I’ll let you in on a little secret. I like to analyse websites made by ex-Googlers to see how they do SEO, and today I looked at a website called “Shoes of Prey” by Mike Knapp. I intend to keep this post in form of a summary and free from editorial or opinion.
Summary of Findings
- Inbound link anchor text is almost entirely brand or URL [see table]
- Use of descriptive internal anchor text on content and blog pages [example].
- Great range of productive phrases [see table] with minimal text content on the home page.
- Smart use of synonyms [see screenshot]
- High authority links [see table]
- Only 25 “content” pages.
- Massive media coverage and brand references (150,000 results).
- Roughly 2,320 pages indexed.
- Quiet blog with low comment & social activity across 256 pages.
- Thin, repetitive content doesn’t seem to affect the performance of the site [example].
- Massive gallery page (ascending, descending, new & none overview indexed) with well-handled faceted navigation
Anchor Text
| shoes of prey | 375 |
| www.shoesofprey.com | 74 |
| shoesofprey.com | 44 |
| http://www.shoesofprey.com/ | 38 |
| http://www.shoesofprey.com | 18 |
| (img) [No Anchor Text] | 18 |
| shoesofprey | 11 |
| [No Anchor Text] | 10 |
| shoes of pray | 8 |
| (img) shoes of prey | 6 |
| shoes | 4 |
| shoes of prey | 3 |
| michael fox | 3 |
| shoes of prey ontwerp je eigen s… | 3 |
| http://shoesofprey.com | 3 |
| shoes of prey’s | 3 |
| website | 2 |
| (img) shoes of prey logo | 2 |
| mike | 2 |
| visit website | 2 |
| shoes of prey com | 2 |
| here | 2 |
Search Snippet
The following search snippet screenshot illustrates triggering of related words as search matches and absence of keyword “buy”.
[Back to top]
Productive Keywords
| Keyword | Global Monthly Searches |
| make and buy your own shoes | 260.00 |
| design your own shoes | 110,000.00 |
| design your on shoes | 110,000.00 |
| custom make your own shoes | 2,400.00 |
| wedding shoes shoes | 673,000.00 |
| custom make your own shoe | 1,900.00 |
| shoes for pray | 1,300.00 |
| shoes with pray | 1,300.00 |
| shoes design your own | 110,000.00 |
| design and buy your own shoes | 260.00 |
| designer your own shoes | 590.00 |
| custom shoes design your own | 1,600.00 |
| designs your own shoes | 390.00 |
| wedding and bridal shoes | 673,000.00 |
| design your own custom shoes | 1,600.00 |
| design your own shoe | 110,000.00 |
| design ur own shoes | 320.00 |
| bespoke womens shoes | 170.00 |
| designing your own shoes | 320.00 |
| make your own custom shoes | 2,400.00 |
| customize my own shoe | 480.00 |
| design ur own shoe | 320.00 |
| make your own shoe | 110,000.00 |
| custom made bridal shoes | 720.00 |
| make your own shoes | 110,000.00 |
| make ur own shoes | 880.00 |
| design your own shoes design your own shoes | 110,000.00 |
| make ur own shoe | 880.00 |
| making your own shoes | 74,000.00 |
| custom make your shoes | 2,400.00 |
| making your own shoes online | 4,400.00 |
| custom design your own shoes | 1,600.00 |
| make ur own shoes online | 28.00 |
| custom womens shoes | 1,000.00 |
| design your shoe | 110,000.00 |
| custom made wedding shoes | 720.00 |
| making your own shoe | 74,000.00 |
| design ur own shoes online | 16.00 |
| small ladies shoes | 1,600.00 |
| make your own shoe online | 1,000.00 |
| small women shoes | 5,400.00 |
| women shoes for large feet | 3,600.00 |
| custom make shoes | 22,200.00 |
| make your own shoes online | 6,600.00 |
| design your own shoe online | 1,000.00 |
| make your own shoe design | 110,000.00 |
| wedding shoes wedding shoes | 673,000.00 |
| customize womens shoes | 140.00 |
| custom women shoes | 2,900.00 |
| width width shoes | 135,000.00 |
| ladies shoes for small feet | 110.00 |
| shoes for small women | 5,400.00 |
| custom your own shoes | 3,600.00 |
| wedding day shoes | 590.00 |
| design your shoes | 110,000.00 |
| shoes for small feet | 4,400.00 |
| design your own womens shoes | 73.00 |
| made your own shoes | 390.00 |
| shoes for large feet | 12,100.00 |
| larger womens shoes | 6,600.00 |
| designing your own shoes online | 28.00 |
| bridal shoes | 673,000.00 |
| small shoes for small feet | 4,400.00 |
| customize your on shoes | 14,800.00 |
| design your own shoes online | 6,600.00 |
| custom your own shoe | 2,900.00 |
| customise your own shoe | 12,100.00 |
| customize your own shoe | 12,100.00 |
| narrow width shoes | 8,100.00 |
| customise your own shoes | 12,100.00 |
| wedding shoes for brides | 165,000.00 |
| small feet shoes | 4,400.00 |
| shoes for large women | 33,100.00 |
| your own shoes | 135,000.00 |
| brides wedding shoes | 165,000.00 |
| custom shoes design | 5,400.00 |
| shoes for larger feet | 1,900.00 |
| women shoes for big feet | 3,600.00 |
| wide wide width shoes | 90,500.00 |
| odd sized feet | 73.00 |
| large women shoes | 33,100.00 |
| shoe for small feet | 1,900.00 |
| customize ur own shoes | 58.00 |
| design your own custom shoes online | 46.00 |
| larger women shoes | 9,900.00 |
| wide width shoes | 90,500.00 |
| design you own shoes | 1,600.00 |
| wide foot shoes | 14,800.00 |
| wedding bridal shoes | 673,000.00 |
| small shoes for women | 5,400.00 |
| customize own shoes | 14,800.00 |
| large womens shoe | 22,200.00 |
| wedding shoes | 673,000.00 |
| custom ur own shoes | 73.00 |
| shoes narrow width | 8,100.00 |
| customize your own shoes | 14,800.00 |
| shoes for bigger feet | 590.00 |
| custom own shoes | 3,600.00 |
| make my own shoe | 6,600.00 |
| handmade womens shoes | 480.00 |
| TOTAL SEARCH TRAFFIC | 6,432,605.00 |
Link Authority
| URL | Page Authority | Domain Authority |
| entrepreneur.com | 73 | 92 |
| fashiontribes.typepad.com | 69 | 95 |
| adwordsagencyapac.blogspot.com | 66 | 93 |
| highsnobette.com | 64 | 57 |
| feeds.feedburner.com | 62 | 97 |
| techcrunch.com | 59 | 96 |
| thenextweb.com | 59 | 91 |
| weddingchicks.com | 59 | 76 |
| crunchbase.com | 58 | 92 |
| color-stripes.blogspot.com | 57 | 93 |
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thanks!
This is the right way to do SEO. Thanks for sharing Dan and show us the way
This is some really interesting insight here, you’re really onto something. Whilst we know Google isn’t great at practicing what it preaches it’s great to see what it’s ex-employees do.
Excellent post Dan – I notice they have 95K Facebook followers & nearly 5K on Twitter. Having this sort of solid audience for their broadcasts must be a big help. Oh and very good design too 🙂 I better open another tab before my wife sees these shoes!
Interesting and creative approach Dan, especially if you identify someone from Google search team that has moved on and is publishing as part of a new venture. It would be darn near impossible to not optimize yours or client’s sites based on what you know will work, at least based on the algorithm and knowledge of it at the time they left. Actions speak louder than words and I would guess that Google makes all employees who work on the Google search algorithm and have direct visibility, sign rock-solid NDA which would preclude them from sharing any of these trade secrets during and after their tenure at Google. Thanks for sharing.
Using Scrapebox, I scraped a list of high PR blogs including “SEO” in the page title, and ran across your blog today. This is top quality content here, for sure. Thanks for your research. I’ve been using the Open Site Explorer at SEOMoz to look at sites listed on page 1 for search phrases like “viagra”, to see how competitive phrases are targeted, and your information above corresponds with what I’m seeing too. Use the brand name, and variants of the website address. I’ll be a repeat visitor to this blog for sure.
Love this post. I can’t imagine a better way to get insight into high level SEO. This reminds me of IRS agents that become accountants and utilize their knowledge to pull magic tricks on tax returns.
Great post, Dan. As you might expect they are pretty huge on Pinterest too: http://pinterest.com/source/shoesofprey.com/
I was surprised to see that the internal links weren’t clearly visible, though (text isn’t underscored or a different colour)
I noticed the hidden hyperlinks (or should I say underlines) but decided not to list it in my findings. It’s just CSS and the word is actually visible.
Haha, interesting analogy.
Yeah, not all, but some of them have done really well.
Yes you’d have to focus on those who have had close contact with search quality or search engineering team or have been a part of it.
Interesting that their blog has so few social shares. I guess the product is visual so it makes sense to focus more on chit chat and pinterest than reading long posts.
Did I miss the bit where something is mentioned about their non brand keyword rankings? Also this is probably off topic but it mentions that this is one of their best links fashiontribes.typepad.com but take a look at the site, Blatant selling of exact match anchor text (sitewide) links. Thoughts?
Following on from the comment about the number of pins they’ve received from pinterest, that really highlights another huge opportunity for them.
Firstly when you custom design a shoe, every shoes appears to generate a new URL – even when your custom shoe combination matches an existing shoe. As such, Shoes of Prey are generating duplicate image content needlessly. Just like traditional duplicate content problems, they are now splitting link equity between images that are identical & as such pinterest will show much lower sharing figures for each image.
Secondly they’ve got a huge opportunity to craft automatic alt text for each custom designed shoe as well, instead of “Design your own shoes” as the alt text. Improving that alone could yield solid results from image search but if they cleverly linked those into hub pages of listing similar shoes from other users – they could pull in all sorts of mid-long tail traffic for more precise/descriptive search phrases.
They should pay you money for that advice. Gold.
I noticed that too, but their link was organic I think.
Nothing so special so far, i guess this post is entirely created to gain quick links? isn’t it?
Hi Rick – I’m Mike Knapp, the author of the site, and the ex-Google software engineer who now work at Shoes of Prey. I need to point out that at my time at Google I didn’t work on search, and I have zero knowledge on the proprietary algorithms that Google uses. (I worked instead on internal apps and Google Reader.) The other co-founder who also worked at Google also didn’t work on search (he was on the business side). We actually haven’t done much (if any) work on SEO. We’ve been too busy building the business! However, I can see that it’s probably something we should look at more in the future. This is a great discussion. Thanks everyone! 🙂
Hi deyan,
Great post. I was wondering what other sites you have analysed that are run by ex-Googlers?
Thanks
David
Thanks Mike, I think there is much to learn from a pristine website such as yours. Too many SEOs obsess over things like anchor text, seo landing pages and keyword stuffing and just make things unnatural. Shoes of Prey is a great example of how a website can be successful just by focusing on the product and users.
Hi Dan
Great post, any bets on when they will have added a Pinterest page?! Seems crazy given their product is such a perfect match.