SEO Best Practices to Maximize your Google Ranking

SEO Best Practices to Maximize your Google
Ranking

CONFIDENTIAL ‹#›Wednesday, June 11, 2014
TribalVision and SEOBoston provide marketing
and SEO consulting
An entrepreneur with 20 years of marketing
experience, Chris Ciunci is the founder and CEO of
TribalVision – an outsourced marketing
department for hire for small and mid-sized
businesses. Chris oversees the firm’s strategic
direction, client work and business development
efforts. Chris works closely with clients, partners,
and employees to develop comprehensive
marketing strategies that revolve around
generating new busines.
Daniel Zayets-Volshin is one of Boston’s leading SEO
experts. With over a decade of experience in Search
Engine Optimization, PPC Management, Affiliate
Marketing as well as SEO-friendly Web Design &
Development, Daniel acquired a truly wide set of
Web Marketing skills. He is one of the founders for
SEOBoston - Boston’s top ranking organic SEO
Company which offers SEO services and
consultation for Boston based businesses. Daniel
collaborates often with TribalVision on web
marketing projects.

Agenda
Today’s SEO Landscape
Improving Your Site: The Basics
GooglePlus Best Practices
5 Tips to Start Using Tomorrow
Questions

Today’s SEO landscape is rapidly evolving
Meta-data is becoming less critical1
Video is now a must for those who want to compete – by 2015
it will be 90% of all online traffic
2
Traffic increasingly comes from mobile devices3

Why meta-data is (somewhat) less important
than in the past
Being the #1 ranked
search engine, it’s
important to know that
Google has removed meta
keywords from its
algorithm. However, other
search engines still use
meta keywords in their
calculations.
Meta Descriptions are still
important: Google uses
meta descriptions to give
searchers more
information about your
site. Without a meta
description, Google will
hand-pick something from
the site it feels is relevant
to what the searcher is
looking for
http://melbel.hubpages.com/hub/Meta-Data-for-SEO
Due to updates in
Google’s Hummingbird
algorithm, keyword
density is no longer
important (semantic
search allows engines to
return relevant queries
based on context, not just
search terms – so,
frequency becomes less
important in relation to
value of the context)
http://www.keloland.com/business/detail.cfm/keywords-are-dead-keywords-arent-dead/?id=163782

Video
Linking YouTube to Your
Website
Linking YouTube to your website makes the 2 platforms into
a combined entity, allowing the value of the videos from your
channel to generate value for the page where it’s placed.
Use Transcriptions
Creating & uploading your own transcripts will help Google
understand the content of your videos. YouTube
automatically creates a transcript for you of what it thinks it
hears (which can be unreliable).
YouTube Participation
You should be the person who watches other people’s
videos, likes/dislikes them and comments on them. Especially
the videos in the relevant field - it works towards your
rankings
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2343365/10-Video-SEO-Tips-That-Can-Truly-Impact-Your-Rankings
http://www.lucrazon.com/extra-seo-juice-by-adding-youtube-video-transcripts
Social Signals
Social Signals are extremely important in video ranking. If you
have a video that gets naturally shared it will be done though
social sharing options on Youtube - do not not ignore this
sharing part as this is what makes it look real.

Mobile
Mobile Website Responsive Website
“70% of mobile searches for products or services will result in a sale in
the near future.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/06/04/7-ways-that-seo-is-uniquely-important-for-entrepreneurs/

Know your niche: industry & competitor
research
http://moz.com/blog/illustrated-seo-competitive-analysis-workflow
Identify your
competitors & gather
data on their SEO & PPC
performance
Compare your site and
back links with your
competitors & industry
giants
Choose targeted long tail
keywords based on your
analysis
A competitive analysis will provide you with more informed keywords, allowing you to
begin your on-page optimization with a strong foundation.

Cover your bases of on-site optimization using
your keyword selections
URL
A page’s URL should be first and foremost straightforward and meaningful. The use
of relevant keywords in it still matters a lot and so is a geo location if your business
targets local market. .Com URLs are valued more than .org, .net or .us ones.
Meta
Keywords
Though not as relevant as in the past, the meta keywords tag should not be ignored.
They allow the relevancy of the page to be based on the set of keywords and should
not be abused (display only keywords used on the actual page).
Meta
Description
Meta descriptions in most cases will show up in search results right under the link.
They are a great opportunity to showcase what the page is about, include relevant
keywords and to include the catchy call to action in roughly 155 characters.
Keywords
Keywords should be used in the title tag & meta description, keyword tag as well as
used throughout a page’s content it’s headers and subheaders (H1-H4 Tags).
Title
Possibly the most important element of on-page SEO, the page title tells search
engines (and people!) what your page is all about. The title should contain keywords
and be no longer than 70 characters in length. If possible make it into a question.

Take your written content to a new level -
make it Hummingbird-friendly
Content
The content pages should ideally be structured around answering a question or
providing a valuable set of tips – this is how people search and what they click on.
The content needs to present value, feature quotes and links out to outside material
Photos
Use as much visual content as possible and apply the appropriate alt tags - with
useful keywords to those photos. Make them funny, make them with text, make
them unique to stand out from the crowd.
Videos
A Relevant video with proper meta data embedded on the page, can help a page to
rank higher. Use videos for the relevant material, industry quotes or relevant
presentation. Make the page more diverse in content.
Amount of
Text
Ideally the textual content should be between 2000-3000 words (about 6 pages of
text) - this sort of format for presenting informative content is ideal for Hummingbird
Readability
The viewer needs to be able to read the text by skimming through it’s sub-headers,
by doing a more extensive 1 minute read, as well as by doing a detailed reading. Use
a lot of bullet points and clearly divided sections to make your content digestible.

Locating on-page elements
Press Option + Command+ U1
Press Command + F2
Search for Title tag, meta description, keyword tags, H1, H2, H3,
H4
3

Example on-page elements
Title Tag

Example on-page elements
Meta
Description
Keywords
Tag

Example on-page elements continued
H1 Tag
H2 Tag
H3 Tag
H4 Tag

Off-site optimization (link-building) process
Before building links it is vital to get a
full landscape of keywords appropriate
to your industry that get a lot of traffic
and especially those keywords that are
long tail and get a lot of traffic. Short
keywords are usually not action-
oriented while longtail ones are.
Research them in Google Adwords for
free by creating an account. Don't send all of the links to the home
page. Send the links to the sources that
are more relevant for the link rather than
sending all of it to the home page. In
fact, some of the best link building
campaigns focuses on evenly spreading
the entire site.
Integrate the keyword into the backlink
coming from the source to your site.
Diversify the variation as if the link
repeats to many times the same way it
looks artificial.
It is better to get 1 link forma very
powerful source than 20 links from a
barely known sources.
Keywords
Where to Link-Build
How to Link-Build
Not All Links Are Created Equal

More strategies for link-building
Even though press releases are no longer counted by Google towards your link
building collection, a well written and distributed Press Release might get picked up
by some publication and those are usually a great source for valuable links.
Make sure that the information is consistent. Some of the directories are paid like
Yahoo, while some are free like SuperPage. Make sure that the directories are
whitelisted before you post there.
Business Directories
Blogs and Forums
Press Releases
Engage in the comments/discussions on the blogs and forums and make
comments on those with links to your website. Typically you need to become an
established contributor first before you would be allowed to backlink to your
website. You also need to check as a lot of websites are “no follow” meaning that
they don't pass the link juice outside of the website.

Even more strategies for link-building
Social Links
Likes, shares and +1s are counted towards your back-linking factors, especially if
people who mark your content are an authority with more people following them
than they follow. Social links gain more strength when they get re-tweeted on
Twitter and +1 re-shares on Google Plus.
.Gov & .Edu
These are some of the most desirable links. Make sure if you are getting the .edu
links that they come from USA or at least Canada, Australia or the UK.
Foreign Links
In general, links from other countries might help you rank better in those countries,
but will not help you as much in your native country and can even harm you if used
inappropriately. It is still worth getting them from English-speaking countries, but it’s
recommended to avoid them otherwise.
Resource
Websites
Links from resource websites are some of the most important links. The most
practical way to build such links is to search the content and locate broken links,
restore the content on your site and suggest the owner of those broken links to fix
the link by linking to your website as you have a fixed version of that content.

Social
Social is now an integral part of any serious SEO campaign. Social is growing as a
source of credibility for companies and individuals online, making it important to
know how to optimize your presence.
Frequency of posts Quality content
Consistent photo across
mediums
Number of comments
Presence across
platforms
Number of retweets
Number of followers vs.
number of people
followed
Active Google+ account
(it is vital for appropriate
rankings)
Number of likes

Google +: Circles & Account Type
http://www.jeffbullas.com/2013/11/11/how-to-increase-your-seo-with-google-
plus/http://www.drumbeatmarketing.net/seo-blog/google-circles-everyone-needs-g-posse
A fully saturated Local GooglePlus account is vital for appropriate
rankings.
Use photos with appropriate photo names
(i.e. keywords), use hashtags and make the
post keyword rich
Your page needs to be updated regularly –
going dark can result in a major drop in
ranking
Grow your circles: more circles = more value
= Authority Ranking
359 million active users on Google+
(a platform for YouTube, Hangouts, Maps
and Local Marketing)
Google gives articles and posts created by
circled profiles a leg up shifting them to the
top of SERPs and shifts up websites
affiliated with Active Google + Pages
Just like on YouTube- participate in
discussions on Google Plus

Google+: Best Practices
Use Keywords
Use keywords in the description – make sure the explanations is very keyword
rich but not stuffed – it must sound natural
Link
Link to your website from your Google+ page or ask your developer to help
you. If you have multiple locations, get Google Plus Local and link them to the
subdomains of the site - essentially breaking each location to the subdomain
presence. Google considers subdomains as almost a unique website.
Circles
You should be growing the numbers of people that follow you versus who you
follow. Ideally the ratio of followers should be larger than people you follow.
Registration
Type
Local page registration is the ideal case scenario. Choose the keyword rich
name especially “keyword”+”city” those and then register the google plus local
listing under same name.

Reviews
1
Reviews from people with established Google Plus or
active YouTube accounts get higher ranking
2
Ask the reviewers to include the relevant keywords in the
review as those help with the local rankings
3
Ask your customers for reviews on Google Plus,
SuperPages and other directories. Again - Try to avoid Yelp
as long as you can.

One 5-star Review = 3 position jump

Reviewers with more authority rank higher

Local
Google Plus syndicates reviews from
other directories, so the more diverse
the list of white-labeled directories
where you have reviews, the better it
will be.
Helps with local ranking. If interested,
please ask for a list after the
presentation.
New Product Launches Client-hosted Events
Google Plus does not punish for reviews
being left close to each other like Yelp
does. Nevertheless, try to spread them
apart as ranking and spam algorithm
may change
It is vital that you have the same contact
info (phone and address) in different
directories and on the site itself as that is
how the local information is being
verified
Types of Local Directories for
Submissions
Reviews on a Diverse Range of
Directories
Frequency of Reviews
Same Contact Info on the Site &
Directories

Top 5 tips you should start implementing
tomorrow
If nothing else, make sure all of your webpages have title tags.1
Create a local Google Plus Account and link it to your website2
Try to avoid Yelp for as long as you can (focus on GooglePlus instead)3
Use free tools at your disposal to make the optimization process
easier (i.e. Alexa, SEMRush, Moz On-Page Grader)
4
Make your content informative and with a value at its source - and
don’t be afraid to link it out
5

Friday, June 6, 14Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Thank You!

SEO Best Practices to Maximize your Google Ranking

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