Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Bloggers and Crafters€¦ · Search engine optimization is a...

Instructor: Jewel H. Ward 22 March 2017 Questions? [email protected] License:

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Bloggers and Crafters

Logistics How to use this workshop.

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Login Overview of today’s

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Meet Jewel H. Ward Your Own Information Systems expert!

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Jewel Ward Founder+Principal

Jewel Ward is an SEO expert, a metadata specialist, and an experienced data analyst and information scientist. She loves to help people take their website and information systems to the next level or find insight in their data to create results with an impact. Her work experience + academic background means she has both hands-on practice plus the theory and research to know “why” something should be done a certain way. She is an entrepreneur, a researcher, and a doctoral candidate in Information Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

[email protected]

+1.919.265.3755

www.impactzone.co

Does This Sound Like You? If so, then you are in the right place.

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Need More Traffic Your Web Designer/Developer handed you a beautiful site, but you aren’t receiving the traffic you want.

Content Blank You built a beautiful website yourself, but you are wondering how to create content that keeps people on your site.

Better Rankings You want to improve your organic search rankings results AND keep people on your site when they visit.

Will SEO Help Me You are wondering what this SEO thing is, and whether or not it can help you achieve your online goals.

What You Will Learn Here is an overview.

Further Reading Thought you’d get out of this without some “homework”? Think again! We’ll link you to a few of our favorite articles by our favorite authors.

It’s YOUR Time Ask questions! That’s what we are here for. Share your stories with the other students in the webinar. Share your problems...and solutions.

SEO in Plain English Keywords Technical Optimization

Summary and Q&A

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6 SEO in Plain English What’s in it for you? How does good SEO benefit you?

33% of search traffic goes to the #1 ranking on Google*.

*Source:SearchEngineWatch

7 SEO in Plain English So what? Why should I care?

Yes – you read that correctly. You have 3-5 seconds to catch a someone’s attention when they come to your site. “What?!?!” you cry. All those hours and all that money you put into building the best-looking, most fabulous site, EVER, and you get 3-5 seconds? Not minutes. Not hours. Seconds. Is your site ready?

You have 3-5 seconds to catch a user’s attention when they visit your site.

8 SEO in Plain English You can do it. It takes patience and skill.

Building traffic to a website can take time. If you post good content over time, and have a solidly built website, then you will eventually build an audience. What if you want that traffic NOW? Write this down: “Just build a great website.” Tip: use good SEO techniques, and you can increase your traffic sooner. Also, optimize your off-site microsites.

You Can Do It.

9 SEO in Plain English Isn’t search engine optimization snake oil?

It is difficult, if not impossible, to guarantee results. The most knowledgeable professional can follow all best practices to optimize your site. You may not see results for months. You may not see results at all. (We agree. It’s a great gig if you can get it!) Tip: as with any professional services, do your due diligence. Ask for referrals. Do a bit of research yourself to understand what your SEO expert can and cannot offer you.

Like All Services, Buyer Beware.

10 SEO in Plain English If you cannot guarantee results, why should I do or pay for SEO?

When you eat nutritiously you feel better, and the odds of you becoming sick or ill are reduced. Yet how do you prove this? If you eat junk food, though, the results are noticeable. SEO is like eating healthy. Easy to say in theory, hard to do well and consistently in practice. Tip: There are best practices to follow for website optimization that are recommended by the W3C, Google, and Bing. Professionals such as Rand Fishkin or Joost de Valk, have recommended, tested, tried-and-true strategies for optimizing your organic rankings with search engines.

It’s Like Eating Nutritiously.

Google Search engine optimization is…about making small modifications to parts of your website. …these changes…seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they…have a noticeable impact on your site's user experience and performance in organic search results. [It] is about putting your site's best foot forward when it comes to visibility in search engines, but your ultimate consumers are your users….

SEO in Plain English What does SEO mean?

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WebOpedia Search engine optimization is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP) -- including Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines.

Impact Zone Search engine optimization is about having a well-designed site with solid content that is technically sound. Optimizing your site for search engines to find and rank well really is that simple. You want the site to be technically sound. You want users to be able to navigate it well. You want interesting content that is simple to read and engaging. That's it.

SEO in Plain English Search engines 101.

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They index the web by using something called crawlers or spiders. These “robots” traverse the web, going from site to site by way of links between web sites.

Search engines index websites and other content in order to make those websites and digital objects findable. They do not store websites or the objects on those websites.

What They Do

How They Index

What They Index Crawlers determine what keywords are on the page; if those keywords are in the title and URL; or, adjacent to links. They examine site structure, load speed, and code quality.

SEO in Plain English Citation what?

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Citation analysis is the point of Google’s PageRank algorithm. (My explanation is an oversimplification, but it gets the gist of it.) PageRank is the Holy Grail for people who want their pages to rank well organically. You see citation analysis every day. Do you have friends and/or relatives to whom you go for advice? Are there other people whom you avoid like the plague because their advice is bad? Or you know some friends and relatives are somewhere in between? Yes, that is citation analysis. Yes, that is PageRank.

Citation Analysis: Applying References to Web Links

14 SEO in Plain English Participant questions about SEO.

•  What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

•  Why should I implement SEO?

•  What are common misconceptions on SEO?

•  What are the most important Google algorithm

changes recently?

•  What kind of practices can get you into trouble with

Google?

•  How to maximize SEO the simplest way?

•  How do I move up in rankings for Google Searches?

SEO Basics We Covered I Search Engine Basics


•  How does implementing SEO help her sell her physical work? How does it increase my sales or make my life better?

•  How much time commitment is implementing SEO? •  What happens after the SEO implementation? What

should I expect from maintenance and short- and long-term results?

•  Is SEO helpful to my website even though it is a shop? •  What if I don’t have a blog and don’t do content

marketing? •  How often are people doing a Google search for

artists? What types of art/artists are they searching for?

•  How do I get found by art buyers?

SEO Basics We Covered II Search and SEO Implementation

Next: Keywords “SEO in Plain English” has been completed.


Summary and Q&A

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Keywords First, let’s define terms.

Keyword: The theme of the web page. It is “a word or concept of great significance; a word that acts as the key to a cipher or code; an informative word used in an information retrieval system to indicate the content of a document; or, a significant word mentioned in an index.”

Meta Description: The abstract of a web page. “A page's description meta tag gives…search engines a summary of what the page is about. Whereas a page's title may be a few words or a phrase, a page's description meta tag might be a sentence or two or a short paragraph.”

Title Tag: The title tag defines the content of the page. It is the equivalent of the title in a Table of Contents. It tells both users and search engines what is on the page. Each web page should have a unique title.

Alt Tag: The alt tag is the title of a non-text object. It can be an image, video, audio file, PDF, or other media. us. It is not the same thing as the file name, although the content may be the same. It tells crawlers and people what the content of the non-text image is.

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Keywords Here’s one example of usage.

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Keywords are the method by which you find the information object you are seeking online. They are how someone finds your information objects. The “information object” may be your blog post, Instagram post, Pinterest pin, or Etsy product. Marketing is one approach to keywords, but it is really about cataloging your information so online users can find it. Tip: this is why you should care about what keywords you use when you put something online. It helps people find what you post.

Title Tag: URL with Keyword Meta Description: Keyword

Keywords Where to look for inspiration.

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Thesaurus Think of a word or a

theme you want to use. What are the synonyms?

Search Forms Search engines auto

finish words and phrases. What other words are displayed?

SERPs Search engine results pages (SERPs) display related search words

and phrases.

Social Media # Explore hashtag usage on your favorite social media. Who uses what

and how often?

Tip: when you are struggling to come up with a topic for a page or blog post, think of a theme. Go to a thesaurus. What are the synonyms for this word? Explore online using a search engine. What words auto finish and with what phrases in the search field? What related searches come up? Next, go to your favorite social media? How many tags of this keyword or phrase are there? Is this word or phrase used too often or too little?

Keywords Use them to maximize your SEO, example part 1.

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•  Your title should be about 50-60 characters. If you keep it under 55 characters, it will display properly and not be cut off in search results.

•  You want a meta description of about 155 characters. •  Your blog post ideally will be no less than 300 words but no more

than 1000. •  You need at least one header tag that contains the keyword or

phrase. •  The keyword needs to be in the title, in the URL, in the alt tag for

the featured image, and in one of the header tags in the body of the article.

•  One link to an outside source, preferably of high quality content. •  Include the title in the URL stub, preferably without stop words

such as “the”, “a”, or “and”, etc.


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I use WordPress, but I think you’ll find the same fields in most other platforms, including SquareSpace. The technique is the same, though. You can use the following guidelines to maximize your SEO, regardless of platform. There are websites that provide character counts, if your platform does not allow you to install a plugin similar to the Yoast WordPress SEO. There are as many ways to write as there are stars in the sky. I hope this gives you some ideas on how to write to improve your SEO. This is one way to use keywords to build up a post and make it SEO-friendly. I would love to hear how you use keywords and phrases in your writing.


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Here is an example of image optimization. I have keywords in the file name. I opened it up in photo editing software and changed the featured image size to 1038 pixels. This makes it easier to upload, and provides pre-optimization before I load it. The TinyPNG plugin compresses the image. Compression makes the image load faster when someone visits the site. I upload this image to the WordPress Media dashboard, and then add information to the alt tag. I use the file name in the title tag, to ensure uniqueness. You may add an acutal title, if you prefer. In the “alt” tag, I use my blog post title with the keyword or keyword phrase. I leave the other two fields empty unless I need a caption or other description, but you can fill these in.

Keywords What questions to answer on every site with categories.

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Who?

Know your target market or audience. Describe yourself and the blog, site or business.

What?

Describe your blog topics and/or products. Tell people the purpose of your website.

When?

When do you do what you do. This is often implied in the content of the website.

Where?

P r o v i d e b a s i c c o n t a c t information and a way for people to contact you.

How/How Much?

Describe how you do what you do. Display the prices of your products and services.

Why?

Answer the “so what?” factor. What makes you or your

products or services special?

Keywords How basic questions lead to website sections.

1 2 3 4 5 6

Let’s apply these categories and concepts to website design. Every website you build should answer the who-what-when-where-how. If you are building an eCommerce site, then you’ll need to include how much. You must always include a where. (This is not an exhaustive list. It is meant to get you started with regards to what minimum content should be on your site.)

Who? HOME, ABOUT (YOU, the COMPANY/BLOG)

What? HOME, ABOUT (SHOP, BLOG…)

When? Contextual. Now, in the past, upcoming?

Where? CONTACT, includes

SOCIAL MEDIA

How/How Much ABOUT (process)/

SHOP

Why? HOME, ABOUT (YOU,

PORTFOLIO)

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•  What tags should I be using? •  What should be in the meta description for my

website? •  What terms or keywords are best to use? More

general, or more specific? •  What are the best basic descriptions and tags to use? •  Should all my images have my name over them? •  Should I tag every image / product with my name? •  What other tags should I use? •  How do I research keywords for my target audience? •  SquareSpace SEO

SEO Basics We Covered III Tags and Keywords

Technical Optimization Keywords has been discussed.


Summary and Q&A

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Technical Optimization I Six Tips for a Solid Website .

Clean up your code. Optimize your images by reducing their size. Use YSlow to check your pagespeed, and things like the W3C to check your broken links and validate your HTML and CSS. It is tedious and frustrating to fix, but it also helps your site rank higher in search results.

Optimize Your Website

Search engine crawlers are hungry little beasts. Give them something to eat. It will up your ranking in search engine results. This means, take advantage of the meta title and page descriptions, and always use the alt tag for your images.

Give Crawlers Something to Eat

The important items go left to right, as people view things in an F pattern. You want them to see your shop, services, or portfolio first. In simplest terms, “left is best“. If you aren’t sure how to order your site, look at major retailers with similar products, and copy their navigation order.

Navigation Menu

Here are some backend, not-so-glamorous website tips that you need for a solid site. It is a bit boring to do, and it will take time. However, I believe you will find the end result — improved organic rankings on search engines — will make the effort worth it.

Technical Optimization II Six Tips for a Solid Website .

If you are already registered, then re-check your sitemap.xml and robots.txt files via Google and Bing. If you are not registered with Google and Bing webmaster tools, then do so immediately. Google and Bing need to know you exist so they will know to crawl your site. You can also ask Google and Bing to crawl your site once you have completely optimized your site, per the above list.

Let Search Engines Know Your Site Exists

The look and feel of your site matters, and not just from the outside. It doesn’t matter how pretty your site is, if the code is bad, then you will not rank well organically with search engines. This is the store front of your site. Do your research and buy a top quality theme or have a custom one built for you.

Theme Quality Matters

Aim for a 100 word minimum on all pages and posts, but 300 is better. Try not to write more than 1000 words per post. Ask how you can serve your clients, how can you answer a question, what can you do for THEM? “So what, why should I read your post? What does this do for me?”

Content is King

I cannot guarantee a number one organic search result listing if you do all of the above suggestions. However, if you optimize your site’s technical “guts”, pay attention to meta descriptions and alt tags, write quality content, and ensure page speed loads are quick with minimal broken links and redirects, you should see improvements in SERPs.

Summary and Q&A “Technical Optimization” has been discussed.


Summary and Q&A

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30 Summary Take away this point.

Search engine optimization is about having a well-designed site with solid content that is technically sound. Optimizing your site for search engines to find and rank well really is that simple. You want the site to be technically sound. You want users to be able to navigate it well. You want interesting content that is simple to read and engaging. That’s it. It really is that simple.

Just build a great website. That’s it.

Any Questions Up to This Point? What can I clarify or cover?

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Questions or Comments?

•  Impact Zone blog posts: SEO DIY Tips •  Google Webmaster Advice •  Moz Beginner’s Guide to SEO •  HubSpot’s Guide for On-Page SEO Management •  Yoast’s General SEO •  O’Reilly Media’s The Art of SEO, 3rd Edition Mastering Search Engine

Optimization

Further Reading

Best Wishes Know this.

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I hope that attending this workshop has taken some of the mystery out of search engine optimization. I want you to leave here inspired to make your website and online world the best that it can be. I want to know that your business, blog, and website are helping you succeed and be your best self.

It’s simple. “Just Build a Good Website.”

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[email protected]

+1828-412-0866

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Illustrations credit: Apinan via Adobe Stock License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Thank you

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