SEO Who knew 3 letters could mean so much?

What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving and promoting a web site in order to increase the number of visitors the site receives from search engines. It’s the process of getting “free” or natural listings on search engines.

A quick history of Google Search…

People use the Internet to find things. Google’s job is to serve up the best possible “answer” to anything you search. It’s all about the rankings!

There are 3 types of queries in search: By keyword Mid-tail (2-3 words) Long-tail (4 words or longer) *long-tail has about 20-50% of all web queries; 18-20% are extremely long tail

BC is a trusted website (.edu).  It has “built in” social trust and authority. It has a long history and strong reputation. It creates quality content. SEO likes Boston College…

But…

BC has a big problem. Currently, when one performs a search, certain departments are no where to be found in search suggest. If you go through all the letters of the alphabet, you will notice that BC athletics and athletic stories have most of the searches. The more often we post, tweet, blog, post a photo, etc., the more signals we send. Search engine crawlers will notice the activity and as a result, will give us traffic and better “real estate” in search engines.

We use meta tags (title, keywords, descriptions) in our HTML.  This will allow a more robust profile for BC to appear in search suggest. We create more quality content, not just articles, but things people will engage with and share.  We will try to do this daily. We will become better social community members.  We will mention other sites (link to them) and people when possible. SEO could love Boston College if…

SEO Basics

Titles: <70 characters but aim for <60 when possible Keywords: <10 always; aim for 3-5, but no more than 7 if possible Description: <150 characters, but think social media and stay between SEO Basics: Meta Tags

SEO Basics: Keywords 2010: The best way to rank #1 for a keyword was to use it in the, the, maybe an, and a few times in the text (but no keyword stuffing! Google had figured that out, at least.) 2013: Google understands synonyms now, so you can use a keyword once and show that it's highly relevant with other similar terms. Experts recommend using keyword groups: Use a number of keywords that all mean approximately the same thing, so you can be relevant for all of them. Use Google Trends to help you find the best keywords for your articles and posts.

SEO Basics: Page set-up How does the website make you feel? Do you see a lot of ads? Is it easy to navigate? Does the navigation logically flow? Do all the links work? Are you linking to keywords that lead to another page?

SEO Basics: External Links Are you linking to other websites that have relevant, trusted information? Are you a “one-stop shop” on the topic? Do you seek out other resources your students/customers would be interested in?

SEO Basics: Trends and Volume Seasonality BIG EVENTS Viral videos

SEO and Social Media You like me, you really like me! But do you engage with me?

Build it.  It’s still “new.” Use it for SEO purposes. Use it as a support. Posts:  can be explained in 140 characters or more.  are tech-based (because that’s where the techies are!)  are events. They have a great event feature and we testing events on Google+ to see if it drives traffic.  don’t really have a home anywhere else. Testing! Testing! Google+: Your new best friend

SEO #2!!!!!

Penguin, Panda, Hummingbird – Oh My

SEO Editorial Checklist  Keyword phrases are just as important in copy as in title  Writing in copy “Lynch School” or “graduate program” will help SEO  For evergreen content, Target a Researcher: Show our Expertise  “Hot Stories” come and go; we need to show we are experts in our verticals first: “researcher” just as important as “user”  Work Towards Time-Effective Strategy  Daily Publication on Hot Topics (with use Social Media)  Seek to connect other content (no more than 3)  Find other content (external and internal) that relates to article and point to it  Link to Keywords (no more than 7)  Learn the different keywords and link to them (makes the total fewer)

Moz.com blog Searchengineland.com HubSpot.com Seobythesea.com Seerinteractive.com Distilled.net SEO help

Questions?