John Lewis may be one of the biggest names on the high street, but our SEO analysis has shown that they still have a long way to go to be just as visible and popular on the web.

URLs

The site’s problems start with its URL structure. Many URLs are long and buried deep within the site structure – not a great way to get indexed by the search spiders. Making the URL’s simpler is highly recommended as it would make them far easier to index.

To compound the problem, many product URLs are given generic names, like ‘product’ preceded by a string of numbers, rather than something descriptive with relevant keywords. Not only does this fail to describe the page adequately to the search engines, but it also makes it harder for web users to figure out what the page is about. To rectify the matter, “http://www.johnlewis.com/231459215/Product.aspx”, for example, could be altered to something more relevant, such as, “http://www.johnlewis.com/Organic-Surge-Gentle-Cream.aspx”

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When used as the anchor text for referring links, relevant keywords in the URLs would also further boost SEO value, and help web users to identify the page’s topic simply from its URL.

Meta data

Having the meta data buried far down the site’s code does it no favours, and moving this crucial information to the top of the page where it is more easily interpreted by search engines would be highly recommended.

On the subject of meta title tags, for some strange reason there are two on the John Lewis home page. One has a quite reasonable title, the other is left blank. This blank should be removed, as logic dictates that a page can only have a single title, and the search engines are particularly keen on logic.

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Site structure

XML site maps are lacking completely. These should be added to make it easier for the search engines to index the site’s many pages. Making it easy for the search engines to understand and explore your site should be a priority for any webmaster. As well as creating a sitemapindex. XML file for the entire site, we would recommend the addition of a number of category and product sitemaps for sites like John Lewis’.

A variety of empty and broken pages also do little to enamour the site to search engines, or consumers for that matter. People perceive sites with even just a few broken links as being low quality, and are more likely to become frustrated and click away. Search engines may downgrade the ranking of a site with many broken links, for these same reasons.

We also found a total of 513 internal links on the site. This is quite an excessive number, and though having so many may not directly damage the SEO value of web pages, it can dilute the concentration of link juice that passes through them.

Content

Search engines are above all else looking for high quality content that will be relevant and useful to their users. Good quality content must of course be well written, but there are other factors to consider too.

The most glaring omission from the John Lewis site is a lack of H1 tags. These are judged by search engines to have at least a little more significance than regular text, so should be used with keywords for extra benefit. Using relevant H1 tags to describe a page’s content is also held as best practice in terms of web usability too. You should avoid stuffing keywords into the headers though, as this can be seen as ‘keyword stuffing’ by the search engines, resulting in your content being penalised in the rankings. Our recommendation is usually to include no more than two keyword instances in H1 tags on any given page.

Keywords

It’s important to consider how the search engines will view your site. In John Lewis’ case, Google would see things like ‘skip to main content’, ‘help’, and ‘register’ before it sees anything else – words that are not keywords and bear no relevance to the site’s actual content.

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This should be rectified, by moving these irrelevant words further down the DIV structure. The perceived importance of these words could also be reduced by converting some links into images; for example, by using an image of a shopping cart to symbolise the words.

On the subject of images, relevant alt tags should be added to all images, to ensure that they are indexed properly.  Search engine spiders can’t interpret images themselves, but they do read the information provided in the alt tags, which are used to specify the text that should be displayed if the image or other element cannot be loaded.

The general aim with content should be to emphasise the importance of keywords which are relevant to the site. In John Lewis’ case, this would be things like ‘furniture’ or ‘clothing’.

Beware of duplicate content

John Lewis’ creation of a mobile version of its site is to be commended, but to ensure that this is not viewed as duplicate content, we would recommend using the rel=”canonical” tag. At present, both versions of the site contain the same content and URLs. As well as using the canonical tag, it would be advisable to rewrite some of the content, particularly the main information and category pages.

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Keep it fresh

Finally, a site like John Lewis might improve its search engine rankings by adding a regularly updated news section or blog. Search engines value web pages that add new content regularly, as they are deemed as being more current and relevant to users.

Taking these factors into account, and with the right advice from an SEO expert, your website can avoid the mistakes that even the big boys can often make, creating an effective, productive site that appeals to both your human visitors and, just as importantly, the search engines too.

1. Analyze traffic patterns.
2. Look for places where visitors tend to exit.
3. See which landing pages funnel to conversion pages most effectively.
4. Look at pages with high drop-off frequencies and see if there are any content or technical issues to modify.

To start using Visitors Flow, go to your Analytics interface. Navigate to Standard Reporting, then Audience, and finally Visitors Flow. Select the starting point for the flow visual; you can choose from Country/Territory, Traffic Sources, Content, or System from the drop-down menu. The report is organized by “interaction,” or each page the user clicks through to. These are the nodes. By hovering over the nodes, you can get more detailed information. The nodes will tell you the most popular destinations, drop-offs, and how visitors continued on the site. To trace which pages lead to which connections, you click on the connection.
At first, looking at these visualizations can be confusing; it looks like spaghetti, and it can be hard to track which strand leads to another. When beginning with Visitors Flow, reduce the number of connections to simplify the interface. To do this, find the Connections slider at the top and move it to the left.
The Visitors Flow report has the capability to tell you a lot about your site and how people navigate it. If the interface has intimidated you, jump in. Try it with fewer dimensions and connections and work your way up.

1. The 60 new apps, with more on the way, mean that people will spend even more time interacting with Facebook in one form or another. This can mean greater engagement, and on a deeper level, with brands.
2. Brands will be able to target an audience better. If they can see that users like not only music, but specific artists, they can tailor ads with incredible accuracy.
3. It appears that ads will remain on the viewable page rather than scrolling off as people navigate down the page, which means you get more exposure per impression.
4. Marketers and advertisers will be able to create more varied Sponsored Stories, which increases the likelihood of click-throughs.

This new territory is going to be tough for marketers to navigate, simply because it is so vast and uncharted. It’s the Wild West of social networking, but if played right, it can be a huge boon to businesses and brands.

1. Google will offer impression share metrics reports at the ad group level. Marketers will be able to see which ad groups are not “capturing the majority of available impressions,” or underperforming.
2. Ad group reports will have three new columns; some complain that this is going to bury important information, so you have to be able to sort it out. The columns are: Impr. Share, the percentage of impressions received divided by impressions you were eligible for; Lost IS (Rank), the share of impressions that were lost because of your Ad Rank; and Exact Match IS (Search Network only), the percentage of impressions you receive for exact match keyword searches divided by the estimated number of exact match impressions you were eligible for.
3. Algorithm updates for more accurate campaign impression share metrics, including refined campaign-level statistics and once-daily updates.
4. Users will be able to set up as many as 100 automated rules (such as increase bids, decrease bids, pause keywords when…, enable keywords when…), an increase of 90.
5. Users will also be able to undo changes made by one or more of these rules simply by clicking “Undo.”

And, arguably the biggest news:

1. Google will allow two enhanced mobile features: Wi-Fi targeting and targeting based on operating system. The first will allow you to target campaigns to mobile users on a Wi-Fi connection. This expands the reach of your campaign, and will also help if your ad, campaign, and/or landing page has high bandwidth content that you still want users to access.

The second mobile feature is an expansion: you can already target campaigns based on OS, but in February, you will be allowed to limit views to specific versions of those operating systems, such as iOS 4.0 or Android 3.0 and above. Google calls this a more “granular” approach, and it can allow you to target the right users when offering an application or service specific to one of these systems.
While the reports will look different and you might have to root around to find the information you need, the enhancements to AdWords can help you make your next PPC campaign more effective and successful.

Search, Plus Your World will incorporate data from your Google+ profile and Circles, business pages, and posts. If, for instance, you are searching for apple pie recipes and your friend Dave +1’d his favorite, that will appear on your search results page. Dave’s faves will not, however, appear in the results of strangers. Twitter is adamant that this is “bad” for everyone, especially those seeking information. The microblogging site says that it will make it harder for users to find up-to-the-minute information on world events, such as the riots in Egypt in 2011. They, and others, also contend that Google is unfairly favoring its own results.

But beyond these concerns, there is another. Do users want their search results to be customized? Do you care that Dave, a contact from work that you met twice, likes this apple pie recipe? Is he an apple pie authority? Why should his +1 mean anything to you? And if it doesn’t, is it pushing back links or sites that could mean something to you, like a friend’s re-tweet on apple pie being a superfood? Slate’s Farhad Manjoo writes:

I’m fine with personalized search – Google should use what it knows about me to improve my results. What bothers me is “social search,” which uses what Google knows about other people to determine my search results. More often than not, the inclusion of social results on Google and Bing seems like a cheap gimmick. They don’t improve rankings in any meaningful way, and to the extent that they are replacing other valuable links, they’re cluttering my search page.

Mashable did an informal poll on their website to determine if regular users actually want Google to search their worlds. According to the latest figures, the answer is no.

Do you prefer your searches to be generic (as in everyone gets the same results for the same queries) or do you like to know which content your contacts recommend?

What are personal search results? Matt Cutts explains using an example. As an avid Werewolf player, Cutts did a search (Google, of course) for the general term “werewolf” using Search, Plus Your World. The results were customized, including, even, an image result with Cutts himself in it. The photo was taken and posted by someone in his Circle, Cutts was tagged, and Google returned this personal, relevant result.

The “decline” of SEO, then, comes in the reduced power of the link and the increased power of social media. When your friends and/or connections +1, like, or tag content, it will show up in related search queries because it is more likely to be relevant to you. For now, Search, Plus Your World uses content from Google’s social platforms, but that could well change.

Twitter, Facebook, and other social sites charge that Google is playing favorites with its own content, but Eric Schmidt says results from these sites will be given priority – if they allow Google to troll their data. This is an “if” that Facebook and Twitter are strenuously objecting to at the moment, but in the race to stay at the top of the SERPs, they may alter their current positions.

Is this, finally, the SEO killer that has been lurking in the shadows? Not really. Social media is not replacing SEO. Rather it is augmenting it and continuing its evolution. The cornerstone of any SEO campaign is content, and this can help your site get shared, liked, or tagged in order to show up on personal results. It is offering one more weapon (Google+) in your arsenal, but not everyone is or will be using Search Plus. Solid SEO is still important, but to this, you must add good SMO.

The goal of SEO is to see and be seen, to be found. That goal doesn’t change even though the methods may. SEO isn’t terminal; it just isn’t static.

*Rich snippets. These are markup tags that help search users get better, more relevant results. They’re tremendously useful, and they do present SEO opportunities in that you can optimise your markups. However, Google provides more information to users before they click through. This well may decrease your page views.

What can you do? For one, make your rich snippets incredible. They can increase click-throughs if you provide well-written, original, and inviting content. Snippets can help your rank, so that is a plus. Build on that with valuable content and a strong lead-in.

*Negative press. 90 percent of consumers trust online reviews and ratings. This is incredibly powerful, and it can be a great boon for business. On the other side, an angry customer or a disgruntled employee can cause a lot of damage. Reputation monitoring is crucial as more and more consumers demand reviews and more sites comply.

Always, always, always deal with negative comments. Evaluate them. Do they have merit? Did you mess up? Were you in the right? Do you need to offer a replacement product or perform a free service? Do you need to stand up for your business against unreasonable claims? You do not always need to appease customers but you always need to address concerns and complaints. Sometimes, an apology turns an angry customer into a repeat customer – and a vocal one at that.

Another must: monitor your buzz. You work hard on your content, so monitor it. What are people saying? What are they not saying? You need to know.

*More info. Usually, more data is good. But the new interface for Google Analytics may be overwhelming at first. There is so much information that it can be hard to locate exactly what you want or need. It’s hard to find the data in all that data and KPIs may get lost.

Set some time aside and take a tour of Google Analytics. There are various tutorials and guides online so you can familiarize yourself with its new features and interface. Learn how to find what you need and what you can filter out.

There’s always another SEO challenge. But there is always a way to overcome, improve, and innovate.