introduction to search engine optimisation – seo (getting your website found in the search...
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Introduction to search engine optimisation – SEO (getting your website found in the search engines)
Ann Stanley MD Anicca Digital Solutions
Agenda• Introduction• How search engines work?• Auditing your website• How to improve your listings in the search
engines?– Ensuring your site is indexed– On-page optimisation– Off-page optimisation
• Other resources
UK web visits week ending 04/09/2010.
Google 91.85% Bing 3.04%Yahoo 2.84% Other 2.27%
Source Hitwise - The table shows websites for the industry 'All Categories', ranked by Visits for the week ending 04/09/2010.
Search engine visits
Search engine results
Sponsored links - paid
Display options
Organic or natural results
Universal results – news, shopping etc
Targeting local customers through Google Places (map) or pay per click
Summary of different results in Google• Google.com – used by USA and English speakers anywhere in the world• Google.co.uk – defaults to “web results” or select “Pages from the UK” –
both biased towards UK (local) results• Organic or natural results on the left• Pay per click or sponsored listings at the top and on the right hand side of
the results• Local map with business listings from Google Places• “Universal results” inclusion of other results at the top of the organic
results:– Images or videos– Shopping results– News, blogs, Twitter (Tweets)
• Google Caffeine – “faster and recent” results including more news, blogs and Twitter posts
• Google Instant – results shown as you type each letter
Position Click Through Rate1 42.30%
2 11.92%
3 8.44%
4 6.03%
5 4.86%
6 3.99%
7 3.37%
8 2.98%
9 2.83%
10 2.97%
11 0.66%
21 0.29%
Aim for the top organic positions
73.5% click positions 1-5
A search engine is made of three basic components:
A Spider or Robot
An automated browser, it searches the web for new websites and changes to websites then views the web pages and strips out the text content
A storage system or database
A record of all the pages viewed by the Spider
A matching process or relevancy algorithm
The rules that tell the search engine how to determine what would be relevant to your search
How Search Engines work
3 key factors that help you get high rankings in the search engines
1. Web site has to be spidered by the search engines for them to index your content
2. You must have relevant keyphrase-rich content on your website (on-page optimisation)
3. Your website must be considered authorative for your chosen topics/sector (off-page optimisation)
There are 85 – 100 factors used in the algorithms of the major search engines!
Site:www.anicca-solutions.com
140 pages indexed in Google
Each page has keyphrase rich URLS, titles and description tags
Pages indexed in each search engine
Google Yahoo Bing
www.anicca-solutions.com 140 185 86
Reasons why your site is not indexed• Not submitted eg a new site• Technical barriers eg
– Flash (also iPhones do not display Flash images)– Frames– Some Javascript drop down menus
• Some content management systems and ecommerce software produce complex URLS
• Pop-up windows• Text as graphics• Robots.txt blocking spiders• Re-directs• Password protected content• Hosted overseas (a problem for .com websites)
• Title Tag• Meta Tags (description, keyword etc)• Content• Heading content• Frequency of phrases (how many times they are
mentioned)• Density of phrases (proportion of the text)• Internal Link structure with anchor text)• Image optimisation (file names, Alt tags)• Avoid Spam techniques and over-optimising• Create new ongoing content on your site eg a blog
On-page factors
Page plan with levels of monthly searches vs competition (results in Google)
On-page optimisation
Kathey Bailey leads Written Communication Skills Workshop
• Homepage ~500 words• Topic pages~350 words• Target 1-2 keyphrases per page• Keyword density = the percentage of all the text on a
page represented by a word or phrase• This is how a search engine understands what a page
is “about”• Keyword density target of 2% to 6% • Above 7% the text will appear repetitive
Keyword density and page length
• It’s important to have different title tags on different web pages
• Give the search engines multiple access points to your website
• The titles will reflect the content of the specific page: e.g. camping, real ale brewery, self-catering holiday cottages
Multiple Title tags
Create ongoing content with Integrated blog with Retweet & Facebook
Checklist for optimising your website• Carryout keyphrase research• Prioritise your keyphrase by high search volume and low competition
(use pay per click data if you have it?)• Produce a topic and a page plan (ie which pages are to be optimised
with which phrases)• Write new optimised content or existing and new pages, (URL, title,
description, headers, keyphrase density, anchor text, image optimisation)
• Upload your content through your CMS and add new links from the homepage for new pages eg in the footer (you may need to get your developer to do this)
• Add new optimised content every week via a blog • Review results using Webmaster Tools and Analytics
• Domain age• Domain name• Filename/full URL• Directory listings• External Link Structure• Anchor text of inbound links• Page quality of inbound links• Social bookmarks• Reviews and testimonials• Facebook “Likes”
Off-page factors
Key to Google’s algorithm:• Indicator of value: PageRank• Indicator of relevance: Anchor text
Best links from:• Highly trusted sites (high PageRank)• Pages with relevant content• Your keywords as anchor text
Why are Links important?
• Content that people will want to link to• Free stuff• Blog posts• Useful documents/articles• Online tools• Video and audio• Funny or entertaining content
• Publicise the content• Email relevant website owners• Submit the page to social bookmarking
tools• Allow others to promote your pages
Getting Links
Content Placement and Article Syndication
• There are many sites that allow you to upload content relevant to your business and create your own link to your site, with your choice of optimised anchor text
• Not only does this increase the traffic to the site, it also improves the PageRank and therefore position of the site in the search engine results
• Create a network of incoming links that builds steadily and gradually over time
• Focus on getting links from authoritative websites with high page rank
• Ensure links have consistent inbound URLs
• Get keywords into the inbound links (anchor text)
• Focus on the major directories and article sites
• Avoid link farms and link exchanges
Your linkage strategy
Other resources
• Free workshops (2011?) – www.ebusinessclub.biz• www.anicca-solutions.com - free guides to download
from homepage; plus Library and Blog pages• Industry sites www.econsultancy.com
www.figarodigital.com • Key blogs – eg Marketing Pilgrim, SearchNewz,
WebProNews, SearchEngineland
