Covering the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Why is SEO Important. What can be done to assist with SEO. And some useful tips and links to get started on getting your website found.

1. Why am I not on the first
page?
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

2. What’s SERP (Search Engines Results
Page)?
 Search Engines are designed to search for information on the web.
 Results will be listed based on keywords that a user types.
 93% of online experiences begin with Search Engines.
 Can you really afford to not be on Search Engines?

3. What’s SEO?
 SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is
the process of improving the visibility
of your website in SERP “naturally” or
“organically”

4. How does it work?
 Search Engines use software called
Bots or Spiders to scour the web.
 They find websites by following links
and “read” the text-based content
and index (store) the information.
 Before it displays your results, it uses an
algorithm to calculate best matches.

5. Why is SEO Important?
70% of the links search users click on are organic.
75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results.
59% of consumers use Google every month to find a reputable, local business.

6. High ROI (Return on Investment)
 Effective SEO campaign can bring a higher return on your investment than
any other type of marketing for your company.
 SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads have a 1.7%
close rate
 On average inbound leads cost 61% lower than outbound leads.

7. Long Term
 SEO, done properly is a cheaper and long-term solution. Things done
today will have long standing effects to help with positioning.
Plant that seed!

8. Measureable
 Overtime you’ll notice an increase in your website performance.
 Quantify results of search engine optimization by positioning reports, site
traffic, visitor conversion and other metrics.

9. “
”
The success of a page should be
measured by one criteria: Does
the visit do what you want them
to do?
-AARON WALL

10. What can we do to boost our ranking?

11. Content
 Careful Keyword Selection
 Google recommends making pages for users, not search engines
 No cloaking – deception, present different content to search than what is
displayed. (No invisible text)
 No Keyword Stuffing – Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword
 No Duplicate – cause for confusion
 Create useful, information-rich site that clearly describes your content.
 New content gets attention. Create fresh and unique.

12. Title Tags
 Short, unique and a quick sales pitch
 Shows in results
 Accurately describe page’s content
 Be unique on every page of your site

13. Header Tags
 Use only one H1 element on a page
 Top level heading
 Accurately describe the page’s content
 This can have links

14. Image Alt Tags
 Google reads text and does not view images.
 Be sure to choose a logical name for a keyword
 Text nearby image, should support the image.
<img src="/assets/icons/bottle_shadow.png" class="wine-
image-shadow" alt="oval shadow" /> <img alt="Ethos Bottle"
class="wine-bottleshot" itemprop="image"
src="/files/brands_cms/BottleShot/521/Ethos_CabSauv.png_m
edium.png" /> </div>

15. Meta Description
 Short and captivating.
 Describe the pages content
 For humans and for search engines
 Connect to title
 Be unique on each page

16. URL’s
 Pay attention to the entire URL
 Use descriptive URLs
 301 redirect - a permanent redirect from one URL to another. (Think of it as
a change of address form.)
 Not only for changing your website domain, but also:
 www.example.com
 Example.com
 www.example.com/index.html
 Example.com/home.aspx
http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/28/media/new-york-
daily-news-defends-virginia-shooting-cover/index.html

17. Link Building
 On site links on a given page should be reasonable (fewer than 100)
 Embed links within your content to relevant pages
 Use descriptive text for links
 Link building Is an art
 Inbound links are important
 Directories and listing on relevant resources
 Request customers and other connections to link to you.
 BLOG! (next page)
 Use Social Networks
 We will have more on this later.

18. “
”
The objective is not to ‘make
your links appear natural’; the
objective is that your links are
natural.
-MATT CUTTS

19. Blogs
 Build a company blog filled with valuable information.
 Create content that inspires viral sharing and natural links.
Companies that blog have 434%
more indexed pages. And
companies with more indexed
pages get far more leads.
Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links.

20. XML Sitemap
 Helps search engines index your page
 Tells what page to crawl and index
 How often and with what priority
 Search engines have Webmaster Tools that you can sign up provides
insight to how your site is crawled.
 The simplest way to verify – is to place a designated code on your site.

21. Design for Mobile in Mind
 Responsive Design
 Easier for Google to find
 Adaptive Design
 Separate Mobile Site
 Uses a different URL for configuration that could confuse Google in identifying.
48% of users say that if they arrive on a
business site that isn’t working well on
mobile, they take it as an indication of
the business simply not caring.

22. “
”
A good way to make it [a site] work in
both worlds [mobile & desktop] would be
to have a site that uses responsive web-
design techniques to adjust to the size of
the user’s device/settings.
-JOHN MUELLER, GOOGLE

23. “
”
Even the best SEOs are not magicians. The can’t
simply place a site at the top of the engines when
there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of
others that offer basically the same thing, and
provide basically the same information. If they could,
you’d see a whole lot more millionaire SEOs.
-JILL WHALEN

24. Directory Submissions
• Submit site to online directories such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
• https://www.google.com/business/
• https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/local-listings
• https://www.bingplaces.com/
• Submit listings to four major database providers:
• http://developer.factual.com/contribute-or-correct-data/
• https://mybusinesslistingmanager.myacxiom.com/
• http://www.neustarlocaleze.biz/welcome/
• http://www.infogroup.com/small-medium-businesses/online-listing-management
• http://www.business2community.com/brandviews/act-on/63-digital-
advertising-terms-every-marketer-should-know-01303561