What the F^@& is SEO? And how you can kick booty in the interwebs game 1
WHAT THE F^$& is SEO?? SEO (SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION) is the process of improving your website so that it attracts more visitors from search engines. Our goal is to turn those visitors into new business so we rule the world (or something like that) 2
discussion questions: What are areas of SEO you struggle with the most? Have you ever worked on SEO for your website or hired someone to help? If so, what has been the most successful aspect of implementing an SEO strategy? A strategy has to have goals. What is the purpose of your website and what are your goals? Get specific about what you want to get out of your online presence (clients) 3
why THE F^$& is it so important?? Search Engines need to find the most relevant, useful and trustworthy answers They send spiders to crawl through the web searching for that content From that data, they create a list of results. They rank the results in order of popularity and authority of the websites. The more visits a website gets, the higher it ranks. There are over 3.3 billion searches on Google alone A DAY >> this is only 67% of all of the search queries A #1 position in Google search results receives 18.2% of all click through traffic Our goal, as business owners is to be in the top organic results > 94% of searchers only click on the 1st page and only 6% go to the second page Implementing strategy and best practices will get you to the first page OVER TIME 4
WHAT THE F^$& DOES IT ENTAIL? SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION KEYWORDING RESPONSIVE BACKLINKS WEB DESIGN SECURITY SITE MAP CLEAN CODE PAGE SPEED 5 (this is literally just the tip)
HOW MUCH TRAFFIC FLOWS FROM SOURCES ON THE INTERWEBS? *Desktop Data 50.00 43.38 37.50 25.00 21.13 27.79 12.50 6 5.18 0.36 1.54 DIRECT EMAIL REFERRAL LINKS SEARCH SOCIAL DISPAY
TWO TYPES OF SEO RANKING FACTORS ON THE PAGE SUCCESS FACTORS On-The-Page search ranking factors are those that are almost entirely within the publisher s own control. What type of content do you publish? Are you providing important HTML clues that help search engines (and users) determine relevancy? How does your site architecture help or hinder search engines? OFF THE PAGE SUCCESS FACTORS Off-The-Page ranking factors are those that publishers do not directly control. Search engines use these because they learned early on that relying on publisher-controlled signals alone didn t always yield the best results. For instance, some publishers may try to make themselves seem more relevant than they are in reality. 7
Inbound methodology ATTRACT CONVERT CLOSE DELIGHT strangers visitors leads clients Promoters Blog keywords social publishing forms calls to action landing pages crm email workflows surveys smart content social monitoring 8
SEO STRATEGY (on page) Do Keyword research Create content around your keywords Optimize content around a primary keyword Promote your content Earn Links to your content 9
HOW TO DO KEYWORD RESEARCH Keywords are the words typed into search engines. These are the topics that searchers are trying to learn more about Make a list of keywords your buyer personas would search for 1. Who are they? 2. What are their goals and intent? 3. And what problems do they face? What are the common industry questions they might ask? What questions might they have that your company provides solutions to? What questions might they have when deciding to reach out to you or book your services? MUY IMPORTANTE : Try and mimic the language your clients might use. Don t get fancy. 10 persona > Sarah
persona > Sarah 1. Who are they? >> 25-35 College Educated Young Professional Newly Engaged Stylish etc 2. What are their goals and intent? >> Research Photographers Book within month Budget friendly Engagement Photos 3. And what problems do they face? >> Too Many options Don t know costs Instagram World 11 What is their demographic information? What is their job and level of seniority? What does a day in their life look like? What are their pain points? What do you help them solve? What do they value most? What are their goals? Where do they go for information? What are their most common objections to your product/service?
HOW TO DO KEYWORD RESEARCH, continued.. Expand your keyword list by searching the web for alternatives >> test by typing Determine which keywords people are using to find your site >> use Google Analytics, Moz or Hubspot Decide which keywords you have the best opportunity to rank for >> remember there are other websites out there trying to do the same thing. Only 10 make is to the first page Long tail keywords > Main keywords expanded upon > does your page match that keyword? Example Twin Cities Day of Coordination Services Package 12 The best way to rank for a primary term is to be specific and make it a long tail keyword
CREATE CONTENT AROUND YOUR KEYWORDS Create Content with input from industry thought leaders. They ll share the content, giving you new visitors and a new link (TRUST!) BLOGGING BLOGGING BLOGGING Create Best of or Resource list (preferred vendors) Interview an industry thought leader Write crowdsourced content Ask an industry thought leader to write the forward or give a quote for a blog post, etc 13
optimize a page around a primary keyword Is it in the page title? Is it in the URL? 14
optimize a page (CONT D) Easy Navigation Optimize for visitor first, but also for search engine Promote good user experience Don t make people hunt, show them the next step to convert into leads and then customers Include relevant internal links within the content to make it easy What is the goal of each page? Is it your goal to have the consumer purchase something or contact you? Then make sure a contact button is on EVERY. SINGLE. PAGE. 15 Next Step/Easy Button
PROMOTE YOUR CONTENT Social Sharing Options on each page Share pages/posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MailChimp Online Directories > Yelp, Yellow Pages, local chambers of commerce, If you are location specific, create a Google Business Listing Page, which Google will use in search results. Having a page on a directory will increase the number of links and citations to your site (online mentions of your business name) LINKS BACK TO YOUR WEBSITE 16
GOOGLE MY BUSINESS https://www.google.com/business/ 1. Is it set up? 2. Is it verified? 3. Is it the categorized properly? 4. Do you have a physical address? 5. Do you have reviews? 6. Is your Product/Service Keyword in your title? 7. Is your contact information on your GMB page the same as on your website? 8. Is your website secure? 9. Do you ave hours of operation? 10. Do you have photos associated with your GMB listing? Are they labeled correctly? 17
EARN LINKS TO YOUR SITE (OFF PAGE) Search Engines follow links between pages to see how they re related to each other. Links coming into your website are called inbound links. They help search engines analyze how authoritative your website is. If a trusted site is linked to you, your website is becoming more trustworthy. Not all links are created equal >> make sure you are earning HIGH QUALITY links and not quantity. Are the links relevant to your site and your industry? Build relationships with authoritative sites >> FOREVER BRIDE Blog Posts Social media Send friendly emails 18
OTHER SEO FACTORS (OFF PAGE) Submit SiteMap to Google Submit URL to Google, Bing, Yahoo Site Speed Security (SSL Certificate) Responsive Design Alt Image Tags Clean Code Reviews Reviews Reviews 19
SITE SPEED How quickly your webpages load is increasingly becoming a differentiator for search engines. All you photographers out there - better start compressing your images 20
RESPONSIVE DESIGN Is your website and its content equally optimized for any given screen size or device? Just this past year, Google has started penalizing websites that are not responsive. 56% of consumer traffic to the leading websites is now from mobile devices. If you don t have a responsive site, you don t have visitors. 21
PROPERLY TAGGED IMAGES Many people forget to include the alt attribute when they upload images to their content, but this is definitely something you shouldn t overlook because Google cannot see your images, but can read the alt text. By describing your image in the alt text as accurately as possible it will increase the chances of your images appearing in Google Image search (and get those keywords out there) 22
Think of it as a savings account > your goal is to have one million dollars in 30 years, the way you re going to get there is to have a plan and be consistent. If you stick to your plan, you will earn returns on your investment. It s the same with content and SEO. Every optimized page will offer a return in the long run. 23 It takes time to develop credibility on line and earn traffic you want to receive.
SEO TOOLS CREATE SITEMAP https: /www.xml- sitemaps.com/ KEYWORD PLANNER https: /adwords.google.com/ home/tools/keyword- planner/ SUBMIT SITEMAP https: /www.google.com/ webmasters/tools/ sitemap-list GOOGLE MY BUSINESS https: /www.google.com/ business/ SUBMIT URL https: /www.google.com/ webmasters/tools/submit- url SEMRUSH https: /www.semrush.com SITE SPEED https: / developers.google.com/ speed/pagespeed/ insights/ MOZ https: /moz.com/ MOZ LOCAL https: /moz.com/local GOOGLE TRENDS https: /trends.google.com/ trends/ 24
Call me, beep me, if you wanna reach me HELLO@LAINEPALMDESIGNS.COM LAINEPALMDESIGNS.COM @LAINEPALMDESIGNS @LAINEPALMDESIGNS 25