The Icing! SEO, Show Notes, Enhanced Podcasts, Pitches 27 June 2008

Agenda SEO Show Notes Ehanced Podcasts Pitches

SEO SEO – search engine optimization –The art of increasing legitimate site traffic from search engines using targeted keywords White Hat –Practices that are related to good design Black Hat –Practices that are frowned upon (ie, not legitimate) such as “invisible” or “hidden” text or cloaking (serves different page depending on if the request is a “human” or a spider) –SE look at meta and javascript redirects as spam

How Do Search Engines Work? New content added and linked to; existing linked content modified SE spiders (bots) crawl the site –Look for robots.txt file or metatag –Text, metadata, page titles, URL –Follow links – looking for # links “in” and # links “out” –Index key terms, count word frequency Weigh these things somehow (algorithm)

Search v Findability Consumers use “search” to “find” It’s not that they “want to search” … it’s that they “want to find…”

Terms Unique visitors (IP address) Bounce rate (visit 1 page and leave) Average visit, page duration (seconds!) Most requested, entry, exit pages Hits v Page View Referrers These data come from your server logs!

What Stats To Use? Referrers tell you where your visitors are coming from For example: some referrer datasome referrer data Google: Webmaster ToolsWebmaster Tools Also, Trellian keyword discovery or WordTrackerTrellian WordTracker

Who To Study, Read? Danny Sullivan, SearchEngineWatch.com, Search 101 Search 101 Aaron Wall, SEOBook.comSEOBook.com Slideshare Google: –What is a sitemap and why should I have one?What is a sitemap and why should I have one?

Show Notes - Relevance How to increase traffic – good content! Link Sharing Update your content Know your keywords

How Do We Read (erh, scan)? Eye-tracking research –Top to bottom –Left to right Then there’s the “above the fold” thing

Enhanced Podcast Apple implemented in 2005 –AAC format –Chapter Markers –Images MAKE Magazine “how to” Jake Ludington’s “how to” for WMP“how to” for WMP Example from the BBC Naked Scientists (!)Naked Scientists

The Pitch Effective presentations –Presentation Zen (buy the book!)Presentation Zen –5 Steps to Slide Design for Non-Designers5 Steps to Slide Design for Non-Designers Guy Kawaski –The “Pitch” (mp3)mp3