Final introduction to SEO - General Assembly

GENERAL ASSEMBLY I A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO SEOA PracticalIntroductionto SEOJohn DohertyLead/SEO Consultant, Distilled NYC

GENERAL ASSEMBLY I A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO SEO 2What is SEO?DefinitionSEO is the process of getting traffic from the “free,”“organic,” “editorial” or “natural” listings on search engines. Allmajor search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing havesuch results, where web pages and other content such as videosor local listings are shown and ranked based on what the searchengine considers most relevant to users. Payment isn’t involved,as it is with paid search ads. source

We’re optimizing the organic listings, not the paid listings.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY I SEO 101 BY DISTILLED 4That’s great,but tell me howdo it.

5SEOhas 3maintenets• Content• Accessibility• Outreach

GENERAL ASSEMBLY I A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO SEO 61) ContentEverything in SEO, and broader online marketing, starts with content.

7KeywordRichContentContent should be aimed at user needs, withsearch engines taken into account.If you want to rank, put the words on the page.

Optimized 8Titles andHeadingsThese are the strongest on-page indicators tothe crawlers what your content is about.

Keyword 9 Research To get traffic from the search engines, you need to create content around the keywords you want to rank for. http://www.johnfdoherty.com/minimum- viable-keyword-research/http://bit.ly/QU6dtu

User 10 Targeted Content These are the pages that meet your target audience’s needs. They will usually be your most linked-to pages.http://bit.ly/nODcB5

User 11GeneratedContentDepending your niche and site goals, allowingusers to create content on your site, witheditorial control, is a great way to get contentscaleably

12ONE WORD OFCAUTION WITH Depending your niche and site goals, allowing users to create content on your site, with UGC editorial control, is a great way to get content scaleablyProvide some education to your users, or require them to adhere to certain length and quality requirements. Build SEO best practices into your system

13 CONTENT STRATEGY, not Depending your niche and site goals, allowing SEO CONTENT users to create content on your site, with editorial control, is a great way to get content scaleablyA blog is not a content strategy. And we’re past the days of “unique content for SEO”. You need unique content on your site, but it needs to be content that is not only unique but also useful for users.

14 On-Site ContentDepending your niche and site goals, allowing Strategy isusers to create content on your site, witheditorial control, is a great way to get contentscaleably ongoing and integrated

The Dropbox method 15 is very specific and hard to replicate. From an organicperspective, it’s not To get users good practice. from organic, Depending your niche and site goals, allowing you need to users to create content on your site, with editorial control, is a great way to get content scaleably give them content

Build pages friendly to 16rankings AND conversions Depending your niche and site goals, allowing users to create content on your site, with editorial control, is a great way to get content scaleably

Don’t forget about the 17other verticals of search too. Depending your niche and site goals, allowing users to create content on your site, with editorial control, is a great way to get content scaleably

GENERAL ASSEMBLY I A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO SEO 18Don’t Forget“Why”Especially as a startup, you’re unknown. You need people to connectwith your brand, so tell them “why” they should care. Who works there?What are you trying to do? Why? “Sell benefits, not features”

19 Depending your niche and site goals, allowing users to create content on your site, with Show Your editorial control, is a great way to get content scaleably PersonalityPeople want to connect with your story and be part of something bigger. Show who you are and why what you are doing it cool. Tell a story.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY I A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO SEO 202) AccessibilityWithout a clear site structure, search crawlers cannot access andtherefore cannot rank your site and content.

21If theycan’t crawlit, userswon’t come.The search engine crawlers are your fifth user.Not only do you need to think about howhuman users use your site, you also need tothink how search crawlers access it.

22Googlecan’t crawlcontent thatyou need tolog in tosee.

Google 23crawls links.Links drive SEO and the Internet. This ismostly how Google discovers new content(though social has a role in that now). If youwant your content to be discovered andranked, put your most important content ashigh in your site structure as possible.

24Site Image Credit: https://seogadget.co.uk/StructureMost important pages go near the top of your site’s hierarchy. These are passed the mostinternal link equity from the most well-linked-to pages. Think about categories and sitetaxonomy when it comes to linking.

25 Internal LinkingAlways think about ways to link to the other pages on your site. Top navigations make themost sense, as well as linking to parallel pages in categories. Link with targeted anchor text,but make it natural for users. Think “Hotels in Paris” not “Paris Hotels Best”.

26 No fancy JavaScript or AJAXGoogle has gotten better about crawling Javascript and AJAX onsite, but best practices stilldictate that if you want the content indexed, you need to display it with HTML and CSS.HTML5 is fine as well. Otherwise, you risk not getting credit with the search engines.

27 No fancyOr otherwise this might happen. And you do JavaScriptnot want this to happen.

28 Categories Categories CategoriesCategory pages have a better chance of ranking for competitive terms than individual productor article pages. Link back to these from articles, link to them from the homepage and othercategories. Good post - http://kaiserthesage.com/large-scale-link-building/

29This pagecan rank for“women’sshoes”

30This won’t.Ever.

36 31GENERAL ASSEMBLY I A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO SEOA FewTechnical BestPractices

32ShortURLs arebetter forrankingsShorter URLs have been shown to correlate better to rankings than long URLs.Google/search engines stop crawling at a certain point to save on computing costs.Therefore, try to keep URLs under 80 characters.Post - http://www.johnfdoherty.com/lessons-from-google-about-url-lengths/

Short, 33easy torememberdomainI tend to favor branding over domains with keywords in them, especially domains withhyphens and keywords. If you build a brand, you’re more likely to win online because ofbrand loyalty.A good post by Rand Fishkin - http://moz.com/rand/domain-bias-why-branding-search-marketing-cannot-be-separated/

34OptimizedTitle TagsTitle tags are still the #1 correlated onpage metric to search rankings. If you want to rankfor a term, you need to have it in your title tag. Stuffing keywords into title tags no longerhelps though. Titles must be relevant to the user otherwise Google will change them in thesearch results to return a better result to users.

35 AnalyticsTo truly be able to optimize your site well, you need to track where users are coming fromand through which keywords. Therefore, at least have Google Analytics and GoogleWebmaster Tools set up.Intro: http://www.google.com/analytics/learn/index.html

36 RedirectsIf and when you rearrange your site, use proper 301 (permanent), not 302 (temporary)redirects. 302 redirects do not pass link equity, whereas 301s will preserve up to 90% ofyour link equity and help you preserve your rankings.

This guy again

GENERAL ASSEMBLY I A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO SEO 383) OutreachWithout outreach for press and links, your site will not rank. Links drivethe ranking algorithm.

39Links stillrule theSEO world.SEOmoz Ranking Factors

Recent algo changes 40have changedlinkbuilding A real example (WPMU) from @rosshudgenshttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-wpmuorg-recovered-from-the-penguin-update

So we must be 41careful about whatlinks we get.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY I A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO SEO 37 42Let’s do it right.

43Do PR(and cool stuff)

44GuestContent • Ask friends if you can write on their site • Engage online

Here’s an Analytics Custom Report for youhttps://www.google.com/analytics/web/permalink?uid=OClPZwEVQ- 45 aOBYBhDq21Sw Guest Content • Track the following: • Links • Referral Traffic • Conversions

46FindInfluencersEvery niche or vertical has influencers. You shouldknow who they are, or find them using Topsy orFollowerWonk. Seek to connect with them (onlineand offline).

47Do stuffworthy oftheir attention

GENERAL ASSEMBLY I A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO SEO 37 48WinningCombination

GENERAL ASSEMBLY I A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO SEO 49Great content ona crawlable sitethat converts.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY I A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO SEO 37 50Tools To Know

51OpenSiteExplorerhttp://www.opensiteexplorer.org

52Google Analyticshttp://www.google.com/analytics/

53Followerwonkhttp://followerwonk.com/

GENERAL ASSEMBLY I A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO SEO 69 54THANK YOUQuestions? John Doherty John.doherty@distilled.net @dohertyjf

http://www.onqmarketing.com.au	287
http://ticsyformacion.com	181
http://storify.com	105
http://www.olafmolenaar.com	73
http://onq.dietdigital.com.au	65
http://elearning.arenca.com	20
http://www.socialbrandingco.com	10
https://twitter.com	7
http://www.dominio.ws	4
http://flavors.me	3
https://si0.twimg.com	3
http://kickmyass.loader.io	2
http://pinterest.com	2
http://tweets.onqmarketing.com.au	2
http://kred.com	1
https://www.facebook.com	1
http://saia.uft.edu.ve	1
http://novaxarxabusos.omitsis.com	1
http://tribaltattoosdesignss.blogspot.com	1
http://onqmarketing.wpengine.com	1

Final introduction to SEO - General Assembly

by John Doherty on Sep 12, 2012

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

20 Embeds 770

Statistics

Final introduction to SEO - General Assembly Presentation Transcript