Session 1

Understanding SEO &

Onsite SEO

Grant Ruxton

Make Google Love Your

Website & Deliver New

Customers

What is SEO

What SEO aims to do

Where SEO is carried out

How we do it

Why SEO is important

Onsite SEO

Keyword Research

Checking your site

Overview

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the

process of making your website as best

suited for a search engine to value as

possible

As you can see from the definition Google

provides, it isn’t simply a one stop shop to

make your site get more visitors

What is SEO?

Help new visitors find your site

Help existing visitors have an easy time of

using your site

Increase traffic for your site

Increase search rankings for your site

Increase sales

What SEO aims

to do

SEO is carried out in two areas: Onsite and

Offsite

In this session I’ll be talking mostly about

Onsite SEO factors and giving an overall

view of how it works

In the next session, I’ll be looking more at

Offsite SEO and Local SEO factors that a site

would need to address

So let’s see how we carry out SEO.

Where SEO is

carried out

Through a carefully thought out process that

is a mixture of pre-emptive research and

proactive work

SEO is always a long term process. Sites

can’t just become Number 1 in their niche

within a few days

It takes a timely investment to see any type of

change and improvements happen for a site

How we do it

There is no such thing as a perfect website

Every site has its flaws and areas that it could

be performing better in

Think of SEO as taking a car to get to get an

MOT. The car might be brand new out of the

factory, or 15 years old and still going strong

You won’t know if your site has any glaring

problems until a professional gets under the

hood and has a proper look at the engine

That’s why most SEO campaigns start off

with Onsite SEO

Why SEO is

important

So what is Onsite SEO?

This area of SEO covers a number of

different factors

Almost every piece of a website can be

affected and improved with Onsite SEO

From the name of a website URL to how a

company’s contact details are displayed to

the way you link in-between pages

Onsite SEO looks at a plethora of different

issues which can determine how a search

engine, web crawler, or me and you view a

site

Onsite SEO

Some of the main factors for Onsite SEO

include:

• Search Engine friendly (and user friendly)

URLs

• Title & Description tags

• Natural keyword usage (Latent Semantic

Indexing)

• Sitemaps

• Robots.txt

• H1 H2 tags and proper HTML formatting

• Image use and alt tags

• Text links with attributes

• 404 (Page Not Found) Errors

• Internal Linking

• Information Architecture

• Site Speed

• Mobile Optimisation (very important in

2015)

• Onsite Penalties and Algorithm Updates

Onsite SEO

Before we look in to these factors, it’s vitally

important that we start by figuring out what a

site’s message is

We need to know what a site has to offer us

and what terms we, as the owners of the site,

use to describe the services and products we

provide

That is why I’m now going to look at Keyword

Research; the starting point for Onsite SEO

Onsite SEO

These are some tools which can help with

engaging in Onsite SEO:

• Keyword Research -

http://www.longtailpro.com

• Screaming Frog -

http://screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider

• Onsite Analysis -

http://netpeak.co.uk/soft/netpeak-

checker

Onsite Tools

It is the cornerstone of successful SEO

Not everyone will find your site from

searching by brand name

Many people search online for things in a

very literal (almost abstract) sense,

something many websites forget about when

trying to figure out what their ideal keywords

are

Unless you’re a company like McDonalds

which only needs to rank for brand terms

(e.g. Happy Meal instead of kids meal), you

have to figure out what terms are best

associated for what your site provides

This is where we start the process of

Keyword Research

Keyword

Research

So how do we discover traffic driving

keywords? There are a number of methods,

all of which should be considered

• Using the Keyword Tool -https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/Home

• Analysing competitor’s onsite signals

• Brainstorming

• Analysing historic traffic and sales driving

keywords

• Looking for potential evidence of keyword

penalties

• Seeing what keywords your competitors

use and to what effect

• Seeing how they optimize their keywords

• Checking what meta data and title tags

you competitors use

• Checking what URL extensions they use

too

Keyword

Research

Remember that it helps to understand what

your customers are searching for

This research is the first opportunity to tailor

your site to customer needs

It is great at helping us to discover untapped

areas of the market we inhibit

It helps us target users at important stages of

the customer journey

Keyword

Research

The keyword planner from Google is where a

lot of keyword research takes place

It helps anyone to get an idea of the audience

size that is out there looking for what you

have to offer

Surmising the size of this potential audience

can only be calculated after your confident

with which terms you want to really go after

Keyword

Research

The Keyword

Planner

On the right you’ll see the different options a

visitor gets when accessing the Keyword

Planner. It can be daunting, but it is great to

experiment with this resource to better

understand it

We can use any of these four options to get

keyword volumes and carry out research in

different ways

I’ll be showing you what happens when we

search for the volume of keywords based on

ad groups

The Keyword

Planner

This is the information the Keyword Planner

provides any user

When we’ve decided on which keywords to

start attempting to rank for, we can then start

to track how each important term ranks for

the site

We do this using a rank checker

Keyword

Research

Sign up for a free account on Accuranker at

http://bit.ly/1fMM4Pa

Add as many keywords that you think are

right for your business

Find out exactly where you rank

Build a successful keyword strategy

Monitor your site rankings whenever you

want

Where does my

site rank?

When we’re happy with the keywords we

want the site to rank for and which terms

we’re going to be keeping an eye on, it’s time

to take a step back from the onsite content

and ask ourselves:

• Is suitable meta data in place?

• Is the content suitable for the target

keywords?

• Could the site be structured more

effectively?

• Is the site easy for users to navigate?

• Is social media being integrated

effectively?

Get Google to

find my site

And let’s not forget those technical issues

we’ve been working on too. With good

content on site, we have to ensure technical

factors are all sound and ask ourselves:

• Can search engines crawl the site

effectively?

• Is the URL structure SEO friendly?

• Are there any coding errors?

• Is the robots.txt file in place and properly

formatted?

• Can the site speed be improved?

• Does the site work well on a mobile

device?

Get Google to

find my site

To ensure all our onsite work is working, we

have to put measurables in place that can be

tracked and easy to report on.

Common measurements include:

• Keyword positions using an online rank

tracker like AccuRanker

• Traffic from natural search from Google

Analytics

• Traffic to landing pages targeted by SEO

• Sales and Goal conversions from natural

traffic

Looking at these factors on a regular basis

will help to adapt the campaign we have for

Onsite SEO, and then reflect that work in how

we approach Offsite SEO

Measuring Onsite

SEO

In this session we looked at:

What SEO is

Its importance

Onsite SEO

Keyword research

Keyword rankings

Onsite SEO measurement

In the next session we’ll be looking at:

Offsite SEO

Local SEO

Summary

Thank Youwww.boyddigital.co.uk

@boyddigital