This is a PPT that I created for the http://www.storagefront.com team to teach them the basics of SEO. Some illustrations were from SEOMoz and helped explain some basics nicely. All branding and images property of StorageFront. Hope you find this valuable.

1. Self Storage SEO
Basic SEO 101 for Storage Industry
Created by Travis Wright

2. Content in this Presentation
• The Search Landscape
• How Do Search Engines Work?
• Site Architecture
• Effective Keyword Research
• Link Building Strategies
• Social Media, Social Search & Social Influencers

3. THE SEARCH LANDSCAPE

5. Completely different ranking
algorithm than standard search
results
Probably doesn’t get traffic like
most “#1” results. Actually,
11th listing on the front page.

6. News Results
Real Time Results
Local Results
Image Results

7. Click-Through Rates

8. HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES WORK?

9. Crawling & Indexing
Without links, the
engines might never
find this page

10. Domain
Authority

11. Page Rank
“ PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web
pages by considering more than 500 million variables
and 2 billion keyword terms. Pages that we believe are
important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more
likely to appear at the top of the search results.
-Google’s definition of PageRank

12. Page Rank

13. The Flow of PageRank

14. PageRank is Split Evenly
Between the Links on a Page

15. Technically, Every External Link
“Leaks” PageRank

16. Nofollowing or Removing Links Can
Alter the Flow of PageRank

17. Or, at least it used to...

20. Crawlability / Link Architecture

21. Duplicate Content & Canonicalization

24. Canonical URL Tag

25. 301 Redirects
302s

26. Search Friendly URLs
www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/african-elephants
Keywords in page name,
Single domain separated by hyphen
Shallow folder structure
with relevant words

27. Search UN-Friendly URLs
Xyz3.nationalgeographic.com/a/?q=31z&mg=vv7z&sd=8
No keywords in the URL string
Unnecessary
Subdomain Dynamic URLs don’t perform as well as
static and engines recommend against
more than two parameters

28. Important Tags & Signals

29. Title Tags

30. Meta Descriptions

31. Tag Length Recommendations

32. Anatomy
Of
A
Link

33. Page Copy

34. Image Alt Attributes
Good keyword usage
in the alt tag

35. H1, H2, H(x) Tags

36. Keyword Research + Targeting

37. Create Spreadsheet w/ these Columns

39. Choose the “Best”
Words/Phrases to Target

40. Identify High Value Keywords

41. Geo Targeted / Local Keywords
Albuquerque storage
Albuquerque public storage
Albuquerque self storage
Albuquerque storage units
storage Albuquerque
Self storage Albuquerque
Storage units Albuquerque
Public storage Albuquerque

42. Add Keyword Data for Top Competitors
We like using a weighted average of
the Page Authority metric

43. Link Building Strategies

44. #1 - Manual Link Submissions/Requests

45. #2 - Competitive Link Research/Acquisition

46. #2 - Competitive Link Research/Acquisition

47. #3 - Links via Embedded Content

48. #4 - Linkbait & Viral Campaigns

49. #5 - Content, Technology & API Licensing

50. #6 - Partnerships, Exchanges & Trades

51. #7 - Paid Links

52. #8 - Link Reclamation

53. Training & Incenting Link Builders
• Do link building together
• Create consistent metrics
• Reward like a sales team
• Record reasons why links didn’t happen (like objections to sales)
and work on these (things like design quality, affiliations, language,
etc. will come up)
Training Camp (via Gil Searcy on Flickr)

54. Building a Link Acquisition Funnel
Visit Link-Targeted Content
Grab Link Code
Link to the Site

55. Building a Link Acquisition Funnel
Visit Link-Targeted Content
Grab Link Code
Link to the Site

56. Building a Link Acquisition Funnel

57. Building a Link Acquisition Funnel

58. Questions?
Feel free to distribute this presentation for educational use. We love to help SEOs learn!