Pay attention at the back because our Birmingham-based SEO training courses are tailored to help you make the most of your internet marketing. This course provides business-focused expert SEO training in Birmingham and around the West Midlands. Delivered to you by Opace in Birmingham, we provide a range of practical workshop-based SEO, social media and internet marketing training courses for groups and on a 1:1 basis.

1. SEO Training Workshop
Classroom Based. 2014 Agenda.

2. Agenda (Day 1)
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SEO course objectives
Day 1
 Background - business, marketing and SEO goals
 Introduction to SEO
 Google Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird changes
 Google penalties
 Review our bespoke keyword and marketing reports
 SEO checklist
 Keyword planning
 Market research and competitor analysis
 On-page SEO (optimisation of keywords, meta data, URLs and HTML tags)
 Off-page SEO (do’s and don’ts of link building)
 SEO and website copywriting
 SEO strategy and action plans
 SEO tools (basics)

3. Agenda (Day 2)
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Day 2
 Revisit day 1
 Competitor research for link building
 Recommended business directories
 Social media, blogging and content marketing
 Getting to grips with Google and Bing Webmaster Tools
 301 redirects, canonical tags and duplicate content
 Getting the most from Google Analytics
 Things you can do to improve click-throughs and conversions
 SEO plugins and best practice Joomla, WordPress or Magento (if applicable)
 Social media best practices and tools (time permitting)
 Questions and Answers

4. SEO course objectives
 Understand the basics of SEO and best practice
 Learn how to carry out competitor research and identify the right
keywords
 Learn how to write for SEO and your audience
 Learn how to apply on-page SEO techniques
 Learn how to apply effective off-page SEO strategies
 Learn how SEO and social media is changing and the future of search
 Appreciate the impact of latest Google updates, including Panda, Penguin
and Hummingbird and how to avoid Google penalties
 Implement tools to monitor and review the effectiveness of your SEO
 Have a practical action plan for progressing the SEO in-house

5. Day 1

6. Background
(understanding the company or organisation)
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SEO, technical and marketing knowledge within the team
Amount of resource to support SEO
Previous SEO work carried out
Effectiveness of current SEO and marketing
Is there anything that that the search engines may not have liked

7. Business, marketing and SEO goals
 Business vision and goals
 USPs / competitive differentiators
 SEO and marketing objectives

8. Workshop:
Define goals & USPs related to SEO

9. Introduction to SEO
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It’s as simple as….
1. Keywords
2. Links
Or is it? SEO definitions and popular terms
 Keywords
 Links
 Anchor text
 Meta Data/Tags
 ALT Tags
 Nofollow
 PageRank
 Robots
 Domain Authority
 Canonical / 301 Redirect
 …

10. Google Panda, Penguin and
Hummingbird changes
 Overview of recent Google algorithm changes and why these
were rolled out:
 Panda
 Penguin
 Hummingbird

11. Google Penalties
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Why websites are being penalised
How do you know whether you’ve been penalised
What you can do to overcome a Google penalty
Link Audits, Removals and Disavow

12. Workshop:
Look over Google Analytics and
Webmaster Tools data

13. Keyword & Marketing Reports
 Run through our bespoke keyword and marketing reports and
how to interpret the data

14. SEO checklist and review
 Explanation of our SEO checklist and how to use it

15. Workshop:
Audit website according to checklist

16. Keyword planning
 Keyword brainstorming and research
 Get ideas - ask team, customers, prospects, friends and family…
 Brainstorm ideas (there’s no right or wrong answer)
 Research competitors (see next section)
 Use the Google Keyword Planner Tool!
 Deciding on the right keywords for each page
 Do you have the right content to begin with
 Prioritise keywords based on business/marketing objectives
 Map keywords to pages and identify gaps within your content - pages,
sections, categories, products, etc.

17. Workshop:
Brainstorm keywords and try mapping
to pages on your website

18. Market research and
competitor analysis
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How to do competitor analysis for SEO
How to spot what keywords they are optimising for (free tools)
 look at competitor link anchor text - http://www.opensiteexplorer.org
 get suggestions from Google based on competitor domain https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/Home
 review competitor traffic (although not always accurate)
 http://www.semrush.com
 http://www.alexa.com
 get other ideas based on industry/niche http://www.wordstream.com/keyword-niche-finder
How to check competitor rankings for keywords – there are lots of tools to choose
from, some free, but to get all of the features you will most likely have to pay!

19. Workshop:
Try to identify new keywords based on
competitor research

20. On-page SEO
(optimisation of keywords, meta data, URLs and HTML tags)
 Keyword / HTML optimisation
 URLs and meta data optimisation
 Important HTML elements - headings, sub headings, image
ALT tags, links, and body text
 Importance of blogging and content freshness
 SEO copywriting (see following section)

21. Off-page SEO
(do’s and don’ts of link building)
 How can you build high quality backlinks?
 Content is king!
 Guest blogging and content marketing
 Visual content – video, images, infographics
 Social media marketing and social sharing
 Link baiting techniques
 original content, ideas and research - anything interesting enough to
catch people's attention
 ground breaking news (get there first)
 quirky content which could go viral
 don’t be scared to be controversial

22. Off-page SEO (2)
(do’s and don’ts of link building)
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Things to avoid
 Article and press directories
 Poor quality business directories, which look like they’ve been built for SEO
 Duplicating / spinning content and submitting to multiple sites
 Over-linking content to your website
 Over-use of anchor text in links – keep your links varied and natural!
 Over-use of keywords in content (keyword stuffing)
 Spammy blog/forum commenting
 Buying links although we do appreciate there are cases where this might make
sense if these links deliver high quality targeted traffic to your site - just make
sure ANY link is set to nofollow to avoid a Google penalty
 Link wheels, blog networks or anything that looks artificial

23. Off-page SEO (3)
(do’s and don’ts of link building)
 The trick is to find high quality, relevant websites that have
good quality controls, then look for opportunities to gain
backlinks – it’s all about content!

24. SEO and website copywriting
 Learn how to write for SEO but target your audience - and not
Google - with compelling ‘calls to action’ and engaging
content that users will read and share
 Be mindful of keyword and keyword densities but don’t
obsess on them
 http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density
 http://www.ranks.nl/cgibin/ranksnl/spider/spider.cgi?lang=
 Consider what is a meaningful and appropriate amount of
content – look at a range of competitor’s content who rank
well for your keywords

25. Workshop:
Based on your keyword research:
a) write a well optimised page for your website; and
b) write an engaging blog post.
For each, define the meta data and look at competitors to gauge
how long the content should be

26. SEO strategy and action plans
 Create a digital marketing strategy which integrates SEO with
your other online marketing activities (e.g. social media, PPC,
PR, blogging, etc.) and ensure these can all be tied back to the
business vision and goals
 Ensure larger sized SEO / marketing teams are clear on their
individual roles and accountabilities - and ensure they are
working together, towards the strategy
 Plan your SEO work each month – create action plans and set
targets with regards to activity
 Monitor results, review effectiveness and revise the action
plans accordingly

27. Workshop:
Try to define a suitable monthly action plan
and clearly define any roles, responsibilities and
accountabilities within the team

28. SEO tools (basics)
 Setting up Google and Bing Webmaster Tools
 Creating XML sitemaps and submitting your site to search
engines
 Creating robots.txt files
 Monitoring your backlinks using Webmaster Tools
 Setting up Google Analytics set up for SEO reporting / metrics
 Rank tracking and performance monitoring (ROI)

29. Workshop:
Set up Google Webmaster Tools and Google
Analytics if you don’t already have accounts

30. Day 2

31. Revisit day 1
any questions?

32. Competitor research for link
building
 Simply search for your competitor’s name in Google enclosed by
quotes e.g. “competitor x” and see where they are listed
 See where your competitors are getting their backlinks from using
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org
 There are lots of free and paid tools for checking backlinks

33. Recommended business
directories for link building
 There are still some good quality free business directories but
there are also thousands that are low quality ‘designed for
SEO’ directories that should be avoided like the plague
 Submitting your site to the high quality business directories
and social media sites will help, search, visibility and referrals
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http://www.yell.com
https://plus.google.com
http://www.freeindex.co.uk
http://www.yelp.co.uk
http://www.citylocal.co.uk
http://www.crunchbase.com
…

34. Workshop:
Research competitor links using
www.opensiteexplorer.org. Look at Linking
Domains. Order by Domain Authority and identify
5 potential sites to acquire links from.

35. Social media, blogging and
content marketing
 Refer to earlier section about dos and don'ts of link building
 Types of content marketing
 PR / news content (only use high quality moderated sites) –
http://uk.prweb.com is probably the best known. Of all the PR
providers they are usually the quickest to adopt changes in
Google policies and practices
 Blogging – maintaining high quality blogs will be the simplest
thing you can do to aid your SEO.
 Consider on-site blog vs. externally hosted blogs
 Consider the options available - WordPress.com, Tumblr
and Blogger

36. Social media, blogging and
content marketing (2)
 Social media – Google is favouring social signals (social votes) so get
active on social media. At very minimum reserve you social media
accounts and have a social sharing widget on your website
 High quality Infographics – infographics are very popular right now.
If you can come up with visually appealing original content (the
quirkier or more fact based the better), then people will want to
share your content – each share equals a vote towards your SEO!
 Video content – YouTube is considered as the no. 2 search engine by
many and there is no doubt that people engage better with video
than text. Video content also tends to rank very well in search
results providing it has been optimised properly

37. Workshop:
Create a content marketing ideas document identify ideas and topics for blogs, news/press,
infographics and videos. Consider how you would
share this content using social media.

38. Getting to grips with Google and
Bing Webmaster Tools
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Monitor your messages through Webmaster Tools
Monitor errors and clean-up any technical issues highlighted
Watch out for manual actions (Google Penalties)
Ensure your sitemap is up-to-date and pages are getting
indexed properly

39. Workshop:
Review your Google Webmaster Tools account

40. 301 redirects, canonical tags and
duplicate content
 Duplicate content can happen for lots of reasons – glitch in your CMS,
website migration (copy+paste), outdated SEO practices, etc.
 Be aware of the dangers of duplicate content and how to overcome them
 301 redirects (htaccess)
 Canonical tags
 Robots (noindex)
 301 redirect checker - http://www.redirect-checker.org
 Duplicate content checkers
 http://www.copyscape.com
 http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php

41. Getting the most from Google
Analytics
 What does the data mean?
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Visits
Bounce Rate
Time on site
Landing page
Keywords and issue with (not provided) data
 Setting up goals
 Tracking conversions/sales (for e-commerce sites)
 Funnel visualisation

42. Workshop:
Review your Google Analytics account

43. Things you can do to improve clickthroughs and conversions
 Improving click-throughs from search results
 Goolge+ and authorship - your photo in search results
 Goolge+ publisher and company data
 Rich snippets – reviews, ratings, videos, recipies and
products data for e-commerce (price, brand, quantity)
 Improving conversions
 KISS - "Keep it simple, stupid"
 One page checkout – a MUST for e-commerce!

44. SEO plugins for Joomla, WordPress
or Magento (if applicable)
 Magento
 Rich snippets - http://www.magentocommerce.com/magentoconnect/rich-snippets-suite.html
 SEO suite (option a) - http://www.magentocommerce.com/magentoconnect/seo-suite-ultimate.html
 SEO suite (option b) - http://www.mageworx.com/seo-suite-ultimatevs-pro
 SEO suite (option c) - http://mirasvit.com/magentoextensions/advanced-seo-suite.html
 And much more… see
 http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect

45. Workshop:
Identify ways to potentially improve click-throughs
and conversions

46. SEO plugins for Joomla, WordPress
or Magento (if applicable)
 Joomla
 AceSEF - http://www.joomace.net/joomla-extensions/acesef-joomlaseo-sef-urls
 sh404 - http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/sitemanagement/sef/10134
 And more… see http://extensions.joomla.org
 Wordpress
 All in One SEO Pack - http://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack
 YOAST - http://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo
 And more… see http://wordpress.org/plugins/

47. Social media best practices and
tools (time permitting)
 Platforms
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https://en-gb.facebook.com
https://twitter.com
www.youtube.com
https://www.pinterest.com
https://uk.linkedin.com
https://plus.google.com
http://instagram.com
 Which platforms are right for you

48. Social media best practices and
tools (time permitting)
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Uses of social media
Writing compelling content for social media
Frequency of updates and investment required
Generating engagement (likes, tweets, pins, comments, shares, +1s)
Tools for social media management and reporting
Using social media hand-in-hand with SEO

49. Any questions?

50. Thanks for Attending