1. Search Optimization Techniques Dan Belhassen greatBIGnews.com Modern Earth Inc.

2. About your presenter Dan Belhassen – Founder & President Modern Earth Inc., an Internet technology company – Website creators, online software developers, search engine consultants, elearning specialists, new media marketing specialists – Find me in my booth if you want to follow up – Presentation at Modernearth.net/lern2010

3. How large is the Internet? Estimates vary How many websites on the Internet?

4. How large is the Internet? Estimates vary How many websites? – Apr 19971 Million – Feb 200010 Million – Jul 200130 Million – Mar 200560 Million – Aug 200690 Million – Nov 2008182 Million – Oct 2010netcraft.com

5. Finding Information Online Two main types of resources: – Search engines – Website directories (ie: yahoo directory, dmoz) We will focus on search engines

6. Top Search Engines

7. Getting Listed Two methods – Paid placement – Organic results

8. Organic Results The “regular” “unpaid” results Focus on Google – Majority of searches – Other major engines (such as Yahoo & MSN) use similar algorithms

9. The Purpose of Google Provide relevant search results Make it seem magical – ``Googol`` means 1 followed by 100 zeros The largest number that the founders could imagine Misspelled as ``Google`` “Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” http://www.google.ca/corporate/index.html

10. How Google Works Automated software crawls the Internet reading all website content (googlebot) Uses over 200 factors to determine ranking – So, don’t mind my generalizations…

11. How Google ranks sites Ranking is generally based on a simple algorithm What your site is about Plus The “Importance” of your site

12. What your site is about

13. – GoogleBot reads all content across all pages Domain name URL directories and file name Page titles Text headers Text (regular site content) Image alt tags – NOT “meta keywords”!

14. What your site is about Be careful! Looks for overall “relevance” Knows that “important” words appear 6-7% Tries to not be fooled by “keyword spamming” Can’t read graphical text!

15. But Wait! Who are you designing your website for?

16. But Wait! Always design your website for – Visitors (prospects) first – Search engines second Conversion (clicks) is what matters – Importance of “meta description”

17. The importance of your site The “Importance” of your site

18. The importance of your site The “Importance” of your site – Based on “PageRank” PageRank determined by – Who is linking to your site How important they are How “relevant” they are

19. The importance of your site The “transfer value” of a link is based on the number of outgoing links on the page

20. The importance of your site How do you know your PageRank? Get the Google Toolbar – Free browser plug-in – Google.com

21. Who’s out there? Find out who is linking to your site – Use Google link:www.mywebsite.com – Use Alexa.com

22. Who’s out there? All links were not created equal – Relevance of the link text Nurse continuing education vs click here – Relevance of the anchor page content Is it relevant to your landing page?

23. Now what? How to increase your website rankings

24. Increasing Your Ranking Step 1: Determine your keywords – Initially focus on 3-6 keywords Keywords are actually phrases – (e.g. nurse continuing education seattle) – Research which words are actually used in searches https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal http://Wordtracker.com – See keywords driving traffic to competitors http://compete.com

25. Increasing Your Ranking Step 2: Optimize your web pages Domain name URL directories and file name Page titles Text headers Text (regular site content) Image alt tags – May need to develop “landing pages” A “home” for your keyword Create landing pages for each keyword Develop appropriate links to your landing pages

26. Increasing Your Ranking Step 3: Verify keywords are found site:www.mywebsite.com http://www.googlerankings.com/kdindex.php – Ensure that Google knows about all your pages Set up a google site map http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

27. Increasing Your Ranking Step 4: Train Googlebot to re-visit your site often Learns how often to visit your site Perform frequent updates to shorten “indexing wait” after major updates

28. Increasing Your Ranking Step 5: Link building campaign Keywords used in links Relevance of content on the anchor page

29. Increasing Your Ranking Step 6: Track your rankings http://WebCEO.com http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/

30. Increasing Your Ranking Step 7: Track your traffic Website statistics (google.com/analytics) Are keywords driving traffic to your site? What are they doing when they get there?

31. Increasing Your Ranking Step 8: Begin again! Back to step 1.. Keep revising your process based on results

32. What’s Next? Resources – http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search -engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf – http://seobook.com

33. Thank you! greatBIGnews.com modernearth.net Presentation available at http://modernearth.net/lern2010