search engine optimisation 101

Search Engine Optimisation

What’s on the Agenda?

1. A bit about me and e-CBD and this workshop2. Why search engines are so important to business3. SEO vs. SEM4. SEO Tips and Advice5. AdWords Tips and Advice6. Further Reading7. Question Time

About me: Matt Granfield

• Communications degree• Worked in Public Relations and Journalism• Joined e-CBD with Marilyn Strauss in 2001• Focussed on online marketing• Became Marketing Magazine’s ‘Online Marketing

Guru’• Now I head e-CBD with Marilyn, and memery and

write regular features for Marketing Mag

About This Workshop

• It’s not a lecture, it’s a workshop so if you have questions, write them down and we’ll go through them at the end.

• If something isn’t clear just yell out and I’ll go over it again, but if you’ve just got a general question, save it for the end.

How Much Do We Know?

• Does anyone not have a website?• Who has dabbled a little bit in SEO?• Who doesn’t really know much at all about SEO?• Who has used Google AdWords?

Why search engines are so important to

business

Search Engines for Local Businesses

• 86% of people have used search engines to find local businesses

• 78% of consumers use the Internet more than they did two years ago

• 52% of consumers use telephone directories less than they did two years ago

• 78% of consumers research a product online before making a purchase using a search engine

• 73% of people prefer to find products and services using search engines than have an advertisement sent to them

Source: Nielsen ‘Why Search Matters to Local Business’

• Websites in the first three results on Google get five times as many clicks as those outside the top three.

• Google local search is predicted to take over the Yellow Pages.

Virtually all of our clients who rank in the first few results of Google get more than 50% of their business that way.

SEO vs. SEM

SEO is search engine optimisation: the process of improving the visibility of a web site or a web page in search engines via the ‘organic’ search results.

SEM is Search Engine Marketing, it’s an umbrella term including:

• SEO• AdWords• Yahoo Ads• Bing

SEO vs. SEM

SEO Tips and Advice: Understanding what

Google wants

SEO tips and Advice: How do we know what works?

Google tells us.

SEO tips and Advice: How do we know what works?

Google tells us.

Everything you need to know is publicly available information from Google.

SEO tips and Advice: What does Google want?

• To be #1• To be trusted• To give people the most relevant results• The way to rank the highest in Google is to be

the most relevant result

SEO tips and Advice: How does Google figure out what sites are relevant?

It sends out spiders to crawl the web and gather information about every page they find.

These spiders crawl the web from link to link. Each link counts as a ‘vote’ for a website. The more links a website has pointing to it, the more voting power it has.

As Google crawls the web, they read every page and store the text and images they find in a giant database.

SEO tips and Advice: What are the spiders looking for?

• Words in the text on the page, especially:• Headings• Words at the top of the page

• Words in the coding on the page, such as:• The page ‘title’• The page ‘META description’• The words in the image ‘ALT tags’

SEO tips and Advice: Choosing Keywords

Google has a keyword tool. Use it.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

SEO Tips and Advice: Putting it into Practice

SEO tips and Advice: The Title Tag

What’s a title tag?

What to do with it:

• The title is what the page is all about. When someone adds a page to their ‘favourites’ list, the title should accurately describe the content of that individual page.

• The title should be unique for each page.• When Google tries to figure out what a page is about, it

looks at the title first.• Make sure your keywords are in the page title.• Keywords don’t necessarily have to be next to each

other to get picked up.• Use shorthand (‘&’ instead of ‘and’)• Edit the title in your content management system (or

ask your web designer to do it)

e-CBD — A Gold Coast Web Design + SEO + Online Marketing Agency

Gold Coast Lawyers - O'Keefe Mahoney Bennett

O'Keefe Mahoney Bennett

Gold Coast Lawyers, Gold Coast Solicitors, Gold Coast solicitor, gold Coast lawyer, lawyers, solicitors, lawyer

SEO tips and Advice: Put the Keywords on the Page• Use your keywords in a heading, in bold, high

on the page, in the middle of the page and at the end of the page.

• Make it look natural. Your website copy is there as a marketing tool. The site has to read beautifully. It should make your high school English teacher proud.

• Don’t worry too much about the ‘keyword density’, but 1-5% is about right, depending on the page.

SEO tips and Advice: Put the Keywords on the PageGood

Car Loans: http://www.aussiecarloans.com.au/

Search engine: http://www.google.com.au/

SEO tips and Advice: Use the META Description Tag

What is it?

• Accurately summarize the page’s content - Write a description that would both inform and interest users if they saw your description meta tag as a snippet in a search result.

• Use unique descriptions for each page - Having a different description meta tag for each page helps both users and Google.

• Use 140 characters.

• Put your keywords in here, but don’t get too excited about it.

e-CBD is a Gold Coast web design, SEO and online marketing agency. We've helped hundreds of big (and little) brands make the most of the web.

Robina Plumbers, Broadbeach Plumbers, Surfers Paradise Plumbing, Gold Coast Plumbing Services, Mermaid, 24 HR / 7 Day Emergency Plumbing Services

SEO tips and Advice: Don’t worry about the META Keyword tag

• Search engines ignore the META Keyword tag

SEO tips and Advice: Use Friendly URLs

• Use your keywords in the names of your pages.

Eg. http://www.e-cbd.com/web-design-services.html

• Separate them with hyphens

• Having keywords in the domain name helps, but for a business, it’s not crucial. It’s far more important to have a memorable brand.

• wotif.com ranks higher (and makes more money) than hotels.com.au and hotels.com

SEO tips and Advice: Heading Tags

• Heading tags are used to present structure on the page to users. There are six sizes of heading tags, beginning with <h1>, the most important, and ending with <h6>, the least important.

• Read up on them and use them properly (and make sure your web designer does too) – Put your keywords in them!

• http://www.aussiecarloans.com.au/ and http://www.goldcoastaustralia.com/ are great examples

SEO tips and Advice: Image ‘Alt’ Tags

When you insert an image into a

website, most content

management systems will ask you to specify a

description for it.

This description is what blind

people see when they navigate a website using a talking browser.

This text also shows up if the image

won’t load for any reason.

It’s really important to describe the

image accurately, but try and get your keywords in here as well, without going

over the top.

SEO tips and Advice: Make your site easy to navigate

Remember how we said that Google

crawls the web from link to link? It finds pages on your site

the same way. Make sure every page of

your website is accessible from at least one text link.

A ‘sitemap’ is a great way to do this.

SEO tips and Advice: Make your site easy to navigate

If you have no links, or a site made entirely from Flash, Google can’t read your content and probably won’t list you in their results.

SEO tips and Advice: Create Interesting ContentRemember how we

said that Google counts links to your website as a vote?

The best way of getting links is by

having content people want to link to. Starting a blog

with industry news, tips, or advice is a

great way to do this. Make your website a

resource for others to refer to

SEO tips and Advice: Link to Other People

Google works by crawling around the web following links. They love links. If Google loves links, it’s a good idea to give them what they love. Think about other useful, relevant websites you could link off to from yours. Google will like you.

SEO tips and Advice: Get Other Sites to Link to You

Getting other websites to link to you is the single most important thing you can do to get your site ranking well in Google.

• Each link is a vote. The more ‘votes’ you get from other website, the higher you will rank.• The ‘votes’ have to be relevant though. A link

from a site that isn’t about similar topics to yours won’t help you.• Links from powerful, trusted websites are worth

more votes. • For example: Government websites, non-profit

organisations, educational websites, popular newspapers, important bloggers and industry directories.

SEO tips and Advice: Get Other Sites to Link to You• Google’s webmaster guidelines say you should:

“Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is

online.”

• Submit your sites to directories• Contact bloggers and let them know about your

site (they’ll want to know why your site is interesting enough to tell their readers about)• Swap links with your business partners, suppliers

and clients• Ask your friends and family

SEO tips and Advice: Get Other Sites to Link to YouOnce you’ve tried all the obvious places and run out of cousins:

• Search for the keywords you’re targeting and note the top 30 results. If appropriate and likely, email them and politely ask them for a link.

• Search for the keywords you’re targeting and note the top 30 results. Go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ and check the ‘inlinks’ of each of them. See who comes up and if they’re appropriate, write to them nicely and offer to swap links.

• Do a web search for ‘your industry’ and the word links – you’ll find lots of links pages.

SEO tips and Advice: Get Other Sites to Link to YouWhen you get people to link to you, ask if they can use your keywords in the ‘anchor text’ – the text that is the link.

Do a search for ‘click here’ and you’ll see why this is important.

So how many links do you need to get?

SEO tips and Advice: Get Other Sites to Link to YouLinks required to rank #1-3 in Google

Search Website Links

Main Beach real estate http://www.realtygoldcoast.com/ 78

Gold Coast plumber http://www.whywait.com.au/ 137

Gold Coast limousines http://www.mygoldcoastlimo.com/ 189

Car loan http://www.aussiecarloans.com.au/ 2,350

Gold Coast car rental http://www.eastcoastcarrentals.com.au/ 3,230

Gold Coast accommodation http://www.goldcoastaustralia.com/ 4,640

SEO tips and Advice: Google Maps

• Update your Google Local profile with pictures• Get reviews• Link to your maps page from your website• Use the keywords on the maps page• Make sure you appear on other people’s custom

Google Maps• Do a Google.com.au search for ‘Brisbane Cafe’ and

you’ll see what works

SEO tips and Advice: Google Webmaster Tools

• This is where Google will communicate with you and give you advice.• Create an account and check it out.

Google AdWords

• Google has made it so that the ads which get the most clicks pay less money and appear at the top.• This is so big companies can’t out-bid everyone.• It’s nice, but it means that if your ads don’t

perform well, you’ll end up paying more so always get professional advice, at least at the beginning, to help set up your campaign, or they’ll be tainted forever.• Include your phone number in your ad – then you

don’t have to pay for the click.• Read all the other ads competing with you and

stand out!

Google AdWords

• Create a call to action• Create a special offer• Setup conversion goals so you can track sales• Create dedicated landing pages with content

targeted to people coming from Google – it’s almost always a bad idea to send people straight to your homepage• Make every word count, get rid of useless words• Refine your ads and test them over time.

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