Search Engine Optimization Guide CONTENTS. 1.0 What is SEO?

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1 This guide will go over what Search Engine Optimization (better known as SEO) is and basic updates you can make to your site to help your website rank higher on search engines. CONTENTS Search Engine Optimization Guide 1.0 What is SEO? Steps in making your site more search engine friendly Look good in the search results Help search engines understand images Update and keep going Useful Google Tools What is SEO? Search engine optimization (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. In general, the higher you are ranked on a search page, the more visible you are and the more visits you will have. Keep in mind SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, news search and more. 2.0 Steps in making your site more search engine friendly We have optimized our sites to be very search engine friendly, but it takes you and your content to really bring it to life! WIth SEO there is no one magical thing you can do to make your site rank higher. Instead it s the little things that matter such as adding a description about an image when you upload it, making sure the title of your site is informative and to the point, frequently adding new content, and so on. The rest of this guide will go over the different things you can do that effect search engine results. Search Engine Optimization Guide 1

2 3.0 Look good in the search results A Your page title is used as a suggestion for the title in Google s search results. Describe your business in a concise, informative phrase. B Domain names are an important part of Google s search results. Choose a descriptive and easy-to-read domain name for your website. How to update your title and description: To update your title (A) and description (C) login to your dashboard (admin) area of your site. Then navigation to the Settings > General Settings page. C Meta descriptions are page summaries often used by Google and other search engines on the search results page. Write unique descriptions for each page in 160 characters or less. On the General Settings page the table to the top left About this Team here you will find the Team Name and Team Description this is where you can update your title and description. Search Engine Optimization Guide 2

3 4.0 Help Search Engines Understand Images Whenever you upload an image there are a few things you should always do to help with SEO. A Give your images short, descriptive file names / titles. such as ourteam-at-nationals.jpg or big-green-field.jpg B The alt (Alternate Text)attribute describes the image. This helps Google understand what s in the image. How to make your images SEO friendly After you upload an image (or any type of file can use these same techniques) to any page or new post you will be prompted with options before you insert the image into the post. These options (see image below) are where you can add all the information described in this section. After you put in the proper information click Insert into Post to add your new SEO image. C Write a short caption on the page below each image. Put important information in text rather than images. *For more information on how to add photos to pages and new posts see the online help documentation Search Engine Optimization Guide 3

4 5.0 Update And Keep Going PROVIDE USEFUL CONTENT AND KEEP IT UP TO DATE Your website is like a virtual storefront. You wouldn t leave a store unattended for 6 months, right? Keep your site fresh by constantly adding news posts, keeping pages up to date, and updating and information/call to actions you have on the home page. SOCIAL MEDIA It is also important to add links or feeds to your social media sites on your website (this can easily be done via widgets). The same rules apply for your social sites (facebook, twitter...), keep the content up to date and fresh! Interesting sites will increase their recognition on their own Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it. This could be through news posts (aka blog posts), social media services, , forums, or other means. Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site s reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without fresh quality content. It is recommended to add at least two new news articles a week (following the SEO guides provided previously) and updating other content (pages, widgets) at least once a month. For more information on how to add news posts and pages see the online help documentation. Anticipate differences in users understanding of your topic and offer unique, exclusive content When creating content think about the words that a user might search for to find a piece of your content. Users who know a lot about the topic might use different keywords in their search queries than someone who is new to the topic. For example, a long-time baseball fan might search for [nlcs], an acronym for the National League Championship Series, while a new fan might use a more general query like [baseball playoffs]. Anticipating these differences in search behavior and accounting for them while writing your content (using a good mix of keyword phrases) could produce positive results. Search Engine Optimization Guide 4

5 6.0 USEFUL GOOGLE TOOLS Google offers useful tools to help you get the edge. Below is a list of our favorites: GOOGLE WEB MASTER TOOLS Sign up for Google s web master tools to help get the edge. You want to be found on the web and Google wants to help. Get data, tools and diagnostics for a healthy, Google-friendly site. Sign up here: ADD YOUR SITE TO GOOGLE Use the link below to submit your sites URL to Google Once on the General Settings page toward the bottom right you should see the Google Analytics area. Sign up here: GOOGLE ANALYTICS Your clients go everywhere; shouldn t your analytics? Google Analytics will show you exactly how many people are visiting your site, where they are coming from, and how long they stay on your site, plus a ton more! Once you sign up with Google Analytics you will get some code that you need to copy and paste into your site (this is the code that tracks all the data on your website...). Luckly we made it easy for you! You can paste the Google Analytics code on the Settings > General Settings Page. Keep in mind it may take search engines such as Google, Bing, and others up to a month before they revisit your site and update their search results with your new SEO content This guide scratches the surface of SEO, but goes over the key concepts. For further reading please reference Google s full length SEO guide. This concludes the Coachnite SEO guide. For any questions please reference the online help documentation or give us a call at (855) 76COACH. We look forward to seeing you at the top of the search engines! Search Engine Optimization Guide 5