SEO – what you should know

Catherine Elder

March 2015

What is SEO…

Search engine optimization – getting found when someone

searches on a keyword relevant to your

organization/services

Source: How to make any content SEO-friendly by Anvil and Act-on

Keeping up with changes…The average SEO-engaged brand saw its natural traffic rise by 19.8 percent year-

over-year in 2014.

…data indicate that there’s a 58/42 split between desktop and mobile site visits

coming from natural search, compared to 63/37 just a year ago.

Google has also promised more moves in its SERPs later this spring around mobile

optimization, calling out and boosting sites that have a good mobile

experience, and punishing the rankings of those that don’t.

Google and Bing are becoming apps rather than search engines, and making your

site the answer to customers’ questions will take more than typical SEO tactics.

Semantic markup, a robust presence on Wikidata when it takes over from Freebase

this summer, and making your content richer and more Hummingbird-friendly will all

determine how well you thrive in the new world that Google and the search engines

have planned for us.

Source: SearchEngineWatch

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Search enginesSearch engines - crawl sites and then build an index so they can serve up relevant results when someone conducts a search.

Search engines do this by using automated robots (also called crawlers and spiders).

Once the search engines have gathered the data they use algorithms to determine relevancy so that it can be associated to the search query.

There are hundreds of components involved in these algorithms to determine relevancy and these are modified by the search engines on an ongoing basis (you can search on search engine ranking factors for more information).

Popularity of the page is also considered

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Why people use searchPeople search in B2B to:

understand a product category

learn about a product/solution

solve a specific problem

Who is coming to your site via search engines?

Assess your Google analytics to determine:

The percentage of visitors coming to your site from organic search

The keywords they are using to find your site

(if you’re already using ad words use the keyword planner to help)

Transactional queries

Can people complete a transaction? Can they purchase a product or service? how easy is it for them? are they assured of security in the transaction? Are the steps clearly defined to complete the process?

Informational queries

Can people search your site and easily get information?

Is information written for the web so its scannable?

Is it easy to print?

Do you have helpful checklists, tip sheets, whitepapers etc?

Is content aligned so its clear which problem it can solve?

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Long tail search results

People will often put in a very exact term and get highly

relevant but few results.

6Source: How to make any content SEO-friendly by Anvil and Act-on

What does it all mean?

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Although paid

advertisements show at

top and side of page,

organic results tend to be

trusted more.

However, 75% of people

only look at the first

search engine results

page (SERP)

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Next steps

Create a cohesive content management plan

“Too often we treat the various aspects of our marketing programs as individual things. Social media lives over here, content marketing lives over there and SEO is somewhere off in the distance”. (source: Brick Marketing)

A cohesive content management plan is key to creating a strong digital strategy and should include:

Content written for online

With key messaging (defined by brand and service line objectives)

Optimized for search engines

Supported with a search engine marketing strategy (if you have the ad budget)

Designed for responsiveness including mobile devices, and accessibility

Identified channels for content

Including social media strategy

Multi-purpose content for multi-channels

An editorial calendar

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Best practices for SEOWebsites written for people, with a focus on being clear and user friendly –

know your audience and write to them

Where feasible, keywords should be included in:

page titles, headings (h1,h2,h3), and emphasis

Only the first 65-75 characters of a title tag display in the search results

- this is also the general limit allowed by most social media sites.

Headings should be 65 characters max. (long headings can be

interpreted as spam by Google)

Bolding or italicizing keywords can also aid search engines to know

what words are important – but emphasis must be appropriate, i.e.

done for a reason the reader understands

within content, especially within the first paragraph (have about 300 words

per page)

Link content (contextual links), including navigation/menu items and

anchors 10

Source: What is search engine optimization? by Mike Hanson (slideshare); SEO MOZ – The beginners Guide to SEO

Best practices for SEOSearch engines also look at:

age of site (how long has it been in existence, is it a credible source of information on that keyword)

Neighbourhood – who is linking to your site and where is your site linking to (is there a high degree of relevance especially for the keyword) (also called backlinks)

Having a blog that you link to and links back with relevant links can support better results

Create content that is of high valuable so people will share it and link to it

Search on Google for allintitle:resources directory – and find resources directories that you can approach to link to you

Note: bad links – pages that only contain links and no content

Fresh content – frequently update your content (stale content will get pushed down in the results)

URLs – should be readable and the shorter the better (115 characters max as shorter urls have higher click throughs)

Meta data - description (up to 150 characters including spaces), page title, ALT (less than 65 characters incl spaces), tags

Use questions in subheadings (users often pose questions in SE)

Hierarchy of content and information architecture; Flat sites do better as spiders view low level pages as less important

Social sharing can aid in improving search results

Multiple formats can aid in improving search results (e.g. videos, articles, tools)

Format considerations (images need ALT; video needs transcripts)

Content behind a form may not be indexed, therefore a summary of what is in it, using keywords, is important

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Source: What is search engine optimization? by Mike Hanson (slideshare); SEO MOZ – The beginners Guide to SEO

Things to consider

Algorithms change

(Google makes 500-600 changes per year – source: ActOn

“SEO 101”)

Page ranking changes – your place on SERP is never

guaranteed or permanent, continual work is required

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ApproachFirst step is to understand what your keywords are for your services, how people refer to your service and what words they would use when conducting a search.

Write for people and for web consumption incorporating in the best practices.

Choose a primary keyword/phrase as well as secondary

Do not assign the primary to more than one page (secondary keywords can be for multiple pages)

Use synonyms in body copy

Review your site content

What are your URLs, page titles and headings – do they support what you think your keywords should be?

Use a keyword density tool to find out how often keywords (and phrases) are used within your site

(note, increasing keyword density is not a guarantee to impact SERPs; content should be written for readability)

You may want to brainstorm to find out what your keywords should be

ask your business development team what people talk to them about,

What are RFPs asking for and what terms do they use

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ApproachVerify the appropriateness of your keywords:

Is the keyword relevant to your website's content?

Will searchers find what they are looking on your site when they search

using these keywords?

Will they be happy with what they find?

Will this traffic result in financial rewards or other organizational goals?

Test the keywords in search engines – do your competitors

appear?

To give your site and keywords a boost, consider using ad words

for defined periods and test which ones work best for you in the

ads

Continually assess and tweak your approach

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(SEOMOZ)

Conduct research

Conduct a keyword density search of your site (or of the

main pages) and analyze which words you are using and

identify those you aren’t

Assess your analytics for the main search terms used to find

your site – what terms do people use to find you

Conduct search engine searches on your services

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Next stepsAssess keywords

currently used on your website; and

where your site appears within search engine organic search results for those keywords or keywords you think you should have

if your competitors are being returned in organic results this may be the right phrase; if your competitors are also advertising with this keyword you will have to determine if you want to compete for it

Identify gaps – what are the words you want to be known for (that are relevant to your products and services)

Incorporate the keywords into your content

Choose what keywords will be best utilized in online ads to support boosting your profile of that keyword in organic results

Begin content management strategy and plan

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ToolsGoogle

Information http://www.googlekeywordtool.com/

Webmaster tools (login) - https://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/#utm_source=en-

wmxmsg&utm_medium=wmxmsg&utm_campaign=bm&authuser=0

key word planner (need to login to ad words) - https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner

http://ubersuggest.org/

http://mergewords.com/

Keyword Density analysis http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density/

Keyword density http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/

Markup help for SEO results http://schema.org/

http://www.seo-browser.com/

https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner (login required)

http://www.google.com/trends/

Bing http://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/bing-ads-intelligence (download required)

https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/sign_in/ (free trial available)

Read my blog post: Get discovered – Understanding search engine optimization

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