Vancity Buzz SEO Seminar 2.0

WELCOME TO SEODean Brookstone

INTRODUCTION

•SEO is: “When you fine tune your site and blog posts so that they get found and rank higher on search Engines like Google”

•How does this helps YOU?

TABLE OF CONTENTS• SEO Basics

• Section 1: Content

A) Keyword research

B) Blogging - making your posts visual - Make it easy for Google

• Section 2: Links- Using internal links

SEO BASICS

•Google ranks your post based on Authority and Relevance

AUTHORITY• Authority is how important your site or page is

RELEVANCE

• Relevance is how related your page is to a search term

ON THE INTERNET, NO

THREE PARTS OF SEO

•Content

•Links

•Structure

CONTENT IS KING•Every time you

post, Google registers it as a new page

•Google tries to scan every page of your website to determine what it's about

LINKS

• Google scans all the links on your website. Links look like this: Old Macdonald had a farm.

• they link to other websites and pages on your own site

• People can also link to your site from theirs

STRUCTURE

•The structure is the framework, like the outside of a house

•You guys only have to worry about content and links because you aren’t designing a website

SECTION 1: CONTENT

A) KEYWORD RESEARCH

HOW KEYWORDS WORK•When someone wants to find something, they

type words into a search bar

• These are keywords

KEYWORDS IN ACTIONKeyword

Paid Result

Results

GETTING FOUND USING KEYWORDS

• You can figure the out which keywords will help you rank based on:

- Traffic- How Specific they are- How Relevant they are

TRAFFIC

•Is anyone searching for that word or phrase?

•You want to focus on keywords that have results

GOOGLE ADWORDS TOOL•To find it, just google “Google Keyword

Tool”

•Enter the words you want to focus on and see how they're doing/what the competition is like

•Try to choose keywords that have a high traffic score and a low competition score

USING GOOGLE ADWORDS

GOOGLE ADWORD RESULTS

BE RELEVANT•Make sure the keyword is relevant to what you are

writing about

• If your article is about Donuts, your keyword shouldn’t be Broccoli... it should be Sprinkled Donuts, Chocolate Donuts, etc.

BE SPECIFIC

•Since the competition for popular words like "chinese food" and "cheap liquor" are high, look for the phrases that are easier to rank for

• Ex: "chinese food in Downtown Vancouver" or "cheap liquor stores in Gastown."

LONGTAILS

•When you look at the results, you'll notice that the longer and more specific a keyword phrase is, the less competition it has

•These are called "longtails"

NOTE TO SELF: USE YOUR KEYWORDS!

1. The Keyword is in the title of the page

2. The Keyword is used repeatedly throughout the post (minimum of 3 times)

3. The Keyword is used in the URL

B) BLOGGING

2 PARTS OF BLOGGING

•1) Make your posts visual

2) Format posts for search engines

1) MAKE YOUR POSTS VISUAL

•5 ways:1) Optimize titles2) Use pictures3) Use heading4)Break it up into chunks5) Bold certain words

OPTIMIZE TITLES• Start with the

Keyword you are focusing on

• THEN make your title enticing to get people interested and clicking on it

USE PICTURES•Make sure you are using pictures in your posts!

• Pictures are a great way to catch people's eye and get them to click on a link to read the full article

• Vancity Buzz kills this on the homepage, but you can use them in your articles to help as well

USE HEADINGS

• Put headings throughout your post - this helps people scan and focus on what they want

• Put your keywords in your headings to help with search engine optimization

• Important note: This is NOT the same thing as just bolding text

USING HEADINGS

1) Go to the top of your post

2) Select the heading you want

USING HEADERS CONT.

3) Highlight the text you want as a Header

4) PRESTO

WHERE ARE THE PICTURES AND HEADERS?

A excerpt from a recent VcB article on Stephen Harper: Great content, but

difficult to read

BREAK IT UP INTO CHUNKS

• use paragraphs and lists to make it easier to read

WHICH IS EASIER TO READ?

All Together

Chunked

BOLD CERTAIN WORDS

• Bold important phrases to stress what you are optimizing

• Bolding words also helps guide search engines and makes articles easier to read

2) FORMAT FOR SEARCH ENGINES

• URL structure

• Titles and Meta tags

• Pictures labeled and sized appropriately with hyperlinks removed

URL STRUCTURE•Most blogging software allows you to change the url

•Make sure there are no numbers or symbols in the URL to make it easier for search engines to figure out what your post is about

•WordPress should do this automatically, but if you have a really long title or one with numbers in it, change the URL

CHANGING YOUR URL

1) Find your URL box at the top of the page

2) Edit and then hit “OK”.

USE TITLE AND META TAGS

• Title tags are the headline for your page when it shows up on a search result

• Meta tags are that title’s description

• For our purposes, use them both as the same thing

TitleMeta

TITLE AND META TAGS IN ACTION

Title

This is on the bottom of your WordPress post page

Meta

LABELING PICTURES• Google is a very smart program, but it isn't great at

figuring out what a picture is about

• For example, if it’s a picture of a hockey stick, call it hocketstick.jpg instead of 3456stick.jpg. You can do this on your desktop

TITLE AND ALT TAGS

SIZE YOUR PHOTOS

• HUGE pictures slow down pages, hurt your pages rank

• don’t put up enormous pictures if you are using a smaller version

REMOVING HYPERLINKS

Click the photo, then the broken link button

DONE!

PERFECT KEYWORD USE

SECTION 2: LINKS

3 TYPES OF LINKS

• Inbound - when someone else links to you

•Outbound - when you link to someone else

• Internal - when you link to one of your own pages

INTERNAL LINKING

• This is something you can do that makes a HUGE difference

WHY USE INTERNAL LINKS?

•Your website can be a confusing place for a Google

RELEVANCE WITH INTERNAL LINKS

• Internal linking shows Google which pages are relevant to which and links them together

LINK TO RELATED POSTS

• If you are writing a post and you have written another one with related content, link them to each other

Cheap Chinese food? Yum!

Wait a sec... Thats related to

cheap food trucks!

USE RELEVANT ANCHOR TEXT

• Anchor text are the words that you actually use as a link when you create a link

Irrelevant

Relevant

PUT RELEVANT WORDS AROUND THE ANCHOR TEXT

•Not only is the anchor text important, but search engines also analyze the words around it

CHECK OUT THAT ANCHOR TEXT

I eat the pepperoni pizza at Joe’s Pizza Place for lunch.

I walk by Joe’s Pizza Place with my dog all the time

Relevant

Irrelevant

AUTHORITY WITH INTERNAL LINKS

•Internal links also let you tell Google which pages are the most important on your site

LINK TO THE SAME PAGE CONSISTENTLY

•The more you link to a page or post, the more you tell a crawler that this is the most important page on your website

•Make sure that the page you are linking to is consistent with the one you want to show up in searches

CREATING AUTHORITY IN ACTION

Best Pizzas Ever

Pepperoni Cheese Hawaiian

VCB SEO TOOL (YAOST)

THIS IS YAOST

GENERAL PAGE

!

WHAT IS ON THE GENERAL PAGE

- Focus Keyword: How to Use Analytics- SEO Title (also the title of my post): How to Use Analytics for your Small Business

- note that I used the keyword here- Content: I have used my keyword phrase 5 times in the article- Meta Description: I have used the keyword in my Meta Description- URL: The URL is red because it doesn’t include the keyword – click the “fix the page URL” to adjust it

Helpful Hint: In order to get the Green Light, you have to fill out this page properly

STEPS FOR USING GENERAL PAGE

• Step 1: hit “Save Draft”

• Step 2: Put in your Keyword: this is your keyword phrase as we have discussed in the full guide to SEO

• Step 3: Put in your SEO Title: this is the same as your article title at the top of your page. It must contain your keyword.

• Step 4: Put in your Meta Description: This is the hook for people searching for you online. It must contain your keyword.

STEPS PART 2• Step 5: Save your article again, then click the “Check” link with the button next to it (right

under the save draft button).

• 1 of 3 things will happen – the light will go red, yellow or green.

- If it’s Green, it means you have completed everything you need to and are ready to publish!

- If it’s yellow, it means you still need to do a few things. Check the analysis tab to see what is left

- if it’s red, you have quite a few things left to do. Check the analysis tab to see what is left

Step 6: do your updates, then hit save draft and check your article again. Once you get a green light, you are good to publish!

Helpful hint: You don’t have to do every little thing – just do your best. You will get better at SEO every time you write an article

ANALYSIS PAGE

!

CONCLUSION•Do keyword research using Adwords and use those

words in your posts

•make it visual with pictures, headings, bold, optimized titles

• format your posts for search engines

• link to posts relevant to what you are writing and use good anchor text