SEO Part 1 Search Engine Marketing Chapter 5 Instructor: Dawn Rauscher

Organic vs. Paid 70-90% of users click on Organic first

SEO Search Engine Optimization Companies often choose keywords they want to rank but not keywords the customer used

New SEO - Analytics Allows companies to manage SEO according to business goals Analytics shows you which keywords bring visitors to your site Goal - #1 in Search Engine Measure success by showing an increase in leads, conversions, or sales

Search Engines

Google, Yahoo, Bing In November 2010, Google accounted for more than two-thirds – 66.2 percent – of organic searches in North America Yahoo! and Bing now accounts for as much as 28.2 percent of organic searches in that same period. Remember that Bing is now powering all Yahoo! search results in the US and Canada

Concentration Build pages for Google If you do well with Google, you will be fine with Yahoo and Bing Specialty Search Engines -

What do search engines want? Types of Searches –Navigational Searching for the official website for an organization, company, office, or a person –Informational You are searching for information. You want to learn about a subject or how to perform a task –Transactional You are searching to get something. Buy a product, hear a song, watch a video, download PDF

Navigational Use company name. Most likely you will be at the top

Informational Google will show pages with the best information about that topic. Need to have authoritative information on your site Pages with not-very-useful information will not show up for a search query

Transactional Buy a product or get a service Google shows the most credible vendor or supplier for an item. To rank high, your site should be a reliable merchant.

Google Rank Algorithms, Quality Raters, Statistics First Ranking - Official sites –Country, government office, organization, company, city, or a person

Second Rank Pages with information –Comprehensive, high quality, authoritative –Neutral, factual –Not too broad, not too detailed –Wikipedia and Encyclopedia articles rank highly

Third Rank Pages that are Relevant –Page matches the user’s search Page answers an aspect of search Page has useful details, partial information

Keep in Mind… Official Informational Relevant

What Lowers Ranking? Offering information with registration Erotica on page Methods to mislead search engines

Offering information - must register Free download Free PDF Free Book

Information on Site If Website is informative -- offer complete information Original manufacturer of items has advantage. Create landing pages that show you produce the products Reseller -- write informative pages so you can rank higher than your competitors

Erotica on page Labeled as porn Example -- many pictures but one is provocative the whole page will be labeled as porn

Misleading the search engines Page will be marked as webspam Keyword stuffing Content text from wikipedia or other sites

Languages Always write in your language and add a copy of the page in English for the rest of the world Google always shows pages in English for the results of a search in another language

Quality Raters Work from home all over the world Lists of terms to search and websites to visit Official, Informational, Relevant? Not relevant, spam, porn?

Good Content Be Authoritative Make it clear that your site is official –City –Organization –Company –Person Offer Expert Information –Write a page that fully answers what someone wants to know Google wants you to add to the conversation

SEO Methods Internal architecture Keyword research USP Meta Tags Body Tags Sitemaps

Google Spider If all pages are linked to each other, the spider will not know what the site is about. Linking structure is modified to turn the website into several sets of pages People can browse AND the search engines can index the site

Mask Links Search engine should not be able to hop from one section of website to another Mask the links to the other sections Spider sees only the pages in the section and nothing else

NoFollow Attribute Visit my koi website The link is clickable No follow tells the search spider to ignore it Google Information ters/bin/answer.py?answer=96569

Getting Started Create a list of your major products or services Each product/service should have a collection of pages that belong Main page and several subpages Collection of pages should fit into a theme about that product

Koi Food Example Main Page states the USP Subpages –Food for fingerling koi –Active koi –Senior koi –Nursing koi –Comparison –How to make your own food

About Us Silo Contact Information Maps Key Team History of the Company Information for Investors Press Releases

SEO on Main Pages Entrance pages -- sorted by traffic Focus on these entrance pages –Home Page –Product Pages –Service Pages –FAQ’s –Support Page –Contact Us Page

Internal Architecture

Sitemaps List the pages at a website Two types –HTML –XML

HTML Sitemaps HTML Sitemaps are for people Overview of site -- roadmap of site Not useful for SEO Useful for visitors

HTML Sitemap Tips Create a plain-text sitemap that lists the significant pages at your site. You do not need to list every page. Link to the sitemap on homepage Google’s Limit – 99 links – Pages get a lower rank Create multiple sitemaps –Divide by themes

XML Sitemaps Not meant to be read by people Long list of URL’s with information about the files Webmasters create an XML file that contains a list of all pages

XML Sitemaps Fewer than 500 pages Larger Sites

Submit XML Sitemap Google Yahoo Microsoft

Google Webmaster Tools Improve SEO Refer to handout for instructions on how to use the Google Webmaster Tool

Site: Search If your site is displayed as a result when you perform a Google site search for your URL, then it's included in our index. Example: site:fvcc.edu

Verify your domain name ranks Example in a Google Search