SEO for Beginners: An Interactive Workshop

5.10.2014

Intro to SEO: ROCKET YOUR SITE TO THE TOP OF SEARCH RESULTS

Welcome! Girl Develop It is here to provide affordable and accessible programs to learn software through mentorship and hands-on instruction. Some “rules” - We are here for you - Every question is important - Help each other - Have fun

Tell us about yourself! Who are you? What do you hope to get out of the class? What’s your favorite word?

What we’ll cover today ON-PAGE OPTIMIZATION TECHNICAL SEO LINK BUILDING SOCIAL MEASURING SUCCESS

What to expect A BREAK HALFWAY THROUGH WIDE RANGE OF TOPICS HAVE FUN! (PLEASE ASK QUESTIONS) SURVEY

Emma Still

• SEO Account Manager - SEER

• @mmstll

• linkedin.com/in/emmastill/

You are… business or website owner / marketing or ecomm manager / developer / designer / curious

…looking to grow your website SALES / FORM SUBMISSIONS / REGISTRATIONS / TRAFFIC

Search Landscape PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Where we want to be

GAINING VISIBILITY BECOMING MORE COMPLEX

• Knowledge Graph - try it out!

– “bagel vs. english muffin”

– “famous jazz composers”

– “Britney Spears Toxic”

• Devices

• Personalization

• Local – try it out!

– “Pizza places”

– “HVAC Philadelphia”

The Present T

“FUTURE-PROOFING” YOUR STRATEGY

• Consistency

• Long-term mindset

• Integrated marketing

• Proactive

• Understand search engine’s goals

The Future T

Search is… T

• One of the most popular online activities

• Key in the purchase process

• Always going to be king (glasses, mobile, desktop, etc.)

• “…the first interaction point for many of your current and prospective users”

Understanding how it works HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES RANK A WEBSITE?

Search Engine Goals

• RELEVANCY

Search Engine Goals

• RELEVANCY – Fresh, unique, quality

content

Search Engine Goals

• RELEVANCY

• QUALITY

Search Engine Goals

• RELEVANCY

• QUALITY – Technical

– Mobile

– URL structure

– Page speed

• RELEVANCY

• QUALITY

• AUTHORITY

Search Engine Goals

• RELEVANCY

• QUALITY

• AUTHORITY – Links

– Citations

– Social shares and mentions

Search Engine Goals

“How does a website become relevant, quality, and authoritative?”

Primary Factors ON-PAGE OFF-PAGE “IN”-PAGE

Keyword Research

Optimize

Build Authority

Measure

The SEO Process

On-Page SEO

On-Page SEO THE THINGS THAT HELP GOOGLE FIND YOUR WEBSITE

On-Page SEO CAN BE SUMMARIZED, IN ITS SIMPLEST FORM AS: KEYWORDS CONTENT META DATA

• The things people are searching to arrive on your website

Keywords / Content / Meta Data

• Try it out! Write down what you would type in to Google to find the items above.

Mid ring

Midi ring

Knuckle ring

Mid knuckle ring

Half finger rings

Champagne glass

Champagne flute

Wine glass

Sparkling wine glasses

Toasting flutes

Champagne stemware

Glass champagne flutes

FOUNDATION OF SEO

FIGURE OUT WHAT YOUR AUDIENCE IS SEARCHING FOR BEFORE YOU CAN OPTIMIZE FOR IT

Keywords / Content / Meta Data O

Keyword Research

Optimize

Build Authority

Measure

TAKE THESE INTO CONSIDERATION

•Relevance

•Search Volume

•Competition

•Seasonality

• Intent

• Offer

• Supply

• Revenue Business

• Ranking

• Content

• SERP Landscape Status

OPTIMIZE EXISTING / CREATE NEW

Clarifying “content” WORDS ON A PAGE VIDEOS INFOGRAPHICS BLOG POSTS WHITE PAPERS CALCULATORS OR WIDGETS IMAGES ETC.

Content - DON’T DO THIS

Content - DO THIS O

Content – DO THIS O

META TITLE, DESCRIPTION, AND KEYWORDS

• Try it out!

• Browser

• SERPs

• External Websites

• Character limit: depends

• Plugins

H TAGS, ALT TEXT

URL STRUCTURE, INTERNAL LINKING

• Employ empathy, shorter is better, keywords, hyphens

• Linking absolutely vs. relatively On

http://moz.com/learn/seo/on-page-factors

IMAGE OPTIMIZATION: FILE NAMES, ALT TEXT, DESCRIPTIVE TEXT

• Save files with descriptive text

• Always use alt text (logos, headers, product images, etc.)

In-Page SEO

In-Page SEO THE CODE ON YOUR SITE THAT SEARCH ENGINES USE TO DETERMINE RELEVANCE

In-Page SEO In

Keyword Research

Optimize

Build Authority

Measure

• Crawling & Indexing

• Robots.txt

• Sitemap.xml

• Mobile

• Duplication

• Structured data

Basics In

Basics: Crawling and Indexing In

• Try it out!

• Google and other search engines “crawl” your website

• To see the last time Google has visited and indexed your site, check the cache date.

• Check index status in Google Webmaster Tools

Basics: Robots.txt In

• Try it out!

• Every website should have a robots.txt

• Block search engines from crawling parts of your website

Basics: sitemap.xml In

• Try it out!

• Every website should have an xml sitemap

• Tell search engines about all pages on your site

• Different than an HTML sitemap

Basics: Mobile In

• Google recommends responsive web design

– Easier for users to interact with, share, and link to

– Easier for search engines to index

– No redirects needed (reduces load time)

– Saves resources for site and search engine crawlers

Basics: Duplication In

• Common forms of duplication – Try it out!

– www. to non www., /index.html, trailing slash, https vs http

– Parameters

– Casing

• What to do if you have duplicate pages

– Canonical

– 301 redirect

– noindex

RICH SNIPPETS

Basics: Structured Data In

RICH SNIPPETS

• Authorship

• Reviews

• Rich Pins/Twitter Cards/Open Graph

• Try it out! – “Structured Data Testing Tool”

Basics: Structured Data In

Off-Page SEO

Off-Page SEO “EARNED MEDIA” SIGNALS SENT TO SEARCH ENGINES

Off-Page SEO CAN BE SUMMARIZED, IN ITS SIMPLEST FORM AS: LINK BUILDING CITATIONS

Link building is the process of getting other websites to link to your website.

What is link building? O

Why is link building important?

Links connect the Internet.

Link building = Authority Authority = Trust Trust = Rankings Rankings = ?

WHEN ANOTHER WEBSITE LINKS TO YOUR WEBSITE, GOOGLE SEES THIS AS A VOTE OF CONFIDENCE FOR YOUR WEBSITE

Link Building O

Quality of Links > Quantity of Links

Link Building O

PRINCIPLES: HOW DO YOU GET LINKS?

• Content

• Build relationships

Link Building O

Keyword Research

Optimize

Build Authority

Measure

#RCS (real

company stuff)

• Example: http://rcs.seerinteractive.com/money/

• 10k Tweets

• 14k Facebook shares

• 800 websites have linked to this

TACTICS: HOW DO YOU GET LINKS?

• Testimonials

• Unlinked mentions

• Brand misspellings

• Media mentions

• Sponsorships

• Local citations

• Speaker bios

• Contribute content on other sites

Link Building O

BACKLINKS BEWARE

• Anchor text

• Link networks

• Remember where Google’s going…

• READ THIS: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en

• Diverse backlink profile

Link Building O

Social Signals and SEO

Social Signals and SEO DO TWEETS/LIKES/+1S AFFECT RANKINGS?

The short answer: NO

The longer answer: THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT IS STILL SPECULATIVE, BUT PROJECTED TO BE A CRITICAL RANKING FACTOR IN THE NEAR FUTURE.

THINGS TO TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION • Increased visibility and brand awareness = links and citations = rankings

• Increased positive reviews on G+/Yelp/etc. = increased visibility in local search

• Google+

– Posts crawled & indexed almost immediately

– Studies done showing correlation between +1s and rankings

• Using social influence to build relationships = links and citations = rankings

• Audience analysis

How Social [indirectly] Affects SEO S

Measuring Success

Measuring Success HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU’RE DONE?

Measuring Success

Keyword Research

Optimize

Build Authority

Measure

GOOGLE ANALYTICS

• What pages are you optimizing?

• Organic traffic

• Referral traffic

• (not provided)

Traffic M

GOOGLE ANALYTICS

• Goals

• E-commerce

• Your wallet/your phone/lead capture

Conversions M

Questions? Please take the survey: BITLY.COM/GDI-SEO Additional Resources: EMMASTILL.COM/BEGINNER-SEO-RESOURCES/

emmas@seerinteractive.com @mmstll

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