Introduction to search engine optimisation – SEO (getting your website found in the search engines) Ann Stanley MD Anicca Digital Solutions

Agenda Introduction How search engines work? Auditing your website How to improve your listings in the search engines? – Ensuring your site is indexed – On-page optimisation – Off-page optimisation Other resources

UK web visits week ending 04/09/2010. Google 91.85%Bing 3.04% Yahoo 2.84% Other 2.27% Source Hitwise - The table shows websites for the industry 'All Categories', ranked by Visits for the week ending 04/09/2010. Search engine visits

Search engine results Sponsored links - paid Display options Organic or natural results Universal results – news, shopping etc

Targeting local customers through Google Places (map) or pay per click

Integration of organic and places results (28 th Oct)

Google shopping results

Image optimisation Site Links

Recent news

Summary of different results in Google Google.com – used by USA and English speakers anywhere in the world Google.co.uk – defaults to “web results” or select “Pages from the UK” – both biased towards UK (local) results Organic or natural results on the left Pay per click or sponsored listings at the top and on the right hand side of the results Local map with business listings from Google Places “Universal results” inclusion of other results at the top of the organic results: – Images or videos – Shopping results – News, blogs, Twitter (Tweets) Google Caffeine – “faster and recent” results including more news, blogs and Twitter posts Google Instant – results shown as you type each letter

PositionClick Through Rate % % 38.44% 46.03% 54.86% 63.99% 73.37% 82.98% 92.83% % % % Aim for the top organic positions 73.5% click positions 1-5

How to get into the Google results Map – create a free Google Places listings (also in Bing) Shopping results – feed your ecommerce database into Google Merchant Centre Images & videos – make sure these have keyphrases in the file names and tags News, blogs and Twitter results – create ongoing blog content on your site or via Twitter and news feed sites (PR) Sponsored Links – set up an AdWords pay per click account – where you bid on relevant phrases and you pay if they click on your ad Organic or natural listings – search engine optimise your website ie SEO (today’s topic)

Getting listed in Google Places (Local Search)

Add your company details

Bing Map – listing through My118 Information

A search engine is made of three basic components: A Spider or Robot An automated browser, it searches the web for new websites and changes to websites then views the web pages and strips out the text content A storage system or database A record of all the pages viewed by the Spider A matching process or relevancy algorithm The rules that tell the search engine how to determine what would be relevant to your search How Search Engines work

Different result in each search engine GoogleBingYahoo Online marketing Leicester AdWords Leicester1, 2102 web development leicester 4Map (2), not in top modified broad match (blog article) 6Not in top 507 leadership first funding (blog article) 2Not in top 5045

3 key factors that help you get high rankings in the search engines 1.Web site has to be spidered by the search engines for them to index your content 2.You must have relevant keyphrase-rich content on your website (on-page optimisation) 3.Your website must be considered authorative for your chosen topics/sector (off-page optimisation) There are 85 – 100 factors used in the algorithms of the major search engines!

Auditing your website

Site: 140 pages indexed in Google Each page has keyphrase rich URLS, titles and description tags

Pages indexed in each search engine GoogleYahooBing

Search Engine submission

Rank Checker (from SEOBook)

SEOQuake

Keyphrase density of Anicca Homepage

Keyphrase density of old Anicca Homepage

Google Analytics

Keywords

Google Webmaster Tools

Link: in Yahoo Site explorer

Summary of auditing tools Enter “Site: in the search box of each search engine to see how many page are indexed Submit your site if it is not listed Use Rank Checker (from SEO Book) or Webmaster Tools to see your current positions for different keyphrases in the search engines Install SEOQuake (a Firefox plug-in) to see various metrics and to check the keyphrase density on each page of your website Install Google Analytics and view the amount of traffic you receive from different keyphrases used in the search engines (non-paid search) Install Webmaster tools (Google and Bing) to review and influence how these search engines view your website Use Webmaster tools, Yahoo Site Explorer, and other link analysis tools in SEOMOZ and MajesticSEO to determine the number, source and anchor text of inbound links to our site

How to improve your listings in the search engines

Reasons why your site is not indexed Not submitted eg a new site Technical barriers eg – Flash (also iPhones do not display Flash images) – Frames – Some Javascript drop down menus Some content management systems and ecommerce software produce complex URLS Pop-up windows Text as graphics Robots.txt blocking spiders Re-directs Password protected content Hosted overseas (a problem for.com websites)

Roadblock – Flash websites

Checklist for existing websites Ensure site is submitted and use site: in search engines to check the number of indexed pages (and format of titles and descriptions) Use webmaster tools to check for any technical errors or barriers If you have a website built using Flash or frames you may have to get it rebuilt or change it so that it is standard html pages

Checklist when getting a new website built Do not have a site built in Frames, Flash or based solely on images Check previous sites built by the designer – are the pages indexed, do they have keyphrase-rich URLS, titles and descriptions Can you control these SEO elements yourself using the content management system (CMS) Will your new website have an integrated blog and other social marketing features such as tweeting and bookmarking content Is the site built using search engine friendly technology eg CSS (cascading style sheets), is it accessible, and W3C compliant

Title Tag Meta Tags (description, keyword etc) Content Heading content Frequency of phrases (how many times they are mentioned) Density of phrases (proportion of the text) Internal Link structure with anchor text) Image optimisation (file names, Alt tags) Avoid Spam techniques and over-optimising Create new ongoing content on your site eg a blog On-page factors

Google keyword research tool

Determine the level of competition

Page plan with levels of monthly searches vs competition (results in Google)

On-page optimisation Kathey Bailey leads Written Communication Skills Workshop

Homepage ~500 words Topic pages~350 words Target 1-2 keyphrases per page Keyword density = the percentage of all the text on a page represented by a word or phrase This is how a search engine understands what a page is “about” Keyword density target of 2% to 6% Above 7% the text will appear repetitive Keyword density and page length

The importance of the Title tag

Meta tags

It’s important to have different title tags on different web pages Give the search engines multiple access points to your website The titles will reflect the content of the specific page: e.g. camping, real ale brewery, self-catering holiday cottages Multiple Title tags

Create ongoing content with Integrated blog with Retweet & Facebook

Keyphrase density of pay per click page

Checklist for optimising your website Carryout keyphrase research Prioritise your keyphrase by high search volume and low competition (use pay per click data if you have it?) Produce a topic and a page plan (ie which pages are to be optimised with which phrases) Write new optimised content or existing and new pages, (URL, title, description, headers, keyphrase density, anchor text, image optimisation) Upload your content through your CMS and add new links from the homepage for new pages eg in the footer (you may need to get your developer to do this) Add new optimised content every week via a blog Review results using Webmaster Tools and Analytics

Domain age Domain name Filename/full URL Directory listings External Link Structure Anchor text of inbound links Page quality of inbound links Social bookmarks Reviews and testimonials Facebook “Likes” Off-page factors

Key to Google’s algorithm: Indicator of value: PageRank Indicator of relevance: Anchor text Best links from: Highly trusted sites (high PageRank) Pages with relevant content Your keywords as anchor text Why are Links important?

Keywords in domains May help with ranking Searched words get emboldened in SERPs = more clicks Links to your domain name automatically contain anchor text Keywords in filenames (URLs) Use hyphens to separate words Benefits as above Domains and URL’s

The importance of Links

Anchor text

Content that people will want to link to Free stuff Blog posts Useful documents/articles Online tools Video and audio Funny or entertaining content Publicise the content relevant website owners Submit the page to social bookmarking tools Allow others to promote your pages Getting Links

Major directories - DMOZ

Yahoo Directory

Cost for editorial consideration

Content Placement and Article Syndication There are many sites that allow you to upload content relevant to your business and create your own link to your site, with your choice of optimised anchor text Not only does this increase the traffic to the site, it also improves the PageRank and therefore position of the site in the search engine results

Create a network of incoming links that builds steadily and gradually over time Focus on getting links from authoritative websites with high page rank Ensure links have consistent inbound URLs Get keywords into the inbound links (anchor text) Focus on the major directories and article sites Avoid link farms and link exchanges Your linkage strategy

Other resources Free workshops (2011?) – free guides to download from homepage; plus Library and Blog pages Industry sites Key blogs – eg Marketing Pilgrim, SearchNewz, WebProNews, SearchEngineland

Thank You Ann Stanley