diy seo

www.kulkarnisoftware.com 1

DIY – SEO

Ashish Kulkarni

Director, Kulkarni Software


Companies create websites for

• Marketing• Sales / eCommerce• Customer engagement• Publishing information• Building Reputation / Brand• Servicing Customers• B2B services / Web services• Other reasons


Visitors come from

• Direct marketing – email, leaflets, business cards, events, word-of-mouth, etc.

• Internet Search – Google (65%), Yahoo (20%), Bing (8%), others (7%).


The problem

• Websites are like shops.

• If you open one in the high-street, you will get lot of customers.

• However, if you open one in a remote unknown corner, you will struggle to get any business.

• Without SEO, most websites are left to chance with regards to visitors.


What is SEO?

• SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a combination of Art and Science to enable a website achieve better Search Engine ranking for business critical keywords and search terms.

• In an ideal world, with the help of SEO, a website should appear on top spot of search engines for business critical keywords and search terms.


Why SEO?

• SEO helps websites achieve higher ranking in Search Engines.

• Each second, 2900 searches take place on Google.

• SEO helps Search Engines like Google understand and hence, index a website better.

• There are tools such as Google Analytics that can give you in-depth analysis of your visitors.


Before SEO

• It is often said – content is king• Create and publish good and useful

content• If you are selling, make calls to action

blatantly obvious• Make sure your website looks attractive to

your visitors and not just to you• Ensure good and intuitive navigation• Make it easy to bookmark


Before SEO

• Ensure your domain name is locked and is on auto-renew contract

• Ensure your hosting contract offers a fair amount of bandwidth

• On your website, make your calls to action very clear. This is especially the case if you are looking to sell a product or a service online.

• Ultimately, with SEO, you will get more visitors. Once these visitors arrive at your site, there should be something to keep them interested.


What does SEO consist of?

• SEO involves 2 kinds of activities– On-page optimisation– Off-page optimisation


On-page optimisation

• On-page SEO involves making sure that the content of each and every page of a website is relevant and emphasises business critical keywords and search phrases in– URL– Title– Meta Description– Meta Keywords– Page Content– Navigation


Page Content

• Must contain keyword / search phrase with good density• Keywords and phrases must appear naturally. Text

should not become human unreadable or spammed with keywords.

• Avoid using stop-words such as “and”, “or”, “of”, etc. Use pipeline symbol “|” instead in places like Title and Description.

• Use websites like www.websitegrader.com to check website compliance

• Keep content fresh. Use Blog / Content Management System if possible.


On-page optimisation

• Submit website to Search Engines. This is called Indexing.

• For this to take place properly, create a file called – sitemap.xml – and put it in the root folder of the website. Use tools such as www.xml-sitemaps.com as a starting point.

• Update this every time you update your content.• The navigation of the site should allow search

engines and humans to access all the pages of the site from the home page with as few clicks as possible.


Off-page optimisation

• Off-page optimisation involves creating links to your website and its content on other websites.

• This shows search engines that people are talking about your website on other websites.

• Think of links as water. The more water coming in, the better the rank.

• Build more incoming links on other sites and have less outgoing links on your site.


Off-page optimisation – Social Media Bookmarking

• Social Media Bookmarking (SMB) is different from Social Media Marketing (SMM).

• You are posting stories with an intention of creating link(s) back to your website.

• Look for Popular Social Media websites with good PageRank and DOFOLLOW robots instruction.


Off-page optimisation – Blog commenting

• Blog commenting involves finding blogs relevant to your website / webpage and posting comments to posts on that blog.– While doing that, put your keywords as name– And put your website URL as the URL

• Comments need to be approved so make them useful and not just “Nice article. Thanks.”

• These blogs need to have good pagerank• These blogs should have DOFOLLOW robots

instruction.


Black Hat Techniques

• Putting names of your competitors in title, description, keywords and content in the hope that if someone is searching for your competitors, they will find you is one example.

• Buying 50 websites and putting pages with links to your website is another example. This is also referred to as Link farming. Doing this in a limited way with 4-5 microsites is acceptable.

• Do not try to deceive search engines. They are smart. And once they catch up, they may blacklist your website.


PPC SEO

• In addition to organic SEO, you can also invest in PPC (Pay Per Click), where your website’s link will appear at prominent position(s) on search engines.

• Google Adwords – Display on Google• Google Adsense – Display on other sites• It is extremely important to have very

strong calls to action and very low bounce rate before going for PPC SEO.


Sequence of events

• Decide your SEO objectives– Who is the target audience?– Why do you want to reach them?– What will you gain from them? Money?

Fame? Influence? Reputation? Brand awareness?

• Do an analysis of what keywords to use based on what people are searching for and amount of competition


Keyword analysis report


Sequence

• Plan your website and content

• Don’t put too little or too much on one page

• Plan titles, description, keywords and content for each page

• Plan page and folder names

• Plan website navigation


Sequence

• If possible, get a copywriter to create the content or oversee the content to make sure it is relevant for the web.

• Get a Web Designer to create CSS based web page layouts and use these to display the content. Avoid using tables and frames.

• Review the content after switching CSS off in FireFox. This is what Search Engines see.

• Use SEO analysis tools to ensure the content will rank well with search engines.


Sequence

• Check for any spelling mistakes

• After going live, create an XML Sitemap for the website

• One final check to ensure everything is in its place, is correct and relevant

• Submit your website on all major Search Engines – Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, etc.


Sequence

• Make it easy to bookmark your content on Social Media websites


Ongoing activities

• Generate Back Links

• Keep content fresh

• Track your website’s ranking

• Analyse visitor trends and rework on content as appropriate


Google Analytics


What next

• We are planning a full-day “Web Demystification Event” on Saturday 24-April-2010.

• You will find out everything about websites– Domain names– Hosting – Plans, comparisons, pros & cons– Web pages, Blog, CMS, eCommerce, etc.– Create your own blog-based website or blog– Search Engine Optimisation

• Get guidance on Social Media – Create accounts on Twitter, FaceBook and LinkedIn and use them effectively for business and link them up with your website

• Cost – £200 for the full day including lunch. £100 if you book by 31-March-2010. You will need to bring a wi-fi enabled laptop.


Where can you find me

• Google– Ashish Kulkarni– Kulkarni Software

• Twitter– @ashishkulkarni– @kulkarnisoft

• LinkedIn– www.linkedin.com/in/ashishkulkarni

• Web– www.ashishkulkarni.com– www.kulkarnisoftware.com

• Email– [email protected]

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