Search Engine Optimization or SEO can be confusing for businesses that are new to the practice. This presentation will explain the process, basic strategies, and best practices.

1. 1
Search Engine Optimization
Starter Guide
iBoomerang.com | @iboomerang | (937) 387-0655
with
Brittany Fullenkamp
Digital Marketing Specialist
iBoomerang, Inc.

2. 2
Agenda
• Explaining Search Engines
• Defining Search Engine
Optimization
• Benefits of SEO
• SEO Basics
• SEO Strategies & Best Practices
• SEO Tools
• Resources
• Takeaways & Review

3. What is
Search Engine Optimization?
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4. 4
Understanding Search Engines
• What is a search engine?
• A search engine is a program
that searches for documents
about a specific keyword and
returns a list of matching
results.
• What does a search engine do?
• Search engines have two main
functions – crawling & building
an index and providing
answers by calculating
relevancy & serving results.

5. 5 Understanding Search Engines

6. 6 Understanding Search Engines

7. 7 Understanding Search Engines

8. 8 Understanding Search Engines

9. 9 Understanding Search Engines
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10. 10 Understanding SEO

11. 11
Search Engine Optimization
• What is search engine optimization?
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
is the process of maximizing the
number of visitors to a particular
website by ensuring the site
appears high on the organic list of
results returned by a search engine.
• How?
• SEO-ers consider how search
engines work, what people search
for, keywords, and preferred search
engines of targeted audiences.

12. 12 Understanding SEO
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13. 13 Understanding SEO
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14. Benefits of
Search Engine Optimization
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15. 15 SEO Benefits
Increased
Traffic
Top positions on the search engine result pages
receive a majority of the impressions and clicks,
so ranking in these top positions can result in
significant traffic increases for your website. SEO
also focuses on creating informative and
keyword relevant title tags and meta
descriptions, which show up in the result pages.
Having optimized tags and descriptions helps to
increase click through rate, which also promotes
increases in qualified web traffic.
With Analytics and reporting tools, you’ll see a
clear cut increase in traffic. This is a definite way
to maximize your business efforts. SEO will give
you results (not immediately but rather quickly)
and as soon as you start your SEO efforts, traffic
will increase at a steady rate. Using tools to
track traffic to your site you can clearly watch as
more people visit your site and sales go through
the roof.

16. 16 SEO Benefits
Increased
Traffic
When you buy 1000 visitors from a paid ad, 2%
of those visitors might convert into a sale. When
you get 1000 clicks from SEO, 4% of those
visitors will convert into a sale, leading to a
better return on investment.
SEO provides trackable and quantifiable results,
regardless of whether you are an ecommerce or
non-ecommerce site so there are no qualms
when it comes to ROI. Comprehensive analytics
also provide the ability to drill down at a
granular level and see demographic information
and other engagement metrics for individuals
who have interacted with your website. For
Ecommerce sites, you can see which paths users
take in order to complete a sale, all the way
down to which keyword they used to search for
you prior to purchasing. For non-Ecommerce
sites, you can attribute values to your lead
conversions, like a 'contact us' form fill-out, and
calculate the value of your SEO strategy that
way.
Return on
Investment

17. 17 SEO Benefits
Increased
Traffic
SEO is one of the most cost-effective marketing
strategies because it targets users who are
actively looking for your products and services
online. SEO's inbound nature helps businesses
save money as opposed to outbound strategies
like cold-calling. While cold-calling can still be an
effective strategy, the leads generated cost 61%
more than leads generated by an inbound
strategy like SEO.
Organic listings are essentially free. When you
are listed at the top, you don’t need to pay per
click or allocate a budget for advertising, one of
the main benefits of SEO is that it is the gift that
keeps on giving. With a little bit of effort, you
can watch your website get consistent traffic.
Unlike paid ads, your traffic will not drop to
nothing when it stops. SEO gets rid of the need
to have thousands of ads across the web.
Return on
Investment
Cost
Effectiveness

18. 18 SEO Benefits
Increased
Traffic
In an effort to make your website easier to
navigate for the search engines, SEO
simultaneously helps to make your website
more navigable for users as well. SEO consists of
rearranging the site's architecture and links to
make pages within the website easier to find
and navigate. This not only makes it easier for
search engines to crawl your site and find pages,
but also makes it easier for users to find
information on your website as well.
Return on
Investment
Cost
Effectiveness
Increased Site
Usability

19. 19 SEO Benefits
Increased
Traffic
Since top position rankings result in significant
impressions, having your website in these top
positions on the result pages translates to more
exposure for your website. The more your pages
and content rank in high positions in the search
engines, the more chances you have for users to
see your content and associate with your brand.
Return on
Investment
Cost
Effectiveness
Increased Site
Usability
Brand
Awareness

20. 20 SEO Benefits
Brand
Credibility
People trust that the first listing in Google is a
reputable company. By doing SEO, your website
becomes THE brand name. You’re the guy the
competitors want to beat. The further back you
are in rankings on Google the more people are
skeptical about your website. If Google has a
spot dedicated to you at the top especially if it is
a top tier listing with other subpages listed
below the main home page it gives your website
credibility that no ad can top. Ads can often be
seen as annoying and many people have ad
blockers installed on their browsers.

21. 21 SEO Benefits
Brand
Credibility
SEO is a rising field and it is gaining ground.
More people are starting to realize that the
benefits of SEO are extremely high. Your
competitors know this and are starting to take
advantage of it. If your competitors are using it
then they will appear before you on Google and
get all those hits that can lead to sales before
your website will. Even if your site offers better
services or prices. Hiring a better SEO company
or investing in a skilled SEO Staff could be
exactly what your company needs to rank above
your competitors in the Google rankings.
Beat the
Competition

22. 22 SEO Benefits
Brand
Credibility
SEO can bring it thousands upon thousands of
visitors to your website a day. This may put your
company in a position of needing to expand to a
larger web server to accommodate the traffic
and sales to your website. Your customers may
recommend you a product or service that they
were looking for when they visited your
website. SEO is a really great investment for
your company and could be what you need to
take it to the next level.
Beat the
Competition
Increased
Sales $

23. 23 SEO Benefits
Brand
Credibility
Unlike advertisements the affects of SEO are
permanent. They don’t suddenly stop if you stop
paying for them. Of course you will need a little
upkeep to maintain that top 1st spot ranking,
but if you can get that top spot chances are it
will be quite difficult for it to get taken away.
Beat the
Competition
Increased
Sales
Permanent
Results
$

24. 24 SEO Benefits
Brand
Credibility
What data you may ask? You get customer data.
You can discover new products to expand to by
looking at keyword data and seeing what people
are searching the most for. You can use this to
your advantage and find a high search volume
keyword with low competitiveness and although
that may be hard to find it has the potential to
bring in thousands of sales per month to your
website. Customer data is extremely valuable in
this business and is not that hard to come by
with the right tools. Manipulating it to your
advantage can be exponentially beneficial for
your business.
Beat the
Competition
Increased
Sales
Permanent
Results
Access to
Data
$

25. Basics of
Search Engine Optimization
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26. 26
Terms to Know
Keyword
-Word used by
the search
engines to
determine the
topic of a web
page or other
document on the
internet.
- Word(s) a user
types in to search
the internet.

27. 27
Terms to Know
SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
- The listing of web pages returned by a search engine in
response to a keyword query.
Organic Search
- Search results within a
search engine that come
about without the help of paid
search.
Paid Search
- Search results within a
search engine that companies
pay to have appear.

28. 28
Terms to Know
Meta Data
- Description information on
a web page enabling search
engines to identify its
purpose and topic.

29. 29
Terms to Know
Meta Data
- Description information on
a web page enabling search
engines to identify its
purpose and topic.
Title Tag
- HTML attribute that
represents a page’s title.

30. 30
Terms to Know
Meta Data
- Description information on
a web page enabling search
engines to identify its
purpose and topic.
Title Tag
- HTML attribute that
represents a page’s title.
Alt Tag
- An HTML attribute typically
used within an image to
provide alternate text when
images cannot be displayed.

31. 31 How People Search
Search engine usage has evolved
over the years but the primary
principles of conducting a search
remain largely unchanged. Listed
here are the steps that comprise
most search processes:
Experience the need for an
1
answer, solution or piece of
information.
2
Formulate that need in a string of
words and phrases, also known
as “the query.”
3 Enter the query into a search
engine.
4 Browse through the results for a
match.
5 Click on a result.
6 Scan for a solution, or a link to
that solution.
If unsatisfied, return to the search
7
results and browse for another link
or…
8 Perform a new search with
refinements to the query.

32. 32
Elements of a Great Website
Attractive Design
- A good website design/user interface is great for digital marketing efforts. A
great design will keep users coming back to your website.
HOWEVER
Google doesn’t care what your website looks like.
Search engines only look at the HTML text on a webpage.

33. 33
Elements of a Great Website
Unique, Accurate Page Titles
- A title tag tells both the users and search engines what the topic of a particular
page is.
- The <title> tag should
be placed within the
<head> tag of the HTML
document. Ideally, you
should create a unique
title for each page on
your site.
- Page title contents are
displayed in search
results, at the top of
your internet browser,
and on social media
posts.

34. 34
Elements of a Great Website
Meta Tags
- Meta tags were originally intended to provide a proxy for information about a
website’s content.
- Multiple Types
- Description: A short description of a page’s content
- Meta Robots: Used to control search engine spider activity
- index/noindex: Tells the engines whether the page should be crawled and kept in the engine’s
index for retrieval
- follow/nofollow: Tells the engines whether links on the page should be crawled
- noarchive: Used to restrict search engines from saving a cached copy of the page
- nosnippet: Tells engines to refrain from displaying a descriptive block of text next to the page’s title
and URL in search results
- noodp/noydir: Tells engines not to grab a descriptive snippet about a page from the Open Directory
Project or the Yahoo! Directory for display in the search results

35. 35
Elements of a Great Website
Meta Tags
- Meta tags were originally intended to provide a proxy for information about a
website’s content.
- Multiple Types
- Keywords: List of keywords or keyphrases that describe your website
- Refresh/Revisit-After: Sends the user to a new URL after a certain amount of time.
- Google Site Verification: Verifies ownership for Webmaster Tools

36. 36
Elements of a Great Website
Good Navigation
- Website structure that lets spiders browse the pathways of the website.
- Good navigation is important in
helping visitors find the content they
want.
- A bad structure includes pages that
search engines cannot access, thus
impacting their ability to get listed in
search results.
- In this example, a Google spider would reach
the Homepage and see pages “B” and “E”.
However, it does not know that pages “C” and “D”
exist because it cannot find a direct link to them.

37. 37
Elements of a Great Website
Crawlable Link Structure
- Friendly URL addresses for a particular document
- Display in search results and can
impact click-through and visibility. Also
used in ranking documents.
- Appear in browser’s address bar. Poor
structure or design can result in
negative user experience.
- Used as anchor text

38. 38
Elements of a Great Website
Quality Content
- Creating compelling and useful
content will likely influence your
website’s ranking more than any
of the other factors I discuss.
- Remember, Google is looking
for pages that are “relevant” and
“useful” to the search user’s
keyword.

39. Strategies of
Search Engine Optimization
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40. 40 SEO Strategy
Set
Goals
Build
Audience
Develop
Channels
Create
Content
Analyze
Results

41. 41 SEO Strategy
1 Set Goals
• Raw Traffic – Getting people to your site
• E-Commer Sales – Selling a product through
your website
• Branding & Building Authority
• Lead Acquisition & Direct Marketing
• Ideological Influence – Seeking to sway public
opinion about a topic

42. 42 SEO Strategy
2 Develop Channels
• Define Your Audience and its Interests
• Define Target Location
• Keyword Research
• Competitor Research
• Make a list of keywords and topics
• Get a website
• Build navigation and design with SEO in mind

43. 43 SEO Strategy
3 Build Audience
• Let Google do its thing!
• Set up Google Webmaster Tools and submit
your sitemap
• Cross-promote
• Tell friends and family
• Add to business cards
• Send an email campaign
• Pair with digital advertising

44. 44 SEO Strategy
4 Create Content
• About Us
• Contact Us
• Product Overviews
• Blog
• Newsroom
• Social Media Links

45. 45 SEO Strategy
5 Analyze Results
• Google Analytics
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Record Key Metrics
• Number of Visitors
• Number of Page Visits
• Time Spent on Site
• Conversion Rates

46. 46 SEO Strategy
Awareness
Interest
Desire
Action
Advocacy
Achieved Through: Visibility and Engagement
What To Do
Develop
Channels
Cross-Promote
Website URL
Research
Website
Navigation
Advertising

47. 47 SEO Strategy
Awareness
Interest
Desire
Action
Advocacy
Achieved Through: Community Engagement
What To Do
Create
Content
Articles
Product Pages
Blog Posts
Lists Guides
Directories Glossaries

48. 48 SEO Strategy
Awareness
Interest
Desire
Action
Advocacy
Achieved Through: Landing Pages
What To Do
Create
Content
Call-to-Action
Optimized Visuals
Relevant & Useful

49. 49

50. 50 SEO Strategy
Achieved Through: Multiple Strategies
What To Do
SELL, SELL, SELL!!!
Use multiple venues to create interest
in your products…
…until your LEAD becomes your CUSTOMER!
Awareness
Interest
Desire
Action
Advocacy

51. 51 SEO Strategy
Achieved Through: Repeat Visibility and Engagement
What To Do
Analyze
Results
Awareness
Interest
Desire
Action
Advocacy

52. Best Practices of
Search Engine Optimization
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53. 53
SEO Best Practices
Attractive Design
- Include Indexable Content
- Content written in HTML text format so that it can be listed in
search engines.
- Assign “alt attributes” to images
in gif, jpg, or png formats.
- Supplement Flash or Java
content with text on the page.
- Accompany video and audio with
transcripts if the words and
phrases used are meant to be
indexed by the search engines.

54. 54
SEO Best Practices
Unique, Accurate Page Titles
- Be mindful of the length. Keep it under 75 characters.
- Place important keywords close to the front.
- Include your brand every time.
- Consider readability and emotional impact.
- Follow optimal format
Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword | Brand Name
- Example: NFL Scores – 2014 Week 4 | NFL.com

55. 55
SEO Best Practices
Meta Tags
- Focus on description and keywords to start
- Easiest to do and will help you create content
- Customize these for each page of your website
- Keep descriptions under 160 characters
- Create compelling descriptions that include important keywords
- Include up to 20 keywords
- Proofread
- Once you are comfortable with easy
meta tags, move on to the more
complex ones

56. 56
SEO Best Practices
Good Navigation
- Create a naturally flowing hierarchy
- Use mostly text for navigation
- Ensure more convenience for users by using
‘breadcrumb lists’

57. 57
SEO Best Practices
Good Navigation
- Put an HTML sitemap page on your site, and use an XML sitemap file
- A simple map page with links to all of your pages
- XML Sitemap files help search engines discover new pages on your site

58. 58
SEO Best Practices
Good Navigation
- Useful 404 Page
- An HTTP status code
that means the server
could not find the web
page requested by the
internet browser.
- “Page not found” error
- Include link back to
homepage and form for
user to report the error

59. 59
SEO Best Practices
Crawlable Link Structure
- Employ Empathy
- Look at the URL and see if you can accurately predict the content on the page
- Keep it short to make it easy to copy and paste
- Include keywords
- Create static links
-Links that are human readable
- Example: http://moz.com/blog/google-fresh-factor vs.
http://moz.com/blog?id-123
- Use hyphens to separate words

60. 60
SEO Best Practices
Quality Content
- Anticipate the differences in search behavior and account for them while
writing your content, using a good mix of keyword phrases
- NLCS | National League Championship Series | baseball playoffs
- Write easy-to-read text
- Stay organized around the topic
- Create fresh, unique content that no
other site offers
- Create content primarily for your
users, not search engines

61. 61
SEO Best Practices
White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO
White Hat SEO Black Hat SEO
Techniques and tactics that focus on a human
audience opposed to search engines and
completely follows search engine rules and
policies. Also called Ethical SEO.
Techniques that are used to get higher search
rankings in an unethical manner. Attempts to
trick the search engine’s algorithm from its
intended purpose.
• Relevant keyword usage and keyword
analysis
• Link building
• Backlinking
• Unique content
• Fresh content
• Optimizing pages for social media
• Hidden text
• Text the same color as the background
• Sending a user to a different page than
what was requested
• Keyword stuffing
• Buying links
• Blog comment spam

62. 62
SEO Best Practices
Mobile Sites
- Configure mobile sites so that they can be indexed accurately
- Verify that your mobile site is indexed by Google
- Verify that Google can recognize your mobile URLs
- Redirect mobile users to the correct version of your site

63. 63
SEO Best Practices
Make Use of Free Webmaster Tools
- Google Webmaster Tools helps webmasters better control how Google
interacts with their websites
- Google Analytics provides visitor information and activity
- Google Website Optimizer allows you to run experiments to find on-page
changes that will produce the best conversion rates
- Google Trends will give you trending keywords for your
area

64. 64
SEO Best Practices
Follow Well-Known People in SEO
- These experts are the key to algorithm changes and best practices.
Matt Cutts
Head of webspam team at
Google. Known for
enforcing Webmaster
Guidelines and cutting
down link spam.
Bruce Clay
Professional International
SEO consultant, speaker,
instructor, and CEO of
Bruce Clay, Inc.
Rand Fishkin
Started SEOmoz and was
voted one of
Businessweek’s Best
Young Tech
Entrepreneurs.
Danny Sullivan
Editor-in-Chief at Search
Engine Land and partner
and chief content officer
at Third Door Media.
Aaron Wall
Writes the blog SEOBook
and is a frequent speaker
at the Search Engine
Strategies and PubCon
conferences.
Al Carl
Digital marketing
consultant and mobile
and e-commerce
strategist for Procter &
Gamble

65. Tools & Resources for
Search Engine Optimization
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66. 66 SEO Tools & Resources
Google Analytics – http://www.google.com/analytics
Google Webmaster Tools – http://www.google.com/webmasters
Google Website Optimizer – http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer
The Beginners Guide to SEO - http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide -
http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/us/webmaster
s/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
Wordstream - http://www.wordstream.com/keywords
Google Snippet Data - http://www.snippetoptimizer.net/
Microsoft Free SEO Toolkit - http://www.microsoft.com/web/seo

67. In Summary…
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68. 68 Takeaways
• SEO helps you earn a higher
ranking in search engines.
• SEO is cost-effective and results in
more sales.
• SEO provides important data about
your customers.
• You will be penalized for Black Hat
SEO techniques.
• Create relevant and useful content
for your readers.
• SEO results last for a long time.

69. 69 Review
• Definition of search engine
optimization
• How search engines and SEO
works
• Benefits of SEO
• How to develop an SEO
strategy
• How your SEO strategy plays
into your sales funnel
• Best Practices
• Tools & Resources

70. Questions?
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