The presentation from session 1 of Grant Ruxton's SEO workshop for the Ayrshire Chamber on April 23rd 2015.

2. Session 1
Understanding SEO &
Onsite SEO
Grant Ruxton
Make Google Love Your
Website & Deliver New
Customers

3. What is SEO
What SEO aims to do
Where SEO is carried out
How we do it
Why SEO is important
Onsite SEO
Keyword Research
Checking your site
Overview

4. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the
process of making your website as best
suited for a search engine to value as
possible
As you can see from the definition Google
provides, it isn’t simply a one stop shop to
make your site get more visitors
What is SEO?

5. Help new visitors find your site
Help existing visitors have an easy time of
using your site
Increase traffic for your site
Increase search rankings for your site
Increase sales
What SEO aims
to do

6. SEO is carried out in two areas: Onsite and
Offsite
In this session I’ll be talking mostly about
Onsite SEO factors and giving an overall
view of how it works
In the next session, I’ll be looking more at
Offsite SEO and Local SEO factors that a site
would need to address
So let’s see how we carry out SEO.
Where SEO is
carried out

7. Through a carefully thought out process that
is a mixture of pre-emptive research and
proactive work
SEO is always a long term process. Sites
can’t just become Number 1 in their niche
within a few days
It takes a timely investment to see any type of
change and improvements happen for a site
How we do it

8. There is no such thing as a perfect website
Every site has its flaws and areas that it could
be performing better in
Think of SEO as taking a car to get to get an
MOT. The car might be brand new out of the
factory, or 15 years old and still going strong
You won’t know if your site has any glaring
problems until a professional gets under the
hood and has a proper look at the engine
That’s why most SEO campaigns start off
with Onsite SEO
Why SEO is
important

9. So what is Onsite SEO?
This area of SEO covers a number of
different factors
Almost every piece of a website can be
affected and improved with Onsite SEO
From the name of a website URL to how a
company’s contact details are displayed to
the way you link in-between pages
Onsite SEO looks at a plethora of different
issues which can determine how a search
engine, web crawler, or me and you view a
site
Onsite SEO

10. Some of the main factors for Onsite SEO
include:
• Search Engine friendly (and user friendly)
URLs
• Title & Description tags
• Natural keyword usage (Latent Semantic
Indexing)
• Sitemaps
• Robots.txt
• H1 H2 tags and proper HTML formatting
• Image use and alt tags
• Text links with attributes
• 404 (Page Not Found) Errors
• Internal Linking
• Information Architecture
• Site Speed
• Mobile Optimisation (very important in
2015)
• Onsite Penalties and Algorithm Updates
Onsite SEO

11. Before we look in to these factors, it’s vitally
important that we start by figuring out what a
site’s message is
We need to know what a site has to offer us
and what terms we, as the owners of the site,
use to describe the services and products we
provide
That is why I’m now going to look at Keyword
Research; the starting point for Onsite SEO
Onsite SEO

12. These are some tools which can help with
engaging in Onsite SEO:
• Keyword Research -
http://www.longtailpro.com
• Screaming Frog -
http://screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider
• Onsite Analysis -
http://netpeak.co.uk/soft/netpeak-
checker
Onsite Tools

13. It is the cornerstone of successful SEO
Not everyone will find your site from
searching by brand name
Many people search online for things in a
very literal (almost abstract) sense,
something many websites forget about when
trying to figure out what their ideal keywords
are
Unless you’re a company like McDonalds
which only needs to rank for brand terms
(e.g. Happy Meal instead of kids meal), you
have to figure out what terms are best
associated for what your site provides
This is where we start the process of
Keyword Research
Keyword
Research

14. So how do we discover traffic driving
keywords? There are a number of methods,
all of which should be considered
• Using the Keyword Tool -
https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/Home
• Analysing competitor’s onsite signals
• Brainstorming
• Analysing historic traffic and sales driving
keywords
• Looking for potential evidence of keyword
penalties
• Seeing what keywords your competitors
use and to what effect
• Seeing how they optimize their keywords
• Checking what meta data and title tags
you competitors use
• Checking what URL extensions they use
too
Keyword
Research

15. Remember that it helps to understand what
your customers are searching for
This research is the first opportunity to tailor
your site to customer needs
It is great at helping us to discover untapped
areas of the market we inhibit
It helps us target users at important stages of
the customer journey
Keyword
Research

16. The keyword planner from Google is where a
lot of keyword research takes place
It helps anyone to get an idea of the audience
size that is out there looking for what you
have to offer
Surmising the size of this potential audience
can only be calculated after your confident
with which terms you want to really go after
Keyword
Research

17. The Keyword
Planner
On the right you’ll see the different options a
visitor gets when accessing the Keyword
Planner. It can be daunting, but it is great to
experiment with this resource to better
understand it
We can use any of these four options to get
keyword volumes and carry out research in
different ways
I’ll be showing you what happens when we
search for the volume of keywords based on
ad groups

18. The Keyword
Planner
This is the information the Keyword Planner
provides any user

19. When we’ve decided on which keywords to
start attempting to rank for, we can then start
to track how each important term ranks for
the site
We do this using a rank checker
Keyword
Research

20. Sign up for a free account on Accuranker at
http://bit.ly/1fMM4Pa
Add as many keywords that you think are
right for your business
Find out exactly where you rank
Build a successful keyword strategy
Monitor your site rankings whenever you
want
Where does my
site rank?

21. When we’re happy with the keywords we
want the site to rank for and which terms
we’re going to be keeping an eye on, it’s time
to take a step back from the onsite content
and ask ourselves:
• Is suitable meta data in place?
• Is the content suitable for the target
keywords?
• Could the site be structured more
effectively?
• Is the site easy for users to navigate?
• Is social media being integrated
effectively?
Get Google to
find my site

22. And let’s not forget those technical issues
we’ve been working on too. With good
content on site, we have to ensure technical
factors are all sound and ask ourselves:
• Can search engines crawl the site
effectively?
• Is the URL structure SEO friendly?
• Are there any coding errors?
• Is the robots.txt file in place and properly
formatted?
• Can the site speed be improved?
• Does the site work well on a mobile
device?
Get Google to
find my site

23. To ensure all our onsite work is working, we
have to put measurables in place that can be
tracked and easy to report on.
Common measurements include:
• Keyword positions using an online rank
tracker like AccuRanker
• Traffic from natural search from Google
Analytics
• Traffic to landing pages targeted by SEO
• Sales and Goal conversions from natural
traffic
Looking at these factors on a regular basis
will help to adapt the campaign we have for
Onsite SEO, and then reflect that work in how
we approach Offsite SEO
Measuring Onsite
SEO

24. In this session we looked at:
What SEO is
Its importance
Onsite SEO
Keyword research
Keyword rankings
Onsite SEO measurement
In the next session we’ll be looking at:
Offsite SEO
Local SEO
Summary

25. Thank You
www.boyddigital.co.uk
@boyddigital