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Linkbuilding the Right Way #SESCHI

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Navigating a Website Migration like Indiana Jones: Ensuring a Smooth SEO Transition #SESCHI

Let's face it— at one point in your life you've probably wanted to be James Bond, Indiana Jones, Wonder Woman, or any other number of superheroes. Personally, I've wanted to be all of them…more than once. For some odd, and inexplicable, reason Indiana Jones was always my favorite.

If you're like me, you gave up that life of dodging sink holes and escaping life-threatening situations in creatively unrealistic ways to work in digital marketing. But, Simon Heseltine from AOL and Dave Rohrer from Covario are giving us the chance to be channel our inner superhero again—by navigating the sinkholes created by website migrations.

In their SES session (moderated by Jim Hedger who couldn’t resist a photo-op with the speakers) these two experts addressed the sinkholes created by different migrations, as well as the ways to avoid the potential traffic decreases and reduced ROIs.

Types of Website Migrations:

You can’t very well escape danger if you don’t know what the danger is right? So Heseltine starts us off with 5 main types of website migrations and a few precautions to take when executing:

Domain Moves: this is when you change things on the same CMS. You won’t have many (if any) permalink changes. With a migration like this, you’ll want to plan as much as possible for a pattern match global 301 redirect. Then you’ll have to move the content to the new domain and set up the redirect (and of course tell Google in WebMaster tools). Lastly, you’ll want to submit new XML sitemaps and tell Google News about the domain change if you use it.
Multi Domain Moves: this takes place when your site is going from one domain to multiple domains. This happens when there’s no agreement on a replacement primary domain, like Hesteltine’s dentist. This migration will require you to remove all other links except to the new domain, redirect all other pages to the old home page, tell the story on the home page
CMS Migrations: changing from one platform to another. Create a redirect mapping from the old permalink structure to the new. As much as possible use pattern matching–it makes it a lot easier. Then prep and submit XML sitemaps. You’re only going to put the new pages in the XML sitemaps, not the old ones. If there are pages you’re not going to migrate, you may want to ‘curtain’ them. All that means is you put a banner across the top of all the pages that advertises your new site.
Redesigns: If all your design is look and feel, you wont have any URL changes and there won’t be much to do. However, you can change those URLs and if you do, you’ll have to add in 301 redirects to send users to the new location.
Site Closures: Sites close down for any number of reasons. If you’re considering closing a site look for the content that gets traffic that you could serve elsewhere and set up 301 redirects for these pages. For the rest? Set up 404 pages and tell the story of what happened–that the site is no longer there. If you’re shutting down just sections of your site (known as section closures), you’ll follow those same steps.

Pre-Launch: Is Indiana Jones ever without his hat or whip? Nope. He prepares well, and you should too. Before you launch there are several things you should remember to do

Determine your goals: You want to come out on top right? In order to do so, several things should be considered at this point: platform change/update, legal compliance, do you want to increase leads or sales or conversions etc.
Determine migration scope: What are your phases? What kind of window do you have? Do you want new features? Pick what you’re going to update and what’s priority, then move on. Draw the line in the sand of when you’re going to stop the migration and stop working on it
Establish the how and when: What teams are involved? What do they have scheduled and when? Dates are extremely important. When are you going to QA? When is your soft launch? When is your content freeze? When is the very last day changes can be made
Baseline Everything: use internal analytics like traffic, conversion rates, bounce rates, visits, conversion, typical pathing etc. Then use external 3rd party tools like Google Webmaster and Bing Webmaster tools and Majestic SEO for crawls, errors, indexation, links, sitemap, and other link data.
Categorize and Document: current URL, future URL, what content is going away, if it’s being reused, if thinner pages are being combined

During the Migration

Now it’s the fight scene. You’ve got your hat, your whip, you’ve got your not-quite-as-cool-as-you sidekick and you’re in battle. Here are a few things you can do to channel your inner Indiana Jones:

Verify Baselines: You know whether or not Indiana Jones is winning or losing a fight, because you know what success and failure look like, and you keep watching hoping for success. Your site is no different. As the site is launching keep track of errors. Are there thousands popping up? Are you still ranking for your keywords? Spot check thinks. Technical issues like 404 errors, crawler traps, duplicate content pings, server failures, missing files and missed 301s will occur. Know what success looks like and see how your site is measuring up.
Divide and Conquer: In the latest Indiana Jones movie Shia Le Bouf fights a lot to protect and help Harrison Ford. There’s always some sort of underdog and helper that gets him out of a pickle just when he needs to be helped. When you QA don’t try to tackle the project alone–have help. While you’re QAing your site make sure different people are doing different things. Don’t forget to look at it from different IP addresses to make sure it’s not just your office that can see it.
Communicate: If you’re having help, you can’t very well be dead silent and not let them know what you need right? Make sure everyone knows when things will go live, when they are going live and how things are going. You don’t want your social team to promote a site that isn’t working.

Post Migration:

You’ve migrated your site–you’ve escaped danger. Now what (other than feeling quite proud of yourself for being the nerdy version of Indiana Jones)?

Monitor. Does Indiana Jones take his eyes off his enemy during a fight? No, of course not. So don’t take yours off your site. Make sure you look at Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools. Analytics are a great way to see if there are any trends you should worry about and see how your site is doing. Use crawlers (Screaming Frog is a great tool for this) to see what’s going on with your site and if what you expected to happen is there, chances are tools will catch something you didn’t. Keep an eye on indexes and redirects.
Expect a minor traffic drop. Let’s face it after a huge fight, Indiana is tired. He might not admit it but he is. A migration is a big deal, and for the first few weeks you can expect a drop, but then expect traffic to creep back up. Running crawlers on your site can help you find any issues that could prevent the increase.
Keep communicating. It wouldn’t be fun if the movie ended with everyone going their separate ways right? So don’t just stop talking once the migration is complete. Keep people updated on what’s going on. The chance there’ll be another project at some point is very high, so don’t just disappear into the ether once the migration is complete.

Stay tuned for more from SES Chicago! We'll be live-blogging sessions throughout the remainder of the conference.

Want instant information? Follow the action live on Twitter @elizalynnsteely and@bslarsonmn.

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What You Need to Know about Enhanced Adwords Campaigns #SESCHI

If there’s one thing I’ve heard non-stop lately it’s that digital marketing is becoming more customized and tailored to the wants and needs of consumers. Those creepy Eye See You Mannequins, facial monitoring at gas stations, and those social ads that somehow know that I was shopping for a watch yesterday are all proof that brands are able to cater their advertisements to appeal to something we’re actually going to be motivated to buy.

This has created a unique opportunity for marketers: enhanced Google AdWords campaigns which were launched on July 22nd of this year.

In their SES Chicago session, Michael Griffin and Lisa Raehsler reviewed what those campaigns are and how to design, segment, and optimize one. Here are some of the key takeaways from their session:

User Habits Have Changed

A lot of the sessions at SES have been talking about the fact we like to multitask on several devices. Searchers shift between mobile devices like tablets and smartphones, desktops, and laptops simultaneously. So marketers have to stop thinking of things in a channel-centric way, and start thinking (and creating content and design) in terms of all devices. It is also important to become much more strategic in targeting and ad campaigns to help attract and engage multidevice users.

Marketers Need a New Mindset

Search is no longer all about keywords. It’s important to shift your mindset to knowing your customer deeply and leveraging the tools Google gives you to appeal to those customers. The days of mass creation are over–we’re transitioning into a time when customization, personalization, and relevance will make or break the success of your content. Leveraging this data can help you provide the right message to the right people at the right time.

Calculate Bid Modifiers

There is data out there to help you understand your customers at the zip code level, the city level and the state level to help you maximize the impact of your enhanced ad campaign. Bid modifiers are a great way to tailor your campaign to reach the people who it is most relevant to, and who will likely click on your ads. However, like most things, there is some debate over how to calculate the bid modifiers for an AdWords campaign. The formula the presenters recommend is: [(Revenue per click for a segment divided by revenue per click of the whole) minus 1] * 100.

Use Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)

This new feature allows you to create different audiences based on the value you think they might have. You can bid on those people in Google search results differently helping customize your ads. Segmenting on granular level has proven to bring the best results when leveraging this new capability. This deeper level of segmentation will allow you to guide those searchers to where you want them to go on your site, and help make those landing destinations more relevant.

This works well for eCommerce sites by adding value to the items in a shopper’s cart and targeting based on the value of the total items in their cart. The only limitation to this capability is that 1,000 people have to be in a segment for you to bid on it.

Mobilize Your Campaigns

Design ads that are mobile preferred. This will require specific imagery and a tailored call to action that’s easy for mobile users to complete and that assures them it really is ok to click. With the impressive surge in mobile usage, it is important to convey your messages to the mobile users that are visiting your site.

Follow an Action Plan for Capturing Opportunity

When faced with an opportunity, it’s important to not only capture it but to bring it full circle to enhance mobile experiences. Raehsler provided the following action plan for helping brands do so:

Increase bid modifier for mobile to increase visibility
Increase bid modifier on top states
Create ad copy to mobile + location

Use Data to Craft Mobile Adjustments, Targeting and Experience

There is an abundance of data in anything related to Google. Google Analytics can help you see whether or not people are engaged with what you’re showing them based off of how much time they’re spending on your site, how many pages they look at etc. In AdWords you can break down your insights by gender and age. Seeing who is more likely to visit your site can help you target a more engaged user.

Don’t Limit Yourself to AdWords Enhanced Campaigns only

Did you know Bing had enhanced campaigns? Yeah I didn’t either, but they do. They also allow deeper segmentation and more filtering. Don’t limit yourself to using only Google enhanced campaigns, there’s no reason you can’t use both.

Get to Know Bid Strategies

There are 5 bid strategies when it comes to enhanced AdWords campaigns. The last two in the list below are the newest, and most impressive, of the strategies.

Maximize Clicks: this is a flexible version of the Automatic CPC bidding strategy
CPA Bidding: this is a flexible version of Conversion Optimizer used in the target CPA (average CPA) capacity
Enhanced CPC: this is a flexible version of the existing enhanced CPC capability
Search Page Location: AdWords will increase/decrease bids to target a top-of-page or fist page position with ads. This bid strategy works with Search Network only and doesn’t specify a position on the page (so you can’t choose to be in the second, third, fourth position on the page etc.)
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): AdWords predicts future conversions and values based on conversion values advertisers set up. Used for Search Network only or the Search Display Networks, Adwords will try to reach the ROAS targets across all keywords, ad groups, and campaigns.

Use PPC/display results to further design & author

Ad campaigns aren’t a one-and-done type deal. Use consumer reactions and the results you see through analytics to tweak, redesign, and rewrite your content to continuously appeal to audiences and maintain relevance.

Stay connected for more posts from SES Chicago. You can also keep your finger on the pulse of the conference by following @elizalynnsteely and @bslarsonmn on Twitter.

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