SEO Principles
By
Simon Wharton
Managing Director

Who are we?
PushON is an Online Marketing agency dedicated to
promoting and improving the website visibility of NW
companies by enabling the people who are looking for the
types of products and services you provide, to find your
website quickly and easily.

Our Credentials:
• Established in 2005
• Team of 7 industry‐proven professionals with over 39 years of technical and
marketing experience in Online Marketing
• Council member for Manchester Digital (Trade body for North West ICT and new media sectors)
• Approved consultant to the MDDA for Online Marketing
• Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM)
• Google Adwords professionally qualified
• Demonstrable track record of success
• Holder of Professional Indemnity Insurance

Our core competencies and services:
• Organic search marketing
− Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
− Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
− Social Media Optimisation (SMO)
• Blog marketing
• Online PR (e‐pr)
• Viral marketing
• Pay per click (PPC)
• Website Analysis
• Consultancy
• Outsourced online marketing department/manager

What are Search Engines?
An ever growing catalogue of all the websites and pages they
can find on the internet
The main search engines in the UK are:
•Google: www.google.co.uk
•Live (MSN/Microsoft): www.live.co.uk
•Ask: uk.ask.com
•Yahoo: uk.search.yahoo.com

How do Search Engines work?
In simple terms, they match a word or phrase submitted as a
search term against their log of uses of that word or phrase
on websites that they know about.
•For simple words or phrases, there may be several million
results
•Search Engines use many criteria to rank those results for
relevance to your search term

Google search for Free ISP
PPC Results:
Organic Results:

Why is Organic Search Important?
•6 to 8 times greater propensity to click
•Persistence of results
•Better ROI over time
•Natural development of long tail/niche terms

SERP Results Eye Scanning Research

UK Executed Searches:
Sourced from Hitwise
http://www.hitwise.co.uk/datacenter/searchengineanalysis.
php

Why do Search Engines Rank Sites?
Relevance!

How do Search Engines choose to Rank a Site?
Meta Data
•Title
•Keywords
•Description
Use of text on page
Frequency of updates
Quality of website code (indirectly)
Age of domain
Links to page/site
•Volume
•Quality
Many, many other criteria

Keyword Research: Seed List
•What keywords would you use to find a product or service
like yours?
•What keywords would your Grandmother use to find a
product or service like yours?
•What keywords do your known competitors obviously use?
•What keywords do your actual online competitors use?

Free Online Keyword Tools:
http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
http://www.ranks.nl/

Mapping Keywords
•Map Keywords to each page
•Have 1 or 2 primary keyphrases with 1 or 2 related
secondary terms
•For the Free ISP example:
•Primary: free ISP
•Secondary: free ISP UK
•Tertiary: free ISP provider

Where to Use Keywords?
•URL
•Page title
•Meta data
•Headings
•Menu
•In text
•Alt text

Use of Keywords in Meta Data
Meta Description:
•Use the primary and secondary keyphrases in a
sensible sentence aimed at humans.
•Length about 160 Characters
•It is a call to action.
•Some value in ranking

Use of Keywords in Meta Data
Meta Keywords:
•Little value in search due to keyword stuffing
historically
•Adds some context
•About 8 – 10 unique per page

Headings
Headings H1 >

Use of Key Phrases in Text
Write good descriptive content in sensible chunks
Try and sensibly repeat use of your key phrase in the body
text
Limit of usage on a page should be 5% (opinions vary!)
Bold
Italics
•Bulleted lists

Use of Key Phrase in Alt Text
Alt Text is an alternative to images
Important for the visually impaired
Generally appropriate to use a primary or secondary key
phrase

Internal Linking
Websites aren’t read like books
Sensible linking using good anchor text helps:
•Develop themes
•Guide the Human
•Add emphasis on the keyphrase on the linked to page

Questions and discussion

Simon Wharton
t: 0870 757 488
m: 07900 224 764
e: simon@pushon.co.uk