SEO 101 2 | SEO 101 Todays Agenda: Introduction What to expect - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1 | SEO 101 SEO 101

2 | SEO 101 Today’s Agenda: • Introduction • What to expect today • How search engines work • What is SEO? • Foundational SEO • On and off page basics

3 | SEO 101 Today’s Presenters Taylor Pettis Nate Plaunt Sr. Marketing Manager Sr. SEO Strategist @tpettis @NatePlaunt linkd.in/1dsZJAa bit.ly/1LoDdWN

DOES S SEARCH H ENG NGINE NE OPTIMIZA TIMIZATION TION REALL LLY Y MATTER? TTER?

5 | SEO 101 Organic Search is the #1 Driver of Website Traffic From a usage perspective, new studies have found that organic search drives 64% of all web traffic.

6 | SEO 101 Search Engine Optimization FACT: 79% of search engine users say they always/frequently click on the natural search results.

7 | SEO 101 A New Click Rate Study For Organic Results On average, 71.33% of searches resulted in a page one Google organic click. Page two and three get only 5.59% of the clicks. On the first page alone, the first 5 results account for 67.60% of all the clicks and the results from 6 to 10 account for only 3.73%. Page 1 = 71.33% http://marketingland.com/new-click-rate-study-google-organic-results-102149

8 | SEO 101 A New Click Rate Study For Organic Results Ads / Shopping Results Local / Map 31% Click through Results Organic Results 14% Click through

9 | SEO 101 Does SEO Really Matter? YES! If you are not optimizing for search you are already behind your competition.

10 | SEO 101 What to Expect: • A solid understanding of how search engines operate • Learn how to beat out your competition in the search engine results • Actionable tactics you can implement today • Tools to implement SEO

WHA HAT DID YOU SEARCH CH TODAY? Y?

12 | SEO 101 What Did You Search Today?

13 | SEO 101 What Did You Search Today?

14 | SEO 101

15 | SEO 101

16 | SEO 101 How Search Engines Work

17 | SEO 101 Search Engine Algorithm Key Components • Over 200 “ranking factors” help to decide where your site ranks • Roughly 10,000 sub-factors • Fewer ranking factors in algorithm • Heavy reliance on social factors 1

18 | SEO 101 Google’s Algorithm Key Components Top 4 Components ponents 1. Trust / Authority of the Host Domain 2. Popularity of the Specific Page 3. Anchor Text of External Links to the Page 4. On Page Keyword Usage According to 72 SEO’s Surveyed by Moz 1 8

19 | SEO 101 U.S. Search Engine Market Share 64. 4.2 % 2 % 20 20.2 .2 % 12.7 12 .7 % Ever eryone one el else e 2.9 9 % http://www.statista.com/statistics/267161/market-share-of-search-engines-in-the-united-states/

20 | SEO 101 Not all results are organic Organic

21 | SEO 101 What is SEO? Search engine optimization (SE SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un- paid ("organic") search results. Source: Wikipedia

22 | SEO 101 What is SEO? (Simplified) SEO is two things: 1. The practice of making your website as accessible as possible to search engines. 2. Ensuring your website is as useful and relevant as possible to your current and prospective customers.

SEARCH H ENG NGINE NE OPTIMI TIMIZA ZATION TION 10 101 THE HE BASI SICS CS

24 | SEO 101 SEO 201: Ensure your site is relevant and useful to your visitors. SEO 101: Ensure your site is accessible to search engines.

25 | SEO 101 Technical and structural factors

26 | SEO 101 Technical and structural factors • Goal: al: En Ensure ure accessibil essibility ity for r Searc rch h En Engines gines & & Us Users • Foundation of your entire online presence, so it’s important to get it right • Search engines have very clear guidelines for webmasters to follow when building sites

27 | SEO 101 What To Look For • Can your entire website be crawled? • Is your website indexed by the search engines? • Does your website have any errors? • Is your page load time too slow?

28 | SEO 101 How You Can Do This • XML sitemap • Accurate robots.txt file • Google Search Console • Page speed optimization

29 | SEO 101 What to Avoid Any unnecessary hurdle for the search engines • Flash • JavaScript • URL Parameters

30 | SEO 101 Here’s What Humans See

31 | SEO 101 Here’s What Search Engines See (not a glitch)

32 | SEO 101 XML Sitemap The XML sitemap is a map of your website that enables search engines to efficiently crawl and index your site.

33 | SEO 101 XML Sitemap Various tools can help you generate an accurate and up-to-date sitemap: • Screaming Frog Spider • CMS plugins like Yoast • Other web-based sitemap generators - www.xml-sitemaps.com

34 | SEO 101 Robots.txt file The robots.txt file is a directive for all “bots” visiting your site. • It tells them what URLs to crawl or not crawl • Simple text file – can be created with notepad

35 | SEO 101 Robots.txt file – *Pro Tip Use the Robots.txt testing tool in Google Search Console to troubleshoot errors in you file and to test individual URLs

36 | SEO 101 Google Search Console Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is a free resource with tons of valuable information available to all website owners. • https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home

37 | SEO 101 Why Does Speed Matter? Last year, mobile search overtook desktop search. The gap between mobile and desktop will widen • • Fast page load speed is critical to optimizing for mobile • “Mobile -geddon ”

38 | SEO 101 Google PageSpeed Insights PageSpeed Insights is another free tool from Google that gives you a prioritized roadmap on how to fix speed issues on your site. • https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights

39 | SEO 101 On and Off Page Factors

40 | SEO 101 On and Off Page Factors • Goal: al: Demons monstrat trate e Rele levan ance ce and nd Authori thority ty • Search engines want to provide users with search results that are rele levant ant to their query and au authori thoritativ tative in nature. • Building upon a sound technical structure, we make sure that search engines and users are able to fully understand what various pages on your website are about.

41 | SEO 101 On-Page vs. Off-Page SEO On-page On page SEO refers to Off-page page SEO refers to factors that you can control factors “out of your control” directly on your website on other websites Examples of on-page Examples of off-page factors are: factors are: • Metadata • Inbound links • Internal links • Social Media • Content • Mentions • Technical / Structural • Local Directories

42 | SEO 101 What To Look For • Are your on page elements optimized? • What keywords are you ranking for? • Who is linking to you? • Who is linking to your competitors?

43 | SEO 101 On Page SEO Elements • URL • Page Title • H1 heading • H2 headings • Meta Description • Page Copy • Alternative image text

44 | SEO 101 On Page SEO Elements Pa Page Title: Unique and descriptive URL URL: Descriptive and readable by both humans and search engines H1 Heading ng: Unique and descriptive Alt Image age Text: Descriptive and keyword rich H2 Headings ngs: Sub- Pa Page Copy: topics of the page Descriptive, unique, and keyword rich

45 | SEO 101 Page Title Good: Organic Result #1 Bad: Organic Result #245

46 | SEO 101 URL structure Good: Organic Result #1 Bad: Organic Result #260

47 | SEO 101 On Page SEO Elements Meta Descriptions

48 | SEO 101 A Tale of Two Devices

49 | SEO 101 A Tale of Two Devices

50 | SEO 101 What Keywords Do You Rank For? Ground Rules: 1. Don’t “Google yourself” 2. Use a keyword tracking tool - SEM Rush (freemium) - Bright Local (paid)

51 | SEO 101 What Keywords Do You Rank For?

52 | SEO 101 Off Page SEO Elements • Backlinks • Link anchor text • Citations or Mentions

53 | SEO 101 Internal vs. External Links (Backlinks) • Two types of links: Internal and External. • Internal links refer to links within your site, such as navigation links. • External links refer to links outside of your site, such as a link from Wikipedia. • Both are very useful, but for different reasons.

54 | SEO 101 How do Backlinks Help? NewsSite.com ProductSite.com • Backlinks act as “votes” for pages on your site. • Generally speaking, the more links you have from aut uthorita horitativ tive e YourWebsite.com sour urce ces, the more your site is trus usted ed, and the bett etter er your pages s will rank. IndustryBlog.com ShadySite.com

55 | SEO 101 Link Anchor Text The words used in the anchor text of a link to your site helps search engines understand what that page is about. So, if your site is about “Cats” the anchor text cats would be preferable over click here.