Village Workshop - Modern SEO

MODERN SEO@jsilton @RelevanceAdvice @ATLTechVillage

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AGENDA
1.  A Little About Us
2.  A Brief History of SEO
3.  The 3 Pillars of SEO
4.  Live Site Reviews
5.  A Few Resources
6.  Q&A
| Village Workshop: Modern SEO | @jsilton

Relationships. Results. Relevance.

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WHO
We are experienced
marketing professionals
specializing in search
marketing.
WHEN
Our clients trust us to
maximize search
performance with an
innovative approach,
sound strategy, and
exceptional execution.
WHY
Relevance Advisors
helps companies grow.
WHAT
We drive accelerated
and measurable search
impact.
WHERE
We are a digital agency
headquartered in
Atlanta, Georgia.

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Benjamin Rudolph
PRESIDENT & CEO
Benjamin Rudolph is the President & CEO
of Relevance Advisors, an interactive
advertising agency based in Atlanta which
specializes in pay per click (PPC), search
engine optimization (SEO), and web
analytics. Benjamin spent four years at
Comcast, where he managed the search
partnership with Google for Comcast
Interactive Media.
Jordan Silton
DIRECTOR OF SEO & ANALYTICS
Jordan Silton is the Director of SEO &
Analytics at Relevance Advisors. Jordan is
an accomplished digital marketing
professional who has crafted and executed
search engine optimization and digital
media strategies for clients such as
Apartment Finder, Alston & Bird, AT&T
U-verse, Atlanta Ballet, Ashton Woods
Homes, Cartoon Network, Emory
University, GameStop, Kimberly-Clark
and NASCAR.
Sonya Uddin
SEARCH MARKETING ANALYST
Sonya Uddin is the Search Marketing
Analyst at Relevance Advisors. Sonya
worked a USA Representative for AIESEC
(International Association of Students in
Economic and Commercial Sciences), the
largest global, non-proﬁt youth leadership
organization run by students and recent
graduates. Sonya also spent time as a
Marketing Intern for BlueLinx, where she
created a more efﬁcient information
management system.

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CLIENT PARTNERS

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THE RELEVANCE WAY
IMPLEMENT

PLAN
ANALYZE

OPTIMIZE

DISCOVERY
•  Understand client’s business &
industry
•  Meet with key stakeholders
•  Initial review of website &
analytics (Analytics, Webmaster
Tools, & Historical Rankings)
•  Agree on objectives & goals
STRATEGY
•  Craft custom approach
•  Establish positioning
•  Develop one-page strategic plan
•  Create agile roadmap
•  Prioritize initial projects
RESEARCH
•  Competitive analysis &
benchmarking
•  Industry & keyword research
•  Market trends & best practices
•  Tool and data review
•  Review site history
•  The Relevance Score

We explain everything we do in terms you can understand. We don’t believe in a black
box and hiding behind code. We provide a regular report card of our performance.
We partner with our clients to help them achieve their performance goals.
MEASUREMENT

HISTORICAL SEO
Search Engine Optimization

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In the beginning …
Lycos c. 1996 AltaVista c. 1998

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Web Search Pre-Google
•  Race to crawl the web
•  Focus on quantity of results
•  Engines relied on websites to
describe themselves
•  Keyword use and occurrence
was key

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Along Came Google
•  Created a new scalable
system architecture to crawl
the web
•  Focused on speed and
performance
•  Introduced PageRank

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PageRank: Bringing Order to the Web
The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine
by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page
Counted links as “Votes” in the PageRank algorithm

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Directories Reigned King
DMOZ c. 1999 Yahoo! Directory c. 2003

15 | Village Workshop: Modern SEO | @jsilton

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Lots of algorithm updates …

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“Big 3” Updates
Panda Penguin Hummingbird

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Recent & Conﬁrmed Changes
Pigeon HTTPS

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Latest Mobile Updates
App Content in Search Results Mobile-Friendly Websites

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3 PILLARS OF SEO
Source: Jayson DeMers, Forbes.com

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3 PILLARS OF SEO
Source: Search Engine Journal
Content Strategy | Inbound Links | Social Media

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3 PILLARS OF SEO
Source: Barry Adams, State of Digital

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3 PILLARS OF SEO
Authority
Description
Accessibility

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ACCESSIBILITY
Is your website and content ﬁndable and indexed?

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Robots.txt
•  Ask search engines not to crawl or
index certain content
•  Robots.txt can prevent your website
from being fully seen and indexed
•  Only true way to prevent content
from being indexed is to restrict
crawler access

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XML Sitemap
•  Ensure the Sitemap is always up-to-date and avoid
any 404 or 500 errors.
•  Always use the ﬁnal canonical URL in the XML
sitemap.
•  Do not include any URLs that are blocked by
Robots.txt or include the noindex meta tag
•  Avoid linking to URLs that 301 or 302 redirect to
another location.
•  Only link to URLs on the current subdomain. Do
not link offsite to URLs on a different domain or
subdomain.
•  Omit any poor quality pages such as those with
thin or duplicate content.

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NoIndex Meta Tag
•  While a robots.txt will stop search engines from indexing pages while crawling
a domain, search engines may still ﬁnd references to these same pages from
other places on the web.
•  In order to ensure these pages do not show up at all in search results, the best
practice is to add a meta-robots tag in the header of each intended page.

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Mobile Accessibility
•  Over 50% search queries will be
from mobile devices by the end of
the year
•  The Google My Business listing for
ATV is the only result above the
fold on mobile.
•  Starting April 21, Google will be
expanding their use of mobile-
friendliness as a ranking signal
worldwide.

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DESCRIPTION
How well is your website structured and labeled?

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Site Structure & URLs
•  Organize your site with a clear
hierarchy and structure
•  Use linguistic URLs to help users
understand what each page is about
•  ATV has clear URLs and a user-
friendly hierarchy.
–  ex. “/membership/day-passes”
–  ex. “/about/mission”

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Unique, Accurate Page Titles
•  A title tag tells both users and search engines what the topic of a particular
page is.
•  Create a unique title for each page on your site.
•  The title for your homepage can list the name of your website/business and
could include other bits of important information like the physical location of
the business or maybe a few of its main focuses or offering.

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Include a Meta Description
•  A page's description meta tag gives Google and other search engines a
summary of what the page is about
•  Make sure your meta description isn’t too short, long, or duplicated too many
times

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Utilize Page Headings
•  Use heading tags to establish content
sections or groupings
•  Ensure headings follow a clear hierarchy
and are nested appropriately
•  There are six sizes of heading tags:
<h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6>
•  Only us one <h1> on each page

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Links & Anchor Text
•  How you describe other pages on
your site affects their relevance
•  Anchor text sends signals about the
contents of the destination page
•  Be careful of spam signals!

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Optimize Images
•  Use a short and descriptive ﬁle
name for each image
•  Write an ALT tag to describe its
contents in a succinct phrase
•  Optimize image ﬁle size to load as
quickly as possible

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Structured Data & Schema.org
•  Structured data helps search engines
understand the different entities in a page
•  Google and Bing have both recommended
Schema.org as the standard for markup
•  Schema.org isn’t just for recipes!
ü  Reviews
ü  People
ü  Products
ü  Businesses
ü  Events
ü  Music
ü  Movies
ü  and more!

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AUTHORITY
Why should we trust you?

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What counts as a high quality site?
•  Would you trust the information presented in this article?
•  Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
•  Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
•  Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
•  Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
•  Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well
in search engines?
•  Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
•  Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
•  How much quality control is done on content?
•  Does the article describe both sides of a story?
•  Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
•  Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

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What counts as a high quality site? (Continued)
•  Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages
or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
•  Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
•  For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
•  Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
•  Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
•  Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
•  Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
•  Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
•  Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
•  Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful speciﬁcs?
•  Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?

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Create High-Quality Content
1.  Useful and informative: Relevant content based on your service offering and
questions your customers may have
2.  More valuable and useful than other sites: Make sure your content provides
more value or a different perspective than the numerous articles on the web
on the same topic
3.  Credible: Show your site’s credibility by using original research, citations,
links, reviews, testimonials and authoritative authors
4.  High quality: Your site’s content should be unique, speciﬁc and high quality. It
should not be mass-produced or outsourced on a large number of other sites.
5.  Engaging: Bring color and life to your site by adding images of your products,
your team, or yourself.

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Social Signals
•  Search engines are getting smarter
about social media
•  Google has invested heavily in Google+
and recently signed an agreement for a
direct feed into Twitter’s data
•  Bing partners directly with Facebook
and Twitter
•  Social signals are important, but likely
are not a replacement for links

LIVE SITE REVIEWS

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Rivalry
http://rivalry.com/

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Frogtoon
https://www.frogtoon.com

RESOURCES

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Google Webmaster Advice
Webmaster Academy SEO Starter Guide
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/
6001102?hl=en
http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/
www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-
optimization-starter-guide.pdf

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Beginners Guide from Moz
http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

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Sign up for Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools Bing Webmaster Tools

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Webmaster Central Blog
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/

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The Moz Blog
http://moz.com/blog

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Search Engine Land
http://searchengineland.com/library/channel/seo

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Google Keyword Planner
Keyword Search Search Volumes & Trends
https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner

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Our Industry Update
http://eepurl.com/Z9SCn

Village Workshop - Modern SEO

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