Seo presentation revised(2)

SOME SEO BASICS Malcolm Coles, 1/9/2010

WHY SEO IS IMPORTANT

Why SEO matters

What SEO isn’t http://powazek.com/posts/2090

What SEO isn’t

SEO is about
Working out what people search for
Optimising your site and its pages for those terms
Getting attention for your website
Converting the resulting traffic into customers

Why SEO matters Source: http://www.redcardinal.ie/search-engine-optimisation/12-08-2006/clickthrough-analysis-of-aol-datatgz/ Based on some data AOL accidentally released two years ago.

Why SEO matters http://research.microsoft.com/~ryenw/papers/ClarkeSIGIR2007.pdf

What search results look like

Anatomy of a search page

An individual result You can control this You can control this You can control this

How you’re doing

How do you look in Google?

How does Google see your site?

I’m so pretty …

WHAT YOU NEED TO THINK ABOUT ON YOUR SITE

Html titles

Make your page titles
There’s a bit of HTML called <title>.
It’s not the on-page headline, and you can’t actually see it on a webpage.
Most web publishing software defaults to “page headline – site name”
But it doesn’t always … and you may not want it to.
Google pays A LOT of attention to it

Celebrity Big Brother

Set them!

Make your page titles
Make your page titles:
descriptive,
compelling,
unique
Put the keywords you want to rank for in the title – preferably at the front
This is all good for search engines AND for users.

Don’t get carried away …
X Factor Dermot O'Leary Jedward death threats Louis Walsh sexuality Britney Spears miming Never Mind The Buzzcocks: 3am

Think about what people search for

Meta descriptions

Make meta descriptions compelling
There’s a bit of HTML called the meta description.
You can’t actually see it on a webpage.
It doesn’t help your site rank. It affects clickthrough rates.

Make your descriptions
Make them:
Unique
Compelling
Descriptive
Include the keywords you want to rank for – google will make them bold
Or else don’t bother and let Google decide …

Images

Help Google out
Give the image a descriptive file name
Use alt text
Use a caption

Google can’t understand images

Don’t be naughty …

URLs: how Google organises the web
Don’t have the same content on multiple URLs
Don’t delete URLs without directing them

… not as Google does Google’s SEO report card

Don’t be too helpful
These all work:
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/HPV-vaccination/Pages/Introduction.aspx
http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/HPV-vaccination/Pages/Introduction.aspx
http://www.nhs.uk/ C o N di T io N s/HPV-va C ci N ati O n/Pa G es/Introduction.aspx

Redirect broken URLs

Internal linking

What words do you link with?

How important is a page?

Content

Technologies
Beware of Flash
Beware of javascript

WHAT NOT TO DO

Don’t do any of these things …
Hidden text
Cloaking
Keyword stuffing
Irrelevant keywords
Get hacked

Welcome to our church!
We welcome all worshipers. Daily Mass, 8 am, Monday to Thursday. Communion service at 8 am on Friday. Weekend Masses: Saturday, 5:30 pm; Sunday, 10:30 am 101 Main Street, 555-4242

Welcome to our church!
We welcome all worshipers. Daily Mass, 8 am, Monday to Thursday. Communion service at 8 am on Friday. Weekend Masses: Saturday, 5:30 pm; Sunday, 10:30 am 101 Main Street, 555-4242 CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM

OFF SITE

Links, links, links

Links, links, links X

Never mention toolbar pagerank

Don’t cheat
You can cheat by …
Adding links to other people’s sites (EG blog comments). That usually doesn’t work.
You can buy links. That sometimes works –
but long-term penalties can be ruinous.
You can set up fake websites to get links.
You can do all sorts of things!
Or you could have a quality website with content people want to link to and promote that to get links …

TOOLS YOU CAN USE

Two easy Google ones

NEARLY THE END

To sum up
Have the content people are searching for
Focus pages on individual search terms.
Make it clear what pages are about – to search engines and to searchers
Make sure Google can find your content
Don’t cheat
Then do your off-site SEO

Any volunteers …?
For a quick site review?

@malcolmcoles
www.malcolmcoles.co.uk
Me

Seo presentation revised(2)

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