Search Engine Optimization - The eye-opening presentation for beginners

Search Engine Optimization
The eye-opening presentation for beginners

Date: 1st Nov 2012

Name: Kalin Chernev

Agenda

• Background information
• Preparations: research and analysis
• On-page and off-page optimizations
• Monitoring and maintenance

What is SEO actually?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the
process of affecting the visibility of a website
or a web page in a search engine's "natural"
or un-paid ("organic") search results.

How search engines work?

1. User makes a query

2. User location information
is taken for better targeting
and search personalization

3. Index server searches for
the query information

4. Search results are
returned

5. Results are sorted and
filtered

6. Results are shown

Facts on online/offline shopping

Paid vs organic results statistics

Why do we optimize for Google?

Information source:
http://www.statowl.com/search_engine_market_share.php

Click-through rates by site position

Remember: focus on the big picture

• Effective keywords
• Website technology
• Links
• Competition
• Trends
• Content
• Control and maintenance

Types of optimization - overview

On-page (on-site) optimization
– Unique content
– Accessibility (bots can access the website and crawl it)
– URL structure (domain)
– Internal linking structure
– Sitemap
– Title, Meta tags, Heading Tags, Internal Anchor Text
– Images, Maps, Video
Off-page (off-site) optimization
– Link Building
– Social networks
– Forums and other viral marketing

How you start? Bottom-up approach.

Practical SEO: Step by step

Step 1: Select effective keywords

Step 2: Prepare your website

Step 3: Prepare for competition and trends

Step 4: Generating content and links

Step 5: Monitoring and controlling your results

Keyword phrase length conversion

SEO Master Toolbox

• Keywords research and analysis
– Google AdWords Keyword Tool
– Google Search-Based Keyword Tool
– SEO Book Keyword Tool
– Wordstream Keyword Tool
• Checking the trends
– Google trends
– Google Insights for Search
• Software tools
– SEO Powersuite
– SEOMoz

The perfectly optimized page

• Web page content as text;

• Title, Meta tags, Heading Tags;

• URL, anchor links, meta descriptions;

• Alt tags and descriptions for images;

On-site factors for better results

On-page factors

• in the page meta description tag - this is the advertisement of the
page;
• in the page title tag, especially in the beginning;
• in H1 tag, especially in the beginning;
• in the first 50-100 words of the HTML of the page;
• in the other headings <h2> to <h6>;
• in the alt text of images;
• file name of the image file;
• <b> is for styling, <strong> is for semantic representation;
• Keyword Density Formula - Google it, simple rule => don't overdo
optimizations;
• in list items <li> of the page;

H1 and H2

• Always with text, not cufon or images;
• H1 should be 1 per page, not more;
• H1 tag length should be about 3-5 words;
• h2 is like sub-headings;
• Target keywords are placed in the beginning;
• Don't forget to use synonyms;

Title and description

About titles
– The title should be between 65 and 70 in length;
– Use pipe | for separations, for example title of page | title of website;
– Target keywords are placed in the beginning for more weight;
– Maximum 2 target keywords are used at the same time per page;

About descriptions
– Description should be about 150 and 167 symbols in length;
– This is your advertising message seen in the search results;
– Should be unique, catching and meaningful;
– Target keywords are placed in the beginning for more weight;

Titles and descriptions lengths

Domain

Domains and extensions factors on the optimization

• Domain name - important, should contain the keywords
• Domain extension - avoid spammy .cc, .info, etc
• Subdomain - OK, if a lot of traffic and content
• Domain names in Cyrillic - sometimes help

Keywords in the domain influence

Website accessibility

• Spider / Bot
• initial crawling
• robots.txt
• .htaccess
• Robots meta tag
• Index / noindex
• Follow / nofollow

Sitemaps

• HTML sitemaps - for website visitors and users, better navigation
• XML sitemaps - for SEO purposes, for Google Webmaster Tools

Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site we might
not otherwise discover. In its simplest terms, a XML Sitemap — usually
called Sitemap, with a capital S — is a list of the pages on your
website. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that
Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs that
may not be discoverable by Google's normal crawling process.

Performance

Good performance is growing to be more and more important.
Build your website well from the start.

Google guidelines on best practices

Tools:
– Google PageSpeed Tools - checklist of website components to optimize
– Speed Tracer - identifying performance problems
– YSlow - just another performance tool from Yahoo!

Competition

Approach: research what and how your competitors are achieving their
current results, and do the same with a bit more

To start with: find out which are their target keywords?
• Research paid search prices to define level of difficulty
• Make the homework checks:
– the number and quality of their inbound links
– their social networks presence
– the number of indexed pages they have in Google
– the age of the domain
• Analyze your competitors code and learn from the good practices

Trends

Idea: Be careful with the trends. Some campaigns include season-
dependent target keywords, which are not effective throughout all parts
of the year. For example, all kinds of winter sports and hotels should be
optimized during winter.

Content and links

Content and links should be inter-related focus categories.

If you build good content, other websites will link to you.

If you have many links to your website, search engines give you credits
for being important, and give you better positions.

With better positions in search results, your website gets more traffic.

And the more traffic you receive, the more important your website is
accepted to be, which brings you even better positions and more traffic

Link baiting

Link baiting is the process of getting links to your website.

You can stimulate inbound links by many ways
– listing your website in directories such as the open directory and Yahoo!
– participating in social networks as facebook.com, linkedin.com, etc.
– participating in twitter.com
– participating in website competitions, such as "best website of"
– viral marketing in video sharing websites as youtube.com
– sharing presentations on slideshare.net and related
– sharing documents into document sharing websites
– participating in forums with target audience

Remember:
Focus on the value of the content, and links will come naturally.

Monitoring metrics

• Website position by target keywords
• Traffic to the website by target keywords
• Users' time spent on the website
• Conversions of visitors to buyers

Monitoring tools

• Google Analytics
• Google Webmaster Tools
• link-assistant.com tools
• SEO Book Tools
• Chrome and Firefox Extensions
• Many, many others

Thanks and final words

Conclusions are that SEO is not that hard. But you need strategy and
clear vision. And you need patience and consistent work.

Focus on:
1) effective target keywords
2) your website (the things you say to the world)
3) competition and trends (your environment)
4) the value of your content (to make the world talking)
5) monitoring and maintenance (to keep your good results)

Kalin Chernev
Drupalist

E-mail: k.chernev@up2.nl

http://www.up2technology.com

Search Engine Optimization - The eye-opening presentation for beginners

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