SEO Best Practices to Maximize your Google Ranking

SEO Best Practices to Maximize your Google Ranking

CONFIDENTIAL ‹#›Wednesday, June 11, 2014

TribalVision and SEOBoston provide marketing and SEO consulting

An entrepreneur with 20 years of marketing experience, Chris Ciunci is the founder and CEO of

TribalVision – an outsourced marketing department for hire for small and mid-sized

businesses. Chris oversees the firm’s strategic direction, client work and business development efforts. Chris works closely with clients, partners,

and employees to develop comprehensive marketing strategies that revolve around

generating new busines.

Daniel Zayets-Volshin is one of Boston’s leading SEO experts. With over a decade of experience in Search

Engine Optimization, PPC Management, Affiliate Marketing as well as SEO-friendly Web Design & Development, Daniel acquired a truly wide set of

Web Marketing skills. He is one of the founders for SEOBoston - Boston’s top ranking organic SEO

Company which offers SEO services and consultation for Boston based businesses. Daniel

collaborates often with TribalVision on web marketing projects.


Agenda

Today’s SEO LandscapeImproving Your Site: The BasicsGooglePlus Best Practices5 Tips to Start Using TomorrowQuestions


Today’s SEO landscape is rapidly evolving

Meta-data is becoming less critical1

Video is now a must for those who want to compete – by 2015 it will be 90% of all online traffic2

Traffic increasingly comes from mobile devices3


Why meta-data is (somewhat) less important than in the past

Being the #1 ranked search engine, it’s important to

know that Google has removed meta keywords

from its algorithm. However, other search engines still use meta

keywords in their calculations.

Meta Descriptions are still important: Google uses

meta descriptions to give searchers more

information about your site. Without a meta

description, Google will hand-pick something from the site it feels is relevant

to what the searcher is looking for

http://melbel.hubpages.com/hub/Meta-Data-for-SEO

Due to updates in Google’s Hummingbird

algorithm, keyword density is no longer important (semantic

search allows engines to return relevant queries

based on context, not just search terms – so,

frequency becomes less important in relation to

value of the context)

http://www.keloland.com/business/detail.cfm/keywords-are-dead-keywords-arent-dead/?id=163782


Video

Linking YouTube to Your Website

Linking YouTube to your website makes the 2 platforms into a combined entity, allowing the value of the videos from your channel to generate value for the page where it’s placed.

Use Transcriptions

Creating & uploading your own transcripts will help Google understand the content of your videos. YouTube automatically creates a transcript for you of what it thinks it hears (which can be unreliable).

YouTube ParticipationYou should be the person who watches other people’s videos, likes/dislikes them and comments on them. Especially the videos in the relevant field - it works towards your rankings

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2343365/10-Video-SEO-Tips-That-Can-Truly-Impact-Your-Rankingshttp://www.lucrazon.com/extra-seo-juice-by-adding-youtube-video-transcripts

Social Signals

Social Signals are extremely important in video ranking. If you have a video that gets naturally shared it will be done though social sharing options on Youtube - do not not ignore this sharing part as this is what makes it look real.


Mobile

Mobile Website Responsive Website

“70% of mobile searches for products or services will result in a sale in the near future.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/06/04/7-ways-that-seo-is-uniquely-important-for-entrepreneurs/


Agenda



Know your niche: industry & competitor research

http://moz.com/blog/illustrated-seo-competitive-analysis-workflow

Identify your competitors & gather data on their SEO & PPCperformance

Compare your site and back links with your competitors & industry giants

Choose targeted long tail keywords based on your analysis

A competitive analysis will provide you with more informed keywords, allowing you to begin your on-page optimization with a strong foundation.


Cover your bases of on-site optimization using your keyword selections

URLA page’s URL should be first and foremost straightforward and meaningful. The use of relevant keywords in it still matters a lot and so is a geo location if your business targets local market. .Com URLs are valued more than .org, .net or .us ones.

Meta Keywords

Though not as relevant as in the past, the meta keywords tag should not be ignored. They allow the relevancy of the page to be based on the set of keywords and should not be abused (display only keywords used on the actual page).

Meta Description

Meta descriptions in most cases will show up in search results right under the link. They are a great opportunity to showcase what the page is about, include relevant keywords and to include the catchy call to action in roughly 155 characters.

Keywords Keywords should be used in the title tag & meta description, keyword tag as well as used throughout a page’s content it’s headers and subheaders (H1-H4 Tags).

TitlePossibly the most important element of on-page SEO, the page title tells search engines (and people!) what your page is all about. The title should contain keywords and be no longer than 70 characters in length. If possible make it into a question.


Take your written content to a new level - make it Hummingbird-friendly

ContentThe content pages should ideally be structured around answering a question or providing a valuable set of tips – this is how people search and what they click on. The content needs to present value, feature quotes and links out to outside material

PhotosUse as much visual content as possible and apply the appropriate alt tags - with useful keywords to those photos. Make them funny, make them with text, make them unique to stand out from the crowd.

VideosA Relevant video with proper meta data embedded on the page, can help a page to rank higher. Use videos for the relevant material, industry quotes or relevant presentation. Make the page more diverse in content.

Amount of Text

Ideally the textual content should be between 2000-3000 words (about 6 pages of text) - this sort of format for presenting informative content is ideal for Hummingbird

ReadabilityThe viewer needs to be able to read the text by skimming through it’s sub-headers, by doing a more extensive 1 minute read, as well as by doing a detailed reading. Use a lot of bullet points and clearly divided sections to make your content digestible.


Locating on-page elements

Press Option + Command+ U1

Press Command + F2

Search for Title tag, meta description, keyword tags, H1, H2, H3, H43


Example on-page elements

Title Tag


Example on-page elements

Meta Description

Keywords Tag


Example on-page elements continued

H1 Tag

H2 Tag

H3 Tag

H4 Tag


Off-site optimization (link-building) process

Before building links it is vital to get a full landscape of keywords appropriate to your industry that get a lot of traffic and especially those keywords that are

long tail and get a lot of traffic. Short keywords are usually not action-oriented while longtail ones are.

Research them in Google Adwords for free by creating an account. Don't send all of the links to the home

page. Send the links to the sources that are more relevant for the link rather than

sending all of it to the home page. In fact, some of the best link building

campaigns focuses on evenly spreading the entire site.

Integrate the keyword into the backlink coming from the source to your site. Diversify the variation as if the link

repeats to many times the same way it looks artificial.

It is better to get 1 link forma very powerful source than 20 links from a

barely known sources.

Keywords

Where to Link-Build

How to Link-Build

Not All Links Are Created Equal


More strategies for link-building

Even though press releases are no longer counted by Google towards your link building collection, a well written and distributed Press Release might get picked up

by some publication and those are usually a great source for valuable links.

Make sure that the information is consistent. Some of the directories are paid like Yahoo, while some are free like SuperPage. Make sure that the directories are

whitelisted before you post there.

Business Directories

Blogs and Forums

Press Releases

Engage in the comments/discussions on the blogs and forums and make comments on those with links to your website. Typically you need to become an established

contributor first before you would be allowed to backlink to your website. You also need to check as a lot of websites are “no follow” meaning that they don't pass the

link juice outside of the website.


Even more strategies for link-building

Social Links

Likes, shares and +1s are counted towards your back-linking factors, especially if people who mark your content are an authority with more people following them than they follow. Social links gain more strength when they get re-tweeted on Twitter and +1 re-shares on Google Plus.

.Gov & .Edu These are some of the most desirable links. Make sure if you are getting the .edu links that they come from USA or at least Canada, Australia or the UK.

Foreign Links

In general, links from other countries might help you rank better in those countries, but will not help you as much in your native country and can even harm you if used inappropriately. It is still worth getting them from English-speaking countries, but it’s recommended to avoid them otherwise.

Resource Websites

Links from resource websites are some of the most important links. The most practical way to build such links is to search the content and locate broken links, restore the content on your site and suggest the owner of those broken links to fix the link by linking to your website as you have a fixed version of that content.


Social

Social is now an integral part of any serious SEO campaign. Social is growing as a source of credibility for companies and individuals online, making it important to

know how to optimize your presence.

Frequency of posts Quality content Consistent photo across mediums

Number of comments Presence across platforms

Number of retweetsNumber of followers vs.

number of people followed

Active Google+ account (it is vital for appropriate

rankings)

Number of likes


Agenda



Google +: Circles & Account Type

http://www.jeffbullas.com/2013/11/11/how-to-increase-your-seo-with-google-plus/http://www.drumbeatmarketing.net/seo-blog/google-circles-everyone-needs-g-posse

A fully saturated Local GooglePlus account is vital for appropriate rankings.

Use photos with appropriate photo names (i.e. keywords), use hashtags and make the post keyword rich

Your page needs to be updated regularly – going dark can result in a major drop in ranking

Grow your circles: more circles = more value = Authority Ranking

359 million active users on Google+ (a platform for YouTube, Hangouts, Maps and Local Marketing)

Google gives articles and posts created by circled profiles a leg up shifting them to the top of SERPs and shifts up websites affiliated with Active Google + Pages

Just like on YouTube- participate in discussions on Google Plus


Google+: Best Practices

Use KeywordsUse keywords in the description – make sure the explanations is very keyword rich but not stuffed – it must sound natural

LinkLink to your website from your Google+ page or ask your developer to help you. If you have multiple locations, get Google Plus Local and link them to the subdomains of the site - essentially breaking each location to the subdomain presence. Google considers subdomains as almost a unique website.

Circles You should be growing the numbers of people that follow you versus who you follow. Ideally the ratio of followers should be larger than people you follow.

Registration Type

Local page registration is the ideal case scenario. Choose the keyword rich name especially “keyword”+”city” those and then register the google plus local listing under same name.


Reviews

1

Reviews from people with established Google Plus or active YouTube accounts get higher ranking2

Ask the reviewers to include the relevant keywords in the review as those help with the local rankings3

Ask your customers for reviews on Google Plus, SuperPages and other directories. Again - Try to avoid Yelp as long as you can.


One 5-star Review = 3 position jump


Reviewers with more authority rank higher


Local

Google Plus syndicates reviews from other directories, so the more diverse the list of white-labeled directories

where you have reviews, the better it will be.

Helps with local ranking. If interested, please ask for a list after the

presentation.

New Product Launches Client-hosted Events

Google Plus does not punish for reviews being left close to each other like Yelp

does. Nevertheless, try to spread them apart as ranking and spam algorithm

may change

It is vital that you have the same contact info (phone and address) in different

directories and on the site itself as that is how the local information is being

verified

Types of Local Directories for Submissions

Reviews on a Diverse Range of Directories

Frequency of Reviews Same Contact Info on the Site & Directories


Agenda



Top 5 tips you should start implementing tomorrow

If nothing else, make sure all of your webpages have title tags.1

Create a local Google Plus Account and link it to your website2

Try to avoid Yelp for as long as you can (focus on GooglePlus instead)3

Use free tools at your disposal to make the optimization process easier (i.e. Alexa, SEMRush, Moz On-Page Grader)4

Make your content informative and with a value at its source - and don’t be afraid to link it out5


Agenda


Friday, June 6, 14Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Thank You!