Intro to SEO

Journalists & SEO Chris Snider • chrissniderdesign.com

What would you do if you wanted to learn more about SEO?

You would go to....

Google processes 6 billion searches per month. Yahoo! processes 1.3 billion searches per month. MSN/Live/Bing processes 1.1 billion searches per month. Source: Nielsen Feb. 2010

84% of internet users conduct searches 2nd most popular daily Internet activity (behind e-mail)

drake university is searched 100,000 times each month iowa state fair is searched 60,500 times each month des moines restaurants is searched 33,000 times/month west des moines is searched 450,000 times each month des moines is searched 5,000,000 times each month organic gardening is searched 165,000 times each month Source: Google Keyword Tool

Therefore: Search is a great way to drive trafﬁc to your site. And very likely the best way to drive trafﬁc to your site.

What you see when you perform a search...

paid search results paid search results natural search results

Google OneBox

• 5 search engines receive more than 90 percent of all search trafﬁc • Google,Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Ask

top 3 spots are seen 100 percent of time

10x trafﬁc difference for 1st vs. 10th position

How people search • Users no longer scroll down the page • Instead, they submit multiple queries to narrow information • sandals > women’s sandals > women’s merrell sandals > blue women’s merrell sandals

Eyetrack and search...

How does SEO work? And how can it work for you?

Simpliﬁed SEO • Build a great site with great content • Find the right keywords - and put them in the right places • Get other quality sites to link to you

What are the elements of SEO?

title URL headlines text

And also your source code...

What Google shows... title meta description URL

But what if Google doesn’t know I exist?

You need to get Google to crawl your site One way to do that is to submit your blog to Google Search “submit site” or “submit blog” Or/and get other sites to link to your site. When their site is crawled, it will crawl your site.

How to know if your site is being crawled: Search cache:http://www.yoursite.com

How to improve your ranking

Figure out what words people should search to ﬁnd your site. Remember: The goal is to be helpful to readers, not to trick them. Then: Research those words.

Why research? • To ﬁnd words people actually search • To make sure you’re not trying to optimize a word you will never get ranked for

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/gtrends/

Great resource tool is Google Keyword Tool

Where to use those keywords In your page Title In your URL In your headlines <h1> and <h2> On the page In your meta data (not as important for SEO) In links to your site

Good link: Bad link:

For individual posts: Use your keywords in your headline, at the beginning. Use your keywords in the ﬁrst paragraph of the article.

Spelling is hard Be sure to optimize for the misspelled words people will search.

Don’t use abbreviations People search des moines not D.M. People search Shawn Johnson not WDM gymnast Johnson

OR... Do use abbreviations

Google trends is your friend

Avoid those pun headlines

When people search online, they are far more literal.

Use the keywords in your post Particularly important for newspapers, who seldom use the name of their town or state in posts (because it’s assumed by print readers).

Try to get other credible sites/blogs to link to you. Best way to do that is to link to them.

Write posts that people will want to link to:

Read other blogs - and comment on other blogs. Be sure to leave your URL when you comment.

Promote your best work on: • Digg • Delicious • Reddit • Newsvine • Facebook • Twitter • Other blogs Just don’t overdo it.

Occasionally dip into Google Trends to see what topics people are suddenly searching. If those topics are relevant to your site/blog, take advantage of that fact (and optimize appropriately)

Write articles/posts that people will want to link to. Look closely at your metrics to see what is popular.

Chris Brogan’s most-linked-to posts:

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ChrisSniderDesign.com @chrissnider Linkedin.com/in/chrissnider2

Intro to SEO

by chrissnider on Mar 27, 2010

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Intro to SEO — Presentation Transcript