Getting Started with SEO

Log Settings

Turn on logging so that you have the essential data available to you in your Affino Analysis Centre. This will allow you to evaluate your future campaigns.

You can do this on the following screen:
Control > Settings > Log Settings

Zones

Update your Zone so you have the right site information and SEO settings. You can always change these, but get the basics set up straight away. Make certain your site Topics are in place.

Make sure you’re using the best domain as your Zone Domain and Enforce it. This will ensure all the domains pointing at your site will map on to the preferred one and it will concentrate your ’Link Juice’ giving you the highest rankings.

Note that you have to enforce the Zone Domain for your live sites, this is not only essential for SEO but also how the Affino SaaS service is delivered. The only time the domain is not enforced is during the migration to live whilst the domains are propagating.

It’s key to note that having multiple URLs on the same page content is a very bad thing as far as search engines are concerned and you will be heavily penalised for it.

Affino uses canonical links to minimise this wherever possible on the content level, but it’s essential that the domains are managed to minimise duplicate URLs as well.

Specifics of the zone:

• Make sure SEO is turned on.
• Use the URL shortening tool.
• Select security groups - NB set bot security level as audience, be aware to NOT give bots editor permission.
• Enable Facebook and Twitter.

You can do this on the following screen:
Control > Structure > Zones

Keyword Manager

Make sure you have your keywords in place and in particular your Topics on your Topic List. The Topics are the key areas of interest for your site, these are essential to help you target your users' interests.

You can always update your Topics and re-index your content, but get the basics right from the beginning so you minimise the amount of re-work you need to do.

Once your site is running you can see the trending audience engagement with each topic, the number of articles, channel and live ad campaigns targeting the topic and a great deal more insight around events and audience interest.

You can do this on the following screen:

Control > Publish> Topic Lists

Channels

Make user you’ve got meaningful names on your Channels. You can also add more SEO friendly Titles and Screen Names (URLs) which supersede the names where appropriate and provide more meaningful search results on search engines. Make sure your Meta Data is as good as it can be since Channels are frequently the key landing pages on your site. Also have teasers where necessary, not just for the search engines, but also for your internal site searches. You will also want to ensure you have your SSL encryption in place, and when it is ensure that your Channels are set to Encrypted.

You can do this on the following screen:

Control > Structure > Channels

Note - on Channels you have Hide From Search Engines option. This is recommended to be used prior going live. Part of the launch checklist is making sure your channels are SEO active.

Sections

Sections are typically not as important as Channels or content, none the less make sure you’ve got meaningful names, titles, screen names and Meta Data in place. Teasers can be very important for sections as they help clarify the type of content contained in it for end users and contain the most important terms.

Over time you’ll refine this based on how your pages are listed in the search results. Try and ensure that your section names are different from the channels so as to not have duplicate terms in the URL.

You can do this on the following screen:

Control > Structure > Sections

Content and Media

Have great titles, teasers and meaningful content. Use related content extensively and link wherever possible. Include relevant media which in turn is named relevant names. Tag your content with relevant keywords in the Live Editor and use the Heading buttons (h1 h2 h3) for your headings.

Note - Don't use H1 inside the TinyMCE, as the title of the page will automatically render as an H1

Products

Products are an extension of content, but have their own specific requirements. It’s essential with your products that you use the correct product codes and display them prominently. It’s to make sure that related products and accessories are highlighted on the page, and use known product categories. If it’s media, e.g. a Harrison Ford movie, make certain it is tagged with the relevant meta data.

It can also be beneficial if you’re targeting value customers to highlight discounts, specials and other benefits of purchase such as free shipping. All of these can be factors in users landing on your products pages and converting.

Edit (shortcut)

Every key page has the Edit option available in the content panel (see image below) this will take you to the edit screen for that page where you can update the SEO information (title, teaser etc.).

Registration

Update your registration so that the Member Types and Interests (done via the Demographic Profile) are mapped on to the Topics. This is not so essential for the SEO side, but is a key driver for all the recommendations your site will be making to the users, and can be used to drive auto-related content.

You can do this on the following screen:

Control > Security > Demographic Profiles

Topic Channels, Gateways and Landing Pages

Now that you've done the hard work, Affino can generated automated landing pages for you and build pages on-the-fly around specific topics. Simply create your Skins to use the key highlights Design Elements (with the Channel Topic filter selected) and Affino will populate the pages with content around the key terms applied to the Channel.

Here’s a useful guide with a lot more information.

You can do this on the following screen:

Control > Structure > Channels

eBusiness Dashboard / Site Analysis

Set up your Affino eBusiness Dashboard so that it works for you. You can access it right from your Application Bar or from the Analyse control centre.

This, along with Google Analytics, is the heart of your monitoring system and gives you real-time information on how well your site is performing. The new Referral Analysis centre can be very useful in identifying inbound links and Site Analysis in identifying your most popular pages.

Note - Ensure that products are tagged in Affino

Blog

Start Blogging and keep on at it. Few things will generate as much useful content and Link juice as a well maintained blog. It will drive incoming links, provide an extremely useful RSS feed, be the basis of your social campaigns and provide personality.

RSS Feeds and Social Campaigns

Set up the RSS feeds from your key content sections. For SEO purposes these can be both full content feeds or simply highlights feeds. These should be promoted on all the key pages and will come in very handy when you start link building.

You can do this on the following screen:
Control > Publish > Outgoing Feeds

Comments, Ratings, Sharing and Likes

It’s essential to generate as many in-bound links from as many high-profile and relevant sources as possible. A great way of doing this is by making the right sharing tools available. Affino shares directly to the leading social spaces, e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. These are great drivers to get your content out and to get further inbound links.

Affino also supports up to three share links on each article, these are a great way to get keywords into your URLs,  both as triggers for your audience to share but also for SEO purposes.

You can do this on the following screen:

Control > Settings > Comment and Rating Profiles

Redirects

If you’re migrating content from other sites, or you’ve purchased additional high-value domains then set up Redirects to ensure that your Page Rank is mapped on to your site content. This is essential to prevent loss of rankings whilst transitioning sites and content.

We recommend that for most content drivent sites there will be a core of a few hundreed URLs which will be key, and then there might be a long tail of a few thousand. We advise that after the migration to Affino these are progressively removed over time, i.e. from six months onwards.

You can do this on the following screen:

Control > Settings > Redirects

SEO Import

The SEO Import tool in Affino is exceptionally useful when used in conjunction with Google Webmaster Tools, it lets you bulk update the Titles and Descriptions for all Channels, Sections, Articles and Media Items via a simple spreadsheet. Use Google Webmaster Tools (more information on this, on the tab below) to identify the pages which need updating.

Don’t Overload

There can be a tendency to overload your site for pure SEO gain, but that can work against you since people are less likely to link in to a site which is just perceived as link-bait. Keep your credibility and provide great content and a great service and the links will come.

Google Webmaster Tools

The very first thing you do outside of Affino is register for Google Webmaster Tools, go to your Zone and copy the link for your Sitemap and provide the URL to Google. Once in place, Google will get the sitemap and spider your site accordingly. Without this in place, Google will miss out on a lot of your content and won’t index it. It will also take considerably longer for Google to start indexing your site at all.

The single most important factor now for Google is how long your site has been around, so even if you’re not live, get Google indexing your domain. Just make sure you secure the Channels you don’t want it to access. You’ll also want to do this with Bing Webmaster tools.

Google Analytics

The second thing you should do is set up your site on Google Analytics. It means setting up your Google Analytics Profile to ensure that Affino is passing through all the relevant data including individual order lines on online sales.

Firefox Extensions

See the image below. Firefox extensions are at the heart of knowing what’s going on with your SEO. I’ll do a separate post on this later, but essentially how we run things at Affino is that we use Google Chrome for all our day-to-day web browsing and site management (because it is very fast) and use Firefox as an Uber SEO tool.

Getting Link Juice

Once you’ve to the basics in place and you want to really start promoting your site you need to go for Link Juice. A great place to get information (and tools) on this is Moz. It costs for the premium services but is money very well spent. Most of the information on what to do is free.

Essentially there are some directories (which you will need to pay for) and some key websites which will help elevate your Google Page Rank faster than having hundreds of lesser incoming links. It’s essential to make sure your site is listed on these sites from the outset as it is the fastest way to improve your Google Rank.

Get Social

There are lots of reasons to get Social, i.e. have your Twitter, YouTube, Facebook etc. pages up. One of the key reasons is SEO. These sites, and the right approach can be key drivers for incoming links.

Using Social Connectors and Social Campaigns in Affino you can set up two-way integration between Affino and the key social media sites. These are fully automated and minimize your workload, allowing you to run your social campaigns right from your main website.

Smart Media

It’s increasingly important to create smart media as well, e.g. a great YouTube video. You can use it and associated links to directly promote your site. Frequently videos are ranked higher than content pages, especially if they’re YouTube videos.

Targeting the Top 100

The most laborious part of your rank boosting, but also essential if you really want to get traction, is doing Google searches on the key terms you want to target, starting with the most important ones. Wherever possible set up your profile on these sites; set up incoming RSS feeds from your sites if possible; engage meaningfully with the communities, or pay if it’s worth it to get listed.

You’ll want to do this for all the sites where it’s relevant with relevant and meaning content. Don’t Spam the sites with content, it’s the fastest way to devalue your brand. Always think of it from the end user’s perspective. Are you adding value to the conversation? If not, approach the site later when you have something relevant to say.

Once you’ve done all the sites. Repeat the process every 3 months or so (or more frequently if the resources allow) since the top 100 will change significantly.

Google News itself isn't directly SEO for traditional search results, but it can be a powerful tool to drive traffic to your website and improve your overall SEO in a few ways:

• Increased Visibility: Getting your articles featured in Google News exposes them to a massive audience actively looking for current events. This can lead to significant spikes in traffic
• Credibility Boost: Being included in Google News lends credibility to your website as a trusted source of news. This can improve your website's ranking in traditional search results
• Targeted Traffic: Google News personalizes results to some extent, so the visitors you get from Google News are likely to be highly relevant to your content

For instructions on how to associate your Outgoing (section) Feeds to Google News, please consult this FAQ (How do Outgoing Feeds work with Google News?).

Constantly analyse what’s working for you and what isn’t. Use the Affino eBusiness Dashboard, all the tools available within the Affino Analyse Centre, Google Analytics, Google Adwords (more on this later), and the SEO extensions to shape your SEO campaigns.

Always keep your site current and never lose sight of the end-user experience, which should never be compromised for the sake of SEO.

Trending

Use the Affino dashboard to tell you what content is trending and build on that content. Eg, create sub pages or update pages which are getting good referral links.

Control > Article > View

Affino runs a health check on articles for SEO improvements.

The results are displayed within the article on the SEO Health Check panel:

The SEO Health Check helps clients to improve their article engagement.

SEO Tips

The following tips will appear within the SEO Health Check panel if aplicable.

Note: click on the plus button to the right of each sentence, it will expand providing more information.

• Title has more than 60 characters
• Google will only display the first 60 characters of your title
• Write a concise and compelling title to entice visitors to click your link
• Include a topic (keyword) but avoid keyword stuffing

• There are no social sharelines entered
• Enter alternative versions of the title for visitors to easily share your content Note: this message is displayed only if the article template uses sharelines

• There is no page description
• Provide an accurate summary of your content, including a topic (keyword) while keeping it under 160 characters

• Image [x] is above 200kb file size
• Try to compress images for faster page loading
• This applies to the Thumbnail, Main, Image 1, Image 2, etc

• Image [x] does not have alt text or only displaying the filename
• Use topics (keywords) appropriately and describe the image accurately or describe where it is linking to

• There are no images selected
• Adding an appropriate image helps to improve the user experience for your visitors

• There are no topics selected
• These help visitors to quickly understand the focus of the article and also find other articles tagged with the same topics (keywords)

• The topics (keywords) selected are not found in the title
• Add at least one topic or keyword phrase into your title

• The topics (keywords) selected are not found in the teaser
• Add at least one topic or keyword phrase into your teaser

• The topics (keywords) are not found in the main body or text content
• Add at least one topic or keyword phrase into your main body

• There is no teaser
• Teasers are used to provide a summary of the article where they are listed around the site

• There is no manually related content
• Adding related content helps visitors to navigate to other similar articles

• Use subheadings (H1, H2, H3) in the Main Body
• This will help search engines understand your content better and makes your text more accessible to readers (this applies to the Main Body, Text1, Text2, etc for heading tags)

Note: the above also applies to Steps