1. How to rank No. 1 on Google (and the other search engines)
Clayton Wehner - Blue Train Enterprises
M: E:

2. A little history of Google…

3. Intro About me… Tell us a little bit about you: Your name
Your business
Your website
Your website traffic

4. Scope 1 – Search engines and Google 2 – Choosing the Right Keywords
3 - On-site Optimisation
4 – Getting Value from Links
5 – Content is king
6 – More things to do and not do

5. How this workshop works
I have structured content
But happy to deviate where necessary
Ask questions along the way
Learn from one another
Informal, interactive, fun

6. How does your website fare?

7. Search Engines and Google
Part 1

8. What is a search engine?
A web search engine is a tool designed to search for information on the World Wide Web (Wikipedia)
Search engines exist to deliver the best possible search results to the user, for any given keyword combination.
Search engines use complex algorithms to index and rank web pages programmatically.

9. The big three search engines in Australia are…

10. About Google
Brainchild of two college friends, Sergey Brin and Larry Page
Their search engine was originally called BackRub
In 1997 it became Google, a play on the word "googol," a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros
Google became the world’s biggest search index in June 2000
Google’s ascent as a ‘second mover’ was remarkable – it eclipsed the likes of AltaVista, Yahoo!, MSN, Lycos
Today Google is a frontrunner in mapping and satellite technology, operating system software, office applications, mobile computing and much, much more

11. Why is it important to optimise for Google?
‘Build it and they will come’ doesn’t apply on the web
There are many fancy websites on the web that never get seen!
Launching a website is the easy part…
The hard part is getting qualified traffic
Need to satisfy two ‘audiences’:
People or ‘real’ visitors
Search engine ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’

12. Why is important to optimise for Google?
93% of consumers’ worldwide use search engines to locate web sites. (Forrester Research)
85% of qualified web traffic is driven through search engines. (WWW User Survey)
75% of search engine traffic never scroll past the first page of results. (WWW User Survey)
Google is the number one website in Australia (Hitwise)

13. Don’t settle for second best…
The first result in Google gets as many visitors as position 2-4 combined
The top spot drove 34.35% of all traffic in the sample, almost as much as the numbers 2 through 4 slots combined, and more than the numbers 5 through 20 (the end of page 2) put together."
Result number 10 gets 143% more clicks than result number 11
The biggest jump, percentage-wise, is from the top of page 2 to the bottom of page 1. Going from the 11th spot to 10th sees a 143% jump in traffic.
Chitika Report -

14. Organic vs Paid Google displays two types of results:
Organic results: these are unpaid listings that are ranked by importance/keyword relevance
Paid results: these are pay-per-click listings that appear on the right hand margin and above the organic listings – anybody can bid to display their ad at the top of these listings
Google users generally accord greater worth to the organic results
Google employs over 200 algorithmic factors to determine where web pages rank in organic results

15. Paid Results
Organic Results

16. Quick Quiz What do the following stand for? HTML URL RSS SEO SEM PPC
SERPs

17. Questions?
Search Engines and Google

18. Choosing the Right Keywords
Part 2

19. Are you in Google? site:www.yoursite.com link:www.yoursite.com
Displays a list of pages from your site that have been indexed by Google
link:
Displays a sample of external pages that link to your site
cache:
Displays the cached image of the website that is currently on file at Google.
info:
Displays information that Google currently holds about the website.
related:
Displays pages that are similar to your website.
If you are not in Google, submit your site here:

20. Choosing the Right Keywords
A keyword combination is used to obtain search results from a search engine
Web pages can be optimised for particular keyword combinations
Before optimising a website, it is necessary to identify the best keywords to optimise for

21. Choosing the Right Keywords
Keywords are the combinations of words that searchers enter into search engines to find content
It’s necessary to do some keyword analysis for your website…
What is the volume of traffic for different keyword combination?
Have other websites optimised for those keywords? Would it be hard to get a high ranking?
Who sits in the No. 1 spot for those keywords?
What keywords are my competitors targeting?
What do the keywords say about the searcher’s intent/mindset?
Surfers
Researchers
Buyers

22. Exercise
What is the searcher’s intent/mindset if they were to use the following search terms?
Hotels
Cheap hotels
Hotels in Sydney
Last minute Sydney hotel deals
Sydney serviced apartment deals
Bed and breakfast on george street Sydney
Grand Mercure hotel Darling Harbour Sydney

23. Exercise
Pair up
Imagine that you are in the market for something from your partner’s website and you’re ready to buy
Write down three keyword phrases that you might enter into a search engine to find that product or service
Then, write down three keyword phrases that you think somebody would enter into a search engine to find your own product or service
Compare your keyword combinations

24. Google Keyword Suggestion Tool
Keyword tool
Displays keyword combinations that advertisers bid on
Level of competition for the keywords by advertisers
Global/local monthly searches
Traffic estimator
Displays predicted volume of traffic for keyword combinations
No. of searches, average cost per click, estimated clicks and costs

25. Google Insights for Search
Displays search query trends across the world

26. Keyword Advice
Optimise each page for a different keyword combination (yep, every single page)
Don’t choose single keywords – 3-5 word combinations are best
Don’t choose generic keywords - be specific
Don’t choose hotly-contested keywords
Use geographic qualifiers – ie. Adelaide
Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes
Choose keywords that align with a ‘buying’ state of mind

27. Exercise
Take a couple of minutes to come up with an appropriate keyword combination that you could optimise your home page for.
Here are some combinations that I have used:
Canberra jobs (CapitalJobs.com.au)
Australian online bookstore (Boomerang Books)
Cheap books Australia (Boomerang Books)
Cheap hotels Sydney (Getaroom.com.au)

28. Questions?
Choosing the Right Keywords

29. On Site Optimisation
Part 3

30. On Site Optimisation
On-site factors play a big role in determining your search engine rankings
These are the things that you can do yourself or that you can task your web developer to do on your behalf

31. Use of multimedia platforms
Be careful when using multimedia platforms, such as Flash, particularly as navigational elements
Your website must be ‘spiderable’, otherwise it won’t get good search engine rankings
Text-based navigation can be ‘spidered’; links embedded within a Flash element cannot.
Be careful also with Javascript, DHTML or other graphical navigation elements
If you use these, provide a text based navigation bar elsewhere on the page

32. On-site navigation
Your navigation structure and accessibility is critical for search engine rankings – search engines need to be able to access your content in order to index it
KISS principle
Employ the 2 click rule (3 click rule at most)
Use textual links from your home page
Use a Sitemap which can be accessed from your home page
Employ inline / contextual links – links within your page copy

33. The TITLE tag The singularly most important on-site factor!
If you do one thing to your site, then this should be it!
This is what appears in the top bar in your browser
Almost always the heading that Google chooses for its listings – therefore it needs to be enticing or contain a call-to-action

34. This is where the TITLE tag
appears in your browser

37. The TITLE tag
Include your chosen keywords within the TITLE tag – preferably near the start of the tag
Try to keep it to 70 characters
Must be relevant to the page content
Very important - each page should have a different TITLE tag

38. Exercise Open your own website in your browser
View the source code (View menu)
What is your TITLE tag?
Is it appropriate?
Could it be better?
What does your main competitor have as their home page TITLE tag? Is it better than yours?

39. Metadata Tags
Search engines also use a series of metadata tags that reside in the header of the page to index websites
These tags can’t be seen by human visitors to your website – but they’re still interrogated by the search engines

40. The DESCRIPTION tag A textual description of what the page is about
Regularly used in Google search results as the description of your site

42. The DESCRIPTION tag
Include keywords close to the start of the tag, but don’t repeat more than 3 times
Try to keep it to 150 characters
Must be relevant to the page content
Each page should have a different DESCRIPTION tag

43. The KEYWORD tag
Less important than TITLE and DESCRIPTION, but still worth including
Up to 10 individual words, separated by commas

44. Body Text Google loves original, high quality textual content
Body text is extremely important for search engine rankings because this is what human users come to see
Keywords, synonyms and variations of the primary keyword combination should be included in the body text, but not so that it reads ‘artificially’. It should read naturally.
More on textual content in Part 5…

45. Keywords in URLs
URLs that contain keywords are better than those that don’t
Quite easy to do if your website is static, a little more difficult for database-driven sites
Don’t make the URLs too long because this will be seen as an attempt to manipulate the search results
Good and bad:

46. Heading Tags
Heading tags – eg. <h1>, <h2> - within the HTML identify headings within the page copy and break up the text
They are used by search engines to determine page content
Use keywords in these tags, but don’t overdo it.

48. Link Anchor Text
The ‘anchor’ text contained within hyperlinks provides Google with an understanding of what the linked content is about
Every hyperlink on your site should have descriptive anchor text, rather than ‘click here…’
Inline links or contextual links are best
eg.
Blue Train Enterprises offers a free white paper on how to optimise your website for the search engines

49. Image ALT Text
There is the opportunity to specify ‘alternate’ text for every image on your website
The ALT text is displayed if the image doesn’t load in the user’s browser
It also can have a positive effect on your website rankings
The ALT tag should describe the image
Keep it short and to the point
Don’t use ALT tags as a place to stuff keywords

50. A word on domain names…
Domain names can assist search engine rankings too
If you are thinking of changing names, or planning a new business, think carefully about the domain name you choose
Best to have .com.au for Australian market, but if possible secure .com as well (very difficult these days)
Try to keep it short, memorable
Try to include keywords in the domain name
Register the name for as long as possible

51. Customer Assurance Factors
It is recommended that your website contains:
Business information – ABN, ACN, RBN
Telephone number – 1300 adds credibility
A physical address
Information about your business – ‘about us’
Policies
Privacy
Security
Terms of use / disclaimers
A sitemap with links to major pages

52. Questions
On Site Optimisation

53. Getting Value from Links
Part 4

54. Getting Value from Links
Links – both inbound and outbound – are important factors for Google when assessing a website’s importance

55. Inbound Links These are links on other websites that link to your site
Good quality inbound links serve as a ‘vote of confidence’ for your site – if a good site links to your site, then by association, your site must be good, too
Try and get links from ‘authority’ websites to your site
Thematically-linked sites
High ranking and well-known sites
Government (.gov.au) sites – eg SA Central
Educational institution (.edu.au) sites
It’s not the volume of inbound links that is important – it’s the quality

56. Inbound Links
When requesting a link, try and engineer it so that your keywords are included in the anchor text – eg. Australian Online Bookstore, Boomerang Books instead of just Boomerang Books

57. Exercise
Think of five websites that you could try and get an inbound link from:
SA Central ….
Think B2B partners, customers, local government, local media, chambers of commerce, industry associations, business enterprise centres (!), consumer websites…

58. Outbound Links
There is evidence to suggest that your outbound links contribute to your rankings
Only link to good quality, thematically-aligned content on third party websites
Only link to sites that would be of interest to your audience
Be aware that outbound links take visitors away from your site – and that is not necessarily what you want to do.

59. Caution… Reciprocal links – I’ll link to you, if you link to me
You can get some value from these only if the two sites are thematically aligned and are both high quality
Most requests for reciprocal links should be deleted, particularly three-way link swaps
Paid Links
Google frowns upon paid links – the Google algorithm is sophisticated and can detect links which seek to artificially manipulate its rankings
Link Farms & ‘Bad Neighbourhoods’
These are sites that allow you to post your link for free alongside thousands of other sites
Being linked from these sites can damage your standing

60. Getting listed in Directories
Being listed in major directory-based websites can boost your rankings considerably
– aka The Open Directory Project - a difficult one to get into
- a very important one that will see your business plotted on Google Maps

61. Other ways to get Inbound Links
Articles / interviews published on other websites
Press releases
Forum posts
Blog comments
‘Link bait’ – controversial is best!

64. Questions
Getting Value from Links

65. Content is King
Part 5

66. Content is King Ever heard the saying?
Search engines are simply a means to locate great content
Does your site have great content?
Or is it just static ‘brochure-ware’?
Does your site ‘do’ anything else that will bring visitors back time and again?

67. Content is King
Add content that people want to read and will pass on – top ten tips, ‘how to’ guides, free white papers
Text should be in short sentences, compact paragraphs, be well punctuated, and contain headings to break up the text – time-poor people don’t read, they scan
Pages should not scroll and scroll and scroll…
One page per topic (optimised for that topic) and cross- link; granularity

68. Content is King
Text should be written from a WIIFM (What’s in it for me?) perspective – no fluff, just tell the customer what they want to hear.
Add content regularly via a content management system (CMS) or via regular HTML editing (if you are capable)
If your site remains static, then it will lose its prominence in the search engines (and visitors won’t want to come back)

69. Add content regularly Some ideas for new content for your website:
Articles that are related to your product or services
New product reviews or information
Company activities
Special offers or discounts
Achievements and awards
New staff profiles
Case studies about your products or services
Testimonials from customers
‘How to’ guides
Observations and analysis about the market

70. Web 2.0 and Social Media Content
Search engines love Web 2.0 and social media content
Web 2.0 is a term describing changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and its hosted services, such as social networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis, blogs, etc (Wikipedia)

71. Web 2.0 and Social Media Content
Blogs – Wordpress
Online video - YouTube
Micro-blogging - Twitter
Social networking – Facebook, Linkedin
Social bookmarking – Digg, Technorati, Delicious etc
RSS
Podcasts
Google loves this content and you should employ it where appropriate
See my other workshops for more info on Web 2.0, social media and blogging

72. Bookmarking / Tagging Sites
Consider implementing an AddThis or AddToAny button on your pages
A simple piece of code that adds a button to your page:

73. Exercise
Consider the different Web 2.0 content options – blogs, video, Facebook, Twitter, bookmarking / tagging
Some (or all) might not be appropriate for your business
How might some of these things help your business?
Take 2 minutes to think about it

74. Questions
Content is King

75. More things to do and not do
Part 6

76. More things that you should do…
Monitor your server statistics – unique visitors is the key metric to track (not ‘hits’)
Set up Google Analytics on your site -
Set up Google Webmaster Tools -
Set up Google Alerts for your business -
Try out Google Adwords pay per click advertising using a trial offer -

77. Other technical things to do…
Remove multiple ‘instances’ of your site with a Permanent 301 redirect to elminate dilution of your website standing
Implement a robots.txt file
Implement an XML sitemap
Ensure that your pages load quickly by streamlining your code and optimising your images
Ensure that your site’s server has close to 100% uptime – if it isn’t live when the spider arrives, your rankings may be affected
Make your site W3C compliant –

78. What you should NEVER DO
Hidden text (eg white text on a white background)
Keyword stuffing
Display duplicate content
Cloaking – displaying different content to visitors and spiders
Use Flash alone
Use Frames

79. A final thought
If you employ one of the strategies mentioned in this presentation, you will get some benefit in the search engine results pages
If you employ a couple, you will get much greater benefit
If you employ all of them properly, then you will most likely go to the top of the results
The little things count and, when you employ them together, they can make a big difference to your site performance

80. Final Questions?
Thank you!