This document provides tips and strategies for optimizing a website for search engines. It discusses choosing relevant keywords, creating valuable content focused on visitors rather than search engines, and making pages easily accessible to search engine crawlers by including things like textual content, XML sitemaps, and search engine friendly menus. Technical issues that could block search engines like frames and redirects are also addressed. The goal is to understand how search engines work and evaluate a website to help it rank higher in organic search results through strategies like keyword optimization, link building, and following best practices for accessibility.

1. Does Google love or hateyourwebsite? Sylvie de Meeûs

2. First position: a goal?

3. Your goal : to befound! Referrals (how do visitors land on your pages?) Yourcompanyname ? Relevant keywords ? Minimum 50%

4. Workshop objectives Understand how searchengineswork Evaluateyourwebsite Contents Links Accessibility Blockingfactors Analyse yourstats

5. Paid vs organic SEO

6. SEO for images, videos, maps,…

7. The first place’s secret… OrganicSearch

8. … hides in the cache

10. How does Google work? « PageRank », « TrustRank », « algorithm »… make the differencebetweensimilarwebsites Incoming links = votes for your content Popularwebsite

11. How does Google work? « Createyour web pages for yourvisitors, NOT for searchengines » « Don’tbeevil » Don’tfool Google!

12. 1. CONTENT IS KING

13. Long tail (or trail) Search engines index pages (NOT websites !) Rare queries (less than 10 visits/month) make up to 90% of your traffic

14. Choose the right keywords Good news : eachpage of yourwebsitecanbe 1st for (a) specific keyword(s) Each keyword  one content page Each page  one or keyword (or keyphrase) Choosing the right keyword makes the difference Recruitment or Humanresources ? Books or book ?

15. Choose the right keywords Talk your customers’ language Try a search: accurate results? Try a search: how many results? Useful tip : check « allintitle: keyword» Target smaller niches Your services + town Toys + age, renting, gift lists,… Choose between synonymshttps://adwords.google.fr/select/KeywordToolExternal

16. Reinforcerelevancy For each page: Keyword in <title> Keyword in the links to the page Keyword in title Keyword in URL Keyword at the beginning of the text Breadcrumbs (You are here: Home > … > Keyword) Title tags <H1>, <H2>,… Read « Google search engine optimization starter guide » http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

17. Influence of the global site Number of pages (with real content!) Pages on similartopics Number of pages increased gradually Update frequency linked to the type of content (news, blog, shop) <title> and <description> tags ≠ in each page Simple URL* (directories and pages) Links betweenrelated pages

18. Remember… Carefullyconsideryour keywords Consider SEO beforecreatingyour site structure One theme per page Perfer (original) textual content Bring value to your visitors Don’t think (too much) about Google!

19. A small tip… Write a new page every month Informative and original content Examples : Product description Case study Tips and advices Videos, etc.

20. Mini-audit : content Google Analytics : > Traffic sources> Keywords Relevant keywords Number of keywords « In total, researchgenerated 1 293 visits via 916 keywords »

21. 2. MAKE LINKS

22. Incoming links Indicate your site popularity “Hard” link* (no redirection or javascript or « nofollow » tag) Link on a page indexed by Google Link on a site covering the same theme Prefer few good links to many links without link (= spamdexing*) Avoid paid links and reciprocal links Avoid outgoing links

23. Importance of the link text Link text: underlined text that links to another page Examples : … for more information, click here … on http://www.amaranthe.be … information about our e-marketing trainings Place your keywords: in links on your site in links from other sites

24. Mini-audit : inlinks Authentifyyour site** at Google and Yahoo Google webmaster tools: Number of links to each page Keywords in links Yahoo site Explorer : Inlinks, lessdetailed

25. 3. MAKE YOUR SITE ROBOT-FRIENDLY The spider that visits your site is blind, deaf and has no hand

26. Mini-audit : accessibility Is my content "readable" by a robot? Deactivate CSS and images (Web Developer extension for Firefox) Scapture.com (see your site in Lynx) Spider-simulator.com (explore your site with the eyes of a spider) Doesmy content appear : Totally? In the right order? Is navigation visible? Understandable? Do images have a textual alternative?

27. Here ’s whatyousee

28. Here'swhat the robot sees...

29. Here’swhatyousee…

30. Here'swhat the robot sees...

31. Remember… Textual content on the home page Links to internal pages in the text « Text » menus No text in images Textual alternative to each image XML Sitemap

32. Sitemapsprotocol List the pages to be indexed by the robot on www.monsite.com/sitemap.xml Other information Lastmodification Modification frequency Update sitemapateachwebsiteupdate!

33. 4. DON’T STOP ROBOTS

34. Technical audit How many pages are in the search engines? Site:www.monsite.com (Bing, Yahoo, Google,…) Are my menus search-enginefriendly? www.xml-sitemaps.com (up to 500 pages) Google webmaster tools > diagnostic Errors HTML suggestions

35. Blockingfactors Home without content ("Splash page") Script on the homepage (ex: browser detection) Redirections (beware of yourhosting!) Frames, iframes,… Menu in Flash or javascript (« roll-over ») Programming or CMS generating « exotic » URL’swith « ? », « id »,… Techniques aiming to "cheat"

36. Now, let’s practice ! Install Google Analyticstoday Tackle all technicalisues Améliorez la relevance of your pages Developyour contents If you have no websiteyet… start it now !

37. Further informationhttp://www.amaranthe.be/blog Installer Google Analytics vite… et bien Outils Google, Bing et Yahoo pour webmasters Pourquoi utiliser une sitemap en XML ? Quelques conseils pour bien choisir son nom de domaine Lancement d’un site : 12 choses à ne pas oublier Refaire son site sans pénaliser son référencement Site en panne : conséquences sur votre référencement Comment figurer sur les cartes de Google ? Duplicate content et plagiat sur le web

38. Glossary Breadcrumbs : <title> tag : on top of your browser window <description> tag : appears in searchresults

39. Glossary H1, H2,… <title> <description> Code source (HTML) Code source (HTML)

40. Glossary SEO : SearchEnginePositioning SERP : SearchEngineResult Page Link with a « nofollow » tag CMS : Content Management System Other SEO vocabulary : http://www.4fx.com/seo-vocabulary.html

41. Amaranthe Web Agency Sylvie de Meeûs (info@amaranthe.be) I like: E-mailing Social networks Efficient webdesign Search engine strategy Follow me: Twitter @AmaranteH Facebook.com/amaranteh www.amaranthe.be/blog