LEDOsuite.comtwitter.com/LEDOsuitefacebook.com/LEDOsuiteyoutube.com/user/cirrusabslinkedin.com/companies/cirrus-abs

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Economic Development Organizations //Derek Pillie and Kevin Mullett

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Economic Development Organizations //Derek Pillie and Kevin Mullett

LEDOsuite.comtwitter.com/dpilliefacebook.com/dpillielinkedin.com/in/dpilliejust search for “derek pillie” or “dpillie”Project Manager – LEDO Suite

Why are You Here?

• You know that the success of your economic development organization means attracting new businesses and supporting existing business

• You know attracting new investors means going where they are

• You know that you know these investors are online• Over 90% of site selection begins (or

ends) on the web• Do you have the right info to be

shortlisted (or not get cut)?

• You probably don’t know how to use your existing resources to get in front of them and deliver your “pitch”

What Will You Learn?

• What SEO stands for and how it’s relevant to YOUR work

• How the “alphabet soup” of terms like SEO, SERP, H1, META, ALT, etc. impact how potential investors find your website

• How YOU can use free online tools to improve your online SEO visibility

• What efforts you can focus on to maximize the impact of your SEO efforts

• Why it is important to have community and professional partners link back to your current website.

About Cirrus ABS

• 15 Years Experience in Online Marketing and Website Development

• Hybrid company that offers the best of marketing and technology firms

• 25+ employees

• Full staff of technical & creative personnel

• Client ranging from Fortune 500 to small local businesses

About Cirrus ABS

Cirrus ABS Core Competencies• Corporate Marketing Solutions - Strategic

Consulting, Website Development, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• Platform Solution Development• Vertical Market Solutions• Economic Development,

Education, Insurance…• Corporate Solutions for

Distributor/Dealer Networks• Franchise Solutions

Cirrus ABS Featured ED Clients

Cirrus ABS Featured Corporate Clients

SEO // Optimization, marketing, or visibility

search engine optimization is*:developing a website utilizing best

practices and in such a manner that there are no encumbrances to the search engines ability to crawl a site and properly understand the subject of the site, find the sites pages, links, and documents, so that it might be included in the search engines organic or natural index appropriately.

* but it depends on who you ask and

search engine marketing is an open debate.

SEO // Technical, onsite & offsite factors

There are technical, onsite, & offsite factors that contribute to your sites’ search engine result page (SERP) performance.

SEO // Winning requires knowledge

• What are the rules?• How can I optimize within the rules?• Which races can I win while staying

within my budget?• Am I dedicated to the winning

strategy?• How much is winning worth?

SEO // Architecture matters

• I’ve never seen a perfect launch, i.e. one where I got todo everything I wanted

• Projects are always limited by: time, money, effort, resources, knowledge, buy in (from staff and board members)

• Test conversions, measure results

SEO // Is it the intent winner?

• Social• Direct mail• Television• Radio• Tradeshows• Newspaper• Yellow pages• Search marketing• SEO

SEO // Visibility is online currency

• No visibility = no clicks• Unattractive or spammy titles & descriptions

(snippets) = no clicks• Clicks for incorrect terms = no conversion• Poorly planned landing pages with no CTA = no

conversion

SEO // Do you have a “lame duck” website?

• Does your website have fresh content on the homepage?

• Can you change META info?

• Is your site trapped in Flash?

• Do your site visitors have a reason to come back or refer you?

• Can you even add or modify SEO content without a programmer?

• Do you have enough pages to “tell the story”?

• Do you “connect the dots” for site visitors with clear content paths, related content, internal and external links, calls to action?

Big year for search engine changesGoogle alone uses over 200 criteria/signals for ranking site

pages, performs over 6000 tests, and subsequently implements over 400 changes to its algorithm per year.

A few Google changes in 2010:• Real-time search: if something is trending you will see it• Forced customized (personalized) search:

if you’re logged in you see customized results with social circle included

• Webmaster console: removed pagerank, added Labs which includes site performance, fetch as googlebot, and malware detail tools

• Normal (xml) sitemaps, news sitemaps, video sitemaps

SEO // Keep moving forward

SEO // Recent developments

Recent SEO developments

• Google “May Day”

• Google Caffeine data center change

• Bing + Yahoo = “Bing-hoo”

• Bing + Facebook = Social SERPs

SEO // What’s what?

There are many ways Google presents results!

SEO // All things being equal…

There are over 200 criteria so you must do competitive

analysis to maximize the return on your efforts.

SEO // All things being equal…

There are over 200 criteria so you must do competitive

analysis to maximize the return on your efforts.

SEO // Action 1

• Create a list of competitors sites• Run competitive analysis with

majestic SEO: http://majesticseo.com/bulk-backlink-checker.php

• Develop a plan to win or call in reinforcements

SEO // Action 2

Setup Google profiles for you & your organizationhttp://www.google.com/profiles

SEO // Select the right keywords

We've taken clients to number one on Google basedon keywords they insisted had to be there, only to find outthat a slight derivation would have yielded exponential traffic.

SEO // Action 3

• Poll your existing employers; ask who are your potential investors

• Write down what you really do & who you are competing against

• Take the keywords & keyword phrases you think are important and verify volume with http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal 

SEO // I have nothing to write!

A common complaint is not

knowing what to write & what

keywords to target

• Fresh content is crucial• Newest articles win

all else being equal

• Increases site depth• Increases crawl rate

SEO // Technical considerations

When writing page titles• Keep the title to 70 characters when possible• Use localization and keywords/keyphrases early in the title• Think about attractiveness + bolded words (will it get clicked?)

When writing meta descriptions(these usually become snippet)

• Keep the description to 156 characters when possible• Think about attractiveness + bolded words

Consider the impact on your CTR and visibilityWords included in your titles and descriptions should also appear on the

page

SEO // Technical considerations

Header tags: H1-H6

ALT tags: often missed(don't say picture or image of, Google already

knows its an image)

SEO // Action 4

• For each page of your site run & reviewhttp://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density/(Don't try so hard to get a certain saturation that you lose good long tail connecting words or relevance! Don’t stress about duplicate content.)

• Change title tags & descriptions first because they are valuable & clarify thinking

• Start with keywords & keyword phrases you already rank for

• Make sure there is a call to action on every page

SEO // Internal linking; don’t click here

Formulating your internal linking structure• Search engines want to know what’s on

the other end • Keyword use where it is highly valuable

Example: Click here for our Search Engine Optimization Services.

SEO // All backlinks aren’t equal

Why do we want backlinks?• Visibility / brand recognition• Traffic generation / linkbait

(to pages or our site)• To encourage page or site indexing• Increase page rank / authority to

impact SERPs• Because someone told you to get

them

SEO // Action 5

• Ask community partners for backlinks

• Ask current investors (mutually beneficial btw)

• Create new, subject matter expert, articles on your site and tell the world

• Link to the page with content, not always home

• Look for places to post your site or site RSS feed

• Check Google Analytics or server logs for:bounce rates, time on site, pages visited, conversion pages, confirmation pages (setup advanced filters & funnels)

• Monitor contacts, calls, lead sources• Google A/B testing

SEO // Did it work? Do it again!

SEO // Action 6

Get: Rank CheckerA Firefox browser add-on• Measure baseline• Measure changes• Measure competition• Check in “private browsing”

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Economic Development Organizations //Derek Pillie and Kevin Mullett

kevinmullett.comtwitter.com/kmullettfacebook.com/kevinmullettlinkedin.com/in/kevinmullettjust google “kevin mullett”

Director of Product Development

SEO // Upcoming webinars

Join us for future webinars every other Thursday

Watch LEDOsuite.com for updates

Thursday, December 9th, Using Analytics to Demonstrate ROI to ED Stakeholders

Thursday, December 23rd, Social Media for Economic Developers

We'll Help You Master Internet Marketing

These days it’s more important than ever for you to reach new investors, satisfy existing businesses, find new efficiencies, and improve your local business climate. The Web is the way to do it. We can help!

Call Derek Pillie at 1.877.817.4442 to find out how we can improve your online visibility.