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Welcome to ‘Natural Search’ (SEO) Webinar

November 11th 2013

This webinar will start at 7.30pmFor this webinar, it won’t be possible to enable individuals to speak, but you can ask questions and make comments by

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Welcome

Your webinar presenter tonight is:Mike Berry

Webinar content for this evening:Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

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Search Engine Optimisation

(SEO)Mike Berry

Mike Berry

• Ex-Procter & Gamble, Wunderman (Y+R), DraftFCB, Havas Worldwide• Ex-Head of Digital EMEA for Jack Morton (Interpublic) • Author of ‘The New Integrated Direct Marketing’ (Gower)• In digital marketing since 1995 (ish)• Adjunct Professor of Marketing Strategy at Hult International

Business School London • Adjunct Faculty at University Of Warwick• Senior Examiner at Chartered Institute Of Marketing (CIM)• Digital Marketing Trainer/ Consultant for:Oxford College Of Marketing

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Brands I have worked with...

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mike.berry@mikeberryassociates.comuk.linkedin.com/in/mikeberrylinkedinhttp://mikeberryassociates.com http://twitter.com/mikeberrytweets

Hello and let’s connect!

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SEM = SEO + PPC

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)Helping your site to rank higher in Search Engine Results Pages for a given keyword (= phrase). Depends on relevance (content) and reputation (inbound links)

• Paid Search = Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)Buying ads (e.g. on Google or Bing) to generate clickthroughs to your website landing page. For each keyword, ads are sold on an auction basis. Ad Rank= £bid x Quality Score

SEM = SEO + PPC

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)Helping your site to rank higher in Search Engine Results Pages for a given keyword (= phrase). Depends on relevance (content) and reputation (inbound links)

• Paid Search = Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)Buying ads (e.g. on Google or Bing) to generate clickthroughs to your website landing page. For each keyword, ads are sold on an auction basis. Ad Rank= £bid x Quality Score

Searching all over the world

Why are we here?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)93% of all internet traffic is generated from internet search engines. 99% of internet searchers do not search beyond the top 30 results. 97% of them never look beyond the top three results. (Forrester)November 11, 2013 7:30 PM GMT – 8:30 PM GMT

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Why does SEO matter?

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93% of web user journeys start with a search engine*. Go Figure.

*Forrester

This webinar

– What is SEO?– Defining your keywords– On-page SEO– Linkbuilding– “Black hat” SEO– Useful Tools

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Choose your keywords

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Paid (AdWords) listings

Natural (Organic) listings

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SEO in plain English

SEO is about having content on your website that is relevant to the search terms people use so that it will be found organically by search engines.

Achieving this requires either the cost of using external consultants or spending time yourself changing the content on your site.

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We are what we search for…

San Francisco City Tours Hop on-Hop off

San Francisco City Tours

San Francisco

California

San Francisco holidays

<source: Optimiser>

Search Engine Optimisation (= SEO)

“Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid (“organic”) search results. Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine.”

Wikipedia

Define your keywords

https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool?defaultView=2

Learn from AdWords

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https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2453981

Google helps you with keywords…

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Google helps you with keywords…

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Google helps you with keywords…

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Google helps you with keywords…

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How does Google decide how to rank your page?Google primarily looks at two things:

• Relevance (content of the page and which keywords appear where)

And• Reputation (inbound links from webpages

with high Google PageRank and Google+ page +1s)

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Help Google to find your contentXML Sitemaps for search engines

• Submitted to search engines to help them find and index your site’s pages efficiently. Shows where your pages are (their URLs) + gives information about:

-The relative importance of each page -How often a page changes (always, every time it’s accessed, never)-Date a page was last changed

• Bing: XML Sitemap optional unless you have pages that struggle to get indexed

To be found, you must get indexed

Solve indexing problems by:• Create clear links through your site’s structure to all pages • Using consistent URLs (one per page)• Ensuring links on your site do not require Flash, JavaScript, Ajax to

be accessed. Search engines can follow such links: but HTML links are easier

• Giving all pages unique content, page title tags and meta descriptions. Ensuring key category pages (and as many as possible content pages) have their own inbound links from other sites (deep links)

• XML Sitemap is a good ‘belt and braces’ tactic ensuring all your pages get indexed

Put your keywords in key places

On-site SEO: keywords in the right places

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<Browser right click view page source…>

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URLs

• Your site’s page URL structure is the most important factor in ‘on-page’ SEO.

– http://www.most-important.com/very-important/important/not-that-important/not-important-at-all/invisible

Title Tags

• Title Tags on the index page are the most important html element on any website.– The first three words of your Title Tags should

ideally have your main keyword search phrase– 9-11 words– no more than 2 repetitions of one word

Meta Description Tag

• A page’s description tag is an important aspect in SEO Conversion– If there are no Description Tags declared on

the page, a search engine will usually use the first piece of body copy

– 1-2 readable sentences with strong call to actions directed at the visitor

Keywords Tag

• Meta keywords are no longer an important factor in Google algorithm. However Bing & Yahoo do still read this but are unlikely to use this data as a signal.– Include 3 – 4 key terms per page– Order key terms terms by importance

Headings

• Header tags give prominence to elements such as titles, sub titles & important body copy such as initial paragraphs.– H1, H2, H3 tags should appear in a chronological

order throughout the page– Each page should feature unique headings,

relevant to the content of that pageHelp Google to understandwhat your page is about!

Body Content

• Use the keywords relevant to that landing page. Don’t obsess over keyword percentages.– Contextually link to other landing pages using

keyword-rich anchor text relevant to the destination page it is linking to (not ‘click here’)

Alt tags

• Alt Tags provide a text description of what an image contains for search engines & screen readers.– All images should feature relevant keyword

rich alt text– Alt text should be 4 – 6 words long

Duplicate Content

• Google tries hard to index & show pages with distinct information & duplicate content often lies at the heart of big brands failure to rank.– Create unique content– Robots Text– 301’s– Canonical tag

But don’t overdo it

“All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimisation or overly SEO – versus those making great content and a great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect.”

Matt Cutts

Inbound (back)links carry most ranking weight!

Source: Moz, 2013 Ranking Factors

Link Profile Analysis

• Knowing who is linking to our site currently helps us make better decisions regarding our future link building strategy.– How many sites are linking to our own?– How authoritative are these links?– What anchor text are these links using?

Link Volume

• There are a number of tools that allow us to measure the volume of back links into your site.

• Open Site Explorer• Majestic SEO

Link authority

• A linking website’s authority is based on:• How many second level links are pointing to it• How authoritative these second level links are• How relevant the content is to your own

Links from high PageRank pages are best

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“Can we have a followed link please?”

• Often, you can (and should) just ask a webmaster for a link.– Ask partners & suppliers for links offering

testimonials in return– Contact relevant non-competitors

requesting reciprocal links– Offer unique content to relevant sites in

return for links

PR syndication

• Repurposing existing PR or creating SEO PR for syndication across online PR wires can prove extremely effective.– Maintain keyword-rich titles and content– Request keyword-rich contextual links back to

your primary pages– Test a mix of paid and free submission– PRWeb, PRNewswire, PitchEngine

The new reputation signal…

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Cloaking - caution!

• IP delivery for search engine optimization (SEO) is used to deliver different content to search engine spiders (=robots =crawlers) than to human visitors.

• Determination if the visitor is a known search engine spider is based on the IP address. SEOs compare the visitor's IP address with their list of IP addresses, known to be servers owned by a search engine and used to run their crawler applications (spiders).

• Delivery of different content to search engine spiders from that seen by human visitors is cloaking and is against most search engines' webmaster guidelines

Black hatters beware!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2H_Y7h1roQ&feature=em-uploademail

Google algorithm: c.200 factors

http://searchengineland.com

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

SEO: further viewing

http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp?feature=watch

From the horse’s mouth…

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/googleseo/

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Continuous improvement

• Google's official position on webmaster best practices really hasn't changed much over the years. What has changed is the search engine's ability to enforce these guidelines through improved algorithms. The implementation of Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird has had a big impact

• Google's Matt Cutts says no one should be surprised when a website that hasn't followed the guidelines is penalized

• To reach the top of the SERPs and stay there in 2014 and beyond, your website must deserve to be there. It needs to be the best in class. It must offer the best user experience in that niche

• There are a number of tools that can help you achieve that goal

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Useful (SEO) Tools

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Tool #1: moz

http://moz.com/

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Tool #2: Raven tools

http://raventools.com/marketing-tools/seo-software/

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Tool #3: Web CEO

http://www.webceo.com

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Free SEO tools

• http://www.wordstream.com/free-keyword-tools• http://www.wordtracker.com/• http://www.keywordeye.com/• http://ubersuggest.org/

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Other resources

• http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/63270-the-future-of-seo-was-pr-is-it-cro-now

• http://econsultancy.com/uk/reports/seo-agencies-buyers-guide• http://

econsultancy.com/uk/forums/best-practice/seo-advice-3?page=1#forum_post_14782

• http://www.targetinternet.com/seo-tools-comparison-raven-seomoz-buzzstream/

• http://www.sitevisibility.co.uk/services/search-engine-optimisation/

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Hummingbird:conversation starter…announced September 2013

SEM = SEO + PPC• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Helping your site to rank higher in Search Engine Results Pages for a given keyword (= phrase). Depends on relevance (content) and reputation (inbound links)

• Paid Search = Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)Buying ads (e.g. on Google or Bing) to generate clickthroughs to your website landing page. For each keyword, ads are sold on an auction basis. Ad Rank= £bid x Quality Score

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93% of web user journeys start with a search engine*. Go Figure.

*Forrester

How does Google decide how to rank your page?Google primarily looks at two things:

• Relevance (content of the page and which keywords appear where)

And• Reputation (inbound links from webpages

with high Google PageRank and Google+ page +1s)

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More from OCOM

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mike.berry@mikeberryassociates.comuk.linkedin.com/in/mikeberrylinkedinhttp://mikeberryassociates.com http://twitter.com/mikeberrytweets

Good luck and let’s connect!

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