot of value for SEO. Anytime a user has to take action to show that they see the value in the page will show the search engines that the page is relevant and valuable. Therefore, increasing your rankings for SEO.
• Google+1 – Yes, Google loves their social media site, and providing a way for users to +1 your page and site will drive up rankings in Google.
• Facebook 'Like' or 'Recommend" – The action of ‘Liking' a page for Facebook will sometimes help with Google, but really helps with Bing more than anything. Microsoft anf Facebook have a very close relationship allowing for Bing to use social actions that happen in Facebook to help drive rankings for sites.
• Facebook comments – If you can, try to pull comments that happen in Facebook related to your site and the page into the page itself. It not only allows for more and unique content, but shows Bing and other search engines that the content on the page is valuable to the user, therefore driving up your SEO.
• Twitter "tweet" - A simple tweet with your page's URL will always be counted as a “vote” for your page and website. The more you can get, the better for SEO.
• OGP - Open Graph Protocol – OGP was developed and adopted by Facebook as  way to manage how a page or website looks when shared in social channels. Twitter, and other social sites have followed suit, and my prediction is that Google will start to pay attention to OGP soon. So be sure to spend the time and make sure your basic OGP tags are set for all of your pages. It could really help your SEO.
30. Links – External – Links pointing to your site are important. As mentioned early, tread very carefully with your link building. Make sure that the page(s) linking to your site and pages are relevant to your site. Do not use directory submission websites, don't buy links, and be weary of link exchange requests. Just as external links can benefit SEO, they can also harm if not done properly. Keep the following in mind for your SEO:
• Quality of source of inbound links
• Links from similar sites
• Links from .edu and .gov sites
• Age of inbound links
• Links from directories
• Links from Social Media
• Links on pages that include social actions
31. Schema – Google places a high emphasis on schema tags and information. In the past they have said that if you can get it in there, then great. Now they look at schema information to help drive rankings for SEO. Not to mention that you can manage what is displayed in your snippet from star reviews, author information, embedded video, etc.

Of course there are thousands, if not millions, of algorithms that search engines use to determine rankings, leaving the list I gave you here a small set of what really goes into optimizing a site. In all of my years optimizing websites, I try to write blog posts when I come across issues or get into deep level discussions with my peers on SEO topics. But again, there is so much involved, and sites are all different from one another. I have been teaching workshops since 2007, and have been through thousands of individuals trying to learn SEO and optimize their own sites, only to find that they still need the help of an expert.

What I suggest is that you learn the basics, as much as you can, and start optimizing your site yourself. If you have a site that is older and hasn't been touched in years, go through and see if there are sections and pages you can add with some unique content to add to what you already have. If your site is larger and the traffic just isn't where it should be, then look at what you can do to restructure it to reflect the categories and longtails terms you found in your keyword analysis.

If you want to see how your different categories of terms are performing, you can use this handy template I created along with instructions on how to grab the traffic you are seeing. For some clients, I have used the template to show the estimated traffic I see in the keyword analysis compared to the actual current traffic to show what is missing. I will use the top few terms in the keyword analysis to see how aggressive the category terms are going to need to be to get rankings during the competitive report for SEO. The categories with the most potential, the largest gaps, and the least aggressive with competition are the ones I recommend to tackle first. The competitive report will also help determine what all will need to get done to generate rankings. Is it just one page with a bunch of content and the word mentioned several times, or is it a whole directory with files and filenames that include a mired of terms for SEO that all link to one another?

For usedcars.com the location pages where we generated rankings for the terms “used cars in”… with city and state searches was fairly easy for SEO. The content has a few lines of text seeded with the city and state from the database (also known as templatized content). Content for the page also came from inventory (car listings) provided from the database, with a block from normal listings in that city and a block of deals in which there is a calculation done in the back end that looks at the price of the car and looks up that VIN and price against the Kelley Blue Book value and returns the percentage difference showing cars that are priced under value and are a good deal. Users love those listings. There is also a large map that shows dealerships in the usedcars.com system that are located in that area. The map is generated from Google and helps those pages get rankings for that location.

Those pages were pretty easy to get rankings (after a lot of the mess was cleaned up), and have help rankings providing close to 50% of the traffic from SEO for that site.

A more complex project for usedcars.com that required more pages, and the SEO to be more aggressive is what we called the Make/Model project. The goal was to get rankings in SEO for the brand of cars and the cars with years search trends. We found that users that search the “year make model” search know exactly what they are looking for and are more likely to purchase. So, ranking for all of those year, make and model combinations were highly valuable to the business. The problem is, that all the other car sites know the same strategy and have been very aggressive for their SEO.  A set of rules for syndicated and dynamic content was set in place along with a plan to roll out pages and content in phases. When I left in May of 2014 the project was still underway, but the pages were already seeing some traction. You can see how the pages were developed at http://www.usedcars.com/car/ - considering they are still intact and working on the pages as specified in the project.

I'm always happy to talk SEO with anyone anytime. You can find me on Skype (as SEOGoddess) or fill out the contact form on my site here with any questions. I'm usually pretty quick to respond, and can help you in any quick SEO issues or questions as you try to optimize on your own. I have even been known to look at a website when an agency is working on the SEO just to make the site owner or boss feel comfortable that their agency really knows what they are doing.

There are also many resources other than myself or this blog, and plenty of SEOs with a lot of great experience. Ian Lurie is one of my favorite people in the world, and has a very successful agency with a lot of great SEOs he has taken under his wing and turned into skilled professionals. His company Portent can also help with website design, social media, and paid search marketing. Give them a glance over and see if they fit your needs. Bruce Clay is also a very close friend and someone I go to regularly myself for help. He works with very large corporations on a large scale including AT&T, CNN.com, Edmunds, and more. He is what some of us in the SEO industry call the “Godfather of SEO” since he was one of the original SEOs that has set the standards for quality in optimizing.

I do have a larger list of SEOs I know and trust, so feel free to contact me and ask me for someone in your area, or who might specialize in a site that is much like yours.

Either way, SEO can be fun and you can really learn a lot quickly if you want. You can know enough to be dangerous, but if you stick with the general rule of “don't trick the search engines” you should, for the most part, be just fine.

In the end a site that has increased traffic from SEO is a site that I generating a lot of money, and that's just good for business.

So You Wanna Learn SEO?

It's been a while since I have posted anything. Mainly because it's been a pretty crazy couple of months at the office. Traffic for SEO has gone up, now bringing in over 92% of the total lead volume (go us!) and when things get to going good it just makes me want to keep doing more. So the things that help me relax, like writing, tend to get pushed to the side lines.

What inspired me to write something tonight was an update I saw in my Facebook feed. I see the question come through often, and even get the question myself more often than you would think. You see, people want to learn SEO. Not necessarily so they can be SEOs themselves, but to understand what it is us SEOs are talking about when we say "SERP", "Meta Tags", or "Canonical Tags". So they can envision why we say you can't have two pages with the same word on them (duplicate content), or why we tell them they have to have links to important pages of their website from their homepage (but not too many links). So I put together a long list of resources recommended by some of the best experts int he industry, and even some sent over my newbies that are learning SEO that have read, completed, or tried the following and highly recommend them.

Get Started - SEO Resources for Beginners

• Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (always read this one first - no matter what)

• Learning SEO from the Experts: Step by Step Guide by HubSpot 

• Moz - The Beginners Guide to SEO

• SEO Fast Start by Dan Thies

• The Advanced Guide to SEO

• SEO In Practice

• SEO Made Simple

• Top 10 SEO Tips

• Inline SEO

The Next Step - Buy The Book

• SEO Made Simple by Michael H. Fleischner

• SEO for Dummies by Bruce Clay (My personal friend and often mentor)

• SEO Bible 

Get Certified - Academies and Certification

• Bruce Clay Academy (worth every penny)

• Moz Academy

This should be enough to get your started - perhaps just enough to be slightly more than dangerous even. Of course if you ever have any questions for SEO, I am always available - just contact me. I will at times hold a workshop that has been streamlined to 4-5 hours and covers all the basics you will need for SEO. The workshops are small and I am available to answer questions as you have them so it's a great time to get a list of your questions together, and perhaps even have me take a look at your site for just a few hundred bucks.

I do occasionally take on consulting if you need more than just a quick question. A basic SEO Audit runs around $1,000 to $2,500 (depending on the size of the site, and how in-depth you need) and generally takes a week or two (remember I still have a full time job with ADP, and that takes up my daytime). I have been known to find some really interesting issues with sites even with the most basic audits and managed to get them back from the dead after Panda and Penguin updates. Ongoing support can come in the form of an hourly retainer - which I am happy to discuss. Do remember though, I only take on 1-2 clients at a time so that I can give all of my attention and focus on the work and making sure I am there whenever you need me (I demand quality customer service, and therefore ensure my clients get the utmost 100% best service possible as well). 

SEO Analysis for Good!

Just a week ago I saw a post come through the Seattle Digital Eve mailing list from someone asking for help on behalf of a friend.

The post:

I have a friend who is looking to improve the SEO on their ecommerce site.  They are a small business, and the SEO people they've talked to want to sell them a big, complex package, when what they really need is some coding improvements on the site, consolidation of 2 sites into one while preserving link juice, better keyword/metadata, etc.  

Anyone out there with some decent SEO expertise?

Offering to Help

I emailed the person that posted to the group:

If it's a small project I can probably spend some time on it.
Even though I have a ton of experience, I can keep the fees down since I have a day job.

My email was quickly forwarded on and the business owner (Martin) emailed me right away with a simple "Hey Jenn, I am interested in your SEO skills. Please call me...". I called him on my way home as I was stuck in traffic that evening. Martin described the two websites for me, how they were getting rankings and traffic, and now aren't. He said he had done some work to one of them, and traffic kicked up. He asked me to take a look at them and see if it is something to do with the website, if either had been hit by Panda or Penguin, or if people just aren't searching for rugs online as much as they used to. I quickly thought - how odd that this is almost exactly what we have been going through with the websites at ADP. Not to mention that they have gone through this up and down, all the time me trying to figure out if it was just general loss of interest, change in searcher behavior, or if the site was going through a penalty or hit from just general Panda and Penguin updates. While this man's sites are a small version of what I deal with on a daily basis, this could not only be fun, but should be fairly easy to figure out.

Martin asked what my hourly rate is - but I immediately responded with a giggle (at $250/hr I'm sure it's probably more than he was expecting to pay) and told him that for the initial conversation and if it's something quick, I won't charge him. I then asked him if he has a Google Analytics account attached to the websites, of which he responded with a "Yes". I told him how if he can look at the Webmaster Tools data in Google Analytics and look at impressions vs. Avg position, and then impressions vs. Click Through Rate. If the Avg position, and CTR stay fairly steady, but impressions drop, then that is a quick way to see if interest has gone down. Another way to back that up, is look at how many terms get impressions one week, to the next week. If those numbers drop, then there is a good chance that rankings are dropping and there is a penalty. He was a bit overwhelmed, and asked if he gives me the login if I would take a look for him. I excitingly said "Sure" (since most people don't like to give out their login, it's easier to tell them how to do it - but this was the next best thing). I told him the next steps - I would spend some time that evening and see what I can find, then come up with a diagnosis and a plan of attack going forward of which he can either do himself, or if he has the budget, hire me to help him with it.

The Evaluation

That evening I settled in, opened up the computer while watching Hulu on the TV (we don't have cable), looked through both websites, and then logged into GA to dig through the analytics.

Checking 

Behavior vs. Penalty/Panda/Penguin

I started by going back as far as I could in the analytics account looking at organic traffic only. The month that both sites did the best was just a few months back this year. I also checked the timeline against Penguin and Panda updates via the Moz.com Google Algorithm Change timeline and noted if there were any clear drops that sync up with an update. There was a slight drop with one of the updates that hit one of the sites I work on for my day job that is built similar to his.

I first pulled the Impressions against the Avg position to see if the position stays the same while impressions go down. Though given that there is a slight drop after an algorithm update, I figure that there will be a drop in position, impressions, and number of terms getting impressions.

My First Chart:

Site #1

Impressions vs. Avg Pos.
Note: I took out numbers to protect the client even though he gave me permission.

Site #2

Impressions vs. Avg Pos

As you can see - there is a drop in impressions but the average position stays fairly consistent, and even more-so for Site #2. Both improved the last few weeks in positions, and impressions.

My Second Chart:
Site #1

The number of keywords showing impressions week over week for site #1

Site #2

The number of keywords showing impressions week over week for site #1

I noticed that the number of keywords getting impressions (meaning how many terms showing up when a person searches regardless of position) drops when the impressions drop in the earlier charts, and then goes up when impressions go up.

This clearly shows a penalty, and given that there was a penguin update just before that drop, it is pretty clear that the site took a hit from that update, then saw an improvement when he completed the little bit of work he did.

What Got Hit?

Knowing now for sure that both sites took a hit, the next step is to figure out exactly what was hit. With the site I manage at my day job I will usually run a category report to find out which terms were affected so that we can evaluate and establish a plan to recover. I didn't have time to set up the categories of terms to run the report (it takes days to categorize terms, but since that has already been done for the site I manage - it takes me just a few minutes or so to categorize now) so this time I grabbed the number of words in each term. If the phrase has just 1-2 words then it's safe to say it is a broad term, and if it has 3-5 words then those are more exact. Penguin tends to focus on sites that have optimized for long tail terms, and less on the broad terms. So, this is a faster way to get a similar understanding.

I ran a comparison to see how things were in his big traffic months compared to the recent months that there was a drop. I took 4 weeks in the high traffic month from a Saturday through the last Sunday and compared it to the last 4 weeks Saturday through the most recent Sunday. This would give me an exact day of week compared to that day of week and reference the beginning of a month to the end of a month. Ideally it should compare to the same time of year to reflect searcher behavior for the day of the week, time of month, and the time of year, but in this case the day of week and time of month was going to be good enough.

Example of Keyword Data with Count
Note: Terms and traffic are not representative - I changed them to protect the client.

The table above is what the data looks like. Do note, I changed the top keywords, and numbers to protect the client - but this gives you an idea of what I was working with. From there, I created a pivot table and played around with the data to give me more insight into what was going on. Number of words in a phrase, visits, pages/visit, etc. It all helped me understand what was going on before and after the update.

Keyword Count - showing how many words in a phrase were driving traffic from high month compared to low month.
Note: numbers and details have been removed/changed to protect the client.

The 3-5 word terms dropped from the high month to the recent months. This shows that the longer tail terms were hit, which is pretty indicative of Penguin.

Looking at the Sites

Having spent the first hour of my time running the reports and pulling charts, I spent the rest of the time looking through the sites now that I know what to look for. The sites were once optimized for long tail terms, but something happened that they lost that traffic. As I dig through both sites had categories for the two word terms (such as "area rugs) with links to individual pages for each item that fit in that category. The first that I noticed is that there is a URL hierarchy (something the website I work on lacked). So he was good there...

I started noticing as I was looking through both websites, that they were structured exactly the same way. I also saw that the navigation was the same on the left linking to different URLs, but the content appeared to look very similar on the pages. I grabbed a couple of the URLs that were focused on the long tail terms and pasted them into copyscape. The report kept not only pulling the other site as the first match, but other sites that sold the same products. This is a very common issue with eCommerce websites - since they don't have the time to write their own copy for each product, they tend to pull it in dynamically through syndication. With not enough unique content on those pages, then the site appears to be duplicating what all those other sites have. It's not a majorly serious issue, as Google tends to understand syndicated content, but if a site doesn't support the content with something unique they just won't get rankings as well as the ones that do.

Martin's sites had a bit more of a issue though since he has two sites with the exact same content, and the exact same structure. When I compared the terms that both sites got visits from during the high month, then I noticed that not only were a lot of the terms the same, but there were a lot of the terms with site #2s domain, and name in there.

Compare Terms from both sites with visits from organic traffic.
Note: the domain name has been changed, and so have the numbers to protect the client.

I think at this point it was very safe to say that the site took a hit by the Penguin update to the long tail terms due to both sites duplicating each other.

My Email and Recommendation

After spending a couple of hours on the site, I drafted this email and attached the excel document I used to analyze the sites (note: the email below is changed slightly to protect the client):

Hey Martin -
So I dug into both sites and the Google Analytics to see what’s going on. I’m attaching my excel doc if you want to see my work, but it looks like both sites definitely took a hit of some sort.
 Moz.com keeps a list of when updates happen so you can keep an eye on things: http://moz.com/google-algorithm-changeThere was an update at the end of January then another big update in March that may have led to you losing your rankings. I've seen this drop in other sites that are built very similar to yours – so I dug into the analytics to make sure that my assumptions are correct.
 What I found:I first compared visits from organic traffic (SEO) against your average position the past few months (webmaster tools only goes back 90 days, so I couldn't go back to January unfortunately).
 Site #1 definitely saw a decrease in traffic along with the drop in conversions (pasting the charts below for you to look at). With Site #2 there was a drop in traffic, but the average position seemed to not drop as much. Usually this would be a sign that people aren’t searching as much, so I wanted to check your keyword count and impressions week over week. If the number of terms drops seeing impressions drops from one week to the next it is usually an indicator of a penalization or hit by a panda or penguin update. I’m not pasting those charts in here since they are really raw, but you can see them in the excel sheet. The terms that have 2-5 words in there took a huge hit, while the one word, and longer tails appear to be sticking around. I toggled from keyword count to visits from the keywords and those sets stay pretty consistent in dropping.
 What this means is that you most definitely took a hit in rankings from the updates. Not just rankings dropping, but a bulk of your 3-5 word terms dropped out of the index completely. Those 3-5 word terms are also the bulk of where your visitors come from – those longtails are higher converting terms and can really affect revenue if they drop off. It looks like both sites are build very similar and have a lot of the same content. I compared the top referring terms both sites saw in your highest traffic month and both refer traffic for “your domain” which isn't good. They both get traffic from “broad term” but site #2 has site #2 beat there. They also both have several long tail terms that are the same.
 When I run a report on copyscape.com to check for duplicate content – the site #2 along with a few others come up (included link directly to copyscape) The “product” rugs page on both sites is exactly the same – almost word for word.
 It’s kinda fun to have two sites show up for the same terms, since you could get double the traffic. In fact that’s what my company does – and what I manage. We have dozens of “portal” sites to grab leads to sell to car dealers. But if Google has any idea that both sites are connected then both sites get penalized. I think this might be what has happened here.
 Your first solution would be to get unique copy on all of the pages of the site. I know it’s tough writing for all of those pages, and copy writers can be expensive. There is an alternative called TextBroker (http://textbroker.com). They have writers that bust out copy pretty quickly (2-3 day turnaround) at a pretty reasonable rate.
 I would recommend getting an account set up and start asking them to write for your pages. Even your homepage content – while there is a lot of it, but looks to be pieced from other content on the web.
 The order I would have them do it in is in order of the pages that had the most traffic in your highest month, and then work down from there.
 Once you get them going on that – I can do a full keyword analysis, check to see where the opportunity might lie, and get you a complete plan.
 The excel doc is attached – let me know if you have any questions.
 Hopefully this was helpful J

All in all it took me just a couple of hours since this is what I do for our executives regularly, so I didn't charge Martin for the work.

SEO for Good!

Martin was so excited and appreciative of the work I had done, and what I had found that he asked me if he could pay me in some way - "..if anything to help the school in Nicaragua". I gave Martin the link to donate to the school, and he did.

The money immediately went to help buy supplies for my Husband's students we are bringing with us. Since they had to pay for their immunizations out of their paychecks, don't have sleeping bags (we are loaning bags to them), and anything else they need they pay for themselves, I wanted to help them so that they could focus on helping build the school and not stress that they have everything they need for the trip.

In the end, I helped Martin with his websites because I like to help small businesses succeed, Martin returned the kindness by helping the students with their supplies, so that they in-turn could help build the school for children in Nicaragua.

Everybody wins!