Training Google to Love Your Website

TRAINING GOOGLE TO LOVE YOUR WEBSITE
An Brief Introduction to SEO
4/9/2010

About Me
Jeanne Kramer-Smyth
MLS, University of Maryland

What is SEO?
SEO = Search Engine Optimization
Fancy way to say “making your web content findable by search engines”

Building Blocks of SEO
Analytics
Page Construction
Site Organization
Topic & Keyword Research

What are people looking for?
Analytics
Page Construction
Site Organization

World War II or World War 2?
Keyword research can show you how people actually search – official vs popular version.
Google Insight into Search:
world war 2
world war ii

Tools for Keyword Research
Google Insight for Search
Google Trends
Google AdWords Keyword Tool
Google Search-based Keyword Tool
SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool
KeywordDiscovery ($)
WordTracker ($) and Free Version
SEO Book’s Keyword Tools Page

This site was built for crawling!
Analytics
Page Construction
Site Organization

Tree Gives Content Clear Home

Gain Authority Via Internal Links

XML Sitemaps
A list of pages available to be indexed by search engines – an index for robots that crawl your site.
Types of Sitemaps:
General Sitemap
News Sitemap
Video Sitemap

SEO Checklist: Site Level
All content can be found via crawling
Current XML sitemaps submitted to search engines
Leaf pages point to hubs
Child pages point to their parents
Good anchor text, usually matches target page title

Target each page!
Analytics
Page Construction
Site Organization

Before you start building a page
Physical home & URL
Primary keyword target

Title & Description
TiITLE
<title>Macmillan: Robot Dreams: Sara Varon: Books</title>
<meta name="description" content="Macmillan: Robot Dreams: Sara Varon: Bonus Publisher Materials: Praise, Author Biography, Awards" />
META DESCRIPTION
SERP

Example: Many Pages – One Title

SEO Checklist: Page Level
Clear primary keyword target phrase
One URL per page
Unique page title, less than 65 characters
<H1> tag containing keyword target
Unique meta description, less than 164 characters
Content rich text
Images have alt text

After the launch
Analytics
Page Construction
Site Organization

Questions to ask after launch
Traffic Sources
Bounce Rates
SERP position for target keywords

Free Tools
Google Webmaster Tools: Register your sitemap
Google Analytics: Traffic sources & statistics
Google Feedburner: Tracking RSS subscriptions
Google Website Optimizer: A/B testing

Next Steps for YOU!
Look at sites you like – could you improve their SEO?
Bake SEO into your web site design and development process
Follow some SEO blogs (RSS is your friend!)
SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog
SEO Book
Search Engine Land
Google Webmaster Central Blog

Questions?
Looking for me? Google Jeanne Kramer-Smyth!
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jkramersmyth
Blog: SpellboundBlog.com
Portfolio: SpellboundProjects.com
Audio Book Reviews: BooksForEars.com

Training Google to Love Your Website

by Jeanne Kramer-Smyth on Apr 09, 2010

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