Essential SEO Strategies to Promote Your Site

Copyright © 2009 YADA DROP LLC. All rights reserved.

What we’re talking about…

• What is SEO?• Three Pillars of SEO

1. Forming the right Team2. Targeting the right Audience3. Capturing the right Metrics4. Selecting the right Keywords5. Creating the right Content6. Applying the right Technical Tweaks7. Soliciting the right Inbound Links

What is SEO?

• Strategically improving the quantity and quality of traffic to your web site from the search engines.

Three Pillars of SEO

Compelling ContentKeyword Visibility

Targeted Audience

Forming the Right Team

• Sales/Marketing(Someone who knows the customer.)

• Designer(Build effective landing pages.)

• Technical(Embed keywords into HTML.)

• SEO Professional(Expert knowledge, competitive analysis, industry contacts, and time-saving advice.)

How many hats are you wearing?

Targeting the Right Audience

• Know your customer!• Identify the perfect customer.

– What demographics?

– What do your customers value the most?

– How do they use the search engines?

• Get inside of their head.

Ready, fire, aim?

Targeting the Right Audience

• Market Research– Surveys– Focus Groups– Industry Reports– Talk to existing customers

• SEO always begins with the customer. Ready, fire, aim?

Capturing the Right Metrics

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

• Setup a baseline ASAP• Tools for your belt:

– Google Analytics– Quantcast.com– Alexa.com– Google PageRank™ Movin’ on up?

Choosing the Right Keywords

• Choose key phrases that are audience-relevant.(Think like the customer, always!)

• Stick with key phrases that are 2-4 words long.– Generic = Low quality leads.

– Specific = High quality leads.

What are your customers shopping for?

Choosing the Right Keywords

Perfect Formula:• Audience-relevant key words,• That complement your page

content,• Are specific enough to bring in

high-quality leads,• Searched frequently enough to

bring in a high volume, and• Underutilized by competitors to

ensure a high ranking in the search results. What are your customers shopping for?

Creating the Right Content

• Authoritative content trumps all SEO strategies.

• Search engines are in the business of delivering relevant, authoritative content.

• Generally, people don’t like to waste their time reading crap.

• People don’t share crap with friends, family, and coworkers.

• Web site owners don’t want to create links to crap either.

Is your content king?

Creating the Right Content

• Content doesn’t need to be encyclopedic. Just useful.

• Engaging, compelling. Gets your visitor to do something.

– Buy something.

– Signup for a newsletter.

– Call or email.

• Break up your content into smaller chunks with headlines that can be easily skimmed.

Is your content king?

Applying the Right Technical Tweaks

• Place your keywords in the following HTML tags:

– <title>keywords</title>– <meta description="keywords">– <meta keywords="keywords">– <h1>keywords</h1>

<h2>keywords</h2><h3>keywords</h3><h4>keywords</h4>

– <b>keywords</b>– <i>keywords</i>– <img alt="keywords">

<img title="keywords">– <a href="url">keywords</a>

How’s your balancing act?

Applying the Right Technical Tweaks

• Use keywords in your page URLs, separated by dashes.x.com/keyword-keyword-keyword

• Repeat your keywords naturally in your text using a 3 to 5% keyword density.

• There are well over 100 additional best-practices!

How’s your balancing act?

Soliciting the Right Inbound Links

• Ideal Link Partners:– Relevant to your industry

– Have a high PageRank™

• Techniques:– Personal email to owner

– Software automated

– Link Exchange programs

– Purchase links

• Before you make any link requests… make your content link-worthy!

How well do you handle rejection?

When Things Go Wrong

• You might have...– targeted the wrong audience.– selected the wrong keywords.– content that sucks.

• Don’t give up! Keep tweaking until you get good results.

• You might have accidentally implemented “Black Hat” SEO.

• Hire a professional.

#fail

Assignment

1. Form an SEO planning team

2. Start knowing your customer

3. Setup Google Analytics and Quantcast to capture metrics

Assignment Due Date:

Wed, December 2nd @ 6pm

Did the dog really eat your homework?

Thank you :-)

• My contact information– Email: brian@yadadrop.com– Phone: 614.321.YADA (9232)– Twitter: @Brian294– Facebook: facebook.com/Brian.G.Stevenson– LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/briangstevenson