slides for class

1. DTC356: SEO
03/21/2016

2. ONE SIZE FITS SOME.
➤ There is no neutral SEO.
➤ SEO plans have to be matched to two separate things:
➤ Your web site
➤ Your customers

3. YOUR SEO PLAN

4. FACTORS TO CONSIDER
➤ business to business
➤ business to consumer
➤ large organization
➤ small organization
➤ very small organization
➤ brick and mortar
➤ blog
➤ web designer
➤ non profit

5. FIND YOUR SITE’S NICHE

6. USE YOUR ADVANTAGES
➤ Example: a business to business firm has some things playing
its its favor:
➤ Niche audience: it should be obvious who is
interested in your site and why.
➤ High value conversions: your audience comes to
your site looking to do business.
➤ Text-heavy content: while casual visitors don’t like
to read, b2b sites need to communicate clearly, so the
“wall of text” is acceptable.

7. BE AWARE OF YOUR CHALLENGES
➤ Example: B2B sites will struggle with the following:
➤ Inbound links will be hard: You will find it
challenging to get inbound links to your site, making
page rank something you’ll have to work for.
➤ Slow SEO life cycle: B2B sites will change more
slowly than other kinds of sites, making it harder to
gather data on your audience.
➤ Conversion value can be hard to estimate: Sales are
easy to value—everything else can be a bit of a
guessing game.

8. YOU’LL WANT TO
ADDRESS THE
CHALLENGES AND
ADVANTAGES YOUR
PARTICULAR SITE HAS.

9. FACTORS TO CONSIDER
➤ business to business
➤ business to consumer
➤ large organization
➤ small organization
➤ very small organization
➤ brick and mortar
➤ blog
➤ web designer
➤ non profit

10. THREE ELEMENTS OF
SEO

11. THREE ELEMENTS OF SEO
➤ Technical: optimized with keywords in strategic places and
clear site structure. Bots can easily scan and capture useful
data from your site.
➤ Marketing: keywords are carefully chosen and match both
your organization and your target audience. Your SEO plan
accounts for multiple kinds of search and integrates social
media efforts.
➤ Measurement: Constant efforts are made to monitor traffic
and effectiveness. SEO is a long-game strategy.

12. SEO CHANGES ALL THE
TIME

13. SEO CHANGES ALL THE
TIME

14. SEO CHANGES ALL THE
TIME

15. ETERNAL TRUTHS OF SEO
these things don’t change

16. ETERNAL TRUTHS OF SEO (STUDY THESE THINGS FOR THE FINAL)
➤ robots deliver
➤ search results are blended
➤ algorithms change
➤ humans are smart—computers, not so much
➤ text matters
➤ it’s not just about rank
➤ search engines do not like tricks
➤ SEO is not brain surgery

17. ROBOTS DELIVER

18. ROBOTS DELIVER
➤ links
➤ HTML
➤ text
➤ how the search engines find your site is key to how to make
your site findable by search engines. (Obvious, but worth
repeating.)

19. “
Make sure robots can find and read
your web site.
Craft website content to include
keywords your audience is searching
for.
2 rules of SEO

20. SEARCH RESULTS ARE BLENDED
➤ web search, news, map search, social networking, ads, video
are all shown in the same results.
➤ The specifics of this change all the time and may be subject to
A/B testing.
➤ Ads and “organic” results appear near each other.

21. ALGORITHMS CHANGE

22. ALGORITHMS CHANGE
➤ Don’t get comfortable
➤ Your work is not going to be permanent, so don’t think you’re
done and don’t get attached.

23. HUMANS ARE SMART—
COMPUTERS, NOT SO
MUCH

24. TEXT MATTERS

25. TEXT MATTERS
➤ Titles
➤ Meta Description Tags
➤ Meta Keywords Tags
➤ Inbound links

26. IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT
RANK

27. IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT RANK
➤ Good writing
➤ Usability
➤ Social Media
➤ “Create content that people want to link to.”
➤ Links > traffic

28. SEARCH ENGINES DON’T
LIKE TRICKS

29. DON’T DO THESE THINGS
➤ Cloaking: trying to show robots a different version of your site
➤ Duplicate content: making extra pages to get in extra
keywords. (This dilutes your Google juice.)
➤ Machine generated text: buying lists of keywords or
algorithmically generated keywords lists
➤ Keyword stuffing: write for humans, not machines. Don’t
cram in more keywords in your titles and links.
➤ Invisible text: don’t stuff extra keywords in places not visible
to human viewers.
➤ Link Schemes: Comment spam is bad. Spam is bad. Don’t
spam.