FACT. While .edu domains are generally seen as authoritative by search engines, the specific page linking and its relevance to the topic is more important than just the domain alone. Not all .edu links are equally valuable. The content, authority and relevance of the specific page determines the value of the link.

1. SEO 101
It’s About Competing
For Value

2. Training Outline
• THE LINCHPIN TEAM
• PERSONAS
• WHAT IS SEO?
• EVOLUTION OF SEO
• TLCs OF SEO
• TECHNICAL
• LINKS
• CONTENT
• SOCIAL
• WHAT TO TRACK
• TOOLS OF THE TRADE

3. ABOUT US
INTRODUCING OUR FOUNDERS
Linchpin SEO started in Raleigh, NC in 2004 by two guys (Bill & Dan) who
believed that small businesses should have the same opportunities as large
national brands, without the need of multi-million dollar budgets.
We help businesses build websites in easy-to-use content management
systems, execute local SEO and social media campaigns, write content, and
build a content strategies that include video, traditional content sets, and
infographics to drive traffic and sales.

4. Our SEO Values
WHITE HAT LINK BUILDING
We don’t participate in link buying, comment or social spam, profile spam, link wheels, link farms, or other unnatural link
building tactics. To us link building is about creating great content and a great experience, and then marketing the content
and experience, through social interaction and relationship building with relevant sites, blogs, and social networks.
CONTENT THAT BUILDS WEBSITE VALUE
We believe in creating content that is valuable, compelling, and unique. Content goals include: interaction, education,
branding, and driving quality traffic and metrics to a website. We don’t participate in scraping content, duplication of
content from other sites, or spinning articles.
TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION GUIDELINES
We believe in following the Google Webmaster Guidelines, creating a crawlable site architecture, and following white hat
guidelines when building a website.

5. OUR LINCHPINS
Bill Dan Doryan JJ Ahna
Co-Founder Co-Founder Lead Designer Lead Designer Social Lead
SEO Strategist Developer Illustrator Web Designer Facebook Guru

6. OUR SERVICES
SEO Content Info- Web
Campaigns Creation graphics Design
Social Link Content SEO
Media Building Audits Audits

7. Website Personas

8. Personas
For our purposes, we create personas, or
example users, as tools to represent the
needs, desires, skills and environment of one
or more classes of users.

9. GoogleBot Persona
GOOGLEBOT PERSONA
15 Years Old | Experienced Information Gatherer | Mountain View, CA
• Googlebot is a passionate information gatherer.
• Over 3 million people come to it each day to get answers to their questions.
• It however, has it's weaknesses, it can only gather and present the information if it can access the
information on a website.
• It loves when users give it paths to new content, and tells it what that content is about.
• When determining what a website or page should be ranked for, the Googlebot Persona has evolved from
using what a website says about itself, to what other personas say in their social channels or on their
websites.
• It has become very good at determining what users will find valuable based on what users have told it
over the years.
• If a website gives it a lot of bad information or information that is not valuable it will start to ignore the
website and not use the information when a user asks for it.

10. What is SEO?

11. What is SEO?
TACTICAL PLANNING
Tactical planning of a website's architecture and overall structure to allow internal metrics to flow properly. Technical,
content, and structure audits and competitive insights and analysis.
CONTENT STRATEGY
Planning content that satisfies both the user's intent and Googlebot Persona.
CREATING AN EXPERIENCE
Creating an experience that fosters social sharing, link acquisition, brand building, and conversions.
http://www.linchpinseo.com/what-seo-is-and-what-seo-is-not

12. SEO is a business strategy;
inclusive of publishing,
brand building, marketing,
and traffic acquisition.

13. White Hat vs. Black Hat
WHITE HAT TACTICS (EARNING VALUE) BLACK HAT TACTICS (MANIPULATION AND BUYING VALUE)
CREATING VALUABLE CONTENT SPINNING ARTICLES
EARNING LINKS COMMENT SPAM
CREATING A VALUABLE SITE STRUCTURE FORUM SPAM
FOLLOWING GOOGLE GUIDELINES BUYING LINKS
HACKING WEBSITES

14. Evolution of SEO

15. The Evolution of SEO
1999 - 2002 ON-PAGE SEO
2003 - 2005 ANCHOR TEXT
2006- 2009 AUTHORITY & LINK DIVERSITY
2010 - 2011 MAYDAY & SOCIAL INTEGRATION
2011 - 2012 PANDA & FRESHNESS UPDATE
2012 - 2013 SEARCH PLUS YOUR WORLD & PENGUIN

16. 99-02 On-page SEO
TITLE TAG
IMAGES
KEYWORDS
INTERNAL LINKS

17. 03-05 Anchor Text
WHAT IS ANCHOR TEXT?
Is the clickable part of the link and is usually underlined.
WHY DOES IT MATTER?
The anchor text was one of the primary signals used by Google to determine what the page being linked to was about and thus
should be ranked for.
WHAT DID SPAMMERS DO?
They went out and bought links with the exact anchor text they wanted to rank for.

18. 06-09 Authority & Diversity
WEBSITE AUTHORITY
This defines how authoritative a website is based on its content sets and what other authoritative sites link to it.
Harvard.edu has more authoritative metrics than www.buy-viagra-online-with-porn.com
LINK DIVERSITY
Getting 1 link from 100 different domains holds more value than getting 100 links from 1 domain
WHAT DID SPAMMERS DO?
1. They reached out to college students and started paying them for links.
2. They bought a ton of different domains, added tons of low value content, and linked back to their site from each of
these domains.

19. 10-11 What was MayDay?
WHAT HAPPENED
This evolution seemed to have primarily impacted large sites with item or product pages that:
• Didn’t have many individual links into them
• Might be several clicks from the home page
• May not have substantial unique and value-added content on them.

20. 11-12 The Panda Update?
WHAT HAPPENED UPDATES TO PANDA
Panda 3.6 on April 27th
• Google segmented content sets into buckets based on
Panda 3.5 on April 19th
user feedback and data. Panda 3.4 on March 23rd
• Focused on devaluing low value, thin, duplicated content. Panda 3.3 on about February 26th
Panda 3.2 on about January 15th
• Primary targets were content farms.
Panda 3.1 on November 18th
Panda 2.5.3 on October 19/20th
Panda 2.5.2 on October 13th
Panda 2.5.1 on October 9th
Panda 2.5 on September 28th
Panda 2.4 in August
Panda 2.3 on around July 22nd.
Panda 2.2 on June 18th or so.
Panda 2.1 on May 9th or so.
Panda 2.0 on April 11th or so.
Panda 1.0 on February 24th

21. 11-12 Freshness Update?
WHAT HAPPENED
This evolution was the update by Google to help surface more timely information
• Events
• Sports
• Reviews

22. 12+ The Penguin Update
WHAT HAPPENED
After weeks of speculation about an "Over-optimization penalty", Google finally rolled out the "Webspam Update",
which was soon after dubbed "Penguin." Penguin adjusted a number of spam factors, including keyword stuffing and low
quality inbound links.

23. The TLCs of SEO

24. The SEO Pyramid
SOCIAL MEDIA
Build communities through interaction.
INBOUND LINKS
Create valuable experiences then market them for links.
CONTENT
Create valuable content for your target personas.
TECHNICAL
Build a strong base that focuses metrics in an optimal way.

25. Technical
TECHNICAL CRAWL
301 vs. 302
URL STRUCTURE
SITE STRUCTURE

26. Technical Crawl
WHY DO A TECHNICAL CRAWL?
To ensure that there is a strong base to build your other content creation and link building campaigns upon it is
important to do a technical crawl of your website.
301 (Permanent) Redirect Analysis Meta Refresh Analysis
302 (Temporary) Redirect Analysis Pages Where the Title Element is Too Short
404 (Client Error) Errors Pages Where the Title Element is Too Long (> 70 Characters)
500 (Server Error) Errors Pages Containing Too Many On-Page Links
Pages Where The Title is Missing or Empty Missing Meta Description Tag Analysis
Duplicate Page Content Analysis Robots.txt Analysis
Duplicate Page Title Analysis Meta-robots Nofollow Analysis
Pages That have Long URLs (> 115 characters) Meta-robots Analysis
Overly-Dynamic URL Analysis Canonical Tags Analysis

27. 302 vs. 301 Redirect
WHY USE REDIRECTS
When a page on your site has been deleted or has a new URL, a redirect should be put in place to direct the search
engines and users to the new page.
302 REDIRECT
Temporary redirect: This tells the search engines that that page being redirected to will not be up long, and to keep the
original page in their search results. This is not a redirect that should be used in 99.9% of the cases.
301 REDIRECT
Permanent redirect: This tells the search engines that the page is permanently moved and they should rank the new
page and remove the old page from their index. This redirect should be used 99.9% of the time.

28. URL Structure
KEYWORDS IN THE URL
Tactical planning of a website's architecture and overall structure to allow internal metrics to flow properly. Technical,
content, and structure audits and competitive insights and analysis.
URL RULES
All lower case
“-” for spaces
Remove stop words
No more than 2 levels deep
No more than 40 characters long
Keyword focused (but not overly)
Remove dynamic characters

29. Site Structure
IMPORTANCE
Site structure is of vital importance.
• Products or services that are your highest value should be spotlighted on high value pages such as the home page of
your website.
• Understanding how your customers, users, and personas utilize your website is key to helping them down the path in
which results in a conversion for your website.

30. Content
• TYPES OF CONTENT
• WHAT IS THE VALUE OF CONTENT?
• EVOLUTION OF CONTENT
• WHERE TO ADD KEYWORDS?
• KEYWORD DENSITY?
• WHAT MAKES VALUABLE CONTENT?
• CONTENT CREATION TIPS

31. Content Types
MARKETING
The marketing content consists of your offerings; products, services, etc.. These
pages are all about the conversion, and in most cases lack informational value
INFORMATIONAL
above and beyond what other websites.
BRANDING
This is content sets that talk about your company and what you can offer. These
pages usually consist of the “about us” and “contact us” page and sometimes the
“home page”.
BRANDING
MARKETING
INFORAMTIONAL
This is the content set that holds the most value for driving incremental traffic,
positioning your brand as a thought leader, and earning your site the title of being
a resource within your vertical.

32. Value of Content
FORMS OF CONTENT SEO VALUE
Videos Driving Traffic
Infographics Positioning Your Business as a Leader
Articles Earning Links to Help with Rankings
White Papers Giving You Assets to Utilize For
Images Influencer Outreach

33. “Design in the absence of
content is not design, it’s
decoration” – Jeffrey Zeldman

34. Evolution of Content
UNIQUE CONTENT
When the search engines said they started “penalizing or filtering sites” for having duplicate content SEOs started focusing on the
methodology of “unique content”. Trying to understand what percent of a piece of content had to be unique in order for a filter or penalty
not to be given. This spawned an era of article spinners that churned out content that was unique to a certain percentage, but was not
high quality.
QUALITY CONTENT
The next evolution was about creating quality content. This included grammatical fixes, content structure, keywords, and a general sense
of overall trust that the content was accurate.
VALUABLE CONTENT
This is where content came back into its own. Along with being unique and having a high quality rating, content also has to be valuable. In
a world where earned media drives the highest conversions, ignoring the “value methodology” will inhibit building a strong inbound
marketing campaign or social community.

35. We don’t talk about “keyword density” and
neither should you. Or as Stephen Spencer
put it, “Keyword density is da bomb. Ok, no
one says “da bomb” anymore, but you get
the drift. Monitoring keyword density values
is pure folly.”

36. Where to Add Keywords
1
4
1. Title Tag
2. Content
3. H1 tag
3 4. URL
5. Alt text on images
5
6. Image name
2
6

37. Creating Content Value
1. Would you trust the information presented? 7. Are there excessive adverts on this page?
2. Was this article written by an expert? 8. Would you expect to see this available in
3. Does this article have obvious errors? print?
4. Does the article provide original content or 9. Would you give this site your credit card
information? details?
5. Does this articles contain insightful 10. Would you trust “x-type” info from this
analysis? site?
6. Would you consider bookmarking this 11. Would you recognize this site as an
page? authority?

38. Content Tips
• UNDERSTAND VALUE
• KEYWORD RESEARCH
• UTILIZE TOOLS
• SATISFY PERSONAS
• MAKING LINK WORTHY CONTENT

39. Understand Value
UNDERSTAND WHAT IS VALUABLE
• Study your competition
• Look at their content, find out which has the most shares, tweets, or
links then take what they have done and add more value to it.
• Create at least 3 additional value props.

40. Keyword Research
HIGH VALUE KEYWORDS ARE ALL YOU NEED
• Conversion Value
• Search Volume
• Matches User Intent
• Matches Brand Focus

41. Utilize Tools
UTILIZE TOOLS
• Ubersuggest.org
• Google Keyword Tool
• Wordtracker Question Tool

42. Satisfy Needs Of Users
SATISFY YOUR WEBSITE PERSONAS
• What would your user find valuable to help them make a purchase or
position you as an expert?

43. Link-worthy Content
WHAT MAKES CONTENT LINK-WORTHY
• By adding visual content, like lists and images, can increase the number of websites linking to it.
• Posts with videos included will attract almost 3 times more websites linking to it than a plain text
post.
• Posts with all three media types (videos, images, and lists) will attract almost 6 times more websites
linking to it than a plain text post.
• Contrary to common beliefs, large posts seem to attract more links than posts with 900 words or less.
• Posts with between 1800 and 3000 words will attract more than 15 times more websites linking to it
than a post with less than 600 words.

44. Links
WHAT DO LINKS HAVE TO DO WITH IT?
WHAT MAKES A LINK VALUABLE?
LINK DIVERSITY

45. Reasons we need links
YOUR LINK PROFILE
Links tell the search engines a lot about your website.
• How authoritative your website is.
• What your website should be ranked for.
• How trustworthy your website is.
• How valuable your content is

46. MYTH OR FACT?
Links from educational websites
that have a .edu domain are always
valuable?

47. Valuable Links
1. LINKS FROM HIGHLY TRUSTED WEBSITES
2. LINKS FROM WEBSITES THAT ARE HIGHLY RELEVANT TO
YOURS
3. LOCAL LINKS FROM BLOGS OR MEDIA OUTLETS
4. YAHOO DIRECTORY, DMOZ, BUSINESS.COM, BOTW.ORG

48. Links That Aren’t Valuable
1. 99% OF DIRECTORY LINKS
2. ARTICLE DIRECTORIES
3. LINKS FROM BLOG NETWORKS
4. COMMENT OR FORUM SPAM
5. OLD FASHION LINK TRADES

49. Link Diversity
GETTING 1 LINK FROM 100 DIFFERENT HIGH
VALUE DOMAINS IS BETTER THAN GETTING
100 LINKS FROM 1 DOMAIN.

50. SEO and Social
COMMUNITY BUILDING
• Social media marketing at its core is about building communities around your brand or products.
RELATIONSHIP BUILDING
• Build relationships, don’t just spam or auto post.
DON’T BE A SALES PERSON
• Be genuine and help people out.
DISTRIBUTION OF CONTENT AND EXPERIENCES
• Utilize the community to distribute great experiences and content.
OUTREACH PROFRAMS FOR LINK BUILDING
• Interact a minimum of 5 times with someone before asking them to share something or tweet it.

51. What to Track?
1. ORGANIC CONVERSIONS
2. ORGANIC TRAFFIC
3. TOTAL KEYWORDS SENDING TRAFFIC
4. REFERRAL TRAFFIC
5. TOTAL URLS RECEIVING TRAFFIC
6. RANKINGS

52. SEO Tools
1. SEOMOZ
2. SCREAMING FROG SEO SPIDER
3. GOOGLE KEYWORD TOOL
4. GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS
5. UBERSUGGEST.ORG

53. QUESTIONS?
Mail
BillRoss@linchpinSEO.com
Twitter
@BillRoss