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A complete overview of search engine optimisation principles and practical advice for small businesses.
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Search Engine Optimisation
101
What’s on the Agenda?
1. A bit about me and e-CBD and this workshop2. Why search engines are so important to business3. SEO vs. SEM4. SEO Tips and Advice5. AdWords Tips and Advice6. Further Reading7. Question Time
About me: Matt Granfield
• Communications degree• Worked in Public Relations and Journalism• Joined e-CBD with Marilyn Strauss in 2001• Focussed on online marketing• Became Marketing Magazine’s ‘Online Marketing
Guru’• Now I head e-CBD with Marilyn, and memery and
write regular features for Marketing Mag
About This Workshop
• It’s not a lecture, it’s a workshop so if you have questions, write them down and we’ll go through them at the end.
• If something isn’t clear just yell out and I’ll go over it again, but if you’ve just got a general question, save it for the end.
How Much Do We Know?
• Does anyone not have a website?• Who has dabbled a little bit in SEO?• Who doesn’t really know much at all about SEO?• Who has used Google AdWords?
Why search engines are so important to
business
Search Engines for Local Businesses
• 86% of people have used search engines to find local businesses
• 78% of consumers use the Internet more than they did two years ago
• 52% of consumers use telephone directories less than they did two years ago
• 78% of consumers research a product online before making a purchase using a search engine
• 73% of people prefer to find products and services using search engines than have an advertisement sent to them
Source: Nielsen ‘Why Search Matters to Local Business’
Search Engines for Local Businesses
• Websites in the first three results on Google get five times as many clicks as those outside the top three.
• Google local search is predicted to take over the Yellow Pages.
Search Engines for Local Businesses
Virtually all of our clients who rank in the first few results of Google get more than 50% of their business that way.
SEO vs. SEM
SEO vs. SEM
SEO is search engine optimisation: the process of improving the visibility of a web site or a web page in search engines via the ‘organic’ search results.
SEM is Search Engine Marketing, it’s an umbrella term including:
• SEO• AdWords• Yahoo Ads• Bing
SEO vs. SEM
SEO Tips and Advice: Understanding what
Google wants
SEO tips and Advice: How do we know what works?
SEO tips and Advice: How do we know what works?
Google tells us.
SEO tips and Advice: How do we know what works?
Google tells us.
Everything you need to know is publicly available information from Google.
SEO tips and Advice: What does Google want?
• To be #1• To be trusted• To give people the most relevant results• The way to rank the highest in Google is to be
the most relevant result
SEO tips and Advice: How does Google figure out what sites are relevant?
SEO tips and Advice: How does Google figure out what sites are relevant?
It sends out spiders to crawl the web and gather information about every page they find.
These spiders crawl the web from link to link. Each link counts as a ‘vote’ for a website. The more links a website has pointing to it, the more voting power it has.
As Google crawls the web, they read every page and store the text and images they find in a giant database.
SEO tips and Advice: What are the spiders looking for?
SEO tips and Advice: What are the spiders looking for?
• Words in the text on the page, especially:• Headings• Words at the top of the page
• Words in the coding on the page, such as:• The page ‘title’• The page ‘META description’• The words in the image ‘ALT tags’
SEO tips and Advice: Choosing Keywords
Google has a keyword tool. Use it.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
SEO Tips and Advice: Putting it into Practice
SEO tips and Advice: The Title Tag
What’s a title tag?
SEO tips and Advice: The Title Tag
What’s a title tag?
SEO tips and Advice: The Title Tag
What to do with it:
• The title is what the page is all about. When someone adds a page to their ‘favourites’ list, the title should accurately describe the content of that individual page.
• The title should be unique for each page.• When Google tries to figure out what a page is about, it
looks at the title first.• Make sure your keywords are in the page title.• Keywords don’t necessarily have to be next to each
other to get picked up.• Use shorthand (‘&’ instead of ‘and’)• Edit the title in your content management system (or
ask your web designer to do it)
SEO tips and Advice: The Title Tag
Good
e-CBD — A Gold Coast Web Design + SEO + Online Marketing Agency
Bad
e-CBD
SEO tips and Advice: The Title Tag
Good
Gold Coast Lawyers - O'Keefe Mahoney Bennett
Bad
O'Keefe Mahoney Bennett
Bad
Gold Coast Lawyers, Gold Coast Solicitors, Gold Coast solicitor, gold Coast lawyer, lawyers, solicitors, lawyer
SEO tips and Advice: Put the Keywords on the Page• Use your keywords in a heading, in bold, high
on the page, in the middle of the page and at the end of the page.
• Make it look natural. Your website copy is there as a marketing tool. The site has to read beautifully. It should make your high school English teacher proud.
• Don’t worry too much about the ‘keyword density’, but 1-5% is about right, depending on the page.
SEO tips and Advice: Put the Keywords on the PageGood
Car Loans: http://www.aussiecarloans.com.au/
Bad
Search engine: http://www.google.com.au/
SEO tips and Advice: Use the META Description Tag
What is it?
SEO tips and Advice: Use the META Description Tag
What is it?
SEO tips and Advice: Use the META Description Tag
• Accurately summarize the page’s content - Write a description that would both inform and interest users if they saw your description meta tag as a snippet in a search result.
• Use unique descriptions for each page - Having a different description meta tag for each page helps both users and Google.
• Use 140 characters.
• Put your keywords in here, but don’t get too excited about it.
SEO tips and Advice: Use the META Description Tag
Good
e-CBD is a Gold Coast web design, SEO and online marketing agency. We've helped hundreds of big (and little) brands make the most of the web.
Bad
Robina Plumbers, Broadbeach Plumbers, Surfers Paradise Plumbing, Gold Coast Plumbing Services, Mermaid, 24 HR / 7 Day Emergency Plumbing Services
SEO tips and Advice: Don’t worry about the META Keyword tag
• Search engines ignore the META Keyword tag
SEO tips and Advice: Use Friendly URLs
• Use your keywords in the names of your pages.
Eg. http://www.e-cbd.com/web-design-services.html
• Separate them with hyphens
• Having keywords in the domain name helps, but for a business, it’s not crucial. It’s far more important to have a memorable brand.
• wotif.com ranks higher (and makes more money) than hotels.com.au and hotels.com
SEO tips and Advice: Heading Tags
• Heading tags are used to present structure on the page to users. There are six sizes of heading tags, beginning with <h1>, the most important, and ending with <h6>, the least important.
• Read up on them and use them properly (and make sure your web designer does too) – Put your keywords in them!
• http://www.aussiecarloans.com.au/ and http://www.goldcoastaustralia.com/ are great examples
SEO tips and Advice: Image ‘Alt’ Tags
When you insert an image into a
website, most content
management systems will ask you to specify a
description for it.
SEO tips and Advice: Image ‘Alt’ Tags
This description is what blind
people see when they navigate a website using a talking browser.
SEO tips and Advice: Image ‘Alt’ Tags
This text also shows up if the image
won’t load for any reason.
It’s really important to describe the
image accurately, but try and get your keywords in here as well, without going
over the top.
SEO tips and Advice: Make your site easy to navigate
Remember how we said that Google
crawls the web from link to link? It finds pages on your site
the same way. Make sure every page of
your website is accessible from at least one text link.
A ‘sitemap’ is a great way to do this.
SEO tips and Advice: Make your site easy to navigate
If you have no links, or a site made entirely from Flash, Google can’t read your content and probably won’t list you in their results.
SEO tips and Advice: Create Interesting ContentRemember how we
said that Google counts links to your website as a vote?
The best way of getting links is by
having content people want to link to. Starting a blog
with industry news, tips, or advice is a
great way to do this. Make your website a
resource for others to refer to
SEO tips and Advice: Link to Other People
Google works by crawling around the web following links. They love links. If Google loves links, it’s a good idea to give them what they love. Think about other useful, relevant websites you could link off to from yours. Google will like you.
SEO tips and Advice: Get Other Sites to Link to You
Getting other websites to link to you is the single most important thing you can do to get your site ranking well in Google.
SEO tips and Advice: Get Other Sites to Link to You
• Each link is a vote. The more ‘votes’ you get from other website, the higher you will rank.• The ‘votes’ have to be relevant though. A link
from a site that isn’t about similar topics to yours won’t help you.• Links from powerful, trusted websites are worth
more votes. • For example: Government websites, non-profit
organisations, educational websites, popular newspapers, important bloggers and industry directories.
SEO tips and Advice: Get Other Sites to Link to You• Google’s webmaster guidelines say you should:
“Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is
online.”
• Submit your sites to directories• Contact bloggers and let them know about your
site (they’ll want to know why your site is interesting enough to tell their readers about)• Swap links with your business partners, suppliers
and clients• Ask your friends and family
SEO tips and Advice: Get Other Sites to Link to YouOnce you’ve tried all the obvious places and run out of cousins:
• Search for the keywords you’re targeting and note the top 30 results. If appropriate and likely, email them and politely ask them for a link.
• Search for the keywords you’re targeting and note the top 30 results. Go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ and check the ‘inlinks’ of each of them. See who comes up and if they’re appropriate, write to them nicely and offer to swap links.
• Do a web search for ‘your industry’ and the word links – you’ll find lots of links pages.
SEO tips and Advice: Get Other Sites to Link to YouWhen you get people to link to you, ask if they can use your keywords in the ‘anchor text’ – the text that is the link.
Do a search for ‘click here’ and you’ll see why this is important.
SEO tips and Advice: Get Other Sites to Link to You
So how many links do you need to get?
SEO tips and Advice: Get Other Sites to Link to YouLinks required to rank #1-3 in Google
Search Website Links
Main Beach real estate http://www.realtygoldcoast.com/ 78
Gold Coast plumber http://www.whywait.com.au/ 137
Gold Coast limousines http://www.mygoldcoastlimo.com/ 189
Car loan http://www.aussiecarloans.com.au/ 2,350
Gold Coast car rental http://www.eastcoastcarrentals.com.au/ 3,230
Gold Coast accommodation http://www.goldcoastaustralia.com/ 4,640
SEO tips and Advice: Google Maps
SEO tips and Advice: Google Maps
• Update your Google Local profile with pictures• Get reviews• Link to your maps page from your website• Use the keywords on the maps page• Make sure you appear on other people’s custom
Google Maps• Do a Google.com.au search for ‘Brisbane Cafe’ and
you’ll see what works
SEO tips and Advice: Google Webmaster Tools
• This is where Google will communicate with you and give you advice.• Create an account and check it out.
Google AdWords
Google AdWords
• Google has made it so that the ads which get the most clicks pay less money and appear at the top.• This is so big companies can’t out-bid everyone.• It’s nice, but it means that if your ads don’t
perform well, you’ll end up paying more so always get professional advice, at least at the beginning, to help set up your campaign, or they’ll be tainted forever.• Include your phone number in your ad – then you
don’t have to pay for the click.• Read all the other ads competing with you and
stand out!
Google AdWords
• Create a call to action• Create a special offer• Setup conversion goals so you can track sales• Create dedicated landing pages with content
targeted to people coming from Google – it’s almost always a bad idea to send people straight to your homepage• Make every word count, get rid of useless words• Refine your ads and test them over time.
Google Analytics
Further Reading
Further Reading
Google SEO Start Guidehttp://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide.html
Google Webmaster Bloghttp://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/
Google Webmaster Guidelineshttp://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
Matt Cutts’ Bloghttp://www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/googleseo/
Webmaster Worldhttp://www.webmasterworld.com/
Audience Question Time
More Information?
1300 733 088www.e-cbd.commatt@e-cbd.com
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