What does good SEO look like on a website?

Pritesh Patel

Digital Marketing Manager

7 years working for product manufacturers, 2.5 years agency side

Responsible for auditing, strategy planning and measuring performance

What is SEO?SEO is a process – process for affecting the visibility of a website or webpage in search engines natural listings

Objectives for SEO

To grow and generate better quality traffic to our site from non-branded search terms (raise brand awareness)

To diversify our range of keywords to target topics, markets or themes such as Green Deal, CFSH, Contemporary Architecture or BSXXXX

Search Phrases Differ

Anatomy of a Google Listing

Page titleURLDescription

Page titles: 60-70 characters to play with inc. spaces

URL’s: Ensure consistency, contains keywords

Description: Descriptive copy outlining contents of page

7 things you can do today to check if your website has

the basics of SEO

Check 1 – Page titles & Descriptions

Keep testing different descriptions depending on who you are targeting – technical focused or design focused?

X

Check 2 – URL’sURL’s need to be clean and show structure

What is this page all about?

Avoid numbers, symbols and random words

Check 3 – Redirectswww.johnbrash.co.uk johnbrash.co.uk

Check 4 – SitemapSitemaps tell search engines how your website is structured and which pages are priority

Sitemaps can speed up indexing of new content & crawl frequency

Check 5 – Robots.txt

Robots.txt files tell search engines which pages not to index or folders not to crawl

Exclude all ‘thank you’ pages – you don’t want people entering your site on a ‘thank you for contacting us’ page

Check 6 – Internal Links

Link from well crafted, descriptive phrases to pages which are about that topic

Check 7 – ImagesSearch engines can’t see images. You need to tell search engines what the image is showing.

Ensure images are descriptive and contain keywords also

Summary1. Page titles, descriptions and headers are descriptive

2. URL’s are clean and well structured

3. Redirects are in place – www and non-www’s

4. Sitemap is present, no error occurs or 404 page

5. Robots.txt file is found, no error page

6. Body copy on every page has 2-3 internal links to other key pages

7. Images have descriptive ‘alt tags’ & contain keywords

Let’s do those 7 things on a site

Questions to AskWill my CMS allow me to change page titles, descriptions and headers without affecting other elements of the page?

What are my top 10 non-branded search terms for traffic and enquiries/sign ups/downloads?

Where are the opportunities for growth and how will we do it?

Who are my competitors online and what can you tell me about their SEO efforts?

Measurement

Measure SEO using the following metrics:

Traffic from non-branded search terms

# of search terms (total)

# of non-branded search terms

# of website goals generated from non-brand search traffic

Search Engine Rankings (only panic if your ranking drops by >10 listings)

MeasurementTraffic from non-brand keywords

So what does a well optimised website look like?1. Page titles, descriptions and headers are descriptive

2. URL’s are clean and well structured

3. Redirects are in place – www and non-www’s

4. Sitemap is present, no error page or 404 page

5. Robots.txt file is found, no error page or 404 page

6. Body copy on every page has some internal links to key pages

7. Images have descriptive ‘alt tags’ & contain keywords

Any Questions…

@priteshpatel9

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/pauley-creative

pritesh.patel@pauleycreative.co.uk

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www.pauleycreative.co.uk/blog