A Beginner s Guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

A Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

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CONFIDENTIAL

About Me

 Digital Marketing Manager @ L.E.K. Consulting, a top global management consulting firm

 7+ years of experience in healthcare and digital marketing

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Agency side

– Started my career at pharma ad agencies in NYC

– Transitioned to digital marketing at SEO/SEM firm in Boston working primarily with pharma clients

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Corporate side

– Managed website and all digital marketing initiatives for a Healthcare IT software company in Boston

 Small business owner (www.PYRAMODE.com)

 Passionate about patient advocacy and improving the patient-physician relationship

 Contact me @:

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[email protected]

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[email protected]

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http://www.facebook.com/#!/tiffany.lomcgee

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http://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffanylomcgee 1

What is SEO?

 Often referred to as “organic”, “natural”, or “free” search results

 Process of getting traffic for “free” from search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo!, etc. when

a user types in a keyword or keyphrase

 The results (The SERP) are based on what the search engine deems as relevant to the user based on the keyword/keyphrase searched

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Determined through proprietary algorithms which are constantly changing

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The SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

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Paid Search Results

Organic Search Results User-generated keyword

Key Principles of SEO

 Indexability

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Evaluate your site architecture.

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Is your site fully crawlable by search engine spiders or bots?

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Google Webmaster Tools

 Relevance

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Content is king.

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Keywords, tags, URL’s and more

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Google Adwords Keyword Tool

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Google Analytics

 Authority

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Linking

– Internal & External

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Indexability

 The potential for your website or its content to be crawled or indexed by search engines

 Content on any site is being downloaded by these spiders and stores in the master database of

Google, the Google index

 Also referred to as crawlability or spiderability

 HTML text is the way to go. Alternatives such as images, flash files, Javascript, PDF’s and other non-text content can often by ignored or devalued by search engines

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If you must, find alternatives to make sure text is as optimized as possible for example, video transcripts, alt attributes, etc

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It doesn’t matter how gorgeous your site is, if it’s not indexable, you’re missing out on significant opportunities to gain additional traffic

 Use Google Webmaster tools to see if any issues in particular have been flagged

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404 Error pages (301 redirect these immediately)

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Any orphan pages? (not being linked to from anywhere on site and thus crawlers cannot access)

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Sitemaps (HTML and XML)

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Site speed & page load time

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Relevance

 Content is king!

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Is your content valuable? Does it have substance?

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Does it contain targeted keywords?

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Is your content engaging?

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Are you keeping your content fresh?

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Could this content by “spammy”?

– Don’t have multiple pages targeted towards the same keyword (cannibalism)

 Write for users, not search engines.

 Use Google Analytics & Google Adwords Keyword tools

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Broad, phrase and exact

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Local vs. Global

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Long-tail keywords

 Optimize your PDF properties and filename

 Be aware of duplicate content!

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Use robots.txt files, no follow no index tags or canonical tags to block certain pages of site from search or tell Google which pages are priority. ₇

URL

The Elements

Title Tag Domain Name Meta-Description Link Text URL

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The Elements - Guidelines

 Meta-Description – 160 characters or less

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Can be longer but make sure you have the important keywords at the front and give the user a reason to click through

 Page Title Tag – 70 characters of less

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Include important keywords towards the front

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Include “brand name” at the end. For example, “Masters in Health Communication | Tufts University”

 URL length – Usually a maximum length of 2000 characters but PLEASE keep it short and

succinct with your primary keyphrases as close to the front of the URL as possible

 Own a unique domain name for best optimization as opposed to using wordpress, blogger, etc

 ALT Tag/Attribute – 125 characters or less

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Optimize for no more than 1-3 keywords and keep it as short as possible to make sure you’re not diluting the text

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Pretend the person reading can’t see the image, how would you describe the image?

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

 Broad match: The sum of the search volumes for the keyword idea, related grammatical forms,

synonyms and related words

 Phrase match: The sum of the search volumes for all terms that include that whole phrase

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Screenshot of Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics)

Authority

 Links, audience and influence.

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Internal linking (passing authority throughout your site)

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External linking

– Paid and Unpaid Directories – 3rd _{party links}

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Use link text

 Social media

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Choose what’s right for your Brand

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Be authentic

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Keep your channels updated

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Be influential

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Monitor for reputation management

– Social Mention – Kurrently

Thank you!

Questions?

[email protected]