search engine optimization for killer results

Transcription

1 search engine optimization

2 You may be familiar with many of the ingredients for good SEO, but are you making the most of them? Are you up-to-date with recent search engine changes that will affect whether users find you or not? Find out how! GET READY TO EXIST We understand that if online users cannot find your website through search engines like Google or Bing, you essentially do not exist on the Internet. That s why you need a comprehensive plan for improving your search ranking for important keywords. And because every organization is unique, you need a strategy that is customized for your organization s goals and needs. A great strategic process includes: Brainstorming Session. Schedule a brainstorming session to establish priorities and strategies for increasing traffic to your website. Keyword Research. Conduct keyword research to determine your website s current ranking for relevant keywords and discover which subject-related keywords web users most often search. Then, list out the best keywords to draw qualified traffic. Recommendations for Optimization. Optimizing up to 30 of your website pages is a good starting baseline. Reporting. Review at least six months of reporting that demonstrates how your rank compares to your competition. Monthly Review Call. Conduct a half-hour monthly phone call with all stakeholders to review your statistics and formulate recommendations for continued effectiveness. On-site Training. If needed, contract with an agency to conduct on-site training for content creators. This would either be a one or two-day training event depending on your needs and your team s familiarity with SEO. HOW DOES SEO DRIVE RESULTS? Statistically, 80% of websites are found through search engines. If Internet users cannot find your website in the top 15 results it essentially does not exist. SEO helps more people looking for your content, products or services find you. By driving this qualified traffic to the website, SEO brings you warm leads: visitors who are ready to take action. STAYING CURRENT ENTER PANDA Beginning in early 2011, Google released a series of changes called Panda Updates to its search algorithm. Using machine learning, the updates incorporate human value ratings into a website s ranking. If you ever wanted to do SEO without a lot of experience or specialized knowledge, your time has come. Why Utilize SEO Services? Increase website visibility Increase content visibility Gain better search engine rankings Increase first-time visitors How does Panda work? Panda is all about the user. Panda works by filtering out websites that provide a poor experience for their visitors. to your website It s like commercial Rank above competitors in fishing. If the goal is a search results tasty salmon catch, the Be viewed as the time it takes to remove go-to organization on ratfish from the trap a given topic net costs the business money. Junk sites are the ratfish of the Internet: bottom feeders with a mushy, unpleasant taste. Panda learns from the sites that are thrown back by human raters, and adjusts the algorithm so that fewer and fewer of these are caught in the net on following searches. continued on next page facebook.com/fiveq twitter.com/fiveq 2

3 What are the gotchas? Many organizations are often short on resources, which means that website content can easily become stale and outdated because no one is available to keep it fresh and current. Sometimes a staff member will quickly drop a short paragraph or a list of links onto a page, planning to improve it later, and never get back to it. In the Panda world, these pages are a poison pill for the entire website. Your company or non-profit usually has a depth of expertise that does not get translated into depth of content on the web. This is unfortunate, because Google values expertise, and Panda will allow them to get better and better at recognizing and rewarding it on websites. WHAT ARE THE KEYS TO SUCCESS? The first and most important key to success is intimacy. You don t have to be an expert in artificial intelligence or mathematical algorithms to successfully rank well with Google Panda. You do need to be intimately familiar with your audience, your audience s needs, and how you can uniquely meet them. In addition, a basic understanding of some SEO editing practices will help. 1. Web Page Editing What: Use visitor behavior to identify valuable content. Why: It s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife. People type queries into search engines for specific Food For Thought Although SEO is an ever-changing target (due to changes in search engines), you should consistently see results after the first month of executing a strategy. By continuing the SEO process and regularly refining your website, you will have huge long-term gains. reasons, and they know when they ve found what they want. The math is going to get increasingly better at discerning when that has happened. First, identify your website s top performing pages and use your audience intimacy to pinpoint why the pages are successful. They will have: o Higher time on site/page o Lower bounce rate o Lower exit rate Next, identify your website s poorly performing pages and compare them with the top performers, noting obvious and subtle differences. Improve or remove the poor-performing pages. Monitor results, remembering that an effective and necessary page may be visited briefly because it exists as a roadmap to guide your visitors deeper into the content on your site. 2. Web Content Development What: Beware of pages that contain only a sentence or two, or that consist of a collection of links to other websites without context. Why: It s like a spice rack with plenty of paprika, but no pepper. Panda is penalizing websites for having thin content on just some of their pages (even though there is excellent content elsewhere on the site). Remove pages that provide little value to the reader until you have the time to edit or rewrite the page so that the content is unique, authoritative, and compelling. Don t create pages only for links (such as Our Partners ). Put them in context and let your visitors know why they are important. 3. Keyword Placement What: Avoid a neat and tidy approach to keyword distribution and density. Why: It s like a teenager s bedroom, where the badge of authenticity is its random disorder. Machine learning is going to facebook.com/fiveq twitter.com/fiveq 3

4 allow the web spider to develop a much more accurate grasp of natural language the way people actually speak and write. Make sure the keyword phrase is relevant to the page, and appears frequently enough to be effective, including having a prominent spot at the beginning of the body copy. When in doubt about keyword placement, err on the side of natural language. If a page is not appearing as high in the results as you think is should, try removing one or two instances of the keyword phrase. 4. Meta Tag Writing What: Concentrate your meta tag writing efforts on what the visitor will see more than what the visitor will not see. Why: It s like a sign on the interstate that previews the services available at a given exit. Meta tags work this way for both users and search engines. Place your targeted keyword phrase in the title tag and the description tag as close to the beginning as is natural. This generates clicks due to the psychological effect of seeing your search query in the results. Place your keyword phrase in the ALT text, so that visitors with disabilities have the same access to information that other users do. Place your phrase in the headline (the h1 tag). After all, it is what your page is about. Insist that pages load completely in one or two seconds. Budget for information architecture. Confusing site structure = poor user experience. What else should my website offer? 1. Media. Why? Because rich media offers a unique experience. Panda is all about providing the best possible user experience. 2. Design. Just because design shouldn t be emphasized at the expense of technical excellence doesn t mean it isn t important. Great design is a key factor in great experience. 3. Relevance. Give your visitors a reason to stay that is better than any of the other ten results on the page. 4. Anticipation. Offer something fun, diverting, or intrinsically fascinating to do next. CONCLUSION A local radio station recently ran this promo, We won t force you to listen to our music, but only because the technology for that hasn t been invented yet. When people first come to the web with a question, they don t know what they don t know. If Google has its way, its search engine will increasingly be able to force what searchers want to the top of the results, despite the unavoidable knowledge gap that exists. 5. Technical Excellence What: Pay as much attention to the mechanics of your website as you do to the design. Why: It s like an aircraft: it flies because of the excellence of its engines, not because of its paint job. The paint job is there to let people know if they are on the right plane. Work with your web developer to ensure that the source code is clean and that it doesn t force the web spider to wade past hundreds of lines of code to get to your content. With Google s Panda Updates, if your website has trustworthy information, practical experience, and expertise, your chance of being one of those results just got a whole lot better. RESOURCES Google Blog Post: What Makes a High Quality Site (Published May 2011) Google s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (PDF, Published 2010) facebook.com/fiveq twitter.com/fiveq 3

5 Case Study: Bible League International Bible League International serves the Body of Christ globally through the local Church and other partnerships to eradicate the global Bible famine. The Bible famine is raging in three critical areas: 1. The Persecuted Church 2. The Muslim World 3. Among the Least of the These The Challenge Bible League International (BLI) determined that their core audience primarily utilized their website to search for information about the ministry s activities. Consequently, the BLI team had two goals. First, they wanted to increase the number of website visitors. Second, and more importantly, BLI sought to bring attention to the real, tangible impact their supporter s dollars make through each gift and encourage donors to give on a monthly basis. The Solution BLI partnered with Five Q to improve their website search ranking and optimize their content for search engines in an effort to increase online donations. To help achieve these objectives, Five Q designed a unique SEO and content strategy. Then by setting up Key Performance Indicators to track site visitor activity, Five Q enabled BLI to measure and improve every step in the donation process. 100 % increase in organic search referrals The Results Over the last year, BLI has seen significant growth as a result of their SEO efforts. 15 % 44 % 84 % 150 % 11 % increase in online donations increase in unique web visitors increase in pages viewed increase in time spent on the website increase in new visitors overall facebook.com/fiveq twitter.com/fiveq 4