SEO Workshop By Stuart Brant Future First Technologies Ltd

Workshop Agenda What is SEO How Search Engines Work Keyword Research Site Structure Lunch On page optimisation Off page Optimisation

Our Objectives today To provide you with a clear understanding of what processes and actions you need to undertake to implement an SEO strategy on your website.

What is Search Engine Optimisation Search Engine Optimisation is the process of optimising a website so that search engines will give website pages higher rankings for specific search terms. 2 Main types of Search Engine Marketing: Paid listings – Pay per click (PPC) Organic listings

How Search Engines work Search engines send spiders and bots to visit a standard website on a regular basis - every 3-4 weeks and often more regularly for popular/ever changing sites such as bbc.co.uk Once the bots have spidered the web site they index it in their database This database is then what is searched when someone enters a search term on a search engine so the data it has on a website may be 3-4 weeks old The search engine will then use an algorithm to determine how it ranks a website in relation to a search  Search engines use algorithms to determine whether a website page should rank high or low in relation to a search term  They use a variety or criteria to decide whether a page is relevant to the search term  The programming behind the search algorithms is highly secretive and the major search engines change this methodology regularly

Step 1 – Keyword research Keyword research is the cornerstone of good SEO. Until you understand what search terms your potential customers are going to be using you cannot optimise your website for these terms. Objective of keyword research: To create a list of keywords and search terms that searchers will enter into a search engine when trying to locate your business products and services. Process of keyword research: Use common sense to put together keywords - Try to be specific and localise wherever possible. Try and put yourself in the position of the searcher – don’t use words like reliable, trustworthy etc. If you are a B2C business don’t use industry jargon too much Get ideas from Use keyword research sites like to try your keywords to check estimated search volumes. This should tell you if optimising for these keywords is worthwhile Put together a definitive list of keywords that you need to optimise for on your website

Keyword research exercise Pair up and bounce ask your partner what they would be likely to search for when looking for your products or services – 5 minutes Use the google adwords site to get additional ideas – Get a list of 10 keywords Use the seobook site to check estimated search volumes Put together a list of definitive keywords for each site – suggest After today look at your existing statistics package to see what users may be searching on to get to your site. You should also repeat this exercise so that you have a definitive list of keywords you are going to optimise your website for.

Site Structure After we have got our list of keywords we now have to plan how to implement the optimisation campaign on our website. Ideally you should create a separate page for each keyword you are targeting. Think of the keywords as like a list of services and plan to create a page for each one or alternatively use existing pages for each keyword. If keywords are similar you can group them for pages. Work out either a list of new pages for these keywords or existing pages that can be used for these keywords.

Title, tags and structure Now we have a list of pages and the keywords that we are going to target for each keyword we need to think about the page structure and content. The methodology that search engines use is that if the title, meta content, page heading and content contains the keyword then this website must be about this keyword and rank you highly.

Title tag Title tag – This is the text that appears in the blue bar at the top of the browser. This needs to contain your keyword/phrase. This should contain between 3 and 10 words – frontloaded with the most important phrase in order. The more words in the title, the more it is diluted. Unless you are a well known company don’t put your company name in it as users are unlikely to be searching on that How to change your title – If you are using a commercial html editing software package such as Dreamweaver the title will be clearly flagged. If not open up the web page in a text editor such as notepad and look for the words inside: - this is the title

Example of a good title tag Example of a good title tag in the example of trying to optimise the page for the keyword/phrase “Solicitors in Docklands” would be : Solicitors Docklands If you feel that you need to put your trade name then put this at the end of the title Solicitors Docklands – Acme Law This will be more effective than Acme Law - Solicitors Docklands If you are optimising a page for more than one keyword then an example would be: Solicitors Docklands, Legal Services Docklands – Acme Law

Keyword Meta tag Although of little relevance to most search engines it is worth placing relevant keywords inside meta tags for each page. Once again place the most important keywords at the front and don’t dilute them. Within a text editor this can be found inside the following tags: For the example of Optimising you page for Solicitors in Docklands your meta tag would be:

Meta description tag This should be a short description of the page with the keyword included as it will show up in search engine results, so should act as a teaser to try and get the user to click on your listing. If the user sees the keyword they have typed in the search engine repeated in the description they are more likely to click on it. Once again the description should be describing the pages content and it is up to you to add content that will draw the user in with any offers you may have. Once again try not to dilute the description and frontload it with the keyword. An example of a good meta description is

Page heading This should include the keyword phrase in the correct order. If you are proficient with html this page heading should ideally be inside H1 css tags – or ask your web designers. This signifies its importance to web designers so that the code for the heading of the page should be something like: Solicitors in Docklands

Page content Content Guidelines for writing content: Page should be approx words Keyword should have a keyword density percentage of 5%-10% The keyword should be placed near the top of the content and near the end of the content. Bold the keywords If you refer to another keyword within the text then use the keyword as a link to the page concentrating on that keyword. An example of good content for the keyword/phrase “Solicitors in Docklands” would be:

Internal linking structure When spidering your website, Search engines will first come to the home page and then try to follow every link it can on the page. Therefore, ideally, all of the pages you are optimising need to be linked to from the home page and the link should be the keyword. This can either be done in the main navigation, within text or use a quicklinks or services menu. Ensure the links are text links and not images. Also – create a sitemap with links to all your pages on. If you refer to a page in another page within the text then make it a link and make the text of the link the keyword – for example: “view information about or conveyancing services and the legal property services we can offer”, rather than “Click here to see our conveyancing services” Any pages that are not linked to from the home page can result in these pages not being indexed correctly by search engines.

Page structure re-cap So a search engine starts spidering the website and sees: A link on the home page called “Solicitors in Docklands” This page has the title: “Solicitors in Docklands” The keywords and description tag the page as being about “Solicitors in Docklands” The page heading is called “Solicitors in Docklands” 5-10% of the pages content mentions “Solicitors in Docklands” Therefore the search engine presumes this page must be about “Solicitors in Docklands” and will rank it as such.

Search engine submission Google Create a google account - Go to Webmaster tools Here you can add your site – submit a sitemap to try to ensure google lists all your pages You can also add a local listing for your business in the Local Business area within Google. Yahoo Create a Yahoo Small Business Account - Go to Here you can submit your site to Yahoo and monitor its progress Windows Live Go to Create an account and submit a sitemap

Link building Link building is the process of getting external websites to link to your site. In search engine terms what makes a good link: If the web page linking to your site also ranks highly for search term If the link is one way (i.e. not reciprocal) If the web page linking to you has a high page ranking (Google) If the link is the actual search term (i.e. solicitors in docklands rather than ) If the text around the link is related to the search term If the link is on a page where there aren’t too many other links (i.e. a website will rank higher if it is linked to from a page with only 1 outbound link rather than 100. If a link is a deep link (i.e. it links to an internal website page rather than the home page)

How to build links Firstly create a page called Useful links on your website as you will need this for reciprocal links Add your website to any trade directories – some will have submission pages Add them to any trade associations you are a member of Find businesses that offer similar or complimentary services that aren’t in competition with you (perhaps overseas), them and ask them to exchange links or look on their site for a useful links section – they may have a form to complete – they will normally ask for a reciprocal link which you may have to add to your site first. Add you site to directories, local listing pages PR – trade websites, them and tell them that listing your website will benefit their readership

Linkbuilding method Install a google toolbar on your pc with the Google pagerank bar See Search on your keyword list in google Click on the top organic listings Click on the arrow next to page ranking Select Backward links This will show a list of all sites pages that link to this website (ignore the internal links) – view the pages and find the link submission section and add your site. Or alternatively just find an contact on the site and then with the request to link to your site. You may well have to complete a form to add your link.

Linkbaiting Link baiting is the process of publishing content on your website that other websites will naturally link to because they find it useful. Online tools and calculators Blogs Interesting articles Free advice Jokes and humour Useful directories

Bad (Black Hat) SEO The following practices are considered as black hat (bad) SEO and should be avoided. If Google catches you using these practices it is likely to give you a 30 point penalty ranking: Doorway pages – Keyword heavy pages that automatically re-direct you to another page Keyword stuffing White text on white background Minute text Cloaking – hiding content in code that can be read by a bot but not by the user