February 2012

Search Engine Optimization

Why is SEO so Important?

Data via ComScore qSearch: http://www.comscore.com

Mill

ions

of S

earc

hes

per m

onth

Global Search Growth

Feb 2011, Google said they had 2 Billion+ searches per day!

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-disconnect-in-ppc-vs-seo-spending

Organic vs. Paid Search

Paid

Organic

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-disconnect-in-ppc-vs-seo-spending

Click-Through Rates

80% of Clicks

20% of Clicks

How do Search Engines Work?

Millions of results in seconds.

Providing Answers to user queries

Here you go!

Crawling and indexing.

Your site needs to be SEF..SE who?

Images, Flash, Java Applets & not text elements are invisible.

Accessible to Search Engines

HUH?? I can’t read this…

Research and use words your customers use.

Keywords

Good use of Keywords and Phrases.

More on good URL structures - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls

Good

Bad

www.mysite.com/london/british-airways-flights

www.mysite.com/f?cat=61&?ID=17&CustID=5afs21

Clean, Crawlable URLs

More on sitemaps - www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php

XML Sitemaps

http://mydomain.com/sitemap.xml

Dups get tossed out.

Duplicated Content

Removed from primary index

What can I do to improve my SEO?

Titles (Keep it short between 3 – 5 words), Less than 66 characters, Brand Name | Keyword and Keyword

Title Tags

Use Keywords, less than 150 characters.

Meta Descriptions

Optimization (H1, Bold, Keyword use in your content, Links).

Create Great Content

The “Tree Falls in the Forest” EffectMake a noise and be foundThis is perhaps the most important concept to grasp about the functionality of search engines & the importance of search marketers.

Even when the technical details of search-engine friendly web development are correct, content can remain virtually invisible to search engines. This is due to the inherent nature of modern search technology, which rely on the aforementioned metrics of relevance and importance to display results.

Headings <h1><h2>

BoldKeywords

Links

Human readable filenames, add keywords in alt tags.

Image Names

Good

Bad

beautiful-large-oak-tree-near-table-mountain.jpg

IMG_DSC_P0325665402.JPG

Good keyword usage in the alt tag.

Image Alt Text

Beautiful large oak tree near table mountain

Tell each search engine to come take a look, add your sitemap XML and gain insights from results.

Webmaster Tools

Settings > Webmaster Tools

Webmaster Tools help spot errors and suggest keywords.

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Analytics is totally free! http://www.google.com/analytics

Analytics

Settings > Analytics

Get as many people as possible to link to you Blogs, Sites, Clients, Friends & Directory Listings.

Inbound Links

Without links, Search engines might never

find this page

Feedburner - http://feedburner.google.com – is a great tool for setting up and monitoring feeds

RSS Feeds

http://mysite.com/feed/rss

Loads of ways to create link-backs and organic growth.

Spread the word across the Web

Blogs + Blogging

Comment Marketing

News/Media/PR SEO

Social Networks

Word of Mouth

Q+A Sites

Forums

Online Video

Podcasting

Webinars

Research/White Papers

Infographics

Social Bookmarking

INBOUND MARKETING!(Find Your Audience Organically on the Web)

Direct/Referring Links

Type-In Traffic

Email

Document Sharing

What about Social Media?Google + Bing Now Counting Facebook & Twitter

Grab your username (keyword) and enter your URL (Link Back).

Social Media Platforms

Keywords, links in Tweets, Retweets, Posts & Shares

Q + A

@yousemble

http://facebook.com/yousemble

hello@yousemble.com

http://yousemble.com

There are plenty of resources out there, this is a good place to start.

Resources

Google Trends (Keyword Demand) - http://google.com/trendsGoogle Insights - http://google.com/insights/searchGoogle Analytics - http://google.com/analytics Google Feedburner - http://feedburner.google.comGoogle Webmaster Tools - http://google.com/webmastersYahoo! Webmaster Tools - http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.comBing Webmaster Tools - http://bing.com/toolbox/webmasterScience of Retweets – http://slideshare.net/danzarrellaSEOmoz (Good Resources) - http://seomoz.org