Introduction to Search Engine Optimization for Donegal Women in Business

Search Engine Optimization DohertyWhite Donegal Women In Business May 2010 Michael White, Founder, DohertyWhite Digital Marketing and PR Growing sales through more effective marketing

Contents
Introduction
What is SEO?
The main elements of SEO
A step-by-step approach
Choose your keywords
Revise your site design
Index your site
Optimize each page
Check internal links
Encourage external links
Analyze your performance
Continue the improvement process
Useful resources

Your speaker – Michael White
Co-founder and partner at DohertyWhite
Ex Head of Marketing at €20m Singularity
Helped double revenue at Singularity using online marketing tools like Google pay-per-click, search engine optimization and email marketing
Ex Senior Product Manager at Siemens, ex Management Consultant with Deloitte & Touche, Project Manager with Misys Corporation
Enterprise Ireland Marketing mentor to 20 early stage firms
Experience in large-scale projects in S.America, Africa, Carribbean and across Europe (Ireland, UK, Holland, Sweden, Germany)
Trinity College Dublin Computer Science, Post Grad Diploma in Computing
Ex Member Forrester Research Technology Marketing Exec Council
Annmarie Doherty Simon Rogals Paul Kennedy

Digital marketing, PR and sales consultancy
We help businesses generate more revenue through more effective sales and marketing
Marketing, PR, sales, and product management
Recognised expertise – Forrester, Irish Medical Device Association, Irish Software Association
We work fast and deliver value early and often
What we do

Agenda
Drive increases in sales, lead generation and revenue using Search Engine Optimization
Today when people want to buy something the first place they look is the web, whether they’re looking for shoes, a car or a house
Some websites are more easily found than others
And some web-sites are better at convincing you to buy
During the seminar I’ll be describing what you can do to make your website more easily found and, once found, to persuade people to buy your products or services
Specifically, I’ll be talking about an area called “Search Engine Optimization”

What is marketing?
Make something people want – your product or service and what makes you different/better
Sell it to them – understand your potential customers, how they buy and connect with them
Me My potential customers How do I reach them? “ Make something people want, then sell it to them” ?

General approach Use your website to Generate More Sales Review what you’re selling - so you can articulate it’s features, its benefits, why you’re better 3 Review who you’re selling to – your target buyers 2 1

Why focus on digital marketing? Because your prospective customers will find you before you them.
The first place people look for products or services is online – primarily Google
The first place someone looks after contact is your web-site. What’s on your site that would encourage them to become a customer?
Will they find you? How do you compare with competing sites?
If you are promoting yourself the same way you did 10 years ago then you’re doing something wrong

Why online marketing?
1. Makes business sense
More cost effective – you can see what you get for your money
Greater impact – you can market to 1000s for same price as 100s
Small businesses can look like big businesses
Small businesses can access bigger potential markets
You can ‘Scale up’ – easy to increase results at low cost
2. Recognises changes in Buyer behaviour
People’s buying habits are changing
They start shopping by looking on the web, especially Google
They do research on the web, not at tradeshows
Order online more frequently
Basically, you can generate more sales at less cost

The tools available
PR
Use a mixture, but emphasise online tools ‘ Offline’ Digital Marketing
Print Ads
Web-site
Radio Ads
Search Engine Optimization
Direct Mail
Google Pay-per-click
Events/Tradeshows
Email marketing
PR
Online ads
Telemarketing
Online PR
In-store merchandising
Social Media
Flyers
Webinars
Newsletters / bulletins
eNewsletters

1. Revise website based on buyer analysis, add landing pages 2. Generate content to attract visitor registrations 3. Launch Google pay-per-click ads 7. Launch Search Engine Optimization activities 5. Generate PR and online PR 4. Start Email Marketing campaigns 6. Post to Corporate Blog and Social Media 8. Hardcopy Mail to selected contacts 9. Telemarketing qualification of warm leads Digital Demand Generation The tools available Sales Results Preparation Execution

What is Search Engine Optimization? Advertising – (Pay-per-click) Natural or ‘organic’ search results

You want to get found without paying Google all the time
‘ Organic’ or natural search results
How do you get to the top?
What is Search Engine Optimization?

Most people start their search for a product or service on the Web using a search engine like Google
You want to ensure that someone searching for your kind of product or service will find you
Ideally, they’ll find you before they find your competitor

You can pay to appear using Pay-per-click (PPC) ads
You can also appear for free because you naturally come out near the top in the search results – the ‘organic’ or natural results
Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) is the process and tools you use to rank higher in the free or ‘organic’ search results, with the aim of getting near the top of the 1 st page
Getting the basics right can drive double-digit traffic growth

Google and other search engines use two main factors to decide how high a web-page appears on their search results:
Content - how relevant is the content of the page to the search term
Link Popularity – how many other sites link to this page
And now Social Media presence too

So SEO focuses on
Optimizing your web content (web-pages, documents, text, images) to ensure it’s relevant to your target audiences and can be seen by search engines
Encouraging other sites to link to you by providing great information they find useful
Now a social element too – creating and sharing content

On page Off page
On Page – the content you write/put on your web-site plus how you structure your site
Off Page – links from other people/sites to you
WWW WWW WWW WWW WWW The main elements of SEO
Two sets of ‘things to do’ for SEO

A step-by-step approach
Choose what terms you want to be found for – keywords
Review the structure of your web-site
Get your site indexed
Optimize each page on your site for particular keywords
Check internal links
Encourage external links
Analyse your performance

Step 1. Choose keywords
Which words and phrases do people use when looking for you, your products, your services?
(You can try an idea called “Buyer persona analysis” to help with this)
Looking for keywords that are (a) relevant and (b) popular search terms
But want to avoid words that everyone is competing for – try to find phrases that you can come out on top for
To start, brainstorm all the words and phrases you can think of
Check your web-server log files to see what visitors search for
Collect all the phrases and words in a spreadsheet then....

Ask your customers what they would search for if looking for you and your kind of product/service
You can check how popular these terms are using Google Insights
Look at the keywords your competitors focus on using a free tool like www.seokeywordanalysis.com/seotools
Use keyword tools – Google Keywords (free), Wordtracker

Step 2. Revise site design
Some fundamentals for good SEO site design
Check out Google SEO Starter Guide for tips
Simple, flat structure, easy to find content, good internal linkage to relevant content from home page
Good naming of URLs i.e. intelligible to humans, not too long or complex, avoid non-alphabetic characters
Simple navigation: make content easy to find
Good usability: don’t be heavy handed in use of graphics, tag any graphics you use, name all buttons and boxes in plain language

Aim for each page on your site to target one keyword phrase – try not to have 2 pages optimized for the same topic as they’ll compete for ranking
Review your site structure accord to these principles, moving, adding or deleting pages as necessary
Use 301 redirects when you move pages around or delete them – you want to avoid missing links

Step 3. Index your site
Create an html sitemap (lower-case s)
This is just a page with text links so human visitors to your site can easily see the navigation
Create an xml Sitemap (upper-case S) to submit to search engines
Google’s webmaster Help Center provides a guide to Sitemap files
They also provide a Sitemap generator
And check out Google’s page on sitemaps
Submit your site to the search engines e.g. using Google’s Webmaster tools

Step 4. Optimize each page
Focus each page on a particular keyword phrase
Then review the URL, page title tag , header tags, your text, internal links, use of bold, page description text
Page Title Header tags URL Text, internal links, bold Description text

Step 5. Check internal links
Internal linkage affects page rank
Create a natural flow
Make sure your home page links through to your most important internal pages
Have internal cross-links where it’s appropriate
Avoid complex webs of navigation links e.g. every page linking to every other page
Use text for navigation i.e. a link that says “benefits of SEO”, rather than “click here” (known as anchor text)
These descriptive links should ideally use your chosen keywords

Step 6. Seek external links
You want to attract links from high-authority external sites
Content is the primary means of obtaining links – have interesting, valuable stuff on your site people want to see
You can also offer links to others
Check out LinkingMatters for their free guide to link strategy

Prepare a Link Strategy and execute an Inbound Link Campaign
First, identify a target list of sites you’d like to link to you
Who links to you now
Who links to your competitors
What sites are top for the search terms related to you
Use tools like Check Your Link Popularity
To get links, provide information/content that people think is valuable and should be shared
What will you offer to make people want to link to you? Quality content (e.g. white papers or guides), or a useful tool (e.g. RoI calculators) or information (e.g. resource links)

Don’t ignore free links - you should ensure you’re listed in local business directories, linked to from partner sites, from customers, colleagues, trade associations – anywhere reputable with a web presence that will link back to you
Decide what outbound links you’ll have on your own site
Set objectives e.g. % increase in web visitor traffic
Contact your target sites asking for links, stating why it’s of benefit to them

Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Yammer, blogging, video….
Generate interesting stuff people want to see, read, hear
You’ll get more web traffic, visitors, business
Publish everything everywhere
Distribute, share, propagate
Text, documents, video, graphics
Feed out to Facebook, LinkedIn, Slideshare, YouTube
Tag everything, link everything back to you

Use Web 2.0 and social media as a way to generate links
Entries on your blog that connect to content on your web-site
Online PR – press releases that have links back to your site
Twitter – regular business updates linking back to your content
… . all of which still comes back to content
Think of creating a ‘content strategy’, outlining what you want to say, and your schedule for production, and how you plan to repurpose content for different media and channels e.g. break up a technical paper into chunks on your blog, summarise it in a powerpoint on Slideshare etc.

Step 7. Analyze performance
You can’t manage what you can’t measure
Decide what is important to measure and “baseline” your performance
Then begin cycle of:
Set targets
Make changes to your site to achieve those targets
Monitor whether the changes have the desired effect
Repeat
When you’re confident in your ability to measure and analyze, start “benchmarking” yourself against competitors

What should you measure?
Where is your website traffic coming from – direct visits to your URL, from search engines, pay-per-click, social media, referring sites?
What’s the split between the different sources of traffic i.e. which produces most / least visitors?
Which traffic generates more conversions / engagement / leads?
Inbound links: number, quality, age
What keywords were used to find your site?
Which pages are accessed the most/least?
How long does someone stay on your site?
What are your top entry and exit pages? Why?

What action should you take based on analysis?
What are your goals? Increased site traffic, more B2C direct sales from your site, or more B2B lead generation?
E.g. if you want to generate more ‘conversions’ (e.g. a visitor registration or a direct sale), then identify which pages have the best / worst rates of conversion and compare to find out why
Look at which keywords are most likely to produce a conversion
Look at which traffic sources are producing most traffic today and think about how to augment this

2. Landing page design
Objective – Convert the visitor
Rule #1: Avoid distractions – push visitor to your “Most Wanted Action”
Spell out the benefits and have clear call to action
Remove any unnecessary navigation
Be consistent with the ad or email that brought your visitor here, including keywords, logos and other images
Try to keep registration fields to a minimum e.g. Name and email
Try “A/B” testing of 2 versions of landing page to see what works
Use Google analytics to monitor conversions
Note: Convert your visitors!

Resources www.pandia.com www.marketingsherpa.com www.marketingprofs.com www.b2bmarketingzone.com www.wdfm.com www.raintoday.com www.seomoz.org www.hubspot.com www.forrester.com www.dohertywhite.com
Here are some useful links for search engine optimization
There are also more free guides available from DohertyWhite
www.webworkshop.net www.linkingmatters.com www.seobook.com Google SEO Starter Guide

Thank You DohertyWhite Email [email_address] Slides slideshare.net/dohertywhite Twitter @michaelgwhite Mobile +353 86 383 8981 www.dohertywhite.com

Introduction to Search Engine Optimization for Donegal Women in Business

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