Seo Training 2012

SEO training
A novice to Ninja workshop !
2012 updated

Index
• SEO Overview
• Keyword Importance
• Content Creation
• Technical Guide
• Linking Strategies
• SEO Tools
• SEO and SEM
• SEO and Social Media
• SEO Checklist
• Hands On Exercise – Workshop
• Reflect and Review – Feedback form

What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of
improving the visibility of a website or a web page in
search engines via the “natural” or un-paid (“organic”
or “algorithmic”) search results.

What are the Search Engines?
• Before Search Engines Internet
was a collection of FTP sites in which
users would navigate to find specific
files.
• Search Engines are programs with
the goal to find and organize
distributed date found on the internet.

Role and Skills for an SEO professional
1. HTML / CSS / Web Design
2. How Search Engines Work
3. Keyword Research
4. Understanding On-page factors
5. Ability to write and craft link baits
6. Basic knowledge of social networks
7. How to redirect pages
8. Handling Duplicate content
9. Mod_rewrite with .htaccess
10. Link power and how it works
11. Link Building methods
12. Basic knowledge of penalties
13. Analytics
14. Competitive Research

What are the Search Engines do?
• Crawl
• Index
• Process
• Calculate
Relevancy
• Retrieving
Basic functions of a Search Engine

Is SEO important?
• SEO is not Dead!
• Content is still the King
• SEO is not just for Google

How Google works?
• Page Rank is no longer play any role for your pages to get Indexed
• Caffeine system is indexing pages continuously and globally
• Fresh content is valued. (All English content is now under Google’s Panda)
• On-page optimization and social media linking should happen at the same
time.

Showcase of Google’s Apps
• Try to be visible in as many Google’s Apps
• Keep always in mind that there are many vertical search programs

Role of Keywords in SEO
1. In the Meta-Description tag
2. In the URL structure
3. In the title tag
4. Header tags (H1, H2, etc)
5. Bold / Italic tag
6. Body Text
7. In the Anchor text links
8. In the Alt text of any relevant images
9. In Filenames (ex PDF link)
Can be placed in:

Keyword Research
Keyword Research allows you to determine which
Search terms people are actually entering into
a search engine when conducting a search.

Keyword Selection
1. How many people are searching for a particular
word/phrase?
2. How competitive is the landscape for that word/phrase?
3. How relevant is the keyword?
4. Actionable keywords – “buy iphone South Africa”
5. Measure the conversion!

Keyword Analysis
• Use Keywords Categories (One-word, Two-words etc…)
• Use local terms on keyword-phrases
• Ask other people for their opinion

Answer these now!
Top 3 ranking sites in Google?
Appears in Google? (yes/no)
If yes, in which position?

Unit 3 – Content Creation
If content can be searched,
It can be optimized.

What is Content?
http://www.slideshare.net/khalvorson/content-strategy-the-future-of-marketing

Critical Content Strategies
1. Page Titles
2. Body Copy
3. Link Anchor Text
4. Image Tagging
5. Meta Descriptions
6. User Feedback Management

Guidelines for Content Creation - Onsite
1. Use the H1 tag for your title
2. Keyword Density
3. Use Synonyms and wide vocabulary
4. Bold, italics, underlined, emph
5. META tags
6. Numbered Lists
7. File Names
8. Have useful external links
9. Have a high content-to-code ratio
10. Do not use Flash
11. Links embedded in text
http://www.squidoo.com/SEO-copywriting-tips

Example of an Optimized page (or article)
Page URL: http://marysbakery.com/chocolate-
donuts
Page Title: Chocolate Donuts | Mary’s Bakery
Meta Description: Mary’s Bakery chocolate
donuts are possibly the most delicious, perfectly
formed, chocolate donuts ever made.
H1 tag: Chocolate Donuts from Mary’s Bakery
Image File: chocolate-donuts.jpg
Body text: keyword in strategic alignment

Suggestions for H(n) Tag use
1. Home / Category pages: H1 for main headings with H2 for
subheadings
2. News Article: H1 as article headline, H2 for subheads
throughout the article
3. Blog Post: H1 for post title
4. Landing Pages: H1 for main title, H2 for content sections, H3
for subheads in each section
5. Job Profile Site: H1 for Job Title, H2 for location, H3 for salary
details
6. Events Site: H1 for Event Name, H2, for location, H3 for event
date

Page Titles
1. Very important SEO Ranking Factor
2. Keyword Placement & Order Matter
3. 65 Characters of Display Length
4. Branding technique

Body Copy
1. Topical Relevance is Crucial
2. Keyword Count and Density
3. H1, H2 Tags, Bold etc
4. First 100 words are more valuable – Keywords at the beginning of the paragraph
5. Word Count should be 250 – 1,000 words

Anchor Text Link
1. Use them to connect pages of the website
2. Use them as links to some external pages
3. Links Pass Page Rank Value
4. Navigational Links (in a sitemap format) should appear at the end of the page

Image Tagging
1. Alt-Image Tags Help Google “Read” Pictures
2. Image File Names are often the default setting
3. All static images should have alt-image tags that use keywords
4. Images that Link Pages should target keywords on the Destination page

Meta-Tag Optimization
Meta-Description is still important!
1. Unique description for every page
2. Best description length = 155 characters all
included (135-200)
3. Avoid bad grammar and misspelled words
4. Avoid the use of symbols or prices

Meta-Tag Optimization
Meta-keyword has no value for Google, but is
not harmful!
1. 150 total characters or less. This includes commas and spaces
2. Use comma separated values. Ex. Content=“value 1, value 2,
value 3”
3. Do not use symbols in the values
4. Capitalization is completely ignored
5. Duplicate words are identified as Keyword Spam

User Comments & Feedback
1. Great for Unique Content Generation
2. Encourage participation through all major social channels
3. Participate in the conversation where appropriate

Content Syndication - Offsite
1. Time to get creative
2. Go viral – facilitate the conversation
3. First priority is to create something that is useful,
funny or controversial
4. Second priority is to make it easy to share
5. Use Social Media to get your message across
6. Crowd-source and remember – all blogs matter!

Flat URL Structure
• Don’t go more than 2-3 levels deep in your category structure
• Include targeted keywords for the categories and page names
Example
http://www.pets.com/parrots/norwegian-blue/

URL Structure
1. Avoid dynamic URLs
2. Use lower-case characters
3. Best to use dashes (-) rather than underscores ( _ )
4. Directories should contain index.html or default.html for the default page
5. Avoid using intro.html or other names
6. Use URL Rewrites for creating Search Engine Friendly URLs

URL Rewrites
http://www.pets.com/show_a_product.php?product_id=7
original url
http://www.pets.com/products/7/
better
http://www.pets.com/parrots/norwegian-blue/
best

URL Canonicalization
Common Homepage Example:
http://www.yourdomain.com/
http://yourdomain.com
http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html
http://yourdomain.com/index.html
Example
http://www.example.com/page.html?sid=asdf314159265
<head>
...
<link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/page.html"/>
...
</head>

HTML Code Optimization
1. The content area should be positioned high in the HTML code
2. All HTML tags should be in lower case
3. Remove Comments (may conceived as spam)
4. Avoid Frames, iFrames, Flash
5. Use external CSS and JavaScript Files
6. Size of files on the HTML page should be around 25Kb or less
7. Prefer CSS for the site’s layout
8. Try for W3C Validation (http://validator.w3.org/)

CSS Requirements
• Avoid Inline Styles
• Use external CSS files
• Position the external CSS file links in the
HTML Header
<p style="background: blue; color: white;">A new background and
font color with inline CSS</p>
Inline CSS example

JavaScript Requirements
• Use of Inline JavaScript should be avoided
• Use external JavaScript files
• Limit the size of the JavaScript file to 50kb
• Make sure there is a good code / text ratio

Controlling the Crawler
3 Ways to Control the Web Crawlers
• Robots.txt files
• Robots Meta Tags
• NoFollow Tags

Robots.txt File
Is used to restrict spiders for indexing selected pages
User-agent: *
Applies for all Robots
Disallow: /*.pdf$
Restricts all URLS containing a .pdf file extensions
Disallow: /404.html
Restricts access to specific page
A robots.txt file is expected by the crawlers!

Robots Meta Tags
• Pages without robots meta tags will allow the pages to
index into cache and follow the links
• <meta name=“robots”, content=“noindex, nofollow”>
This restrict the spider from indexing the page into cache and
following the links on the page
• <meta name=“robots” content=“noindex”>
This only restricts the spider from indexing the page into cache
• <meta name=“robots” content=“nofollow”>
This restricts the spider from following the link on the page

NoFollow Tags
• The rel=“nofollow” tag is used for restricts web crawlers from following links.
• The NoFollow Tag doesn’t prevent spiders from actually following and indexing
the linked page
< a href=“url” title=“title” rel=“nofollow”> link text </a>

Migrating Websites - best practices for moving
URLs and domains
HTTP 301 Redirect Headers
301 redirect headers are used to inform search engines that a page has moved to a new URL
• Always use 301 Redirects when moving pages to new URLs
• Limit the number of 301 Redirects to 1 per URL
RewriteRule ^old-url.htm$ http://www.domain.com/new-url.htm
[NC,R=301,L]
• Don’t remove original content that has already been indexed
• Consider using XML sitemaps
• Use paid search campaigns to replace deficiency whilst content is re-indexed
• Use robots.txt to control indexing if content in parallel
• Avoid changing domains at all cost

Understanding XML Sitemaps
1. Sitemap XML file is expected from Google Bot
2. Can be submitted directly in Google Web Masters tool
3. Allows to set-up options
4. Use sitemap.xml for SE and sitemap.html for humans

What is link building and why is important
1. Link Building is a very important part of SEO
2. Google values websites according to their link quality
3. Links are something like “votes” from one site to another
4. A value is passed from page to page via links

Types of Links
Links can be broadly categorized as follows:
• Natural Links – Links that are gained naturally through the creation of quality content
• Inbound only (one way) links – Request inbound links from relevant sites
• Reciprocal linking – Links that are agreed between websites
• Links from Directories – Some are Free and need attention before submit the site.
• Direct Paid links – Links from companies such as Text Link Brokers etc

Link Building Process
• Creation of target keyword list
• Content strategy and creation
• Evaluation of top ranking sites for each kw
• Analysis of inbound links to competitor
websites
• Link acquisition
• Measurement and analysis

Analysing Competitor’s Links
Checking Nutricia’s competitor: http://www.babyspace.gr
• Check first 100 links for each competitor
• Measure Page Rank
• Measure percentage of website style (blog, forum, directory)

Link Acquisition
Key link acquisition techniques include:
• Personalized Campaigns – Contact site owners and
request links
• Look for an affiliate page – Usually a payment is required
• Look for Blogs – Offer sponsorship, or content (widgets, etc)
• Use Social Media
• Communities and Forums
• Bookmarking and Tagging
• RSS feeds for news and blogs
• Online PR (Press Releases, Directories)
• Directory Submission
• Web Tools (apps that run on multiple platforms)
• Surveys, Polls, How-Tos, Lists
• Video content, Webcasts

Link Bait
+ Remember to also link internally!

Unit 6 - Tools
The new seo toolkit

Free tools for your SEO
Yahoo! Site Explorer
Google Webmaster Tool
Google Analytics
Google Adwords

Commercial Tools
Competitors & Links
- Linkscape
- Majestic SEO
- SEMRush
Keyword Research
- AdWords Research
- SEMRush
- SpyFu
- WordStream
Link / Content Management
- BuzzStream
- RavenTools
Social Monitors
- BrandsEye
- SocialMention
- WhosTalking

SEO/ PPC Comparison
http://bullseyenj.com/need-to-know/glossary/search-engine-marketing-sem/

Working Together
When appearing in both natural and paid search for the same
keyword impression:
- Clicks lifted 92%
- Actions lifted 45%
- Orders lifted 45%
- Page views lifted 44%
- Visitors increased by 41%
- Time on site increased by 40%
Source icrossing, “Search Synergy Report: Natural & Paid Search Symbiosis”

Unit 8 – Checklist (10 things to
check)
Good SEO is unseen

1) Focus on Keywords
 Make a Keyword list
 Use SEO tools to build a list
 Find the best / searchable keywords
http://www.slideshare.net/profitsprout/seo-quick-checklist?src=related_normal&rel=6721852

2) Write unique content
“Well-written content with focus
on keywords or Keyword phrases
add relevance to your site”

3) Keyword Rich Titles
• Have a descriptive & keyword rich title tag on
every page
• Add the name of your company at the end of
the title

4) Keyword Links
• Use Keywords or keyword phrases in links
(anchor tag) within your website

5) Design your website considering SEO
• Text Links
• Image Alt Tag
• Headings
• Meta Tags
• Keyword Rich Captions

6) Backlinking
• For Link Building use quality backlinks

8) .edu & .gov
• These domains give high weight to your
website

9) Sitemap
• Design and HTML and XML Sitemap

10) Robots.txt file
• Optimize your robots .txt file

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