A talk that was given at The Norfolk Chamber 1hr Wednesday Networking in King's Lynn on Wednesday 16th January 2019

1. Online Presence
what does it mean in 2019?
A talk given at The Norfolk Chamber
1hr Wednesday Networking in King's Lynn
on Wednesday 16th January 2019

2. Thomas Olesen
• Career in software distribution and
publishing, London & Cambridge
• Consultant to high tech startups in
Cambridge
• Moved back to North Norfolk 2006
• CRM consultant
• Published “Local Search Optimisation”
• Now working with local businesses and
their web developers
• LinkedIn lead generation consultant

3. My Assumptions to narrow today’s talk
As we can only scratch the surface on this vast subject, I assume
• We are based locally, although we may serve a wider area
• We are small businesses (not big brands, not primarily eCommerce)
• We are not experts such as a web design agency
• We want to learn about practical things we can do
• We want to know what we should ask the experts to do for us

4. Some Definitions that I will cover
• SERP
• Organic Search
• Local Search
• Landing Page
• Knowledge Graph
• Structured Data
• Google’s E A T formula
• Technical SEO v Creative SEO
• Sales Funnel
There are plenty of other
definitions that we probably
won’t have time for, such as
“Entity” and “Intent”.

5. SERP Definition
• Search Engine Results Page
• A search engine results page (SERP) is the list of results that a search
engine returns in response to a specific word or phrase query. ... Web
designers and site owners use search engine optimization (SEO)
methods to make their sites and pages appear at or near the top of
a SERP.
• Increasingly the search engine results page on Google contains a
Knowledge Graph of the business which most closely matches the
search query.

6. Organic Search Definition
• The term “organic traffic” is used for referring to the visitors that land
on your website as a result of unpaid (“organic”) search results.
Organic traffic is the opposite of paid traffic, which defines the visits
generated by paid ads. Visitors who are considered organic find your
website after using a search engine like Google or Bing, so they are
not “referred” by any other website.
• The easiest way to increase the organic traffic of your website is to
publish quality and relevant content on your blog regularly. This is,
however, only one of the strategies used for acquiring new visitors.
The branch of online marketing that focuses directly on improving
organic traffic is called SEO - search engine optimization.

7. E.G. search for “definition of restaurant”
followed by more relevant sitesTop of results page

8. Local Search Definition
• Local SEO has a geographical component which organic SEO does not
necessarily have. It is the practice of building signals of relevance
around a specific location (a brick-and-mortar business) or region (a
service based business).
• The geographical component can be explicit (stated in the search
term) or implicit (based on where you are searching from and what
you are looking for).
• Organic SEO, by contrast, is a marketing practice that revolves, more
or less, around a website.

9. E.G. Search for “restaurants in kings lynn”
Top of page = Local Pack followed by organic results, usually directories

10. Landing Page Definition
• One of the biggest differences between a home page and a landing
page is that a landing page is action-oriented. In other
words, landing pages should have some type of Call-to-Action (CTA)
that encourages your viewers to convert. ... Often, having a specific
offer associated with the CTA helps to boost conversions.
• We are all guilty of giving people our website address which takes
them to our home page rather than a specific landing page (and that
is when we are in control).
• In reality, we cannot easily control where people first come across us
online these days.

11. E.G. Conversionlab’s Landing Page

12. Google Knowledge Graph Definition
• The Knowledge Graph is a knowledge base used by Google and its
services to enhance its search engine's results with information
gathered from a variety of sources. The information is presented to
users in an infobox next to the search results. Wikipedia
• Note “from a variety of sources”. Your own website is now just one
of many sources of information to Google (although an important
one).
• The result of the Knowledge Graph is that most people receive
enough information from it that they stay on Google’s ecosystem.

13. E.G. Search “riverside restaurant kings lynn”
Practically all the
information you
need is available
in the Knowledge
Graph so there is
no need to visit
the website.
There is even a
Questions &
Answers section.

14. Structured Data Definition
• Schema.org is an initiative launched on June 2, 2011 by Bing, Google and
Yahoo! (operators of the world's largest search engines at that time) to
create and support a common set of schemas for structured data markup on
web pages.
• Schema markup is code (semantic vocabulary) that you put on your website
to help the search engines return more informative results for users. If
you've ever used rich snippets, you'll understand exactly what schema
markup is all about.
• Rich snippets are a way for you to tell search engines directly who you are,
what you do and to give precise information as to the product, service or
content you're providing. ... Schema is also the preferred method of markup
for Google, Bing and other search engines.

15. Let’s pretend we’re interacting with a JSON based product catalog.
This catalog has a product which has:
•An identifier: productId
•A product name: productName
•A selling cost for the consumer: price
•An optional set of tags: tags.
For example:
{ "productId": 1, "productName": "A green door", "price": 12.50, "tags": [ "home", "green" ] }
While generally straightforward, the example leaves some open questions. Here are just a few of them:
•What is productId?
•Is productName required?
•Can the price be zero (0)?
•Are all of the tags string values?
When you’re talking about a data format, you want to have metadata about what keys mean,
including the valid inputs for those keys.
JSON Schema is a proposed IETF* standard how to answer those questions for data.
Structured Data Example
*Internet Engineering Task Force

16. Google E A T Definition
Google uses E A T to rank websites
• Expertise
• Expertise is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “Expert skill or
knowledge in a particular field.”
• Authoritativeness
• Similarly, authority — or “authoritativeness” — is a person or website of
whom or that is “Able to be trusted as being accurate or true; reliable.”
• Trustworthiness
• Trustworthiness, or “The ability to be relied on as honest or truthful“, is the
measurement of how much credence your brand, website or content has.

17. Technical SEO v Creative SEO
Technical SEO includes
• Look for any crawl errors
• URL structure
• Broken links
• Optimized XML sitemap
• Optimized robots.txt file
• Remove duplicate or thin content
• Add structured data mark-up
• Link building
• Mobile friendly
• Fast to load
• Secure (https://)
• Tags (e.g. images)
Creative SEO includes
• Content that is
• Readable
• SEO targeted
• Expert
• Authoritative
• Trustworthy
• Engaging
• Relevant
• Structured (headings, tags etc.)
• Distributed
• Shared
• Look & Feel

18. Sales, Marketing or Purchase Funnel
The purchase funnel, or purchasing funnel, is a consumer focused
marketing model which illustrates the theoretical customer journey
towards the purchase of a product or service.

19. Google v Facebook v Amazon
• Google, Facebook and Amazon are trying to keep you on their
respective sites for as long as possible. So are other sites such as
LinkedIn, although not addressing the whole world.
• Google’s knowledge graph has severely cut down on the number of
clicks through to websites.
• Facebook’s offerings have been designed to stop people leaving e.g.
direct video rather than links to YouTube. Instagram has no links.
• Amazon is doing what Google and Facebook are doing but focussing
on eCommerce businesses.

20. You cannot control where people will find you
• You could be found online even without your own website.
• If you are new or small, your website is unlikely to be found first.
• It could be your local listing if they are looking nearby.
• It could be LinkedIn which ranks really well, or other social media.
• It could be a directory in organic results which ranks better than most
individual sites because they spend so much money on SEO.
• It could be on Social Media even if you don’t have a presence.
Question
• Do you know where you are listed or mentioned online?

21. Do you know where you are listed online?
• Here are some sites considered to be high authority and therefore
important to be listed on, depending on your target audience.
• Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Factual, Royal Mail, Yahoo Local, Bing
Local, Apple Maps, Foursquare, Yelp, Yell, ThomsonLocal, Scoot,
Twitter, YouTube, BrownBook, CheckaTrade, 192.com.
• Listings on these sites are referred to as Citations and they should
contain your organisation’s Name, Address & Phone (NAP)
consistently in order for Google to recognise their authority correctly.
• Many sites offer reviews, images & videos, categories, links etc.

22. Do you know how you are listed online?
• Many citation sites offer reviews, images & videos, categories, links
etc. and are their own search engine (LinkedIn is a good example).
• Are you populating them?
• Are you checking whether or not you rank on them?
• Are you checking what you look like on them?
• Would you want to do business with your own company based on how it
looks on each of the sites where it might be found?
• You only get one chance to make a first impression.

23. You only get one chance
to make a first impression
• Check where you are found online.
• Then make sure you look good and “on story” with your brand.
• Check where you are not found but should be.
• Then add yourself in a consistent way.
• Think about the link you use to your own website.
• Should it be to the Home page or to a Landing page?
• Should the Home page have a Call to Action?
• Once you are happy with everything, go tell the world.
• Amplification

24. The Amplification formula
• “The easiest way to increase the organic traffic of your website is to
publish quality and relevant content on your blog regularly.”
• But that alone has minimal effect if your website is new or not yet
ranking.
• Once published you need to tell people about it via
• Social media
• Other people’s social media (ask your ambassadors to share)
• Email lists
• and continually grow your subscriber base
• That means capturing their email addresses so that you can message them
and not be held to ransom by the social media platforms

25. Get in Touch if you would like to see your online
presence and get some tips on improving it.
• Thomas Olesen
• thomas@mylocal.org.uk
• 01485 205009
• https://mylocal.org.uk