What you need to know about SEO Tina Arnoldi 360 Internet Strategy LLC
SEO Intro Keywords o Analytics On-site o Page tags o Content Off-page o Link building Agenda
What is SEO? It s about making your website easy to find - both by spiders and by humans. Intent (Hummingbird) o Navigational o Informational o Transactional
Search 101- What search engines do Crawling pages looking for content o Text-driven (they won t see your pictures) Indexing storing for retrieval Pushes out relevant results
Does your site come up in search results?
Not seeing it Violated webmaster guidelines Tell Google o http://www.google.com/submityourcontent/ Create a sitemap Is your site only images?
Tags
What are tags anyway? HTML tags are coding instructions that tell the web browser how to see the page <title> <h1> <meta description> <meta keywords> <alt> (images)
Title <title>welcome to Trident Technical College</title>
Examples Online marketing strategy for nonprofits and small business Google Analytics Training - On site - Charleston, SC
Why do page titles matter? Lets the user and search engine know what the site is about Describes the content Descriptive. Relevant. Brief. Note: Keep it under 70 characters o lettercount.com
Why do meta descriptions matter? Lets the user and search engine know what the site is about Not a ranking factor It s a quick ad for your content You don t always need to write it Keep it under 160 characters
Meta Descriptions
Heading <H1> H1 - tells Google and users this is important o <h1> Online Marketing Training </h1> o <h2> Google Analytics </h2> o <h1> Online Marketing Services</h1> o <h2> AdWords Campaigns</h1> o <h2> Email Newsletters</h2> Think of it like an outline: h2, h3, h4, h5, h6
Alt (for images) If your image doesn't display for some reason, the "alt" attribute will at least show a description of the picture.
What if this picture doesn't display?
alt="geekend Savannah GA 2011" src="http://360internetstrategy.com /wpcontent/uploads/2013/03/geeken d-screen-shot-300x164.png
Friendly URLs x8alskjfd?a;slk.html
Navigation
Why does navigation matter? People want to find what they need quickly If an item on your site is more than three clicks away, it s not important
Don t do this http://360internetstrategy.com/onlinemarketing-services/ http://360internetstrategy.com/onlinemarketing-services/anotherdirectory/have-you-found-what-you-needyet/are-you-seriously-still-readingthis/now-i m-annoyed
Sitemaps
Sitemaps A list of pages on your site. Dynamic content. For people to use if they have trouble finding something on your site. o Hopefully, they won t need it For Google to use to find pages on your site. o Sitemap generators
Sitemap for people
Sitemap for Google http://360internetstrategy.com/sitemap.xml
Is it working? Google Search Console (Webmaster Tools)
404 errors
404 errors An irritation more than a crisis A status code seen by the user when the page doesn t exist o Link out there pointing to that page Use Webmaster tools to find URLs causing "not found
Customize your 404 page Will help users find what they are looking for o Same look and feel as rest of the site o Link to popular posts o Webmaster tools widget creates a search box and shows alternatives o Show a specific landing page Or redirect to homepage
Keywords
Keywords People find you by typing keywords into their browser Customer-centric stay away from lingo! o Charity o Nonprofit o Organization Long-tail (less competition) o Nonprofit (lots of traffic but.) After school programs (.higher conversion rate) 3 4
Keyword Tools Google s AdWords Keyword Tool WordStream Ubersuggest * Sitemapdoc.com * Google incognito *
Incognito
Look for negative keywords too Illinois? Instructor?
Content
Content Blogs Social Media Enewsletters
What makes good content? Engaging Unique Serves a purpose Lists Use keywords Shareable Videos
Share it
Anchor text
What s anchor text? Visible, clickable text in a hyperlink Helps determine the subject matter of the item linked-to
Anchor Text Click here to learn more VS Learn more about SEO
Anchor Text Read our article VS Read our tips for SEO
Link Building
Quality over quantity odon t beg odon t buy o Be relevant
OpenSiteExplorer.org Do you have links? Traffic Travis Local Citation Finder BuzzStream Link Building Query Generator*
Local listings
Why bother? People are searching with where o Restaurant Charleston o Training Mount Pleasant Chances are you re already listed and it could be wrong
Local Listings Verify listing Complete profile Relevant categories
Local Links Google Plus Yelp Bing Citysearch Yahoo local Yellow pages Best of the web Hotfrog InsiderPages Superpages Moz local GYBO*
Mobile Matters
Check your mobile traffic
www.google.com/think/multiscreen/
Is your site mobile friendly? google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
Is your site mobile friendly?
Setup: o Google analytics o Google webmaster tools Read: o Google s SEO Guide Check: o Source code o Content o Sitemaps Now what?
Tina Arnoldi 360InternetStrategy.com Twitter: TinaArnoldi Q & A