intro to seo - denver entrepreneur meetup

Optimize Your Bottom Line:

What You Need to Know About SEO (Search Engine

Optimization)

presented by seOverflow

• www.festooljunkie.com – went from brand new site to over 100K in revenue per month so far

• www.aycockmd.com – plastic surgeon now obtaining 40-60 leads per month from their website not including phone calls

• www.lawcolorado.net – personal injury lawyer positioned for multi million dollar cases

• www.houstonapartmentinsiders.com - apartment locating company, went from brand new site to 70% of a nice business in 12 months

seOverhaul Your Business

• seOverflow is a search engine optimization and pay per click marketing company in Denver, CO.

• We specialize in offering solutions that enable web design companies, marketing consultants, and other solution providers to offer high end SEO services to their clients.

• We are a Google Adwords Qualified Company, Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassadors, and SEMPO members.

Who Is seOverflow?

The Search Engines want to return the most relevant results for every search query.

So, we have to demonstrate the relevance of our pages to them.

What the Search Engines Want

How the SE’s determine relevance:

• By the titles and tags we place on our pages.

• By what they “see” when they spider our pages.

• By what we and others tell them the pages are about through the links to them.

What the Search Engines Want

• Wizardry or a myth.

• Keywords in the meta tags only.

• An overnight success.

• A one time activity.

• Something that can be successful without good incoming links.

What SEO Is NOT:

Anatomy of a SERP

Organic

Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click

Local Ten Pack

Who Gets The Clicks?

Search Engine Market Share

Organic vs PPC

Who Gets The Clicks?

Source: Enquiro, 2006

Advantages of Organic Search Advantages of Paid Search

More traffic on the same keywords Quick to market

Trusted more by the public Easy to cast a wide net

Cheaper over the long term (for some) Ability to geo-target customers

Not prone to click fraud Control over traffic levels

Organic vs Paid Search

• On-page Optimization – research, planning and implementation. Anything and everything that can be controlled on the website.

• Link Building (Off-page optimization) – the process of getting other websites to link to your website. Think of links as popularity votes.

SEO From 30,000 Feet

On-page Optimization

Research, Planning and Implementation

Keyword Research is the process of discovering for which keywords you should optimize. KW research is critical. Without it, your SEO efforts may be misdirected.

Keyword Research: The Cornerstone of SEO

Keyword Research Steps

1. Brainstorming

2. Use Keyword Research Tools

3. Check The Competition Levels, Choose The Keywords

• How much traffic does the keyword receive?

• How likely is someone using that keyword to reach your site going to convert into a customer/lead/sale?

• How competitive is the keyword? (use allintitle: operator)

• How much budget and time do you have?

• TOOL: Google Adwords Keyword Tool:• https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Is This A Good Keyword?

Keyword Research: The Long Tail

• The Keyword Matrix is an optimization map showing which pages will be optimized for which keywords.

• Typically we target 1-5 closely related keywords per page. (3 on avg.)

• Many times we suggest adding new pages to existing sites.

• We use the keywords identified in the matrix as your main ‘rank checking’ keywords.

The Keyword Matrix

The Keyword Matrix Example

URL Keyword 1 Keyword 2 Keyword 3

/home.html donuts best donuts tasty donuts

/chocolatedonuts.html chocolate donutes chocolate frosted donuts

/sprinkedonuts.html sprinkle donuts rainbow sprinkle donuts chocolate sprinkle donuts

• Spiderability

• Accessibility (Broken Links, W3C, File Size etc.)

• Title Tags

• Meta Tags

• H Tags

• Image Optimization

• Outbound Links

• Keyword Density

Critical On-pageOptimization Components

Link Building

Strategies For Finding and Acquiring Powerful Links

Link Building Defined

• Link Building is the practice of obtaining links from external websites into your own website in order to obtain higher search engine rankings and/or direct referrals.

Link Building

On-page Vs Off-Page

Link Building Basics

• Links as “votes”– When another website links to yours, that site is essentially

casting a “vote” for your website. The more votes you have the better, although in this game the quality of the votes you receive is very important too.

• Some Link Factors– Page Rank (PR)*

– Keyword Rich Text Link

– Followed vs no-followed

– Number of outbound links on the page

– Age of the link• Link becomes more trusted with time

Getting Links

Start By Spying On Your Competitor’s Links

Use OpenSiteExplorer to view most of the links coming into your competitor’s websites.

http://www.opensiteexplorer.com

Which of these links can you get? Any idea generated by looking at their strategy?

Getting Links

• Directory Submissions– Paid Directories

– Free Directories

– Niche Directories

– General Directories

• Article Distribution– Plenty of free sites (such as Ezine Articles) that allow you to

create a profile and submit articles that include text links.

• Content Creation and Publication– In addition to articles, also consider creating videos, slideshows

etc and distributing across the web

– Guest Articles

Getting Links

• Press Releases– Not just a tool for the traditional PR company anymore

– Easy way to generate some text links for your product or service

– Press releases often will show up quite high in search results, at least for a while

• Exposure, plus a lasting link for relevant keywords

• Resource Pages– Look within relevant industry

– Often can get these links for free

– Present your website as a resource that should be included in the owner’s list

– Quality

Getting Links• Paid Links

– Against Google webmaster guidelines, much controversy

– Still a widely used technique

• Sponsorships– Within relevant industry

• If your site deals with cars, consider sponsoring a car club

– Local Sponsorships• Sports leagues, parks, etc.- the Page Rank surprise!

• Community Involvement

Getting Links

• Social Media– Social Media categorizes online tools that people use to share

content, opinions, profiles, and news itself. This sharing causes conversations and interactions between people online.

– Examples include• Voting style sites- Digg, Mixx, Sphinn

• Online communities- Myspace, Facebook

• Video based communities- YouTube

• Niche communities- health, auto lovers, etc

Links That Will Not Count

• 302 redirects

• Javascript

• No-followed links

• Links on pages that are not indexed

Outsourcing Your SEO

What To Do and Not To Do

• Experience• Knowledge of Link Building• Ability to “see the light” of possible SEO

opportunities• Ability to diagnose and repair complex

issues• Time savings• Additional revenue streams (if

outsourcing client work)

Outsourcing SEO: Advantages

• Guarantee Rankings• Use ‘black hat’ or hacker-ish techniques• Only perform link building through

reciprocal links and link farms• Only optimize pages for search engines

and not for visitors• Don’t have good references that you

can speak with

Avoid SEO Firms That…

• Got Any Questions?

• Write “pres” on your business card if you would like a copy emailed to you.

Q & A

• http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/css-and-seo.shtml

• http://www.pearsonified.com/2007/01/get_53_percent_more_searches_with_one_tweak.php

• http://www.e-gain.co.uk/online_marketing/news_articles/Search%20Engine%20Marketing/4

• http://www.seofaststart.com

• http://www.seomoz.org

• http://www.shimonsandler.com

• http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/css-and-seo.shtml

• http://blog.compete.com/2008/02/08/search-market-share-january-yahoo-microsoft-google-ask-aol-msn-live/

Sources