BUILDING YOUR SITE FOR SEO
On-‐site traffic-‐driving strategies.
Megan Ura (@Megan_Ura)
St. Edward’s University Instructional Technology
What is SEO?
“the practice of improving and promoting a web site in order to increase the number of visitors the site receives from search engines”– SEOmoz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO
Why?
1. Conversion: Better visibility = More customers, on and offline
2. Trust: Worthiness and
relevance
How Crawler-‐based Search Engines Work
1. Crawling 2. Indexing
3. Calculating Relevancy & Rankings
4. Serving Results
Your mission:
Make your site easily consumable for humans and search engines.
Search Engine Robot Limitations
1. Crawling and Indexing: HTML text rules • Forget forms, login fields
• Poor link structures
• Uneven support for plug-‐in content/media 2. Content to Query Matching: Language, slang
• “fridges” vs. “refrigerators” 3. Is your tree falling in a forest?
• Content must be marketed for visibility
• Generating popularity
Planning it Out
On-‐site
• what you can control
• “content is king”
• site design, structure
Off-‐site
• What you try to affect
• “link building”
Search Plus Your World
January 2012 Algorithm Update
• Google+ Bias
• Related Google+ pages from people and brands • A must-‐have for
businesses, writers, any content makers
image via www.google.com/insidesearch/plus.html
Keyword Research 101
What motivates your customers?
1. List most essential aspects of your site • Review your own copy
• Niche vocabulary and jargon or not?
2. What do you customers want to see, learn about?
3. Learn what your competitors use
4. Use a mix of “popular” and “long tail” keywords
Site structure and navigation • Simple directory structure
• Help visitors find desired content
• Naturally flowing hierarchy
• Create a sitemap • Why it matters
• Usability and crawl-‐ability
• Ease of use
• Watch for orphan pages!
Semantic URL Structure
“friendly” URLs
• short, descriptive file names
• avoid symbols, numbers, capitalizations
• have only one URL per page of content!
Better: brandonsbaseballcards.com/cards/majorleague
image via Google SEO Starter Guide
Rules for Choosing your Domain Name http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-‐to-‐choose-‐the-‐right-‐domain-‐name
• Get inspired by keywords. • Make the domain unique.
• Just Say NO to hyphens and numbers. • Only choose .com available names.
• Make it easy to type and remember. Keep it short! • Create and fulfill expectations.
• Set yourself apart with a brand. Don’t follow the latest naming trends. (flickr.com)
<title>The Title Element</title> Unique, Accurate, Brief
• Site Name/Company Name/Your Name
• Page-‐specific keyword(s)
• Less than 65 characters, including spaces
• Seen at top of browser, browser tabs and search results
• Users rely on good titles!
“Description” Meta Element page-‐specific summaries to encourage clicks On your site:
On a SERP:
images © Google SEO Starter Guide
Quality Content
Unique and fresh – people first, SE’s second
• Easy-‐to-‐read, concise, appropriate
• HTML text equivalent for media
• “keyword density” – frequency of use
• “keyword stuffing” – overdoing it!
Why it matters:
• Keeps visitors coming back!
• Visitors will want to share
Image via pchackz.in
rel=“canonical”
distinguishing copies from an original To the <head> element, add:
<link rel=“canonical”href=“http://www.site.com” />!
• the page is treated as a copy of the canon URL
• all of the SE link & content metrics flows back to the canon URL
Organize content with headings
• Headings present structure on the page to users.
• 6 sizes: <h1>to <h6>, largest to smallest. • Use sparingly; only one <h1> per page.
• Serves as an outline for content
image via Google SEO Starter Guide
Meaningful Anchor Text
Anchor Text: clickable, hyperlinked text
<a href="...">Anchor Text</a>.
• convey the content linked
• Descriptive, not generic “click here” or URL itself
• Stands out visually
• Use for external and internal linking
image via Google SEO Starter Guide
Use “nofollow” when needed
• rel=“nofollow” is a link attribute
• tells search engines certain links on your site shouldn't
pass your page's reputation to the page linked
• sites you can’t vouch for, “bad sites”
• business competitors
A link on the web = a vote, vouch of quality
Image filenames & alternate text
• Accessibility and search engine relevance
• Used in image search results
• Short, literally descriptive
• Place the image near relevant text content
<img src=“SEUlogo.jpg” alt=“St. Edward’s University Logo” />
<img src=“image001.jpg” />
Analytics
• Record and understand traffic trends.
• Google Analytics is free!
Maintenance
An SEOer’s work is never done.
• Evaluate keyword rankings monthly.
• Watch out for broken links.
• Update your content frequently!
• Integrate social media/blogging.
The Unchanging Core: 1. User Experience
2. On-‐page SEO and Internal Linking
SEO as a Career
• Agency, in-‐house, consulting
• Work with a variety clients and businesses
• HTML and social media literacy skills
Where to go from here?
• “Resources” handout
• Books & Blogs
• Consider SEM companies
carefully.
• Promote your site
appropriately.
• Humans first, search engines
second.
www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-‐engine-‐optimization-‐starter-‐ guide.pdf
• SEOmoz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO: www.seomoz.org/beginners-‐guide-‐to-‐seo
• Lots of helpful materials and checklists: www.seomoz.org/learn-‐seo Websites and Blogs:
• SEOmoz: www.seomoz.org/blog
• Search Engine Land: searchengineland.com
• Search Engine Roundtable: www.seroundtable.com • Megan’s curated web resources:
www.diigo.com/list/meganura/web-‐essentials Books:
• The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization (Theory in Practice) by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin, Jessie Stricchiola (2009)
• Don't Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition -‐ Steve Krug (2005)
• An advanced SEO text: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Secrets by Danny Dover & Erik Dafforn (2011)
Free Online Tools:
• See your site as the search engines do: seo-‐browser.com
• Generate an XML Sitemap for painlessly at: www.xml-‐sitemaps.com • Get a 30-‐day free trial of SEOmoz’s tools: www.seomoz.org/tools • Keyword research tools:
o Google AdWords’ Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator o Google Insights for Search
o Google Trends Keyword Demand Prediction o Microsoft AdCenter Keyword Forecasting o Wordtracker’s Free Basic Keyword Demand
o SEOmoz’s Keyword Difficulty Tool (how hard will it be to rank?) • Search Engine Tools for your Website:
o Bing Webmaster Center: www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster o Google Webmaster Tools: www.google.com/webmasters/tools o SEOmoz Open Site Explorer: www.opensiteexplorer.org