SBDC Tune Up Your Site for Search Engines

Are You Hiding from Customers?Tune Up Your Site for Search EnginesSeptember 10, 2009

Let’s Get Acquainted
Ed Tankersley
President of Eight Trails
Smarter websites and online marketing
20+ years advertising and marketing
Interactive director
Creative director
Writer
Led the design and development of more than 50 websites

Now Tell Me About You
How many B2B businesses?
How many B2C businesses?
Business size?
Already have a website?
Have done some SEO?
DIY
DIFM

Tune Up Your Sitefor Search Engines
Today’s agenda

What Is SEOand Why Does It Matter?

What is SEO?
AKA Search Engine Optimization, Search Optimization
Improvements to your website – and related to your website – that improve your site’s ranking in search engines

Why Does SEO Matter?
Traditional advertising is interruptive
Conversely, when someone does a search, they have self-identified as a potential buyer
Get found by the people who are looking for your product or service
Don’t hide from your customers!

SEO vs PPC
SEO or Search Engine Optimization helps you with your organic or natural search rankings
PPC, Pay Per Click, or Paid Search is not affected by what you do with SEO

Top 10 Rank is Critical
Source: http://www.seoresearcher.com/distribution-of-clicks-on-googles-serps-and-eye-tracking-analysis.htm

What is Google’s Purpose?
To deliver useful, relevant results to their searchers

What determines your rank?
It’s all about relevant results for searchers
On-site factors, such as
Page title
Headings
Text
Off-site factors, especially
In-bound links

Optimizing Your Site

Optimizing is a 5-Step Process
Keyword research
Site updates
Submit to search engines and directories
Build links
Measure and adjust

Step 1: Keyword Research
Generate a seed list
Ask your customers
Ask your front-line employees
Look at analytics or server logs
Use tools to expand your list
Evaluate and rank your keywords by
High search volume
High relevance
Low competition

High Search Volume
Get search volume estimates
Google Keyword Tool
adwords.google.com/select/keywordtoolexternal
Wordtracker
freekeywords.wordtracker.com
Keyword Discovery
www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

High Relevance
Are the people searching for that term likely to be buyers?
The more precise the search, the closer they are to buying
Bicycles
Mountain bikes
Mountain bike reviews
Cannondale mountain bike
Cannondale hardtail
Cannondale F3 Caffeine
Cannondale F3 Caffeine Phoenix

Low Competition
You can’t be number 1 for everything
Use long tail keywords

Select Your Keywords
Start with a manageable number – 10-20
Match the keywords to relevant pages of your site
One keyword per page

Step 2: Optimize Your Site
Focus on content
Fix the major problems
Get help with the tougher things

Content – Visible
Domain name
Page title
URL
Headings – H1, H2, H3
Text

Content – Hidden
Keywords
Description
Image alt tags

Structure
Separation of content and presentation
Important stuff first
Text-based navigation
Flat directory structure

Structure
Don’t build your site in Flash!
What Not to Do: Yeti Cycles

Other On-Site Factors
Custom error page
Currency of content
Site map
Robots.txt

Off-Site Factors
Inbound links
Domain authority
Quality of anchor text
Bad
Good

Step 3: Submit Your Site
Search Engines
Google
Bing
Directories
Yahoo
Open Directory (dmoz.org)
JoeAnt
Business.com

Step 4: Link Building
Blogs
Forums
Press Releases
Don’t buy links
Don’t bother with link exchanges
Most social media sites use “nofollow” tags so they don’t helpyour site get better ranking

Step 5: Measure
Google Analytics
Referrers
Search terms
Authority Labs
Position monitoring

Adjust
SEO is a process
Give it a few months to see results
Adjust and refine regularly based on what you measure

The Eight TrailsBaseline SEO Audit

Resources
EightTrails.com
SEOmoz.com
SEObook.com
SearchEngineLand.com

Questions? Comments?
Ed Tankersley
EightTrails.com
ed@eighttrails.com
@EightTrails
602-361-2001

SBDC Tune Up Your Site for Search Engines

by Eight Trails on Sep 10, 2009

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SBDC Tune Up Your Site for Search Engines — Presentation Transcript