The 5-Day "Meal Plan" for SEO Success

The 5-Day “Meal Plan” for
SEO SUCCESS
Recipes & Daily Workouts for Marketers
#KnoxHUG knoxville.hubspotusergroups.com

Meet the Knoxville HUG Leader and Co-
Leader
Holly Yalove
@HollyYalove
Torrie Boggs
@shesgotknoxy
www.vieodesign.com
• Agency Partner Certification
• Inbound Marketing Certification
• HubSpot Marketing Software Certification
• HubSpot Design Certification
• Contextual Marketing Certification
• Inbound Sales Certification
• Growth Driven Design Agency Certification
• Email Marketing Certification
• Content Marketing Certification
• Certified Google Partner
• HubSpot Beta Testers
Agency Certifications:

What We’ll Cover
•HUG News
•HubSpot Product Updates
•What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
•Why Does Your Website Need SEO?
•The 5-Day Meal Plan for SEO Success
•Q&A

HUG NEWS
Future Meetups
• August 24, 2017
• October 26, 2017
Topics & Speakers to Come
• INBOUND 2017: September 26-28, 2017 Boston, MA

HubSpot Product Updates
Five New Out-of-the-box Reports for
your Dashboards
1. New contacts by source
2. Most recently created contacts
3. Most recent returning contacts
4. Contacts overview: A snapshot of
your contact activity over the last 24
hours and the last 90 days, plus your
highest daily total ever, and the total
number of contacts you’ve ever
created.

Five New Out-of-the-box Reports for
your Dashboards
5. Contacts created by day

New Web Analytics
Dashboard:
• Integrates metrics from Google
Analytics into HubSpot

• Shutterstock Integration: 60,000 royalty free images
within HubSpot now available
• Future Date Property Criteria in List Segmentation

• “Pinned” Notes in HubSpot CRM
• Domain Auto-Creation – now can opt out
specific domains
• AMPlify Your Blog with Accelerated Mobile
Pages
• “Block Free Email Providers” List has
expanded with added domains

The 5-Day “Meal Plan” for:
SEO Success
Recipes & Daily Workouts for Marketers
By: Holly Yalove
Principal & Chief Strategist
VIEO Design

What We’ll Cover
•What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
•Why Does Your Website Need SEO?
•The 5-Day Meal Plan for SEO Success
•Q&A

Search Engine Optimization
(SEO):
A marketing discipline focused on the process of
growing visibility of a website (or web page) in a
search engine’s unpaid results by achieving
higher ranking on the list of results returned.
So…which search engine should you focus on?

April 2016 - April 2017
87.93%
6.42%
5.29%
0.42%
0.12%
0.35%
Google
Bing
Yahoo
DuckDuckGo
AOL
Other
0.00% 20.00% 40.00% 60.00% 80.00% 100.00%
Market Share
Google
Bing
Yahoo
DuckDuckGo
AOL
Other
Source: StatsCounter
US Search Engine Market
Share

Why Does Your Website Need
SEO?
Search Engines are a
primary search method for
most Internet users today.

52%
63%
74%
83%
87%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
2000 2004 2008 2012 2016
% of American
Adults Using the
Internet
Internet Use by American Adults

Searches Before Purchases
• 89% of consumers use search engines to make purchasing decisions
• 81% of shoppers conduct research online before making big
purchases
• 71% of B2B researchers start their research online with a generic
search
• B2B researchers do 12 searches on average prior to engaging on a
specific brand's site
Sources: FleishmanHillard, Retail Today, HubSpot Marketing Statistics

Why Does Your Website Need
SEO?
Search Engines:
• Help “strangers” discover your
company/product/service
• Provide targeted traffic
Search Engines are smart and getting smarter, but
website owners still need to help them.

How Your Rank Impacts Clicks…
• 71.33% of searchers click on a first page organic result
• The first 5 results on the first page get 67.60% of all clicks
• Page two and three results get only 5.59% of the clicks
Source: Moz

Source: Moz
STATS: Click Through Rates by Ranking
Position
31.24%
14.04%
9.85%
6.97%
5.50%
3.73% 3.99%
1.60%
0.00%
5.00%
10.00%
15.00%
20.00%
25.00%
30.00%
35.00%
1 2 3 4 5 6 to 10 2nd Page 3rd Page
+
Google CTR
CTR - Desktop
CTR - Mobile
Exact Ranking Position

SEO is Like Exercise…
• It isn’t “once and done” – search engines are
constantly changing
• Consistently executing accurately will yield
compounding returns

Did You Know?
In 1992: < 1 million devices connected
to the Internet*
Today: 23 billion devices connected*
*Source: Neil Patel

5-Day SEO Meal Plan
Recipes & Daily Workouts

Fair Warning!
• Best practices change as the search engines change
• What techniques work best can differ industry-to-industry and
website to website

Valuable, unique content is the
base of the SEO food pyramid.
Quality Content:
• Directly impacts numerous ranking factors
• Indirectly influences other ranking factors
Day 1: Serve Up Quality Content

Quality content checklist…
 Provides obvious value to a searcher
 Offers something new and different
 Has everything the searcher needs
 Includes value added images and videos
 Format makes important information easy to find
 Is unique to the page (avoid duplicate content)

Quality content checklist…
 Well-written, using correct spelling and grammar
 Uses a variety of semantically-related keywords
 Unique to the page and site (avoid duplicate content)
 Keeps key page elements under character limits
• Title: less than 512 pixels (usually 50-70 characters)
• URL: less than 90 characters
• Meta Description: less than 160 characters

Exercise:
• Publish valuable new content frequently
• Regularly rewrite and improve
existing content
• Check for and address any duplicate content
• Titles, meta descriptions, body copy

Swag Time

Day 2: Stir in Some Keywords
If you want your content to appear on search
engine results pages (SERPs), you need to
think about keywords.
Google is getting better at mimicking human
language patterns (called “semantic search”).
Increases in voice searches also require
consideration.

X Don’t “keyword stuff” with a single keyword.
Keyword use checklist…
 Use keyword groups clustered around a specific
topic.
 Choose a primary keyword representing your #1
ranking goal for the page
 Choose a secondary “long-tail” keyword
 Choose related supporting keywords

Use the primary keyword within the first
few words of the title element and page
headline.
Include the primary keyword in the URL
Use a clear well-crafted title (helps CTR)
Use primary and secondary keywords in
the meta description (helps CTR)

 Use primary keyword and/or close variation
evenly throughout your body copy
 Keyword use should sound natural

SEO tools will help
monitor keyword use
and overuse
(examples: Yoast, Moz,
HubSpot)
Keyword Stuffing Avoidance Tips
Read your copy aloud – if it sounds
unnatural, revisit and tweak.

 Use supporting keywords
or synonyms in:
• Headlines
• Title
• Body copy

 Use bold and italics where appropriate on keywords (adds
SEO value)
 Use relevant images on the page with descriptive,
keyword-rich alt text.

i• Revisit important pages and posts to check for missing
opportunities on keywords
• Title
• Headings
• Meta Description
• Body Copy
• Alt text
• Remember to use target keywords and a variety of
related terms
• Make sure it sounds natural
Exercise:

Day 3: Blend Up an Excellent User
Experience
Polished user experience (UX) is great for lead and
customer conversions and improves SEO in direct and
indirect ways.
• Lowers bounce rate
• Increases time on page
• Increases pages viewed per visit
These metrics send positive signals to Google about your content consumption
and value.
Always Think Mobile First!

User Experience Checklist…
 Website design:
 Clear and simple-to-use
 Content layouts that are easy-to-read on all devices
 Pages should be fully responsive to the browser and
device
 Easy navigation with no more than 4 clicks to get to any
piece of content from anywhere on the site
Experience

User Experience Checklist…
 Website Speed: Fast loading pages – Google recommends
less than 1 second
 URL: Same for all devices vs. separate mobile site
 Security: Use an SSL certificate (https://....)
 Page Accessibility:
• Redirects from other/older versions should use 301s or rel=canonical
(not 302s)
• Avoid redirect chains
Experience

User Experience Cautions:…
 Pop-up Caution: Avoid anything that obstructs the user from
getting to content. Example: pop-up modals for mobile visitors.
 Ads Caution: Having too many ads “above the fold” can result
in penalties
Experience

Exercise:
• Explore UX metrics in your analytics including:
• Visitor flow
• Bounce rate
• Time on page
• Pages per visit
• Exit rates
• Watch paths users take through your content to
determine when they leave your site
• Test changes, watch metrics, continually improve
Experience

Day 4: Sprout Some High-Value Links
Domain-level link features are considered the #1
most important ranking factor.
Meaning, the number and quality of links to any of
the content on your website
A few high quality links
from a variety of trusted sites
trumps many links from one.

This one is tricky!
You Can’t Really Control:
• Who links to your website
• How they do it
What You CAN Do:
• Cultivate the kind of inbound links that give the
most benefit

Domain-level links checklist…
 Create excellent link-friendly content
 Share content well on social media
 Guest blog or collaborate with high-authority sites and
influencers

Page-level link features are a close second.
Meaning, the number and quality of links to the
individual piece of content you want to rank in the
SERPs is nearly as important as total domain-level
inbound links.

Page-level links checklist…
 Create an internal linking strategy for linking page-to-page
within your website
 Link your own content to high-authority pages on high-
authority websites (quality signal to Google)
 Use anchor text on outbound links you create that reflect the
topic of the target content
• Note: search bots value the first link the most, so choose wisely

Exercise:
• Identify 1-5 core site pages that you most want
to rank.
• On those pages, remove any unnecessary links
sending “link juice” off the page.
• Begin to create a linking structure by placing
quality links to these core pages on other
relevant pages and posts within your website.

For many businesses ranking in certain geographic
locations is essential.
Day 5: Add Local Flavor
For many searchers (especially on mobile devices)
finding a local business is the goal.
Optimizing for local ranking factors requires adding a
few more ingredients to
your SEO Meal Plan.

Local PackLocalized Organic

Local SEO checklist…
Claim and optimize your online business listings
• Incorrect and/or inconsistent listings can hurt your ability to rank
locally on Google
• Fixing inaccuracies sends “trustworthy” signals to Google
• Start with these popular places:
• Google My Business
• Bing Places for Business
• Niche-specific directories like TripAdvisor and Zomato
• Facebook (Facebook auto-generates pages under certain circumstances)
• White Pages and Yellow Pages (including copycats)

Optimize your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number).
It should be:
Easy for your customers and search engines to find on your website
Consistent between your website and local listings
Consistent NAP information is essential to gain more local
citations and improve search engine rankings.

Use keywords specific to your location and your niche
• Example: If your business is in Knoxville, include "Knoxville,"
"Knoxville, TN" and related keywords at appropriate places
throughout your website.
• Keep in mind: Google penalizes websites that overuse keywords,
so it's important to incorporate into your content naturally.
On-Page signals including NAP and Keywords are
one of the top 3 local ranking factors

 Encourage local inbound links from trustworthy sources
Moz Localized Organic Ranking Factors Moz Local Pack/Finder Ranking Factors

Focus on local reviews and ratings.
Per Moz’s 2017 study, Review Signals
(review quantity, review velocity, review
diversity, etc.) are one of the top 8 local
ranking factors
Local Pack/Finder
Ranking Factors
Localized Organic
Ranking Factors

Exercise:
• Claim and optimize local business listings
• Check your NAP (name, address, phone number)
consistency and placement
• Optimize for local keywords
• Look for local inbound link opportunities
• Encourage happy customers to leave reviews (and
respond to all reviews – good or bad)

Bonus: Sprinkle On Some Social Media
Per Google, social signals don’t directly influence organic
rankings, however…
• Many SEO experts report correlations between social
signals and higher search rankings
• Social platforms are increasingly used as search engines
• There are numerous ways quality social media activity and
engagement benefits SEO

Social SEO checklist…
Link to your website in your social profiles
Make sure business-related content is public and searchable
Use keywords in your social posts
Create business listings on social platforms which offer that
feature

Social SEO checklist…
Verify profiles whenever possible (e.g. like Pinterest does w/
code snippets)
Build high-authority followers and encourage interaction and
sharing
Include social following and sharing buttons on your website
Produce content that people will want to share

Exercise:
• Create supplemental content for your pages and posts (like
YouTube videos or pinnable infographics) and link to the
original from the item description.
• Share both the supplemental content and the related post on
social.
Embedding the new content in the original source will boost
UX metrics like time on page.
Added media adds ranking opportunity on media related
searches (like image and video search).

Q&A

HUG NEWS
• Future 2017 Meetups
• August 24, 2017
• October 26, 2017
Topics & Speakers to Come
• INBOUND 2017: September 26-28, 2017 Boston, MA

The 5-Day "Meal Plan" for SEO Success

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