Search Engine Optimisation workbook

Transcription

1 Search Engine Optimisation workbook Sub-title here

2 Search Engine Optimisation workbook SEO: Getting Started When referring to SEO the focus is on organic search results not paid for traffic from Google Adwords / Facebook Advertising. Figure 1 highlights the position of organic search results. Google has recently changed the page to reduce the separation between paid and organic search results. Paid adverts are now defined with a small AD logo to the left of the listing. Figure 1: Search Results Page When we think about search optimisation (SEO) it s easier to think about your experience with search engines.

3 The principles of good SEO revolve around user experience. The majority of major search engines focus on the user experience and strive to provide results that ADD VALUE to the user. The fact that you believe your products / services are the best in the world, carries no real weight. When carried out correctly the aim of good SEO is to drive the user to the correct and best page within the website that best matched the phrase typed into the search engine. When your using a search engine, how many times do you go back to the search listing and click the next link in the results page. Ask yourself the question: Why do you do this? There will be many reasons but mainly the page you land on within the resulting website is not suitable and your journey starts again. So good SEO is: Creating content / pages that answer the users question. In terms of building content that performs well in search, EVERY page in a website is a HOME page. SEO: How much Traffic is Search There are a wide range of search engines available today with the majority of traffic being generated via the Google search engine, however Yahoo and Bing do take some traffic as shown in table 1. Search Engine Percentage Share Google 89.9 Bing 5.9 Yahoo 2.8 Others 1.4 Table 1: Search Share in UK SEO News July 2013

4 SEO: Objectives Typically objectives for SEO are based around the following key areas: Position Reflect high volume, high intent phrases Visitor Good for non-transactional sites (clicks per months Outcome Volume of actions carried out on the site registrations / sales etc. Market Share Your share of a search for a phrase. Cost Aimed at reducing cost per sale. Action 1: State your objectives for Search Engine Optimisation:

5 SEO: Understand the User One of the main issues with the majority of websites is the lack of targeting for the specified user group. Understanding how the main user is helps define all the marketing actions for a business. It will identify how the user searches, the types of keyword being typed and the messaging they expect to see. It is correct that you should be looking to create a user experience. A good number of brands are going down the route of user experience; it s more about how they interact with the brand and ensuring they have a good experience. We should have a view that that all users are unique however we tend to segment users into specific groups. Action 2: What do your users look like, what are their interests? Think about the user: Are they business based or individuals? What are their defining characteristics? Characteristics are the differentiators for instance: Age / Gender / Age / Type of Business / Sector What identifies your key customers? Try and identify your core user groups as these are the ones that need to stay on your website. The terminology they use is extremely important for creating content and targeting keyword phrases. Characteristic A USER B USER C USER

6 SEO: Getting Found There are four key areas for good SEO. These are identified as the following: Keywords Page Titles Page Content In-Bound Links SEO: Keywords Keywords are defined as the phrases typed into the search engine. What the user is using to find your products. META Keywords: used to be defined in the header section of a page are no longer recognised as positioning within search engine listing pages for the major search engines. If you website is making use of these they need to be relevant to the page content and also small in volume, as some search engines will see this a spam. You need to be thinking about how your main user describe the products / services you deliver. Very often there is a mismatch between the words you will use and the phrases being used by the user. Getting this part correct is a good start to creating pages that work for search. Niche Mapping: Niche Mapping is a technique used to generate ideas for identifying keywords / keywords phrases and also possible content that can be developed to bring in searches around the topic of the website. It involves starting with a top level phrase this may be a product / service and then brainstorming all possible different routes that can be developed from this.

7 If we take the generic phrase : NECKLACE the keyword map may very well start to look at the following areas: Length Type of metal Gift birthday / anniversary How to wear Specific brands Accessories rings / bracelets etc Fashion trends celebrity Summer / Spring / Winter / Autumn Male / Female In addition to the topics you should be taking note of phrases that would be used to find content in relation to the niche areas. This type of thinking assists with creating focused content. Action 3: Brainstorm all key phrases that are relevant for pages on your website take the main products / service you deliver and begin working on these.

8 When you have a list of keyword phrases there are a range to tools that will enable you to expand these further to identify phrases that you may not have identified. Tools that are useful are: Google keyword planner part of Google Adwords this tool presents keyword phrases that generate impression o the Google AD network. When reviewing the lists of keywords take note of the CPC values this will help you identify keywords that convert the higher the cost per click in relation to the other keywords the more chance of conversion. Google Trends checking similar keyword phrases against each other to see the relative search trends across time and in different geographic regions. Google Webmasters Tools shows keywords that result in the website receiving impressions in search listings. SEMRush Commercial tool with a free level access that allows for a level of keyword and competitor research to be carried out. When you have a list of keyword phrases you need to identify the popularity and competitiveness on search results. Are you operating in an A class or B Class market? Who else appears for the search phrases you re targeting? If they re large companies dominating the first page of Google then positioning for that particular search phrase may be difficult. This is where long-tail keywords start to influence. A long-tail keyword is more niche and a lot more targeted meaning search competition is generally lower giving you more opportunity to capture relevant traffic and gain higher positions. The next stage is to assess effectiveness of the keywords and identify the competition. Assessing effectiveness is carried out by searching Google using couple of modifiers and recording the number of pages returned. Search 1: nikki lissoni necklace Search 2: nikki lissoni necklace Search 3: intitle: nikki lissoni necklace Search 4: intitle: nikki lissoni necklace

9 Action 4: Review key phrases to find out which ones are popular search terms: Number of Searches Key phrase Search 1 Search 2 Search 3 Search 4

10 You re looking to identify phrases which are not being targeted effectively in phrase based and intitle searches. These provide a more focused page for search. This is a lengthy exercise and will provide lots of data. Action 5: Identify Top Competitors for key phrases. Select your top keyword phrases and carryout Google searches to identify the sites appearing in the top positions. This will help you understand who your competition in search is. Phrase Position 1 Position 2 Position 3 Position 4 Position 5 Position 6 Position 7 Position 8 Position 9 Position 10

11 SEO: Page Titles & Descriptions In regards to page titles this is probably the most important part of a web page in terms of search position. The significance of these 2 areas is the Organic Advert in the search results. The Page Title is the Blue Link along with the description showing as the black text as shown in figure 2. Figure 2: Page Titles and Descriptions. The page title is the text that appears at the top of the web browser as shown in figure 3 and should be set as part of the webpage settings when adding your webpage to your website via your content management system.

12 Figure 3: Page title location in browser bar. The page title needs to be: Unique for every page Contain the main keyword phrases that describe the content and value of the page Possibly have a level of geo-targeting based on location Reflect user intent in regard to the page content Not be to long as this can be seen as spam Reflect your brand at the end Modifying the page titles will result in an improvement with search position. The level of keyword research carried out will assist, but changing the page title to reflect more the value of the page and link better to the page content results in improvements to the website position. The description is a selection of text that shows underneath the page title in the search results. It provides you the site owner with the ability to clearly show the user the benefit, value and direction you wish them to take. If this was an advert in a magazine you would class this as the CALL TO ACTION what is it you want them to do. Action 6: Review your current Page Titles Creating compelling page title requires you to start looking at the page titles being found in search results. When doing this activity, you need to be critical of the page titles being shown. Ask yourself the following question: If I was looking for this product / service in Google search would I click that link?

13 YES / NO To identify you page titles you can run this commend in Google. It should return all the pages Google has indexed for you website. Site: For you key pages you can focus this further by searching for your identified keywords that you wish to target and start to get an understanding of the pages that would appear in search results. If the keyword is: Nikki Lissoni Necklace The search string is: Nikki Lissoni Necklace site: Carry out the exercise to identify the Page Titles for your chosen keyword phrases. If the page Title is good then tick the column and the same for the description. In the improvements column highlight any changes that you think can be made localisation, improve the intent with words like BUY / Register or add more value and benefit to the page title. Keyword Title Description Improvements This is a lengthy exercise but does give a return on your time. When choosing where to start with optimising the page titles and descriptions you need to work on the areas of the site which you gather the best return.

14 On ecommerce websites category optimisation is a good place to start. Product pages are good place to start. Make use of the page template to think about your page changes. Duplicate as required Action 7: Create Compelling Page Titles & Descriptions Page Name: Page Purpose: Page Keywords / Focus: Page Description: Page Title:

15 SEO: Page Content Once you ve modified the page titles to reflect the keyword focus the actual content on the page needs to reviewed in order to ensure the Page Titles relate to the content and your providing good relevant content to the user and also the search engine. Google uses Latent Semantic Indexing, which gives it the ability to recognise words that are similar, meaning repetition of the same phrase in a document isn t necessary. With all the changes in the Google Algorithms the focus for good SEO is around high quality content that adds value to the user. When creating content are you: Providing benefit Letting the user clearly see benefits Are you using case studies / testimonials to develop trust Including clear call to actions both visually and textually Do you calls to actions stand out or are they in a nice colour that helps them blend into the page Good content can result in people finding and sharing via blogs and social media. Question: Is your content short or do you spend time creating long articles that have lots of value and benefit. Question: If investigating an area, will you read content that helps you understand and has clear points that help, or a short article that covers the basics but doesn t really tell you what to do. When we look at our website content especially when we look at creating blog articles, they tend to be short and to the point. Is this something people would want to share in most cases the answer is no.

16 Action 8: Review the content Take you key pages and review the content. Page Name: Length of Page Calls to Action -Visual Calls to Action -Text Keyword Focus Clear Benefits Testimonials/Case Study Clear User Route Good Graphics Easy to Read Does it Engage Page Name: Length of Page Calls to Action -Visual Calls to Action -Text Keyword Focus Clear Benefits Testimonials/Case Study Clear User Route Good Graphics Easy to Read Does it Engage

17 SEO: InBound Links Inbound links to a website are still valid if from relevant sources. Google in particular is active in lowering the position of websites that have undertaken various link building activities and are taking strong action against website that have tried to manipulate search position through in-bound links. InBound links are a vote of confidence in the website. It shows that the content adds value and is worthy of a mention by other businesses / individuals who have benefitted from working with your organisation. We can use a number of tools to locate the number of inbound links to a website: Opensiteexplorer - Ahrefs Google use command -site: Al of these tools can be used to check where you competitors are located and give you ideas of where to search out relevant and good quality links by observing there link profiles. Action 9: Identifying Links for your website Site OSE AHREFS GOOGLE Action 10: Identifying Links for your competitors Taking the competitors identified in Action 5. Site OSE AHREFS GOOGLE

18 Action 11: Identifying Links for your competitors Review the link profiles of the competitors and build a list of sites that you are going ot investigate to see if you can obtain a link. Look for blogs and relevant directories in your target location that are relevant to your industry sector. Site Competitor Reason for link SEO: Competitor Research Using the list of your main competitors you should start to analyse there websites by looking at some of the areas we ve discussed. Review their websites and start looking at the page title and descriptions along with the content on the pages. Is it compelling, are they making good use of content and calls to action to drive visitor engagement. Look at the social media interact and see if they are generating shares and likes. What type of content are they creating in regards to Facebook and Blogs look at the style of articles and also the types of imagery being used. Also review the website using additional ranking tools such as: Take note of Alexa scores and also the amount of traffic being driven to the website as these are all indicators as to your ability to out position them.

19 Action 12: Competitor Metrics Review the various sections and grade the site out of 10 for the various points. Site Quality Content Optimised Titles Good Content CTA SEO: Monitoring Understanding issues and problems with the website will help you identify areas that need improving. Google Webmaster tools will highlight areas that need to be addressed. This is a free tool that is available from Google and can easily be setup on a website. It provides full tracking of the websites effectiveness in the Google search engine. The tool provides the ability to identify: Pages not found on the website Search phrases that cause the website to appear in Google Search Results In-bound Link to the website known seen by Google Rich content within the website Duplicate and Long Page Titles Site load times across desktop and mobile All the areas listed can help you understand problems within the website that may be causing a problem with the way Google is indexing the website. Microsoft and a number of other search engines also provide access to similar tools through the search interface. Dependant on your wishes to be seen in other search engines then setting up the corresponding webmaster toolsets is recommended.

20 Iin addition to Webmasters tools Google Analytics will give you an insight into the volume of traffic accessing the website from search engines and which particular ones. By learning about segments and filters you can identify how the traffic interacts with website, in regards actions and result of landing on a specific page. Analytics will also allow for 404 error pages to be identified and help with ensuring that visitors actually receive a good experience when they access your website. SEO: Useful Tools Traffic Travis: A desktop application that allows tracking of a number of keywords phrases to show position in search results. The tool has a free downloadable version which does have limits but will give you a basic level of monitoring. It also enables some keyword research to be carried out along with paid advertising analysis for keyword phrases identifying competitors and their paid adverts. SEMRush Mentioned previously this is a paid for SEO toolset that shows ranking positions and enables your site to be compared to major competitors. Like Traffic Travis the toolset provides paid advertising analysis along with in-bound link analysis. This is a very comprehensive tool for working in SEO activities. WooRank WooRank will provide an on the fly analysis of your website or a competitors to identify a range of technical functions in regards to the website being checked.. It scores the website out of a hundred and shows you a scale to identify the perceived uplift and difficulty level in making the amendments to improve that particular area of search. Screaming Frog: A downloadable tool that crawl a website and extracts key data such as page name, page title, meta description etc. It also goes further in looking for page not found issues alongside analysing the size of images and alt attributes within the website. This provides a good quick technical analysis of a website.

21 SEO: Action Planning Search Engine Optimisation is about creating good quality content that engages with the user. The steps you have taken in this workbook will assist with the key steps in building content for search: Identification of keywords Creating Page Titles and Descriptions Structuring Content that drives action Building in-bound links that bring value SEO activities are on-going. There is a continual need to be checking and developing content that can be used to bring traffic. As with any digital marketing technique, SEO is a practice that if done correctly works however all traffic ends up at the website. If your website is poorly constructed and the content non-engaging traffic will not stay and the traffic generation activities become a wasted action. Action 13: Monthly Action Plan STEP 1: Review webmasters tools and identify pages that may be developing 404 errors missing pages This may also be set as a Custom Report in Google Analytics. See the Google Analytics Workbook for more details. STEP 2: Create some monthly metrics to monitor that show the number of visits to the website for the various search engines. Identify additional metrics to show how this traffic interacts with the site, looking at number of pages, bounce rates, actions carried out and time on site. This will give you an idea of what happens if you get traffic from a search engine. Look at identifying the pages within the website the traffic lands on what are the top landing pages. Review Webmasters and identify keywords that have high impression and good position click in to see the page that usually gets clicked and identify if correct and can it be improved in terms of Page Title / Content and Description.

22 STEP 3 Identify area where your content may be weak and needs improving. Look at the competitors sites to see areas they are moving into, or content they are providing. STEP 4 Build links, carryout a review of the competitors to identify new areas of opportunity for in-bound links. Create good quality content articles that add value and promote via the website and social media channels to drive traffic.