DTC356: SEO03/21/2016

ONE SIZE FITS SOME.

➤ There is no neutral SEO.

➤ SEO plans have to be matched to two separate things:

➤ Your web site

➤ Your customers

YOUR SEO PLAN

FACTORS TO CONSIDER

➤ business to business

➤ business to consumer

➤ large organization

➤ small organization

➤ very small organization

➤ brick and mortar

➤ blog

➤ web designer

➤ non profit

FIND YOUR SITE’S NICHE

USE YOUR ADVANTAGES

➤ Example: a business to business firm has some things playing its its favor:

➤ Niche audience: it should be obvious who is interested in your site and why.

➤ High value conversions: your audience comes to your site looking to do business.

➤ Text-heavy content: while casual visitors don’t like to read, b2b sites need to communicate clearly, so the “wall of text” is acceptable.

BE AWARE OF YOUR CHALLENGES

➤ Example: B2B sites will struggle with the following:

➤ Inbound links will be hard: You will find it challenging to get inbound links to your site, making page rank something you’ll have to work for.

➤ Slow SEO life cycle: B2B sites will change more slowly than other kinds of sites, making it harder to gather data on your audience.

➤ Conversion value can be hard to estimate: Sales are easy to value—everything else can be a bit of a guessing game.

YOU’LL WANT TO ADDRESS THE

CHALLENGES AND ADVANTAGES YOUR

PARTICULAR SITE HAS.

FACTORS TO CONSIDER

➤ business to business

➤ business to consumer

➤ large organization

➤ small organization

➤ very small organization

➤ brick and mortar

➤ blog

➤ web designer

➤ non profit

THREE ELEMENTS OF SEO

THREE ELEMENTS OF SEO

➤ Technical: optimized with keywords in strategic places and clear site structure. Bots can easily scan and capture useful data from your site.

➤ Marketing: keywords are carefully chosen and match both your organization and your target audience. Your SEO plan accounts for multiple kinds of search and integrates social media efforts.

➤ Measurement: Constant efforts are made to monitor traffic and effectiveness. SEO is a long-game strategy.

SEO CHANGES ALL THE TIME

SEO CHANGES ALL THE TIME

SEO CHANGES ALL THE TIME

ETERNAL TRUTHS OF SEOthese things don’t change

ETERNAL TRUTHS OF SEO (STUDY THESE THINGS FOR THE FINAL)

➤ robots deliver

➤ search results are blended

➤ algorithms change

➤ humans are smart—computers, not so much

➤ text matters

➤ it’s not just about rank

➤ search engines do not like tricks

➤ SEO is not brain surgery

ROBOTS DELIVER

ROBOTS DELIVER

➤ links

➤ HTML

➤ text

➤ how the search engines find your site is key to how to make your site findable by search engines. (Obvious, but worth repeating.)

“Make sure robots can find and read your web site.

Craft website content to include keywords your audience is searching for.

2 rules of SEO

SEARCH RESULTS ARE BLENDED

➤ web search, news, map search, social networking, ads, video are all shown in the same results.

➤ The specifics of this change all the time and may be subject to A/B testing.

➤ Ads and “organic” results appear near each other.

ALGORITHMS CHANGE

ALGORITHMS CHANGE

➤ Don’t get comfortable

➤ Your work is not going to be permanent, so don’t think you’re done and don’t get attached.

HUMANS ARE SMART—COMPUTERS, NOT SO

MUCH

TEXT MATTERS

TEXT MATTERS

➤ Titles

➤ Meta Description Tags

➤ Meta Keywords Tags

➤ Inbound links

IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT RANK

IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT RANK

➤ Good writing

➤ Usability

➤ Social Media

➤ “Create content that people want to link to.”

➤ Links > traffic

SEARCH ENGINES DON’T LIKE TRICKS

DON’T DO THESE THINGS

➤ Cloaking: trying to show robots a different version of your site

➤ Duplicate content: making extra pages to get in extra keywords. (This dilutes your Google juice.)

➤ Machine generated text: buying lists of keywords or algorithmically generated keywords lists

➤ Keyword stuffing: write for humans, not machines. Don’t cram in more keywords in your titles and links.

➤ Invisible text: don’t stuff extra keywords in places not visible to human viewers.

➤ Link Schemes: Comment spam is bad. Spam is bad. Don’t spam.