SEO Today s Agenda: Introduction What to expect today How search engines work What is SEO? Foundational SEO On and off page basics

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1 SEO SEO 101

2 SEO Today s Agenda: Introduction What to expect today How search engines work What is SEO? Foundational SEO On and off page basics

3 SEO Today s Presenters Taylor Pettis Nate Plaunt Sr. Marketing linkd.in/1dszjaa Sr. SEO bit.ly/1loddwn

4 DOES SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION REALLY MATTER?

5 SEO Organic Search is the #1 Driver of Website Traffic From a usage perspective, new studies have found that organic search drives 64% of all web traffic.

6 SEO Search Engine Optimization FACT: 79% of search engine users say they always/frequently click on the natural search results.

7 SEO A New Click Rate Study For Organic Results On average, 71.33% of searches resulted in a page one Google organic click. Page two and three get only 5.59% of the clicks. On the first page alone, the first 5 results account for 67.60% of all the clicks and the results from 6 to 10 account for only 3.73%. Page 1 = 71.33%

8 SEO A New Click Rate Study For Organic Results Ads / Shopping Results Local / Map Results 31% Click through Organic Results 14% Click through

9 SEO Does SEO Really Matter? YES! If you are not optimizing for search you are already behind your competition.

10 SEO What to Expect: A solid understanding of how search engines operate Learn how to beat out your competition in the search engine results Actionable tactics you can implement today Tools to implement SEO

11 WHAT DID YOU SEARCH TODAY?

12 SEO What Did You Search Today?

13 SEO What Did You Search Today?

14 SEO

15 SEO

16 SEO How Search Engines Work

17 1 SEO Search Engine Algorithm Key Components Over 200 ranking factors help to decide where your site ranks Roughly 10,000 sub-factors Fewer ranking factors in algorithm Heavy reliance on social factors

18 1 SEO Google s Algorithm Key Components Top 4 Components 1. Trust / Authority of the Host Domain 2. Popularity of the Specific Page 3. Anchor Text of External Links to the Page 4. On Page Keyword Usage According to 72 SEO s Surveyed by Moz

19 SEO U.S. Search Engine Market Share 64.2 % 20.2 % 12.7 % Everyone else 2.9 %

20 SEO Not all results are organic Organic

21 SEO 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 unpaid ("organic") search results. Source: Wikipedia

22 SEO What is SEO? (Simplified) SEO is two things: 1. The practice of making your website as accessible as possible to search engines. 2. Ensuring your website is as useful and relevant as possible to your current and prospective customers.

23 SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION 101 THE BASICS

24 SEO SEO 201: Ensure your site is relevant and useful to your visitors. SEO 101: Ensure your site is accessible to search engines.

25 SEO Technical and structural factors

26 SEO Technical and structural factors Goal: Ensure accessibility for Search Engines & Users Foundation of your entire online presence, so it s important to get it right Search engines have very clear guidelines for webmasters to follow when building sites

27 SEO What To Look For Can your entire website be crawled? Is your website indexed by the search engines? Does your website have any errors? Is your page load time too slow?

28 SEO How You Can Do This XML sitemap Accurate robots.txt file Google Search Console Page speed optimization

29 SEO What to Avoid Any unnecessary hurdle for the search engines Flash JavaScript URL Parameters

30 SEO Here s What Humans See

31 SEO Here s What Search Engines See (not a glitch)

32 SEO XML Sitemap The XML sitemap is a map of your website that enables search engines to efficiently crawl and index your site.

33 SEO XML Sitemap Various tools can help you generate an accurate and up-to-date sitemap: Screaming Frog Spider CMS plugins like Yoast Other web-based sitemap generators -

34 SEO Robots.txt file The robots.txt file is a directive for all bots visiting your site. It tells them what URLs to crawl or not crawl Simple text file can be created with notepad

35 SEO Robots.txt file *Pro Tip Use the Robots.txt testing tool in Google Search Console to troubleshoot errors in you file and to test individual URLs

36 SEO Google Search Console Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is a free resource with tons of valuable information available to all website owners.

37 SEO Why Does Speed Matter? Last year, mobile search overtook desktop search. The gap between mobile and desktop will widen Fast page load speed is critical to optimizing for mobile Mobile-geddon

38 SEO Google PageSpeed Insights PageSpeed Insights is another free tool from Google that gives you a prioritized roadmap on how to fix speed issues on your site.

39 SEO On and Off Page Factors

40 SEO On and Off Page Factors Goal: Demonstrate Relevance and Authority Search engines want to provide users with search results that are relevant to their query and authoritative in nature. Building upon a sound technical structure, we make sure that search engines and users are able to fully understand what various pages on your website are about.

41 SEO On-Page vs. Off-Page SEO On-page SEO refers to factors that you can control directly on your website Off-page SEO refers to factors out of your control on other websites Examples of on-page factors are: Metadata Internal links Content Technical / Structural Examples of off-page factors are: Inbound links Social Media Mentions Local Directories

42 SEO What To Look For Are your on page elements optimized? What keywords are you ranking for? Who is linking to you? Who is linking to your competitors?

43 SEO On Page SEO Elements URL Page Title H1 heading H2 headings Meta Description Page Copy Alternative image text

44 SEO On Page SEO Elements Page Title: Unique and descriptive URL: Descriptive and readable by both humans and search engines H1 Heading: Unique and descriptive Alt Image Text: Descriptive and keyword rich H2 Headings: Subtopics of the page Page Copy: Descriptive, unique, and keyword rich

45 SEO Page Title Good: Organic Result #1 Bad: Organic Result #245

46 SEO URL structure Good: Organic Result #1 Bad: Organic Result #260

47 SEO On Page SEO Elements Meta Descriptions

48 SEO A Tale of Two Devices

49 SEO A Tale of Two Devices

50 SEO What Keywords Do You Rank For? Ground Rules: 1. Don t Google yourself 2. Use a keyword tracking tool - SEM Rush (freemium) - Bright Local (paid)

51 SEO What Keywords Do You Rank For?

52 SEO Off Page SEO Elements Backlinks Link anchor text Citations or Mentions

53 SEO Internal vs. External Links (Backlinks) Two types of links: Internal and External. Internal links refer to links within your site, such as navigation links. External links refer to links outside of your site, such as a link from Wikipedia. Both are very useful, but for different reasons.

54 SEO How do Backlinks Help? Backlinks act as votes for pages on your site. NewsSite.com ProductSite.com Generally speaking, the more links you have from authoritative sources, the more your site is trusted, and the better your pages will rank. YourWebsite.com IndustryBlog.com ShadySite.com

55 SEO Link Anchor Text The words used in the anchor text of a link to your site helps search engines understand what that page is about. So, if your site is about Cats the anchor text cats would be preferable over click here.

56 SEO Who is linking to you? Conduct a backlink audit: Open your Google Search Console Navigate to the Links to Your Site section Check out who links the most and to what content *Pro Tip: this will help inform future content!

57 SEO Who is linking to your competitors? Conduct a competitive link analysis: 1. Use Open Site Explorer Enter your competitor s site into the search bar 3. Dig through their backlink profile 4. *Pro Tip: Identify where you can acquire some of the same links!

58 SEO Citations Citations are essentially a mention of your brand on another site like a listing directory. Yelp Yellow Pages City Search

59 SEO Citations It is important that these listings maintain consistency and accuracy. Name Address Phone Number *Check up on your listings using Moz Local - moz.com/local

60 REVIEW

61 SEO Review 1. If done right, SEO is a distinct competitive advantage 2. Get the foundation right 3. Optimize your pages 4. Optimize your off page presence 5. Move up the pyramid

62 SEO SEO 201: Ensure your site is relevant and useful to your visitors. SEO 101: Ensure your site is accessible to search engines.

63 SEO Measurement and Improvement

64 SEO Questions?

65 SEO Appendix Tools Mentioned 1. Google Search Console 2. Google PageSpeed Insights 3. Screaming Frog SEO Spider 4. Yoast plugin for WordPress 5. XML Sitemap Generator 6. SEM Rush 7. Bright Local 8. Open Site Explorer 9. Moz Local