SEO Seminar[Search Engine Optimisation]

Thursday 22nd Jan, 2015 10:00am – 12:00pm

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Matt Lynch• General Manager of Vorian Agency – Delivering integrated online and offline marketing solutions

to business wrestling with how to market in today’s changing environment.

• With over 22 years Online Marketing & Information Technology experience, Matt’s primary speciality is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Matt is a highly experienced senior digital marketing specialist working both within agency and in-house roles. Matt is also a certified Google Adwords and Bing Ads Professional.

• Enjoys keeping up with the 'bleeding edge' of technology advancements and social media evolvement to ensure current knowledge in an ever changing landscape, leading to early adoption and determination of opportunity for marketing enhancement.

• Local, national and international project experience particularly in the field of Travel for over 10 years with companies such as Trafalgar Tours, The Travel Corporation brand and travel properties, Stella Travel and Best Flights. Matt has earned a reputation as an online marketing expert and search evangelist for thoroughness, quality, technical knowledge and success driven results. Matt's previous role was as the Global Online Marketing Manager for Trafalgar, coordinating the online marketing efforts with international teams for this global brand.

Your Presenter: Vorian Agency General Manager

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Add Matt to your circles…Google+: https://plus.google.com/+MattLynchAU

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattrlynch

LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/mattlynchseo

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattrlynch

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/mattrlynch

About Me: http://about.me/au.mattlynch

SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/mattrlynch

Instagram: http://instagram.com/#mattrlynch

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/aumattlynch

Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/mattrlynch

Vine: https://vine.co/mattlynch

Yelp: http://mattlynch.yelp.com.au FourSquare: https://foursquare.com/mattrlynch

Klout: http://klout.com/#/mattrlynch

Email: matt.lynch@vorian.com.au

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Connect with Vorian AgencyGoogle.com/+VorianAgencyWestPerth

Twitter.com/VorianAgency

Facebook.com/VorianAgency

Pinterest.com/vorianagency

Linkedin.com/company/vorian-agency

Foursquare.com/v/vorian-media-group

Yelp.com.au/biz/vorian-agency-west-perth

Klout.com/vorianagency

About.me/VorianAgency

Slideshare.net/vorianagency

Instagram.com/vorianagency

Flickr.com/photos/vorianagency

Youtube.com/user/VorianAgency

Vimeo.com/vorianagency

Vine.co/u/VorianAgencySlide: 4

Interactive Questions?During today’s session, you are welcome to tweet

questions to our Vorian Agency Twitter Account @vorianagency using the hashtag #voriantraining

https://twitter.com/vorianagency

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HousekeepingBefore we start, please note the following:

• Exits• Toilets• Mobile Phones on Silent• Question & Answer session at end of the Presentation• A link to the Presentation Slide Notes will be emailed to you • Vorian Agency info packs are provided to showcase our service offering• Vorian staff are available to arrange an appointment or answer specific questions • Please provide your feedback on today’s seminar on the supplied questionnaire• Please invite others you may know to register for our free seminar series• We are offering a 10% discount on our SEO services for a limited time to attendees

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What is SEO?• The term SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. • It can also be known as Inbound Marketing or Search Marketing.• SEO is the active practice of optimising a web site by improving internal and external

aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives organically from search engines.

• If you business can’t be found, you don’t get the traffic…• When we talk about “Organic” or “Natural” Search, these are the results that appear

in the main body of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page), that aren’t paid for, and are determined by Google (and the other search engines in their own platforms) based on an algorithm that considers the content of your website and matches this to a consumer’s search query.

• SEO is considered the more technical part of internet marketing. – 81% of internet users use search engines to find a website.– 73% of all online transactions begin with a search engine. – 87% of users only look at the first page of results.– 85% of clicks are organic clicks

• Understanding how users search, allows you to target the searcher…– 90% of online men and 91% of women use search engines.– 85% of both groups say they found what they were looking for.– Do YOU have Analytics and are you tracking your customer engagement and conversion?

Black or White Hat SEO• Google Search Engine - Quality guidelines - basic principles

– Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.– Don't deceive your users.– Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel

comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you, or to a Google employee. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

– Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging. Make your website stand out from others in your field.

• Google’s Webmaster Guidelines:– https://support.google.com/webmasters/?hl=en#topic=3309469– https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en

Things Not to Do• Avoid the following techniques:

– Automatically generated content– Participating in link schemes– Creating pages with little or no original content– Cloaking– Sneaky redirects– Hidden text or links– Doorway pages– Scraped content– Participating in affiliate programs without adding sufficient value– Loading pages with irrelevant keywords– Creating pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware– Abusing rich snippets markup– Sending automated queries to Google

• Engage in good practices like the following:– Monitoring your site for hacking and removing hacked content as soon as it appears– Preventing and removing user-generated spam on your site

• If your site violates one or more of these guidelines, then Google may take manual action against it. Once you have remedied the problem, you can submit your site for reconsideration.

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Difference between SEO and PPC

Your Business in the SERPs• Maximise your online footprint, or the visible screen real-estate your business results

take up within Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) with a trifecta of results; three places to secure your brand – PPC, Organic and Maps.

• Add to your company’s Rich Snippet (title+description), to include the Google Map location, Reviews and Google+ Page link.

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Google My Business• Google Map Locations for businesses, the old ‘Google Places’ is now known as

Google My Business. But it is now more that just a management console for your business location details… The Dashboard integrates: Location, Google+, Insights for your Business, Review Management, Google Analytics for your website, YouTube, Adwords Express, and even the ability to start a Hangout video call.https://www.google.com.au/business/

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So,…didn’t SEO die?• Every year, somebody proclaims SEO is dead <yawn>, however SEO has evolved

into a more creative, diverse and challenging profession that should no longer be a ‘siloed’ discipline but rather a foundational component that integrates with and is affected by all aspects of the marketing mix – both online and offline.

• These days, search engines AND consumers want; quality content, engagement and social proof.

• Search engines will measure content quality, brand sentiment and relevance.• Because of the need for quality content, SEO consultants need to move to become

‘content marketing strategists’ and encourage their client’s creation of this content… because, ‘Content is still King’.

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What SEO do I need in 2015?• In 2015 you need to create high quality, holistic content that is relevant and valuable

to the website visitors and is optimised with SEO fundamentals throughout; ensure your website is mobile responsive and technically excellent to support a good user experience; provide social signals and ‘website stickiness’ to promote web content using Social Media and Public Relations to drive quality backlinks as well as ongoing engagement.

• Synchronise and coordinate all aspects of your digital marketing campaigns with SEO in mind and consistent across all your mediums.

• Track, Test, Measure and React, to refine and improve.• Mobile-first design will continue to drive site design. If you want to know where

Google is headed, look to mobile. – Dr. Pete Meyers, Marketing Scientist at Moz

• Maintain a strong and highly relevant themed website structure on an SEO friendly web publishing platform, maximise crawl and equity flow via internal link structure, continuously check and maintain the integrity of your on-page elements, and leave as much space between your website and toxic links as possible… your website’s backlink profile is a major investment, just as you check your bank balance regularly, you should monitor and check your backlinks to mitigate risk (Negative SEO). However, sites that focus only on backlinks without quality content will probably fail. As stated in the Google SEO starter guide: “Create content primarily for your users, not Search Engines”.

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Different types of Search• Is your business, brand, and content visible everywhere? Increase your brand’s digital

footprint.• Search Engines

– Desktop Browser– Browser Toolbar– Mobile phone, Tablet device, Television, Wearables (Glasses, Watch)– Voice Search (“Okay Google”, Siri)– Custom Search (on your own website)

• Social (Google+, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn...)

• Video (YouTube)

• Images• Maps (Maps, Panoramio (photos of the world), Earth)

• News• Play (App Stores)

• Email (Gmail)

• Local (Drive, Docs, Picasa (photos))

• Books• Shopping• Translate (search in other languages)

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Benefits of Mobile Search• Mobile, leading to immediate engagement (phone calls/maps in transit)• 70% of Mobile Searches Lead to Online Action Within an Hour.• 61% of mobile users call after a local business search.• 43% of consumers are unlikely to return to a slow-loading mobile site.• 40% of consumers are going to turn to a competitor's site after a bad mobile

experience.• In 2015 Google is now advising website owners that non-mobile friendly sites will not

be ranked well within the SERPs for smartphone users.

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Changes to Google's Algorithm• Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally

accessible and useful. • Of the daily queries on Google, 16% have never been seen before.• Google’s search engineer, and head of the Web Spam team - Matt Cutts said that

Google’s algorithms change once per day at the least. • In one year, over 500 algorithm changes can take place. • Instead of focusing SEO strategy to fight against Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird,

Pigeon and the Pirate Google algorithm changes, strategies need to focus beyond old school SEO tactics.

• The Penguin update and other tweaks changed the way that search engines interpret aggressive optimisation. SEO strategies can no longer focus on bulk links. Quality links trump quantity, but search engines also have a governing factor that restrains how quickly a site can increase their rank.

• To get Top Google Rankings = user engagement x on-page quality x off-page linking factors x on-page factors x social signals

• Source for tracking Search Engine Algorithm changes:http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change

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Changes to Google's Algorithm

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The Penguin Impact• One key element in Google's Penguin update was the inclusion of an organisation's

brand reach as a factor in SERPs.• The greater your brand popularity, the higher the probability of achieving a first page

position. So building an effective brand, with a consistent brand message, and putting resources and effort into building your brand reach, has never been as important as now. Please register for our Branding Seminar to learn more about this.

• Press releases, interviews and relationships with magazines help Public Relations (PR) link building.

• If Google sees it as relevant to a particular query, you will now see images and videos outranking organic page listings.

• Search engines are increasingly using social signals in their algorithms and measuring 'brand sentiment' more accurately.

• A lot of new clients who come to us after having been hit by a search engine manual action or requiring a Google Penguin penalty recovery, immediately see the benefit in our performance of a month by month due diligence review and monitoring for risk management, particularly in competitive markets where negative SEO is a real threat.

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Link Building Tools• Create useful and natural links• Free SEO Tools (bulk outbound links checker, reciprocal link checker, bulk PA/DA

checker)– http://www.seoranksmart.com/tools/webmaster-tools.htm

• FE International - Website Penalty Indicator on Google– http://feinternational.com/website-penalty-indicator/

• Majestic SEO Site Explorer - what is your link profile– http://www.majesticseo.com/

• SEOMoz Open Site Explorer - search engine for Links– http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/

• LinkDiagnosis - examine your link competition– http://www.linkdiagnosis.com/

• Open Link Profiler– http://www.openlinkprofiler.org/

• Tools that can assist with the bad link removal process:– http://www.linkdetox.com/ – http://www.removeem.com/

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Useful Local Sites• A list of useful Australian websites to submit your site to:

– yelp.com.au– dlook.com.au – localstore.com.au – flyingsolo.com.au – nationaldirectory.com.au – yellowbook.com.au – hotfrog.com.au – startlocal.com.au – truelocal.com.au – street-directory.com.au

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LinkedIn & Reputation Management SEOTie Social Media into your SEO strategy. Whether an individual person or a company, LinkedIn has the reputation and respect of search engines, with results placing highly in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

•A well-structured LinkedIn Profile will help you with your Google organic search results, enabling people to find you, and act as the doorway into your business or organisation. •It will effect your online reputation, especially on a Google search.•It has tremendous bearing on your credibility and authority.•It’s a key trust influencer.•Need help with LinkedIn? Come along to our LinkedIn Seminar.

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The impact of Google+ to SEO• Google+ impacts search results through

personalisation. For example, if someone is following you on Google+, the chances that they will see your posts in Google's SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) is increased.

• When people +1 an article it is more likely to show up for them within the SERPs, but it's also more likely to show up for everyone they follow!

1. People who follow me on Google+ are more likely to see it.

2. People who follow anyone who +1's the content are more likely to see it.

• Therefore if you can build a strong audience of your own, or if major influencers in your market +1 or share your content, this can get you a lot more exposure to your target market.

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The impact of Google+ to SEO…• As well, this seems to extend across the Google ecosystem, and it appears that

people you exchange Gmails with can also create this type of connection that leads to the personalisation of results.

• Content originally created in Google+ such as posts, and YouTube videos from Hangouts can rank highly in the SERPs for your brand, and keywords.

• Google+ shared links do seem to also have an impact on the search results when combined with other signals. Some links in Google+ are in fact "followed" links which allow PageRank to flow.

• One of Google's Search Engine algorithm updates - Hummingbird, is aimed at allowing Google to better process signals other than links, such as signals from social platforms. Social signals are important as they deliver sentiment and popularity information around a brand, which Google's algorithm can use, and replaces the emphasis on biased link building activities by SEOs in the past.

• Keep in mind that Google gets the information you supply from Google+ directly. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, there is no crawling involved in this process. Google+ also is continuing to grow, and it is strategic to Google's plans. This also means that posting new content to G+ will get it noticed and indexed faster.

• Haven’t got a Google+ account optimised yet? We can help you, or book for our Google+ seminar to find out more.

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Content Marketing (Link Bait)• Content Marketing, Social Media and SEO, work together for great results…• Create a Hub-and-Spoke approach around your website with coordinated keyword

rich Text, Documents, Images, Video, Audio…• Blog posts• Videos and Podcasts• Images and Infographics• Whitepapers• Webinars• Slideshows• Reviews• Website copy and Product descriptions• Ebooks• Digital magazines• Research reports• Case studies• Enewsletters• ... then syndicate all of this content through your social channels.• Did you know that making your content font size a bit larger can even impact the

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Understanding Keywords for SEO• Keywords are words or phrases that consumers enter in their search query within

Google, and which trigger your results to appear within the SERPs. • For example, if you deliver fresh flowers, when someone searches Google using the

phrase "fresh flower delivery" or a similar term, you would want your business results to appear in Google search results.

• Start your SEO research by creating a list of keywords that are relevant to your product or service, and making sure that they're specific rather than general (for example, "fresh flower delivery" rather than simply "flower"), as your aim is to have your webpage appear to the people who are most interested in your product or service.

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Keyword ToolsGoogle Keyword Planner Tool (Adwords)

https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner

Bing Keyword Tool

http://www.bing.com/toolbox/keywords

Free keyword suggestion tool that makes good use of Google Suggest and other suggest services

http://ubersuggest.org/

Keyword Spy

http://www.keywordspy.com/

Wordtracker Keywords Tool

https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Free Negative Keyword Tool from WordStream

http://www.wordstream.com/negative-keywords

SpyFu - Keyword Tool

http://www.spyfu.com/

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Finding Good Keywords• Google: Searches related to keyword... Google Related Searches appear at the

bottom of the Google SERP as a list of similar and related common search queries. List the most relevant related queries, for consideration within page copy content creation, to support keyword 'theme'.

• Google Instant Search; Predictive Search, predicting for the user in their search query terms that are most likely to relate to their keyword, and so many influence the search term selected. These phrases to be noted for consideration within page copy content creation, to support keyword 'theme'.

• Google Trends: http://www.google.com/trends/

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SEO Keyword Strategy• Using a structured approach aligned with known SE (Search Engine) algorithms and

'best practice' methodology. The semantic information collected, along with the associated relationship data, and subsequent weighting of focus of each keyword will serve to direct the on-page SEO strategy deployed.

• Broad Keyword Base; List the broader base keyword that your selected keywords are derived from, for inclusion within the page copy creation, to associate the root relationship.

• LSI Keywords; Latent Symantec Index: List the main synonyms related to the selected keyword to be used in page content, to support the keyword 'theme', this is based on obtaining natural, organic spoken/written word/phrase variations that assist computers to understand human language, and everyday speech.

• Singular vs Plural; List both singular and plural version of the keywords, for consideration within page copy content creation, to support keyword 'theme'. For <title> and <description> metatags, avoid duplication and find the strongest primary and secondary matches, whether it is the plural or singular.

• Common Misspellings and Regionalisation; Check for, and list, common misspelling variations of the keyword, as well as regionalisation variations US/UK/AU English for consideration within page copy creation, or for the creation of dedicated pages to cover that 'version'.

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SEO Factors Discussion• Good domain name (Doesn’t have to be an Exact Match Domain (EMD) as it's harder to achieve results

with exact domains in more competitive verticals)

• Quality SEO friendly CMS (Content Management System) or choice of <html>• Quality hosting, preferably on own IP address, with server compression enabled• Clear of Spam blocks (IP not blacklisted)• www resolved. Your website without the www doesn't redirect to www. (duplicate

content)• Lower case, hyphenated, structured URL address strategy• Well structured, clean <html> code that passes W3C Validation• Text/html ratio and positioning• Fast loading page code/design (compressed images)• Good competitor research and keyword analysis• Appropriate SEO <title>, <description> meta tags and other appropriate meta data

that search engines understand (Language, doctype, encoding)• Google/Bing Webmaster Tools verification• Geo positioning location code (particularly for local search)• Canonical reference to the primary parent source (prevent duplication)• Favicon icon image• RSS feed for the site Slide: 30

SEO Factors Discussion…• Reduced number and quantity of Javascript and CSS files• ALT tags and descriptions for images, along with good file naming conventions• Breadcrumb navigation• Use of only 1 <h1> tag, and appropriate lesser heading levels <h2><h3>• Well structured footer navigation internal links• Dynamically coded header navigation with child levels to enable one click traverse of

entire website• Google analytics code on all pages• Consider use of embedding Google maps (location lat/long code)• Local phone number, address, postcode• Actual well written content on the page (keyword saturation)• Use of syntax signals; bold, italics, unordered lists• Customised 404 error page• Strategy for old pages to have 301 redirects• Inclusion of the robots.txt file• Inclusion of the sitemap.xml file(s)• Avoid use of frames and avoid use of flash (doesn't work on iDevices)• Oh,… and did I mention – “Good Content”!

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Track Results with Google Analytics• Google Analytics not only lets you measure sales and conversions, but also gives you

fresh insights into how visitors use your site, how they arrived on your site, and how you can keep them coming back.

• Google Analytics is perhaps the most commonly used, free, famous, and recognised as the standard of web statistics. Google Analytics gives very accurate statistics on not only traffic but also keeps track of almost everything a cookie can store (browsers, type of OS, plugins installed, etc.) on each unique visitors. It is also used to keep track of Google Adwords (Pay Per Click - PPC), integrates with Google Webmaster Tools (GWT), and can be used with Apps (IOS and Android Applications).

• The goal of analytics is to drive organisational efficiencies and overall improvement. A true data driven analytic solution will help an organisation to tackle their most complex problems and create unique, predictive capabilities, driving intelligent decisions.

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Using Google Tag Manager• Google Tag Manager lets you add or update your website analytics tags and mobile

applications, easily and for free, whenever you want, without having to ask your website developer to add code changes in on each page each time.

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Webmaster Tools• Both of the major search engines supply FREE tools for website owners called

Webmaster Tools, which provide an insight into the health of the website, particularly from the perspective of SEO.

• The Search Engines are incorporating Social Signals - BWT (Bing Webmaster Tools) continues to evolve to include information on the social media accounts associated to the business website. GWT (Google Webmaster Tools) is yet to follow, though they do have Author Stats (Google+)

• http://www.google.com.au/webmasters • http://www.bing.com/webmaster

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Speed Testing• http://www.webpagetest.org • Run a free performance review of your site/page to determine which areas can be

improved for the user experience.• Google Page Speed Test

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights

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Website Code Validation• http://validator.w3.org/ • http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/ • Run a free website code markup validation check to review your site/page to

determine if there are any coding <html> that can be improved to ensure different browsers break your website when rendering or impact Search Engines.

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Link Checkers• http://validator.w3.org/checklink • http://xenus-link-sleuth.en.softonic.com/ • Review your website for any broken links to correct these, or update redirects to point

to the final destination.

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Don't forget SEM• Search Engine Marketing or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising• Start with standard Search Network Advertising, then consider; Display Network,

Remarketing, Shopping, Video…• Across Google, then Bing/Yahoo!• Adwords for your YouTube channel• Social Media PPC advertising across Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter

• ComScore's report suggests that display and video ads can increase brand-related search queries by 3x.

• A Google study suggests there is a strong relationship between ad click-through rates (CTR) and the presence of an organic listing on the first page results.

• Take the intelligence from SEM campaigns and directly apply to organic strategy.

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Keep Connected

After today’s session, please feel free to connect with me if you have additional questions:

LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/mattlynchseo

Don’t forget to follow Vorian Agency on LinkedIn:http://www.linkedin.com/company/vorian-agency

All of my other Social Media links are available on About.Me:About.Me: http://about.me/au.mattlynch

Email: matt.lynch@vorian.com.au

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Please… invite othersWe would like to thank you for your attendance

to today’s seminar on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

• A link to the Presentation Slide Notes will be emailed to you • Vorian Agency info packs are provided to showcase our key business areas• Vorian staff are available to arrange an appointment to assist your specific needs

• Special Offer: 10% discount on SEO services for a limited time to attendees of our SEO seminar

• Please provide your feedback and hand-in the supplied questionnaire• Please leave a review for us on Facebook, Yelp or Google My Business

• Please invite others you may know to register for our free seminar series and forward them a copy of today’s seminar email.

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Vorian Agency SEO ServicesSearch Marketing

– SEO - Search Engine Optimisation– SEO Services– Local SEO– International SEO– Mobile SEO Marketing– Technical SEO– Forensic SEO– Ethical SEO– Negative SEO Monitoring– Build an In-house SEO Program– Google Algorithm Updates - Panda, Penguin , Pirate & Hummingbird– Google Manual Penalty Recovery– Reputation Management/Brand Management/PR

SEO Packages– SEO Audits– SEO for Site Redesigns/Migrations– SEO Consultation Service– Starter SEO Package– SEO Packages

Link Building – Link Building Packages

Google My Business (Google Places)– Google Trusted Agency & Photography– Still Photos– Panoramic Photos– Virtual Tours

Bing Places

Content Marketing

Copy Writing ServicesSlide: 42