Website MarketingSEO, Social Media & More

December 8, 2009www.youneedseo.com

michael@youneedseo.com @mfindling

Our Work & Play begin with

Search

3

On Page FactorsPage TitleKeywords in ContentHeading Tags

Keyword ResearchHow do people search?Competition level2-4 word phrases

Link BuildingInternal ExternalAnchor Text

Improved RankingsBetter VisibilityIncreased TrafficMore Leads/Sales

SEO Recipe

•SEO is important because it improves the odds of someone finding you, your goods, services and/or company online.

•Online visibility can help your credibilityand brand awareness.

•Improved rankings don’t always translate to more traffic and sales – the balance between look n’ feel and usability are critical.

•Think like your customers, then verify how people search. SEO can put you in front of the people looking for your products & services.

•Your online marketing efforts should be focused on an end result.

•Make sure your website/landing page makes it easy for visitors to sign up, join, request information, buy, or whatever else you seek.

Why It Matters

1. Search engine bots/spiders are continuously crawling the web, making note of new pages and content. They are not overly sophisticated, which is why html sites with properly built links/navigation often outrank more dynamic sites that use Flash and JavaScript links.

2. Specialized search spiders later return to web pages to gather this new information and it is eventually added to the search engine’s index. Again, these bots are basic…they can read text and links, but not much else.

3. When you conduct a search, the results are displayed almost magically, but a lot is happening behind the scenes. Results are pulled from the current Index, based on a complex algorithm.

Great tool, Spider Simulator: http://bit.ly/8uRZM1

How Search Engines Work

Meta Tags No Magic Bullet

1.

2.

1.

2.

1.

1. Title

2. Anchor Text & Keywords

3. Social Media

Pieces of the Puzzle

4. Navigation

5. Updated Events

Organic vs. Paid

Google Results => PPC Adwords

Google Results => PPC/Adwords

Google Results => Local + Map

Google Results => Local + Map

Google Results => Natural SEO

Google Results => Natural SEO

Where Does Your Eye Go?

Eye Tracking Study – Enquiro

Over 50% of all clicks were on the first 3 organic results.

- Location- Relevance - Page Title - Description - URL

Search Engine Ranking Factors

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag2. Overall Popularity of Site – “Trust” & “Authority”3. Anchor Text of Inbound Link4. Age of Site5. Internal Link & URL Structure6. Keyword Use in Page Content7. Outbound Links to Quality/Relevant Sites8. Age of Page9. Keyword Use in Heading Tags (H1, H2, H3)10. Age of Link

Search Engine Ranking Factors

Components of Your SEO Campaign

1. On-page SEO (Titles, headings, content, and URLs)2. Off Page SEO (Things you do to promote your website)3. Content (and HTML) for Search Engines & Visitors4. Link Building5. Social Media6. Interactive Public Relations7. Analytics & Metrics

Components of Your SEO Campaign

SEO is a Moving Target

• Lots of change, all the time …– Personalization & customization– Vertical search services (Images, Video, News, Maps, etc.)– “Universal Search”

• Fortunately, the tried-and-true tactics still work …– Topically relevant links from important sites– Anchor text– Keyword-rich title tags– Keyword-rich content– Internal hierarchical linking structure– The whole is greater than the sum of the parts

Keyword Research• Tools for brainstorming a seed list

– Google & AdWords Suggest (integrated into Google search)– Yahoo Assist

• Tools to check popularity of keyword searches– Wordtracker– Trellian’s Keyword Discovery– Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool– Google Trends & Insights– Other sites:

• Nichebot.com• URLTrends.com• SpyFU.com

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

• Enter in lists of terms.• Pull terms from a web page.• Search volume• Keep in mind

these are estimates!• Competition for that

keyword should also be considered

Free version: adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Technical Aspects

• Unique Titles• Unique META Information• Crawling issues• Sitemap.xml• Robots.txt• URL structure• ALT tags• Eliminate extraneous HTML code

“Technical Aspects are important”

Keywords & Content

• Keyword research• Keywords in Title• Keywords in content• Keywords in H1, H2, HX• META Description text

“Content is King!”

Visually Appealing to Humans

• Textual body copy• Textual

navigation & links.

• Doesn’t mean a site can’t be visually appealing.

Textually Appealing to Bots (& humans)

• Check for text vs. images:– Select individual

text– Ctrl-A to select

all– View “text

only” version in Google cache.

But Visual Appeal Carries a Cost

With images turned off:– No body copy– Minimal anchor text links– And not to main product pages

Meaningful Titles

• Keyword-rich, without being spammy.

• Lead with most important keywords.

• Looks good to humans & bots.

• Keep Characters to 70 or less – total.

Not So Meaningful Titles

• Not changing titles is a wasted opportunity.

• Check your own site for this costly mistake. site:www.domain.com intitle:“Untitled

Document”

Duplicate Title Tags

• Check for duplication– Use special queries with

Google to find duplication.

– Over 9,000 duplicates of this title alone … what does it say to Google?

• Purely duplicate titles• Canonicalization• Parameters & URL bloat

site:www.officedepot.com intitle:"Office Supplies: Office Products and Office Furniture: Office Depot"

Google Helps Find Duplication• Google’s Webmaster Central

– Alerted to duplicate titles– XML sitemaps– Identify issues– External links– Crawl rate– Search phrases

Flash – Doesn’t Do It

• Flash front doors, splash screens, & Flash-based sites.– May stop bots &

humans in their tracks.

– Unpredictable user-experience.

– Forget screen readers– Unlikely mobile usage

Robots.txt

• Protocol for blocking bots– Keep them out of specific sections– Help avoid duplicate content– Auto-discovery of XML sitemap– Done wrong, can block bots from entire site– Unfortunately, too often, implemented

incorrectly

Tip: This will block all bots from your entire siteUser-agent: *Disallow: /

Are you sure that’s what you want?

XML Sitemaps

• Inform the search engines of your pages.– Auto-discovery through

robots.txt.– Google Webmaster Central– Yahoo Site Explorer– MSN / Live Webmaster

Center• Google’s reporting of

indexed URLs compared to total URLs submitted may be an indicator of URL or content quality.

Links – Gimme that Link Love!• Internal linking• Keywords in anchor text• Domain/Page Authourity• Develop great content• Submit to authoritative, topical, & local

directories• Work with your business partners• Tap into social media• Blogging• Press releases• Syndicate through RSS

“Links are God!”

You want link from this guy?

Google Directory

• Pulls from DMOZ

• Ordered by Google’s PageRank.

Ever Google Yourself?

• Universal Search: Google developed a feature that blended results of different types (web pages, images, videos, books, etc.)

• This has Grown into “Options” – very powerful

Pictures…and more – who is that guy?!

• Look out for Social Search

• Focus on the right keywords• Focus on site architecture• Have great keyword-rich content• Build links (particularly through social media)• Measure the right things• Continually monitor, benchmark, & test• What about Page Rank? (Link Quality)• There is more than Google => BING rising?

In Summary => Best Practices

SEO Resources

•www.websitegrader.com

•www.auditmypc.com

•www.submitexpress.com

•http://bit.ly/8uRZM1

•www.google.com/webmasters

•https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

•www.seoimage.com/seo-tools/count-url-characters-and-words.html

Social Media Optimization

Leveraging Social Mediato Create Buzz and Links

How to use Blogs, Twitter and Facebook to grow your business

Social Media Is Everywhere

Social Media is everywhere

Social Media Landscape

Ten Ways to use Facebook for business

Ten ways to use Facebook for business

1. Meet your industry peers2. Find and source industry contacts3. It opens doors previously closed4. Build and develop business relationships5. Raise your profile in your sector6. Develop your brand7. You can be niche and proud of it8. Create a business page9. Place very targeted adverts10. Cost effective marketing, branding and recruiting – FREE!

(apart from adds)

Twitter

Register twice

Name & Company name

Fill in the bio AND upload a photo of YOU

Make sure you enter your website URL

Use one of the platforms:

Tweetdeck.com | Twhirl.org | Twitterific

Remember140

charactersonly!!

Ten Reason To Use Twitter for business

Ten reasons to use for business

1. Branding2. Hiring people3. Traffic 4. Networking 5. Notify customers | job seekers6. Latest news7. Find prospects8. Get feedback9. Make friends with peers10. Track your competitors11. SEO – your @name – inbound links – Google12. Mobile – everywhere

YouTube

• YouTube gets the links!• Use as many tags as possible

while still being accurate• For Syndication of videos

check out TubeMogul & HeySpread.com

• YouTube is still a top search engine next to Google.

LinkedIn

• Add links to your website, blog, and one other

• Add your email address to your “professional headline” so folks 4+ degrees away don’t have to waste an InMail to contact you

• Post a “question” to LinkedIn Answers that serves your own purposes– e.g. “We’re looking to hire an

SEO analyst and are willing to pay whatever it takes to get a top-notch person. What job boards do you recommend?”

Flickr• Always use tags – as many as possible while still being accurate. Put

multiple word tags in surrounded by quotation marks “”• Make descriptive titles for your photos• If the photo is location specific, go into Flickr’s tools & geotag the picture

– Go into the Flickr set tools, and locate the location on the Yahoo! Map, then drag the picture onto the map to pinpoint its location

SlideShare.Net• Use SlideShare.net to post

an online version of your highly relevant valuable content.

• SlideShare.net is a Web 2.0 social media content site that allows you to upload, favorite, bookmark, tag, and comment on slide shows.

SlideShare.net

FriendFeed.com

FriendFeed.com

FriendFeed is a service that makes it easy to share with friends online

Your Brand

BlogTwitter

Social Networks

Social Bookmarks

Comments

YouTube Flickr

Blogs – Why?

Ten things to write about on your blog

1. Company news; awards, contract wins etc2. Stories about people in your business3. Offer industry expertise4. Views on the industry/your marketplace5. Video of your company environment & your people6. Information regarding your industry such as exhibitions,

trade shows etc7. Product | service reviews8. Industry interviews9. How you work with your customers10. Case studies and testimonials from your customers

How Do you Blog?

How?

SocialPoster.com & ShareThis.com

•Social Poster is a service that helps you quickly and easily submit content from a particular site to multiple socially driven sites without having to enter the title, body, and other information over and over again.

•ShareThis makes it easy to share ideas and get to the good stuff online.

Bit.ly => Short URLs

bit.ly allows users to shorten, share, and track links (URLs). Reducing the URL length makes sharing easier.

Bit.ly => Short URLs

Google Alerts

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

Google Alerts

A few sites worth a mention…..

Social Media, Networking & PR Resources

www.youtube.com www.tubemogul.comwww.linkedin.com www.Flickr.comwww.Picasa.com www.slideshare.nethttp://docs.google.com

www.Friendfeed.com www.ovrdrv.com/maps www.wordpress.org www.prweb.comwww.webwire.comwww.ezine.com www.socialposter.com

Google Analytics• Free!• Connects with your

AdWords campaigns.• Wealth of data

– Keywords driving traffic– Top landing pages– Referring sites– Slice & dice, drill down

• Start small. Pick a couple things to watch, then dig in & try to make sense of it.

• Understand … analytics is less about answers, & more about questions.

Free Firefox-PluginsFree Firefox Plug-insPlugin Most useful feature How often I use it

SEOQuake Any page instant SEO analysis A few times a day

SearchStatus Google, Alexa, Compete Rank Toolbar Multiple times a day

Google toolbar Google search and suggestions Multiple times a day

Rank Checker button Instantly checks a site SE rankings Once a week

User Agent Switcher Change the user agent Once a month

SEO for FireFox Exhaustive SEO analysis within search results A few times a day

Compete.com Site traffic information Once a week

Web Developer Instant access to image and link information Once a day

Page Age Get the page age Once a day

Useful SEO Resources

1. http://SEObook.com 2. http://Sphinn.com

3. http://BruceClay.com 4. http://battellemedia.com/

5. http://SearchEngineWatch.com 6. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

7. http://mashable.com/8. http://www.techcrunch.com/9. http://www.seomoz.org/blog

10.http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/11.http://searchengineland.com/ 12.http://www.readwriteweb.com

13.http://www.sphinn.com/14.http://scobleizer.com/ 

15.http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/ => Creator of Google Analytics16.http://www.veen.com/jeff/ => Great data visualization examples

My Daily Read list: http://bit.ly/4BlSbf

Useful SEO Resources

Human Interaction