Head to Toe Seo

1 Head to Toe SEO Steps to Optimize your Website Presented By: Nadia King Manager of Natural Search Services king@apogee-search.com March 4, 2009

2 Thanks! Pam Knight – Plainview Press Christine Botha – Drake Industries Tim Vasquez – Margarita Store

3 What is Site Optimization? SEO = Search Engine Optimization • Making your website more friendly to search engines • Finding/Indexing all pages of site • Valuing all pages of site & keywords on them When to do it: Best done during development & coding of site, not after!

4 Don’t Forget: SEO is a Process Before: Pick Keywords After: Link Building Other things to consider: • When people come to your site, do they fill out your lead form or actually buy things? What is your conversion rate? • Drive traffic to your site thru Paid Search

5 Steps to Optimizing your Site 1. Help search engines find all pages of your site! (Indexing) 2. Tell the search engines what your site is about (Keyword Optimization) 3. Site Transitions 4. Ongoing Optimization

6 Step 1: Help search engines find all pages of your site! Indexing

7 Indexing What coding language SHOULD I use? Are there any I should NOT use? • Focus on what you need your site to do and go with that solution • It is possible to build an SEO friendly site almost any language • HTML – it’s the oldest, and the best! • PHP, ASP – also good

8 Indexing Drupal best practices • Open source coding language that is friendly to non- programmers • URLs are not typically friendly- download & install modules to make them friendlier: Enable Clean URLs Token & PathAuto Module Global Redirect Module Meta Tags (Nodewords) Module Page Title Module Links Module

9 Indexing Javascript • Not readable by search engines • Avoid using for Navigational Links & Content • Use it to make your page “smaller” to the search engines Flash • Not fully indexable by search engines • Consider what exact page you want search engines to return for your different products & services • Avoid using for Navigational Links & Content

10 Indexing Um, it’s 2009. Are there some Tools that can help me automatically figure out some of this?? • Google Webmaster Tools

11 Indexing Google Webmaster Tools – Overview

12 Indexing Google Webmaster Tools - Settings

13 Indexing Sitemaps - HTML • Traditional list of links on your site

14 Indexing Sitemaps - XML • Created for machine use, not human use • Gives weight to pages of your site • If you set up GWT, you already have an XML file created for you! • Use www.xml-sitemaps.com for smaller sites • Search “how to create an xml sitemap” for Google Support Instructions

15 Indexing Robots.txt

16 Indexing Robots.txt

17 Now, on to Step 2 in Head to Toe SEO: Keyword Optimization

18 Keyword Optimization SEO in Real Life: Why is Page A ranking? If Page A is ranking, how do you correct that to get Page B to rank?

19 Keyword Optimization Make sure search engines are finding the RIGHT page for your keywords Mapping

20 Keyword Optimization Optimizing URLs with Keywords • Include Keywords in folder structure AND page names www.homebuilder.com/consulting/green-energy-remodels www.academicsoftware.com/math-and-geometry-software/smath-game • Use hyphens to divide words www.computerequipment.com/wireless+mouse www.triathalontraining.com/articles/race_day_preparation • Keep them short

21 Keyword Optimization Optimizing Tags with Keywords Title Tags • Example keywords: Product Labels, Custom Product Labels <title>Custom Product Labels from Drake Industries in Austin, Texas</title> Header Tags (H1, H2) • Example keywords: Modern American Literature, Understanding Contemporary American Literature <h1>Understanding Contemporary American Literature</h1> Alt Tags Meta Description Tags

22 Keyword Optimization Optimizing Content with Keywords • Keyword Density = # of times Keyword is used / # of Words per Page • Recommended Keyword Density? • ~300 words of content per page

23 Keyword Optimization Internal Linking “About Us” Page Opportunity for internal linking: http://plainviewpress.net/pages/PVPconcept.html <a href="authorlist.html"> Contemporary and Emerging Authors</a> Help search engines find all pages of your site!

24 Steps 3 & 4 are quick-- Site Transitions Ongoing SEO

25 Site Transitions 3 Tips: • Transition in sections • Launch a wireframe first • My favorite numbers: 301s & 302s

26 Ongoing Optimization Yes, you do need to optimize your site ongoing! • Make sure no tags have been changed • Make sure no other pages on your site are outranking the target page

27 Thanks! Nadia King @naja2183 king@apogee-search.com

Head to Toe Seo

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