optimize your bottom line: what you need to know about seo

Optimize Your Bottom Line:

What You Need to Know About SEO (Search Engine

Optimization)

presented by seOverflow

• www.festooljunkie.com – went from brand new site to over 100K in revenue per month so far

• www.aycockmd.com – plastic surgeon now obtaining 40-60 leads per month from their website not including phone calls

• www.lawcolorado.net – personal injury lawyer positioned for multi million dollar cases

• www.houstonapartmentinsiders.com - apartment locating company, went from brand new site to 70% of a nice business in 12 months

seOverhaul Your Business

Your SEO A-HA

• seOverflow is a search engine optimization and pay per click marketing company in Denver, CO.

• We specialize in offering solutions that enable web design companies, marketing consultants, and other solution providers to offer high end SEO services to their clients.

• We are a Google Adwords Qualified Company, Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassadors, and SEMPO members.

Who Is seOverflow?

The Search Engines want to return the most relevant results for every search query.

So, we have to demonstrate the relevance of our pages to them.

What the Search Engines Want

How the SE’s determine relevance:

• By the titles and tags we place on our pages.

• By what they “see” when they spider our pages.

• By what we and others tell them the pages are about through the links to them.

What the Search Engines Want

• Wizardry or a myth.

• Keywords in the meta tags only.

• An overnight success.

• A one time activity.

• Something that can be successful without good incoming links.

What SEO Is NOT:

Anatomy of The SERP

Organic/Universal Results

Pay Per ClickLocal 7 Pack

Who Gets The Clicks?

Search Engine Market Share

Organic vs PPC

Who Gets The Clicks?

Source: Enquiro, 2006

Advantages of Organic Search Advantages of Paid Search

More traffic on the same keywords Quick to market

Trusted more by the public Easy to cast a wide net

Cheaper over the long term (for some) Ability to geo-target customers

Not prone to click fraud Control over traffic levels

Organic vs Paid Search

The ROI Of SEO

• On-page Optimization – research, planning and implementation. Anything and everything that can be controlled on the website.

• Link Building (Off-page optimization) – the process of getting other websites to link to your website. Think of links as popularity votes.

SEO From 30,000 Feet

On-page Optimization

Research, Planning and Implementation

• DO NOT GUESS

• Information is available

for free regarding

volume, competition,

and more!

Keyword Research: Don’t Just Guess

Keyword Research is the process of discovering for which keywords you should optimize. KW research is critical. Without it, your SEO efforts may be misdirected.

Keyword Research: The Cornerstone of SEO

Keyword Research Steps

1. Brainstorming

2. Use Keyword Research Tools

3. Check The Competition Levels, Choose The Keywords

• How much traffic does the keyword receive?

• How likely is someone using that keyword to reach your site going to convert into a customer/lead/sale?

• How competitive is the keyword? (use allintitle: operator)

• How much budget and time do you have?

• TOOL: Google Adwords Keyword Tool:• https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Is This A Good Keyword?

Keyword Research: The Long Tail

• The Keyword Matrix is an optimization map showing which pages will be optimized for which keywords.

• Typically we target 1-5 closely related keywords per page. (3 on avg.)

• Many times we suggest adding new pages to existing sites.

• We use the keywords identified in the matrix as your main ‘rank checking’ keywords.

The Keyword Matrix

The Keyword Matrix Example

URL Keyword 1 Keyword 2 Keyword 3

/home.html donuts best donuts tasty donuts

/chocolatedonuts.html chocolate donuts chocolate frosted donuts

/sprinkedonuts.html sprinkle donuts rainbow sprinkle donuts chocolate sprinkle donuts

• Spiderability

• Accessibility (Broken Links, W3C, File Size etc.)

• Title Tags

• Meta Tags

• H Tags

• Image Optimization

• Outbound Links

• Keyword Prominance

Critical On-pageOptimization Components

Link Building

Strategies For Finding and Acquiring Powerful Links

Link Building Defined

• Link Building is the practice of obtaining links from external websites into your own website in order to obtain higher search engine rankings and/or direct referrals.

Link Building

On-page Vs Off-Page

Link Building Basics

• Links as “votes”– When another website links to yours, that site is essentially

casting a “vote” for your website. The more votes you have the better, although in this game the quality of the votes you receive is very important too.

• Not All Votes Are Equal: Some Link Quality Factors– Page Rank (PR)*

– Keyword rich text link

– Number of outbound links on the page

– Age of the link• Link becomes more trusted with time

Getting Links

Start By Spying On Your Competitor’s Links

Use OpenSiteExplorer to view most of the links coming into your competitor’s websites.

http://www.opensiteexplorer.com

Which of these links can you get? Any idea generated by looking at their strategy?

Getting Links

• Directory Submissions– Paid Directories

– Free Directories

– Niche Directories

– General Directories

• Content Creation and Publication– In addition to articles, also consider creating videos, slideshows

etc and distributing across the web

– Guest articles

– Article directories (ezinearticles.com)

– Guest blog posts

Getting Links

• Press Releases– Not just a tool for the traditional PR company anymore

– Easy way to generate some text links for your product or service

– Press releases often will show up quite high in search results, at least for a while

• Exposure, plus a lasting link for relevant keywords

• Resource Pages– Look within relevant industry

– Often can get these links for free

– Present your website as a resource that should be included in the owner’s list

– Quality

Getting Links• Paid Links

– Against Google webmaster guidelines, much controversy

– Still a widely used technique

• Sponsorships– Within relevant industry

• If your site deals with cars, consider sponsoring a car club

– Local Sponsorships• Sports leagues, parks, etc.- the Page Rank surprise!

• Community Involvement

Links That Will Not Count

• 302 redirects

• Javascript

• No-followed links

• Links on pages that are not indexed

Local SEO

Optimizing For the Google 7 Pack

Anatomy of The SERP

Organic/Universal Results

Pay Per ClickLocal 7 Pack

The Keys To Local SEO

• Submit/claim and optimize your business listing with Google Place Pages (formerly Google Local Business center) and other search engines

• “Locally Off-page Optimize” your business with citations and reviews

• “Locally On-page Optimize” your website

Off-page Optimization For Local


Create free profiles on:• Google Maps www.google.com/local/add

• Yahoo Local http://listings.local.yahoo.com/

• Bing Local https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx

**Check the status of current profiles with www.GetListed.org **

If you never do anything else, do this!

Create Local Business Listings

A Google Maps Listing

Google Maps Dashboard

• Use your main keyword phrase and complementary terms in your profile descriptions

• Grab the long tail by including:

Your products and services

The brands you carry

The locations you serve

Anything else important in your niche

Optimize Your Biz Listings

• Choose – or create – the right categories• Give your listing attributes

Optimize Your Biz Listings

Citations, aka web references, are web pages that cite or mention your business or web site.

They do not have to contain a link!

Create Citations

• Use the same name, address and phone number everywhere online and offline.

• Go to the sources of business data and standardize there.

• Use a local database directory - check out UniversalBusinessListing.org or Localeze.com

Standardization Builds Trust

• Citations are important in building Google’s trust in the information it has about you.

• Citations can drive targeted traffic to your business.

• Citations are easier to get than links – many are free.

Keep Creating Citations!

Reviews and Local Search


The Impact of Reviews on Local Search

“Online reviews are second only to personal advice from a friend as the driver of purchase decisions; user reviews are more influential than third-party reviews. ("Web users and web community," Rubicon Consulting, Inc. October 2008)”

“81% of online holiday shoppers read online customer reviews (Nielson Online, December 2008)”

“86% of consumers read online business reviews before making purchasing decisions; 90% of whom say they trust these reviews. (Kudzu.com survey of 600 users, December 2008)”

“The Trust in Advertising survey of 26,000+ found that Consumer Recommendations are the most credible form of advertising. ("Social Media Marketing: The Right Strategy for Tough Economic Times" Awareness, 2008)”

Statistics from BazaarVoice.com See more at http://www.bazaarvoice.com/industryStats.html

The Impact of Reviews

ONLY FROM HAPPY CUSTOMERS!• Have a plan in place. • Use surveys and follow-up emails. • “Bribe” people to submit reviews.• Send reviewers to a variety of web sites.

TIP: Ask for Reviews

On-page Optimization for Local

Making Your Website Work in Local Search

• Build relevance and trust in your location+keywords.

• Do all the usual things when optimizing - title, description, h tags, content, good internal linking, etc – but with a geographic slant.

On Page Optimization

• Place your full street address and local phone number on all pages of your website.

• Optimize your Contact or About page for your business name and location.

• Use the hcard microformat to make your location unmistakable to the Search Engines.

Where Are You?

• If your business name doesn’t make it very clear where you are and what you do, then use a tagline to communicate that information to both humans and Search Engine spiders.

TIP: Give Your Biz a Tagline

What’s Wrong With This?

• Create a separate page for each location• Use local info on each of these pages• Link internally to location pages, using the

right link text• Use other terms on the page that will help

the Search Engines understand where you are: street intersections, highway exits, what’s nearby, nicknames for neighborhoods, etc.

TIP: For Multiple Locations:

Outsourcing Your SEO

What To Do and Not To Do

• Experience• Ability to “see the light” of possible SEO

opportunities• Ability to diagnose and repair complex

issues• Time savings• Additional revenue streams (if

outsourcing client work)

Why Outsource SEO?

• Guarantee rankings• Use ‘black hat’ or hacker-ish techniques• Only perform link building through

reciprocal links and link farms• Only optimize pages for search engines

and not for visitors• Don’t have good references that you

can speak with

Avoid SEO Firms That…

• Got Any Questions?• Write “pres” on your business card if

you would like a copy emailed to you.

• Follow us on social media• twitter.com/seoverflow• facebook.com/seoverflow• Linkedin.com/companies/seoverflow

Q & A

• http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/css-and-seo.shtml

• http://www.pearsonified.com/2007/01/get_53_percent_more_searches_with_one_tweak.php

• http://www.e-gain.co.uk/online_marketing/news_articles/Search%20Engine%20Marketing/4

• http://www.seofaststart.com

• http://www.seomoz.org

• http://www.shimonsandler.com

• http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/css-and-seo.shtml

• http://blog.compete.com/2008/02/08/search-market-share-january-yahoo-microsoft-google-ask-aol-msn-live/

Sources

optimize your bottom line: what you need to know about seo

Self Improvement