SEO Summit Recap
JULY 16, 2012 by RICK KLAU
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from a Jeff Smith, SEO Director of Google Ventures portfolio company Whaleshark Media. Jeff teamed up with us at the Startup Lab to host an SEO Summit for Google Ventures portfolio companies.
At the Google Ventures SEO Summit last month, people were ready to talk shop about something that is critical to most if not all websites: search engine optimization (SEO).
A hallmark of the SEO community has always been sharing insights based on data, tests and practical experience. Since sharing and learning are core to the mission of the Google Ventures Startup Lab, it’s not surprising that the SEO Summit last week complemented the Startup Lab’s regular workshops, which focus more on Google products and startup concerns.
The summit, attended by about 20 people from product, marketing and SEO functions from as many portfolio companies, focused on leveraging the collective SEO experience of all attendees rather than learning from one subject-matter expert. The websites represented were at different stages of maturity in the SEO life cycle, meaning they had different challenges and opportunities. Some companies were grappling with foundations (getting indexed, good page titles) while others were ready for advanced topics (testing, mobile).
Many Google Ventures portfolio companies don’t depend heavily on search to be discovered by their customers. But some, such as Rocket Lawyer andRetailMeNot, have the kind of content that lends itself to consumer demand expressed via search. Over the course of an afternoon, the topics ranged from crawl and indexing to link building in an increasingly social world.
With so many possible angles of SEO to discuss in the startup context, a straw poll focused the summit on the following: testing, measurement of SEO efforts, link building, search and social, and keyword research. Conversations about the first four filled the entire afternoon session, not leaving time for the always-important topic of keyword research. Here’s a brief set of takeaways on the top four topics (sorry, but you had to be there for the detail):
- Testing: It was agreed that testing was important, though it could be tough to for SEO, depending on the purpose of the test. Optimizely was the most popular testing tool discussed, not for SEO explicitly but for its ease of use and rapid route to results.
- Measurement of SEO efforts: From Google Webmaster Tools and others that aggregate multiple sources of data (links, rank, social) to Google Analytics, there is significant effort being put into measuring SEO and understanding the landscape. Crawl data seemed to be one area for which the only solution was something built in-house.
- Link building: This, of course, focused on content. Generating links at scale—by making every piece of content on your site shareable and providing incentives to your contributors to link back to you (leaderboards, etc.) — still came down to having content that users would value enough to share. The most successful link campaigns had other components, including participating in your site’s wider community by bringing data, insights and unique content to the conversation.
- Social: The link-building conversation easily transitioned to social, with a focus on Google+. Several companies have already seen increased click-through rates from +1 annotated results, which can be monitored inGoogle Webmaster Tools.
We wrapped up the afternoon with a loose commitment to following up in smaller, more focused sessions, possibly in Google+ Hangouts.
With investments in many companies, venture capital firms have an opportunity to leverage the experiences of individual portfolio companies for the benefit of the whole portfolio. When taken with previous Startup Lab sessions on big data, Google Analytics best practices, YouTube for marketers, and website performance optimization, this SEO summit underscores Google Ventures’ commitment to the success of its portfolio.
Thanks to all the members of portfolio companies who participated and to Google Ventures for hosting!
Posted by Jeff Smith, SEO Director of WhaleShark Media
