Lisa Myers is an expert in search engine optimization (SEO) with over 12 years of experience in marketing and 7 years focused on SEO and social media. She discusses the importance of SEO and ranking highly in search engines to receive the majority of clicks. The summary explains that SEO involves both technical on-page optimization of a website, such as site architecture and use of meta tags, as well as off-page link building through content creation and outreach. High-level tactics for both on-page and off-page optimization are provided.

1. Search Engine Optimisation
Lisa Myers
CEO,Verve Search
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

2. About Lisa Myers
• 12 years experience in Marketing, 7 in Search & Social
• Speaker at Search Conferences Worldwide (SES, SMX, A4U etc)
• Regular contributor to on and offline publications and author of several SEO Best
Practise Guides including eConsultancy and B2B Marketing
• Heavily involved in the global Search Community, founder of
SEO-chicks.com and co-founder of European search blog StateofSearch
Awards
• “Search Personality of the Year” UK Search Awards 2011 + “Best SEO
Campaign” for her agency Verve Search
• Management Today “35 women under 35” list 2009
• “Best Use of Technology woman under 30”
BlackBerry Woman & Technology Awards (2008)
• “B2B Marketing Newcomer of the Year” (2007)
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

3. What is SEO?

4. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is where you
adapt and moderate a website specifically so
that it is indexed and ranks highly within a
search engine's organic (free) listings.
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

5. Importance of ranking highly
• 93% of users won’t go past the first page
• Less than 1% goes beyond 2nd page of a search
•More likely to change the search engine query
(keyword) than go to 2nd page of the SERPs
•The top 3 positions receives an average of 60% of
clicks
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

6. The process of SEO

7. Technical SEO – the foundation

8. Pillars of Technical Optimisation
1. Site Architecture & URL structure
2. Canonicalisation and use of redirects
3. Pagination
4. Geo targeting
5. Using webmaster tools
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

9. Writing the content
• Spend time writing the article, it’s got to be good!
Include stats, research or similar.
site architecture
• Make sure the angle is appropriate for target site
• Including keywords that you are targeting for
- surrounding text
the hierarchy of your website and how you structure it
• ANCHOR TEXT (ideally your main target
keyword)
• Stay away from main keyword in HEADLINE
though, as you don’t want them to rank ABOVE
you!

10. Site Architecture Basics
• Build horizontal rather than vertical!!
• Every page can potentially rank (search engine
ranks pages, not entire websites)
• The further a page is from the homepage the
harder it is to get the page ranked. Homepage
will always be the most powerful!
www.samplesite.com/folder/anotherfolder/onemor
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

11. Writing the content
• Spend time writing the article, it’s got to be good!
Include stats, research or similar.
canonicalisation
• Make sure the angle is appropriate for target site
• Including keywords that you are targeting for
- surrounding text
the “little” issue that can cause havoc
• ANCHOR TEXT (ideally your main target
keyword)
• Stay away from main keyword in HEADLINE
though, as you don’t want them to rank ABOVE
you!

12. Canonicalisation
Canonicalisation is the process of choosing
one URL when there are several choices!
Canonical URL = Preferred URL

13. Multiple URLs – Same Content
http://www.vervesearch.com
Looks like exactly the
same page? I’ll have to
choose one for the
index.
http://vervesearch.com
http://vervesearch.com/index.php
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

14. Potential Link Dilution
http://www.vervesearch.com
=> 848 links
http://vervesearch.com
=>45 links
http://vervesearch.com/index.php
=>89 links
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

15. Transferring “Link Juice”
http://vervesearch.com
http://www.vervesearch.com
http://vervesearch.com/index.php
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

16. Increased Link Authority
Canonical URL
http://www.vervesearch.com
= 982 Links
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

17. How to fix it
You have options:
- Use 301 (permanent) redirect
- Canonical meta tag
@LisaDMyers #EBA2012

18. 301 redirects
This is a permanent redirect that:
Redirects human visitors
Redirects search engine spiders
302 redirects (temporary redirects) on the other
hand will ONLY redirect human visitors and not
carry “link juice”.
@LisaDMyers #EBA2012

19. Canonical Meta Tag
In the HTML of all duplicate URLs insert a code
like this:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.canonicalURLhere.com/” />
This code tells the search engine spiders that all
link authority should be allocated to the
canonical URL. Does not redirect VISITORS!
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

20. Writing the content
• Spend time writing the article, it’s got to be good!
Include stats, research or similar.
pagination
• Make sure the angle is appropriate for target site
• Including keywords that you are targeting for
- surrounding text 100s
when 1 becomes
• ANCHOR TEXT (ideally your main target
keyword)
• Stay away from main keyword in HEADLINE
though, as you don’t want them to rank ABOVE
you!

21. Pagination Issues
The system of which pages are numbered:
An article divided into several pages
Forum thread
Category/group of products

23. Solutions for Pagination Issues
Rel=“next” or Rel=“prev”
(Google’s official guide to these)
Or
“View all” page option

24. Writing the content
• Spend time writing the article, it’s got to be good!
Include stats, research or similar.
geo targeting
• Make sure the angle is appropriate for target site
• Including keywords that you are targeting for
- surrounding text engine where you want to be found
telling the search
• ANCHOR TEXT (ideally your main target
keyword)
• Stay away from main keyword in HEADLINE
though, as you don’t want them to rank ABOVE
you!

25. Estimated 8.26 billion web pages
different indexes for different countries, i.e
google.co.uk and google.de
(or Yahoo...ehm...)

26. Writing the content
• Spend time writing the article, it’s got to be good!
Include stats, research or similar.
• need to helpangle is appropriate for targetwhat
Make sure the the engine figure out site
• Including keywords that you are targeting for
country you are targeting....
surrounding text
• ANCHOR TEXT (ideally your main target
keyword)
• Stay away from main keyword in HEADLINE
though, as you don’t want them to rank ABOVE
you!

27. 1. Country specific Top Level Domain (TLD)
2. LANGUAGE
3. Links and citations
4. Href=lang
Check out my slides from SearchLove 2012
on “international SEO” on SlideShare
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

28. Writing the content
• Spend time writing the article, it’s got to be good!
Include stats, research or similar.
webmaster tools
• Make sure the angle is appropriate for target site
• Including keywords that you are targeting for
- surrounding text
actually useful
• ANCHOR TEXT (ideally your main target
keyword)
• Stay away from main keyword in HEADLINE
though, as you don’t want them to rank ABOVE
you!

29. Using Google Webmaster Tools
• Provides you with details of your pages
visibility on Google
• Diagnoses problems (broken links, server
errors, crawling issues)
• Submission of sitemap; tell Google which
pages are more important, how often they
change, how you want the URL in index to
appear
• Specify what country you are targeting

30. Top Technical Tools
For technical evaluation including crawling,
indexing, page errors, speed and coding etc:
ScreamingFrog
DeepCrawl
Firebug
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

31. Writing the content
• Spend time writing the article, it’s got to be good!
Include stats, research or similar.
• Make sure the angle is appropriate for target site
On Page Optimisation
• Including keywords that you are targeting for
surrounding text
• ANCHOR TEXT (ideally your main target
keyword)
• Stay away from main keyword in HEADLINE
though, as you don’t want them to rank ABOVE
you!

32. The “assumed” Search Path
Search Query SERP Website Conversion

33. More Likely Search Path

34. Most important keyword?
Goal Conversion
Striker Winger
Keyword Keyword
Midfielder
Keyword

35. Don’t forget the “long tail”
Popular keywords typically
make up less than 30%
of searches.
The remaining 70%
lies in the “long tail” keywords.

36. Content is still King

37. Basics of On Page Optimisation
• Keyword research and mapping
• Title and Meta description optimisation
• Main content optimisation
• Internal linking
• Keyword in URL
• Images (alt attributes)
• Updated content

38. Writing the content
• Spend time writing the article, it’s got to be good!
Include stats, research or similar.
keyword research
• Make sure the angle is appropriate for target site
• Including keywords that you are targeting for
- surrounding SEO
the brains of text
• ANCHOR TEXT (ideally your main target
keyword)
• Stay away from main keyword in HEADLINE
though, as you don’t want them to rank ABOVE
you!

39. Basics of Keyword Research
• Identify keyword groups:
- Brand keywords
- Descriptive keywords
- Product/service keywords
• Brain storm (with client, colleagues etc)
• PPC Campaign
• Keyword Research Tools
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

40. Using Google Keyword Tool

41. Keyword Trends
http://www.google.com/insights/search
Keyword: “Digital Marketing Courses”
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

42. Using your own Analytics data
• Which keywords are converting?
Analyse goal conversion and
ecommerce results! Drill down to organic
Traffic then keywords!
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

43. Writing the content
• Spend time writing the article, it’s got to be good!
Include stats, research or similar.
on page areas
• Make sure the angle is appropriate for target site
• Including keywords that you are targeting for
- surrounding text
once you have chosen your keywords what do you do
• ANCHOR TEXT (ideally your main target
keyword)
• Stay away from main keyword in HEADLINE
though, as you don’t want them to rank ABOVE
you!

44. Areas to optimise
• Title tag
• H1 tags (the heading of the page)
• The anchor text of internal links (don’t use
click here!)
• In the first 50 words of text on the page
• In the URL www.yourdomain.com/keyword
• Repeated throughout page content

46. Title & Meta Description Tags

47. Writing the content
• Spend time writing the article, it’s got to be good!
Include stats, research or similar.
• Make sure the angle is appropriate for target site
Off Page Optimisation
• Including keywords that you are targeting for
surrounding text
• ANCHOR TEXT (ideally your main target
keyword)
• Stay away from main keyword in HEADLINE
though, as you don’t want them to rank ABOVE
you!

48. +
SEO TOOLS

49. #1 Link Analysis
#2 Link Prospecting
#3 Creative & Implementation

50. #1
{ link analysis

51. tools...

52. What to analyse
Your own AND competitors Links!
•Anchor text
•Depth of links (what pages are linked to)
• Type of links (sources)
•Authority & Strength of links
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

53. Use of Anchor Text
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

54. Depth of Links
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

55. Type of Links
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

56. # Domains Linking

57. Type of Links

58. #2
{ link prospecting

59. Finding Relevant Sites
• Keyword + “article”
• Keyword + “blog”
• Keyword + “directory”
Keyword inurl: “write for us”
Keyword inurl:”guest posts”
Keyword intitle: “write for us”
and so on...

60. Favourite Prospecting Tools
+

61. #3
{ creative & development

62. Types of Link Development
• Utilising Existing Relationships
• Link baiting
• Content Outreach
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

63. Utilising Existing Relationships
Often it is the simplest idea that gives you the
most link juice!
For example;
- Would your partners, customers etc link to
you?
- Which University did the CEO go to?
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM

64. Apple.com
Links to domain= 35.8 MILLION!
PR=9/10

65. link baiting
great digita
l
content

66. {
A piece of digital content (article, video,
infographic, etc) that specifically increases
the chances for generating “organic links”

68. Infographics is great link bait!

69. Impacting social
influencers

73. Content Outreach
Using a piece
of content
to get a link
can be very
EFFECTIVE!

74. Give something back
Have something to trade, why should they
be linking to you?
- Content (must be relevant!)
- Discount/competition
- Breaking news
- Free “something”
- YOUR USPs??!!

75. Thank You!
@LisaDMyers
Email: lisa@vervesearch.com
Web: www.vervesearch.com
www.stateofsearch.com
www.seo-chicks.com
@LisaDMyers #ecomTIM