SEO - What you need to know

B4B – What we need to know...

By Declan Edwards

What is SEO?

• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is where you moderate and adjust a website specifically so that it is indexed and ranks highly within a search engines organic listing.

• 4 Reasons to rank highly:

1. 93% of users won’t go past the first page

2. Less than 1% go beyond the 2nd page of a search

3. Users are more likely to change a query than go to a 2nd SERP

4. The top 3 positions receive an average of 60% of clicks

SEO Components: InfoGraphic

Architecture and Web Design

Accessibility

• Human/User Friendly = SEO Friendly

• Page Access / Inappropriate Pages

• Pagination

• Redirects 404 Errors

• Site Speed

• Mobile Friendly

• Duplicate Content

URL Structure

• Canoncalisation

• Domain Extension

• Subdomain or subfolder

• Descriptive URLs

• Hyphens

• URL Parameters

Sitemaps

• HTML Sitemap -

• XML Sitemap

• Image Sitemap

• Video Sitemap

On Page SEO

• Keywords

• Locations

• Titles & Descriptions

• Images / Alt Tags

• Structured Data

• Authorship

• Social Snippets

SEO Changes to Note...• Links have lost their value

• Keyword stuffing and over optimisation is now penalised

• Businesses are suffering : Relevancy – B4B must balance between selling & informative content

• Keyword strings & How users search:

- A women won’t just look for a dress... She’ll search for a “Red A line mini skirt size 12”

- Refined searches/questions increasingly popular...filtering is a must!

E.g. Hotels, should have: - Type (romantic, business, shopping) - Quality (luxury/budget)- Area/attractions/near to -Facilities (pool, spa, wifi etc but also babysitting, kids club etc) – Activities...

SEO Changes Continued...• The focus is on deep pages, unique content and relevancy...

• Content is STILL KING

• SEO now mostly about OPTIMISING CONTENT for :

DISCOVERY - generating traffic to your site (search Engines, Social Media, Blogs etc.)

& CONVERSION – making the most of traffic = sales (load times, content, responsive design, ease of conversion/call to action)

• The power and importance of Social Media has increased. The latest trend...

Google AuthorshipGoogle gives precedence to the reputation and trustworthiness of authors, as well as the website on which the content is published.

Google Authorship allows you to Link content published on a specific domain to your Google+ account

Benefits for the Author

• Claim/ validate your content in search results

• Be seen as an ‘Expert’ in your field

• Increase Google+ following

• Help users discover your other content online

Benefits for the web

• Help users find high quality content on the web.

• Empower them to engage with content authors through Google+

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