Presented by Karen Porter UM School of Business Administration & ImpactOnlineMarketing.com Offsite SEO, Tools, & Sleuthing ImpactOnlineMarketing.com

Inbound Links ImpactOnlineMarketing.com Quality of inbound links more important than quantity Links from important sites provide credibility to yours Large, well-respected sites Government sites (.gov) Education sites (.edu) Links from link exchanges / low quality / brand new sites offer little value Links from plethora of article sites, directory sites, etc. not helpful

Social Signals ImpactOnlineMarketing.com Content shared socially from your website / blog Traffic from social sites into your website / blog Time on site / time on pages (Google Analytics) Page views (Google Analytics) Bounce rate (Google Analytics)

“Sleuthing” to Check Competitor SEO ImpactOnlineMarketing.com What are your main competitive sites? Which sites own the first page of Google for your KWs? Which keywords are they trying to optimize? What are they not doing well? You can capitalize on things they are missing After doing keyword research: Visit sites that are ranking well for your best keywords Visit those sites’ source code to “sleuth”

Sleuthing Source Code ImpactOnlineMarketing.com On any website: In white space on page, do a right click > drop-down Select “View Source” or “View Page Source” option If on Google, see clickable link (this is page’s Title Tag)

Sleuthing Information Gathering ImpactOnlineMarketing.com Good things to evaluation on competitive sites How do they emphasis their value proposition? How does their site look and function: ease of use; well- organized; crediblity; attractiveness; etc/ What are their prices like compared to yours? (if applicable) Where are their calls to action and how obvious are they? Are they trying to build an list? Is their site optimized for mobile? What is their social media presence like; which platforms do they use; how often do they interact with customers, and how do they speak with their customers? If on Google, see clickable link (this is page’s Title Tag)

Tools for Assessing Websites ImpactOnlineMarketing.com Assess your own website Assess competitors’ websites Hubspot’s Marketing Grader SEOBook.com Includes information like: Pages indexed - Google/Yahoo Age of the site Inbound link count…and more

More Site Sleuthing Tools ImpactOnlineMarketing.com WhoIs.com – domain registration history / detail BuiltWith.com – platform site is built on, more info MajesticSEO.com – link information limited info with the free version, but still very helpful Compete.com – looks at traffic volume only reliable for large sites