An Introduction to SEOWednesday, 14 April 2010 at The Lowry

Introduction

What is SEO?

“Search engine optimisation”

Search engine friendly techniques & practices

Aimed at generating conversions and RoI from search

Not about getting to “number one on the Google”

Not about driving masses of irrelevant traffic to your site

Why does it matter?

How much traffic does your website drive from search?

How many of these search visitors are simply searching

for you?

How many more people are searching for what you do?

How does SEO work?

Better to ask, “How do search engines work?”

How do search engines work?

Crawl Index Query Rank

Now, how does SEO work?

Make your website code more search engine friendly

Target content to reach the right search audiences

Build connections to increase your visibility on search

Focus on conversion

How long will it take?

Three answers:

1. It depends...

2. 3-6 months

3. Forever

SEO is a process, not a goal

Can you do it yourselves?

What are your strengths?

Web design & development

Copy-writing

Online PR

Online Marketing

Web analysis

SEO works best across the marketing mix

Needs buy-in from decision makers

Terrain is constantly shifting; do you have time to keep up-to-date?

1. Code

By the end of this section...

I’m not a web developer

Once this is over, you won’t be one either

But you should be able to

Name some common SEO issues

Identify whether these problems affect your site

Propose high-level solutions

Instruct competent developers

Content Management

How easy is it to update the content on your site?

How often do you do it?

Build your site around a user-friendly CMS

Adding content should be easy as breathing

Let your CMS do the heavy SEO lifting

Quality matters, but so do quantity and freshness

Committees make terrible content managers

Flash

Designers (and architects) love it. Why?

Pretty

Lets them re-invent standard web interface

Search engines (and Steve Jobs) hate it. Why?

Excludes users with low bandwidth or mobile devices

Buggy, frequent cause of crashes

Makes tracking difficult

Expensive and time-consuming to update

Text to code ratios

Google wants websites with the best content to appear

at the top of search results

Googlebot has a short attention span

Best practices:

Place inline JavaScript in an external file

Use a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to control layout, colours & fonts

If in doubt, pad it out

Web standards & accessibility

W3C compliance (validator.w3.org)

World Wide Web Consortium

Sets guidelines as to how websites should be created

SEs find compliant websites easier to read

Accessibility (www.contentquality.com)

Section 508 = US standard

Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) = UK

Ensure compatibility with screen readers & Braille technology

Put content in its place

Ensure your design templates provide ample space for

written content

Ensure your CMS allows you to edit the following:

URLs

Page titles

Meta descriptions

Headings (<H1>, <H2>, etc.)

Meta keywords

Tell search engines where to go

HTML sitemap

XML sitemap

Robots.txt file

Load time optimisation

Simple: How long it takes to load a page

Increasingly important factor in ranking

Checking page load times

Webmaster Tools

Pingdom

Improving load times

Cross-over with other aspects of SEO (JavaScript, CSS)

Smushing Images

Webmaster Tools

Google & Bing Webmaster Tools

Yahoo Site Explorer

Process

1. Create Account

2. Verify (FTP upload)

3. Monitor crawling and indexation issues

4. Submit sitemaps

Do it this afternoon!

2. Content

By the end of this section...

You should understand how to

Select relevant and opportune search terms

Structure your website around target terms

Focus content on your website around keywords

Monitor keyword performance

Theory is no substitute for practice

Keyword selection criteria

Content relevance

Brand appropriateness

Search volume

Audience location

Difficulty = Competition

Intensity (best guess)

Keyword research process

I’m not going to make this easy for you

Be prepared to compromise

Define your objectives first

Define your keyword research strategy

Short Tail

Long Tail

Keyword research strategy

65%

75%

85%

95%

105%

115%

0

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

50,000

60,000

70,000

The Long Tail of Search

% Competition

Search Volume

Keyword research tools

Brains

Website analytics

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Google search results

Yahoo Site Explorer

Excel

Paid tools & resources

Google Keyword Tool

Mapping keywords

“One page per topic, one topic per page”

Only 1-3 closely-related keywords or phrases per page

Existing content

New content

Keyword focus

Brand terms who you are

Product Termswhat you do

Audience Termswhat else your audience is

searching for

Thematic Sitemap

Page URL Keywords

Home / contemporary art gallery, contemporary art galleries, manchester art galleries

Collection /collection contemporary art collection, contemporary art

Paintings /collection/paintings contemporary paintings, contemporary artists

Lucian Freud /collection/paintings/lucian-freud

Lucian freud, lucian freud paintings, lucianfreud portraits

Girl with a white dog /collection/paintings/lucian-freud/girl-with-a-white-dog

girl with a white dog, dog paintings (??)

On-page optimisation

Meta Keywords

URL

Page Title

Meta Description

Headings

Optimising written content

The first rule of SEO copy-writing is:

Don’t write SEO copy

Make content readable and engaging

Keyword density

Content focus

SEO copy-writing sample

Optimising other content

Images

Videos

Map

Events

Blog posts

Press releases

3. Connections

In this section...

What is a link?

Why do links matter?

What makes a link powerful?

How do you build them?

What is a link?

Reference to a web page or other document

Users can follow from

Source page

to

Target page

Why do links matter?

Query algorithms match search term to content in index

Ranking algorithms determine order of results

Google PageRank

Links are “votes” for content

Not all votes are equal

Google PageRank

What makes a link powerful?

Relevance of source page to target page

Relevance of anchor text to target page

Authenticity of link

Authority of link source

Google PageRank (prchecker.info)

Authoritative domains (.ac.uk)

How to you build links?

Don’t build links, build relationships

These relationships should be

Authentic

Enduring

Mutually beneficial

How do you build relationships?

Compile a Relationship Register

Add details of

Professional associations, organisations

Suppliers, clients, funding partners

Traditional media

Websites, blogs, Twitterers...

Talk to your PR team

Keep talking to your PR team

Relationship Register

Use Excel

Items to include:

Source website name

Source page URL

Description of source website

Target page URL

Contact details

Priority

Link status

Realising benefits

Take it slowly

Be straightforward

Make it easy for them

Don’t be afraid to suggest target pages and anchor text

Monitor link status and chase

Keep chasing (for years, if necessary)

Monitoring links

Webmaster Tools

Yahoo Site Explorer

Majestic SEO

Maintain Relationship Register

Absolute numbers don’t matter Compare your site with competitors’

Monitor change over time

Quality more important than quantity

4. Conversion & Tracking

In this section...

Determining your objectives

Tracking visitor behaviour and engagement

Tracking goal conversions

Testing approaches and improving results

What are you trying to do?

Build brand awareness

Sell products or services

Share information

Gather information

Engage with and retain customers

Understanding

Google Analytics

Where is your traffic coming from?

Search, referring sites, direct...

Paid / non-paid search

Branded / non-branded search

Geography

What are visitors doing on your site?

How effectively is your site converting traffic?

Tracking goal conversions

Simplest method: page as goal

Create under GA “profile settings”

Enables you to track & compare:

How various traffic sources convert

How particular search terms convert

Return on Investment from advertising campaigns

Testing and Improvement

Map paths toward conversion goals

Track funnels (pages & clicks)

Easy:

A/B split testing of calls to action across site

Monitor keyword conversion through Analytics and re-target

More difficult:

Multivariate testing of content & calls to action (Optimizer)

Optimise page titles & descriptions to improve click-thru from search

What next?

Webmaster Tools & Analytics

Website MOT (lunch)

Keyword research, mapping & content updates

Understand your site’s back-link profile

Compile a Relationship Register

Start building relationships (and links)

Start measuring and testing

Get your hands dirty!