SEO, Yahoo!, and Social Networks

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SMX Advanced 2009 Seattle – SEO Track – SEO Ranking Factors In 2009 Laura Lippay

Post from Search Engine Optimizician.
On and off-the-page factors that influence web search, what remains useful and what new signals are growing in importance. [Part 2 of 3]

Laura Lippay
Dir. Technical Marketing
Yahoo!

Laura Lippay is the Director of Technical Marketing for Yahoo! Media, where she and her team are responsible for determining monetizable SEO … Laura conducts regular SEO training at Yahoo and has been a speaker at Search Marketing Expo and Search Engine Strategies conferences. Prior to working at Yahoo!, Laura was the SEO specialist at CNET Networks, where she helped develop the in-house SEO program. Previous to CNET, Laura was manager of interactive media (loosely subtitled The Goddess of Chaos and Harmony) at The Linus Group, a Bay Area marketing firm. And before she got into the online space Laura traveled the country as a performer for the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus.

Laura’s presentation was titled “This Ain’t Your Mother’s SEO – Shed those grandma panties and take on the new number one ranking factor”.

She iterated that SEO was much more than code tweeks and/or traditional ranking factors. Laura continued by explaining what successful SEO was and wasn’t.

Successful SEO isn’t only:

• Meta tag optimization
• Affiliate networks
• Gobs of inlinks
• Keyword density
• Proper H1’s and H2’s

Successful SEO also includes:

• Being viral
• Having Buzz
• Getting linked to and bookmarked naturally
• Being your own linkbait

Yahoo we uses Rand’s SEO Ranking Factors with a small modification.

Yahoo Property case study

• Yahoo Property in competitive vertical worked with SEO regularly
• Started working with SEO in wireframe process
• Built in 90% of the recommendations for their redesign

Upon relaunch the search traffic spiked and fell drastically.

The questions that were not asked were:

1. What is it going to take for us to outrank our top competitor (a current category killer) in search results?
2. What product features would create buzz around the product that would in turn influence higher rankings & search traffic?

There was no upfront SEO Strategy for the product.

• What options are you offering to your visitors?
• What added value does your site have for your visitors?
• Are there any social benefits offered by your site?
• Can visitors become site participators?

All the above questions deal with creating “BUZZ”.

You can use SEO spam for just about everything but a GREAT product.

The more competition you have, the less you should rely on traditional SEO tactics and more on creating a Buzz-worthy product in order to rank well in search engines.

Are the top mindshare sites also the sites with the highest rankings? For the most part yes.

SEO will not cure a bad product.

The big picture

• The best ranking factor you can have is a hot product
• Make the Product Mgr and anyone involved in strategy one of your best buds.
• Before building SEO into a product be sure to ask:
  • What will it take to be a category-killer?
  • Exactly what do I need to build into my product to outrank my competitors? (It is probably not just inlinks and good titles.)
  • Don’t just follow SEO basics: plan, strategize, then build with SEO compliance in mind.

If your site’s product or service has very little competition the “Buzz” factor will be less important for one that has tons of competition.

My takeaway from this presentation not only is content “King” but there is a new “Queen” in town and it is your great “Buzz-worthy” product, like it or not.

How “Buzz-worthy” is your product or service?

Will it live up to the expectations of the Social Networks?

Late,
Gary Pool

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