SEO 101Everything you wanted to know

about SEO but were too afraid to ask…

Who Am I?• Got on the Internet in 1986 at my school lab• Working online with search since 1996• Paid & Natural Search – all aspects• Worked in-house within e-Commerce,

Publishing & High Tech• Moved to i-level, the largest European media

agency• Worked with Orange, Sony, COI• One of the SEO Chicks

What is SEO?

“SEO is the active practice of optimizing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines.”

- SEOmoz

What is SEO?• Natural Visibility

including• Words• Images• Video• Links

Top Factors You Need To Consider

• Keyword Research• Tags• Image Optimisation• On Page Text• Site Architecture and Internal Links• Links• SEO Tools

Elements of Ranking• Title Tags • Meta Description Tags • Meta Keyword Tags • ALT Tags • H1, H2, H3 (and accompanying CSS) • Keywords in the content • Internal Links (images vs. keyword rich text) • URL Structure• Advanced Linking• Authority• Age of domain

Where is Eurostar?

Keyword Research• Check that the words are what everyone uses

and not just internal/personal jargon• Check you are using a more frequently searched

term for roughly the same meaning – “social media” vs “social networking”

• Go for a longer tail – 2 or more words• Each page needs an individual focus• Check Google for competition and news articles• Use as many keyword tools as possible

Tags• Title tag needs to be unique, focused and less

than 65 characters• Meta Description should include call to action,

page information and semantically related focused keywords to demonstrate relevancy – 150 characters if possible

• Meta Keyword is not much used except for competitive intelligence

• Meta Robots tells search engine what to do with page

Driveline slide

Meta slide

Image Optimisation• Ensure image has keyword relevant name• Include Alt Attribute (alt=“keywords”)• If possible, place it on separate page with link

and include relevant text• Use dashes not underscore for multi-word

names (for now – soon to change)• Use high quality images with sharp, clear

contrast• Use a caption by your image

Image image

On Page Text

• Stick to a single focus• Don’t use all keywords for whole site on all

pages - focus• Semantic relevancy is key• No magic % for keyword density

H1

Link

Link – anchor text is “Paris Eurostar Breaks”

Site Architecture and Internal Links

• Create logical groupings – don’t hang everything off root

• Keep subdirectories to minimum possible• Use keywords in dir & page names• Descriptive page names with keywords• Use site map page to link to all pages• Create crawlable links for user & bot

navigation of related pages

Keyword Density & Links

Link Building• Find Sites That Link To Competitors:

“link:url.here” – Google, “linkdomain:url.here” – Yahoo Site Explorer & MSN

• Find Sites By Keyword Search: “allintitle:keyword(s)” “allinanchor:keyword(s)” “allinurl:keyword(s)” “allintext:keyword(s)”

• Find Sites That Already Link To You: “link:your.url.here” – Google, “linkdomain:your.url.here” – Yahoo Site

• Remember – Anchor text is important toget right

Link Building

Linkbait

SEO Tools• IBP http://www.seoelite.com/• WebCEO http://www.webceo.com/• WeBuildPages http://

www.webuildpages.com• Google Analytics http://www.google.com

/analytics/• Google Dev http://code.google.com/• XML Sitemaps http://www.sitemaps.org/• Keyword Density Tool

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/

• SEO Quake http://www.seoquake.com/ • Firefox Browser http://www.mozilla.com/ • Xenu Link Sleuth

http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html• Keyword Research Tools

https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal http://www.wordtracker.com/

• Link Baiting 101• Link Building 101• Google Webmaster Central• Social Bookmarking• Position Trackers• Keyword Cloud• HitTail• Roboform• RSS Feeds & RSS Buttons• SEO Forums• Domain Age Tool• Whois Tool• Various Toolbars + Extensions• Page Rank Tool• Competitor Inbound Links

Questions?

Thank you!

Judith LewisSearch Director