Search Engine Optimisation

An Introductionwww.digital-clarity.com

Learning Objectives:

• What is SEO?• What do Google look for?• Basic Elements

• Content• HTML• Architecture • Link Building• Trust • Social • User

• Why do we do it?• Google’s Algorithms

• Bottom Line• What is SEO?

What is SEO? • Search Engine Optimisation

• Known as ‘Organic’, ‘Natural’, ‘Un-Paid’ traffic

• Process of affecting visibility of your website within a search engine

SEO Listing

What do Google look for?

Site Navigation

Quality Link Building

Relevant Unique Content

Site Structure

User Experience

Site SpeedCode Architecture

Social Bookmarking

Basic Elements

Quality – well written, decent length, rich content (videos and pictures etc)

Keywords – Does your content include the keywords you are targeting?

Engagement – Will people actually WANT to read your content?

Thin – Thin or shallow content will not rank well

Ads – Are there too many ads on the page?

Content On-Page

Titles – Your HTML title tags should contain relevant keywords

Meta – Your meta descriptions should be accurate, relevant and optimised

Headers (H1 tags) – headlines and subheadings should contain relevant keywords where possible

HTML On-Page

Duplicate Content – How does the site manage duplicate content issues?

Speed – does the site take a long time to load in your browser?

URLs – are you URLs short? Do they contain real words or are they messy code?

Mobile – Is the site responsive for mobile users?

Cloaking – Are you hiding pages from search engines/human users? (follow/nofollow)

Navigation and Structure – are there lots of hidden pages? Too many redirects?

Architecture On-Page

Volume – How many links do you have pointing to your pages?

Quality – Are links from trusted, quality websites?

Spam – Have you created low-quality links by spamming blog sites etc?

Paid – Have you bought links or are they genuine? Google can tell!

Text & Keywords – Are the links from relevant pages?

Link Building Off-Page

Authority – Do the links, shares and other factors make you a trusted site?

History – How long has your site been around? What’s your track record like?

Identity – Does the site utilise anything to verify the identity of its users and authors? Is it secure? (https, SSL certificates)

Piracy – has your site ever been flagged for hosting pirated content?

Trust Off-Page

Reputation – do respected users on Social Media share your content? (RT from a user vs RT from the BBC)

Shares – how often is your content shared on social media?

Geographical – Where is the user based?

History – do you get a lot of repeat visits to your site? Are users bookmarking/favouriting your site?

Social Off-Page

User Off-Page

Why do we do it?

Google’s Algorithms What is it?An algorithm is a computer programme that looks for clues to give searchers the most relevant results possible

Why is it important?The algorithm determines

what shows up on the results page to deliver the most

relevant results to a ‘searcher’

Updates to the algorithmPenguin = Valued Links

Panda = Quality Content

Hummingbird = Better Matched Results

What's it got to do with SEO? The more time you spend optimising your site to Google’s best practises the more favourably they will index you against their algorithms. This helps you rank more highly in search results

Visibility over Competitors

The Bottom Line

Ask Again: what is SEO?SEO is hard work and graft

Google do not care about your business goals; they care about the user

SEO is not an activity or a task – SEO is an approach. There are no rules, you just have to use your judgement – it’s about being

aware of things and using that awareness in ALL of what you do

The more aware we are of the principles of SEO, the better we can apply them

No-one is 100% sure how it works and there are a lot of aspects you cannot control or measure

For more information or any questions please contact one of the Digital Clarity Account Managers where we’d be happy to help.

Get in contact:

www.digital-clarity.com