An Introduction to SEO: Guest Lecture

An Introduction to SEO Guest Lecture by Benjamin Morel

2 An Introduction to SEO: An Oxford Brookes Guest Lecture

An Introduction To Me



Benjamin Morel Project Manager and Digital Marketer

@BenjaminMorel

Linkedin.com/in/benmorel

[email protected]



Obergine Creative Digital Agency

@Obergine

Linkedin.com/company/obergine

Slideshare.net/obergine

Obergine.com


What is SEO?


What is SEO?

First: Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)


What is SEO?

Paid search listings (ads)


What is SEO?

Organic Listings: you can’t pay!


What is SEO?

Or universal listings


What is SEO?

SEO is the attempt to gain visibility in

search engines’ organic and universal

results with the aim of driving revenue


How do Search Engines Work?


What is SEO?

“Our goal is to make it as easy as possible

for you to find the information you need and get

the things that you need to do done” - Google

http://www.google.co.uk/about/company/products/


What is SEO?








How Do We Achieve SERP Visibility?

Links ≈ Citations


How Do We Increase Our Visibility?



Value By Creating



“The more creative you are or the better

the experience is with your website, the

more likely you are to be successful”

– Matt Cutts

http://www.stonetemple.com/link-building-is-not-illegal-or-bad/


How Do We Create Value?


1. Have A Site That Works Well


Create Value: Have A Site That Works

Use search engine friendly URLs:

they keep people happy as well.



Which URL means more?

http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=95330226

or

http://www.linkedin.com/profile/benmorel



<title> elements and META

descriptions are your shop window.



Which would you click?



Search engine friendly URL

Not-so friendly URL



Unique <title> tags



Unique META description

No META description



Serve people with the content they need

and do it quickly



47% of people expect a web page to load in

http://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/

2 seconds or less







Intuit took average page load time from 15s to

5-6s. They boosted conversion rates by

14%

http://velocityconf.com/velocityny2013/public/schedule/detail/30146



How do search engines know when I’ve written something?



How do search engines know when I’ve written something?



How do search engines know I wrote this?



They read

Structured Data







My name is Benjamin Morel. I have a profile

on <a

href=“http://twitter.com/benjaminmorel>

Twitter</a>.







My name is Benjamin Morel. I

have a profile on <a

href=http://twitter.com/benjaminmorel

itemprop=“sameas”> Twitter</a>.







My name is Benjamin Morel. I

have a profile on <a

href=http://twitter.com/benjaminmorel

itemprop=“sameas”> Twitter</a>.



Look! Google knows it was written by me!



Look! Google knows it was written by me!



Structured data gives rich snippets



“Rich snippets… help you communicate a clear,

unique value proposition and establish a

competitive advantage” – Hubspot

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/power-google-rich-snippets-ecommerce-seo-ht


2. Create Great Sales Pages


Create Value: Great Sales Pages

Not-So-Great

http://www.countryattire.com/shop-by-brand/hunter-boots/hunter-original-tall-gloss-wellington-boots-black.html



Great

http://www.zappos.com/hunter-hunter-original-black



Not-So-Great Minimal product info




Great


Look at all that useful info!



Great


Reviews build trust



Great


Size guide Size

guide accuracy. More trust building



Not-So-Great

Tiny colours, not even on this page




Great


Easily compare colours, with context



Give your customers useful information

that they can’t find anywhere else.

Make them trust you and give them a reason

to buy from you, not anybody else.


3. Have great design


Create Value: Great Design

http://livingedge.com.au/shop/





What We See What Robots Would See






Robots can read this



Make your design person friendly.



Not person friendly

http://cavs.mit.edu/



Person friendly

http://www.hubspot.com



Great design helps everyone find the value

in your offering.


4. Create Remarkable content


Create Value: Remarkable Content

“Cows, after you’ve seen them for a while, are

boring. They may be perfect cows, attractive

cows, cows with great personalities, cows lit by

beautiful light, but they’re still boring.”



“A Purple Cow, though. Now that

would be interesting.” – Seth Godin

Seth Godin, Purple Cow (Penguin Books)

66


People don’t talk about good.

They talk about remarkable

67


http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors

In the latest Moz correlation survey all of the

top 44 ranking factors related to links,

social media interaction, and trust.

68


Getting all four of these right

creates clear value


Where Do Keywords Fit?

70


Keywords = aggregated search queries

71


They give us targets to aim for.

72


They help us target the right audience

73

Create Value: Where Do Keywords Fit?

They help set context:

Where is the person in the buying process?

What are their aims with this search?

74


Topic vectors

Wellington

Welly

Boot

Rubber

Rain

Wellington

Wellesley

Waterloo

Duke

Napoleon

Wellington

New Zealand

North Island

Hutt

Russell Crowe

75


Topic vectors

Shoes

Cities

76


Topic vectors

Shoes

Cities

Boots

Capital of New Zealand

77


Topic vectors

Shoes

Cities

Boots

Capital of New Zealand

Wellington

78


An Introduction to SEO

optimisation

SEO and Digital Marketing

SEO

search engines

keywords

SEO

rankings

Good on-page SEO looks a lot like good writing

79


Remember, rankings are less important

than revenue


How Do We Get Exposure For Our Valuable Content?

81

How do we get Exposure?

By building relationships

82


Social media is an invaluable part of SEO.

Make its use a core part of your strategy.

83


Find influencers who may be interested in

your content – and be interested in them.


When Does The SEO Process Finish?



Never!

The search landscape changes: guest blogging, HTML5, Google+, the knowledge graph,

universal results, structured data.

They’ve all changed in the last three years.



Never!

There will always be someone smarter, cleverer, more creative, quicker off the mark,

better connected, or more interesting than you.

And you will always need to beat them.


To Conclude


To Conclude

1. SEO is all about organic search visibility and driving revenue

2. That visibility and revenue comes from providing value

3. Value comes from technical competence, good design, and remarkable content

4. Keywords give you targets (not goals)

5. You need to convince people of your content’s value. Build relationships with them

6. SEO is an on-going process not a campaign