3. THREE TIPS FOR IMPROVED WRITING
• Support your claims.
• Hint: your supporting arguments are more interesting than your conclusions.
• Use details and examples to support your points.
• Hint: details and examples can work well as supporting arguments
• Outlines are your friend.
• Use outlines to help you visualize the structure of your paper.
6. SUPPORTING ARGUMENTS:
• Even if you’re right: you need to explain why. A good rule of thumb: show don’t tell.
• Looking at photos on the training site, there are multiple beginner groups with
nearly as many athletes as the training groups for advanced distances.
• I’ve recently read a study that shows many new runners or exercisers are chased
out of the sport by snobby and mean experienced athletes who treat them poorly
and look down on them.
• The manager let me know that they do much more business between Christmas
and the new year than any other time of the year. He says it has to do with new
years’ resolutions.
8. DETAILS
• When I ask y’all to use details, this is what I mean:
• be specific about the item you are describing, focus in clearly and identify key
aspects of the item.
• avoid “you know what I mean” cases as much as possible. Your job as an author is
to TELL us what you mean.
9. EXAMPLES
• Remember: show, don’t tell.
• “Sites need a good meta=“description” tag for SEO
• This site should write a meta=“description tag so that the snippet on Google’s
SERP will show the text the designers choose. Controlling the snippet is
important because it is text that potential customers will read when deciding
whether or not to click on your link. I suggest a meta=“description” tag of “Fleet
Feet PDX has shops in Portland, Vancouver, and Lake Oswego catering to new
and experienced runners and walkers.
11. ”
“
— This is added detail.
THE SITE’S ATTENTION TO DETAIL,
INCLUDING THE META=“DESCRIPTION”
TAG AND THE <H> HEADING TAGS,
SHOWS ADHERENCE TO CURRENT SEO
BEST PRACTICES.
12. IF YOU LOOK AT THE META DESCRIPTION TAG’
TEXT, “SERVING PORTLAND AND LAKE OSWEGO,
OR AND VANCOUVER, WA, FLEET FEET SPORTS PDX
IS LOCALLY OWNED AND OPERATED AND
COMMITTED TO ENHANCING AND GROWING
OUR LOCAL RUNNING AND WALKING
COMMUNITIES BY OFFERING SPECIALTY
PRODUCTS, EVENTS, AND TRAINING PROGRAMS.”
YOU’LL SEE ADHERENCE TO CURRENT SEO BEST
PRACTICES.
21. • Spiders (or bots) crawl links. Linked pages are easier to for search engines to find.
• Spiders copy the code (HTML, JS, etc.) and dump that into the search engine’s
index.
• When people search Google, they are searching Google’s index, not the web itself.
25. BLENDED RESULTS MIX
Organic search results
• These are the search results we’ve been talking about
Advertisements
• These are PPC (pay-per-click) and other ads that people run on the same search terms
your users are searching for.
• Ads are purchased at auction and ads must perform to remain visible.
Images, Video, News
• Competition for your users attention
27. ALGORITHMS CHANGE
• Example: Google changed it’s mobile ranking to make non-mobile optimized sites
drop in searches done on mobile devices.
• Don’t “chase the algorithm.” It’s a waste of time.
• Instead, focus on core fundamentals: “Good HTML titles, good body copy, great
content, ensuring that your site doesn’t have roadblocks to crawling—these have
worked for nearly a decade.”
34. THE TITLE TAG IS THE
MOST IMPORTANT
PLACE FOR KEYWORDS
ON YOUR ENTIRE SITE.
35. KEYWORDS IN THE HTML TITLE
WON’T DO YOU MUCH GOOD IN
RANKINGS IF THEY AREN’T ALSO
PRESENT IN THE TEXT ON THE
PAGE, SO BE SURE THESE TWO
ELEMENTS WORK AS A TEAM.
37. TAKE A WHOLISTIC APPROACH
• How many times do you use the “I’m feeling lucky” button?
• Pay attention to how many times you click on the first link on a SERP.
• Getting to page one is important, but don’t get obsessed.
• Social media marketing: there are avenues other than search to find customers.
42. HIERARCHY OF SEO FACTORS
1. Inbound links (quality and quantity)
2. Inbound link anchor text
3. Site authority
4. HTML page title
5. Visible HTML text on the page
6. Age of domain
7. Primacy (being the primary source/original publisher of content) and freshness (publishing new or updated
content)
8. Site speed
9. Lesser factors
43. 1. HAVE A SITE THAT
ROBOTS CAN CRAWL
WITHOUT BARRIERS.
44. 1. HAVE SITE CONTENT
THAT CLEARLY LEADS
VIEWERS TO
CONVERSIONS.
