1. Contact Us: For more information on this or any other TownNews.com product, contact your regional sales manager. Main TownNews.com Office: 800-293-9576 E-mail: info@townnews.com SEO Tips & Tricks to Increase Site Traffic

2. SEO Tips & Tricks About SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Not an exact science Major Search Engines do not disclose algorithms Industry “experts” disagree on some of the small details Most things are generally excepted principles Google Controls 65-85% of web searches made

3. SEO Tips & Tricks History of Search Engines Meta Tags: early search engines relied on webmaster provided keyword meta tags Keyword Density: measure of how often “keywords” appear on a page PageRank: measures quantity and strength of inbound links to the site. On Page Factors: keyword frequency, meta tags, headings, links and site structure still considered Real-time-search: introduced in 2009 placed importance on current, fresh and unique content Early Search Engines Excite – 1993 Yahoo! – 1994 WebCrawler – 1994 Lycos – 1994 Infoseek -1994 AltaVista – 1995 Inktomi -1996 Ask Jeeves – 1997 Google – 1997 MSN Search – 1998 Overture – 1998 AllTheWeb - 1999

4. SEO Tips & Tricks On Page SEO Factors Title Tag: –Blue bar at the top of the browser –Title of the page on search results pages –TownNews.com injects the article section and headline into the title tag Description Tag: –does not hold much weight for ranking purposes. –Generally snippet that shows on search results page. –Google often ignores and generates own description. Body Copy: –should have keywords throughout Heading Tags: –should contain keywords - tags given more weight by search engine

5. SEO Tips & Tricks Rewriting Headlines Large sites like CNN and MSNBC rewrite headlines specifically for the web. So should you! Bad Headlines: –City Council Approves Budget –Flood Coverage –Governor Caught in Money Scandal Good Headlines: –Moline City Council Approves Budget –Cedar Rapids Flood Coverage –Governor Blagojevich Caught in Money Scandal

6. SEO Tips & Tricks Keyword Tagging BLOX Customers should regularly be keyword tagging content Keywords create links to system generated “topic” pages Topic pages display all content with given keyword Search engines love topic pages as they are keyword rich content

7. SEO Tips & Tricks Link Juice Explained Assume that Site A and Site B are about the same “keyword” Let’s say that Site A gets a link from Site C. Site A will now rank higher than Site B

8. SEO Tips & Tricks Link Juice Explained (continued) Now assume that Site C also links to Site B. Site A and Site B now rank equally again Now assume each site has Site C linking to it but Site A has Site D linking to it and Site B has Site E linking to it

9. SEO Tips & Tricks Link Juice Explained (continued) Since Site D has more link juice than Site E, Site A will outrank Site B Google is able to map out link relationships on an enormous scale: –For competitive keywords, the ranking sites have millions of links from other sites who have hundreds of thousands of links –For non-competitive keywords, very few links (as little as 1) may garner you the top spot in the search results

10. SEO Tips & Tricks How Can I Check My Link Juice? Google: link: mysite.com PageRank Toolbar: http://www.google.com/toolbar/ff/index.html http://www.google.com/toolbar/ff/index.html Link Juice Proof Google the term “Click Here.” First result is Adobe Reader download page despite the fact that the words “Click Here” never appear on that page Why Wikipedia is always #1 in search results

11. SEO Tips & Tricks Additional Notes on Link Juice Reputation of the site giving the link makes a difference –CNN vs. John Doe’s Blog The title of the link matters –“Moline Times” vs. “Moline Flood Coverage” How to Get More Link Juice? Publish great content and it will naturally happen Promote special reports, be the source of information for a particular topic Use Share buttons Create Community Links Promote a single domain

12. SEO Tips & Tricks Additional Notes May not be able to compete for generic keywords such as Obama, Palin etc. But can easily compete for things like “Obama Illinois Visit” Can compete for top ranking on their state’s governor, senators, state reps or local mayor Should compete for things like: Moline News, Moline Entertainment, Moline Classifieds, Local Sports Teams, Local Celebrities etc. Check your sites stats to see how people are finding you and what search terms you are using