Meet The SEOs: Up Close @SMX West 2015

What's the latest on how top SEOs are handling the challenges of the business? Contributor Janet Driscoll Miller recaps a key panel discussion from SMX West.

The “Meet the SEOs” panel, a regular feature at recent SMX conferences, brings together top SEO experts to answer questions from the audience and provide sometimes different takes on approaches and tactics. The panel for SMX West 2015 included:

• Rae Hoffman, CEO of PushFire
• Wil Reynolds, Founder of Seer Interactive
• Marshall Simmonds, Founder and CEO of Define Media Group, Inc.
• Ellen White, Director of Organic Search (SEO) at Team Detroit/Ford Motor Company

The panelists answered a variety of questions during this session, but following are a few that stuck out to me. (Note that none of these are direct quotes — the names in bold are just to denote which speaker I am summarizing.)

If My Site Has Canonical And Hreflang Tags, How Should They Interact?

Ellen: Ellen felt that there are many complexities to this, and the answer depends on the situation. She suggested to make sure your hreflang tags are properly formatted.
Marshall: Marshall shared that his company uses the canonical that is self-referencing and the hreflang tag.  He also shared that one of the best pieces of advice he heard during this year’s conference was in reference to redirecting content. First put the rel=canonical on the current page and point it at the new destination. Let that sit for a few days or weeks, and then use the 301 redirect.

How Do You Justify SEO After The Initial Setup Phase?

Rae: Rae said that many companies (especially small businesses) find it difficult to justify a long-term technical SEO contract, and an alternative is to have someone come in and do an audit every so often. But other aspects of SEO — such as links, branding, and content marketing – are more of an ongoing effort. These are the wind in your sails to keep you going.

What Are The Best Content Marketing Tactics From The Last Year?

Rae: Solve problems. Give data. Show how your product solves their problem – but don’t just show your tool solving the problem.
Ellen: Look for content gaps in certain topic areas that people are talking about. Fill them.
Wil: Look at what’s already performed for the client. What’s gotten a lot of links or social shares without a lot of promotional effort? Wil tested content distribution networks to expose good content to others and get links. As a result, it helped people and they linked to it.
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