SEO presentation by Max Thomas of Thunder SEO given at Drupal SandCamp San Diego on Sunday, January 24, 2010.

1. Max Thomas max@thunderseo.com @ThunderMax (800) 819-6894 SEO Sunday, January 24, 2010

2. Why Online Matters

3. SEO – Why Ranking Matters? Ranking = Traffic Ranking for Target Keywords = Sales Recent Site Example:

4. SOM – Strategic Online Marketing Think strategically. Search and Social Media are separate channels, but they do overlap. SEO is not Online Marketing – that’s short sighted. Look at your market – sometimes Search is better than social, sometimes email, etc. Be on lookout for new media, like Mobile. SEO = turtle (steady, slow, wins in the end) Social = hare (fast, fun, unpredictable)

5. SEO & Google White vs Black Hat SEO “A lot of people think Google hates SEO and nothing could be further from the truth. SEO when done well and done in a white hat way, can make your site more crawlable, more accessible and help users find useful content on your site.”Matt CuttsSee State of the Index 2009 on GoogleWebmasterHelpYoutube.com

6. Track – Track - Track “We can’t manage what we don’t measure.” Keyword Ranking Reports SEO Stat’s (key indicators) Webmaster Tools, site performance, etc. Site Traffic (Analytics) Call Tracking (Dynamic Call Tracking) Conversions/Sales (Forms & Purchases) Frequency: Daily: Conversions & Call Tracking Weekly/Bi-Weekly: Keyword Ranking, Site Traffic Monthly: SEO Stat’s, Site Performance

7. Max Thomas | max@thunderinternetmarketing.com | (800) 819-6894 Track – Keyword Ranking Report Use Proxy Servers Rotate to prevent Google from serving “personalized” search results, or identifying KW software.Example here fromwww.AdvancedWebRanking.com

8. Track – SEO Stat’s GI = Google Indexed Content YI = Yahoo! Indexed Content Inb = Inbound Links Int = Internal Links PR = PageRank Alexa = Site Traffic Comparison Age = Age Domain Registered mR = URL Rank (SEOmoz) mT = URL Trust (SEOmoz) DmR = Domain Rank (SEOmoz) DmT = Domain Trust (SEOmoz)

9. Track – Site Performance Webmaster Tools – this is how Google “sees” your website. Very important to be aware of this. Reference Webmaster Tools for: Crawl Errors (404 errors) Crawl Stats (how frequently G bots crawl) Site Performance (see Resources regarding PageSpeed) http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/ webpagetest.org

10. Track – Site Traffic Using Analytics, consider (at minimum): Change in Visitors (month to month) Traffic Sources Organic Keywords

11. Track – Conversion/Call Tracking Conversions: Use Analytics for sales & “form submits” Call Tracking/Leads: Dynamic call tracking enables tracking by source See VoiceStar example

12. Track – Conversion/Call Tracking

13. What Impacts Rankings SEO’s Three-Legged Stool:

14. 1. Content – Site Structure Keyword Relevancy Onpage Keyword Optimization (SEO Elements) PageRank and Navigation

16. Research Keywords - research keywords and historical searches using Google’s Keyword Tool and Wonder Wheel .

19. Don’t try to rank homepage for multiple terms; target keyword-specific pages (the sub-pages)

20. Key Elements for Onpage Keyword Optimization:

21. URL

22. Title Tag

23. Description Tag (for user, not for SEO)

25. Keyword placement close to top of page

26. Use of terms related to keyword in copy

28. Google’s quantitative measure of a site’s “Authority”

29. PR’s influence has wavered over time; Cutts now “says” it’s important

30. Highly relevant and quality inbound links are primary determinant of PR; links help determine a site’s Authority.

33. This is our made-up page called “Page 0” with links to 35 pages: Reference: http://searchengineland.com/pagerank-sculpting-leaves-nofollowed-tags-behind-34120

35. “Page 0” has 70 PR points to share. According to Matt Cutts, each of the 35 pages it links to receives two points of PageRank. : Reference: http://searchengineland.com/pagerank-sculpting-leaves-nofollowed-tags-behind-34120

37. “Page 0” has 70 PR points to share. According to Matt Cutts, each of the 35 pages it links to receives two points of PageRank. : Reference: http://searchengineland.com/pagerank-sculpting-leaves-nofollowed-tags-behind-34120

39. Google introduced rel=nofollow in 2005 so that NoFollowed links “won’t get any credit when we [Google] rank websites in our search results.”

40. This made it possible to shape (or “optimize”) the flow of PR through a site by using rel=nofollow on internal links that are secondary. Result: PR would be divided only across dofollow links

42. Prioritize pages by User Experience and SEO impact: Reference: http://searchengineland.com/pagerank-sculpting-leaves-nofollowed-tags-behind-34120

44. Revised “Page 0” with links to 10 primary pages: Reference: http://searchengineland.com/pagerank-sculpting-leaves-nofollowed-tags-behind-34120 Previous “Page 0”

46. Revised “Page 0” PageRank points allocation now shared 7 points with each page, versus 2 points previously: Reference: http://searchengineland.com/pagerank-sculpting-leaves-nofollowed-tags-behind-34120

48. Reorganize Links – there may be links from homepage to low-value sub-pages that can be consolidated under a high-value page; link from homepage to primary page, include links to low-value pages on primary page.

49. Remove Low SEO Pages – remove pages from primary navigation that have low value for users and SEO; move them to the blog.

50. Drupal Modules & Tools –

51. -------------

53. Video

54. Feeds (RSS, Twitter, Blog Updates, etc.)

55. “Organic Content” What content can be created by organic process of doing business?

56. Ecommerce easy example – new products daily

57. See if content hosted on 3rd party sites can be brought into the primary domain (not via frames)

59. The more frequently site is updated, the more frequently Google crawls, updates index and changes rankings.

60. How often should I add new content?

61. As often as possible; depends on ranking goal; local map listings – weekly okay; regional/national organic listings – daily.

62. Blogging

63. Easy and effective way to add content

64. Blog posts are crawled and indexed quickly by Google

65. Fast and easy way to add internal links

67. Quality Over Quantity

68. Edu/gov myth

69. Reciprocal links

70. Viral links

72. Competitive Link Research/Acquisition

73. Links via Embedded Content (Widget, Badges, etc.)

74. Linkbait& Viral Campaigns

75. Content, Technology & API Licensing

77. Linkscape and others

78. OpenSiteExplorer.com

79. SiteExplorer.Search.Yahoo.com

80. Google Webmaster Tools

81. Goolge Search/Experimental

82. Social search (google.com/experimental)

84. Consistency is key

85. Target same words as for inbound links

86. Setup internal tracking – Internal Linking Map (see Keyword Map example)

88. Use ILM for all internal links (including navigation)

90. Here, target keyword = office chair

94. Caffeine / Google –What is it?

95. Update to how Google indexes urls and displays them in search.

96. Google PageSpeed Tool

97. Other Google Webmaster Tools

98. Code.google.com/closure

99. Compiler – make javascript compact

100. Library – for code

102. Resources/links:

103. Conversion Optimization - http://www.seerinteractive.com/conversion-maximization/

105. GoogleWebmasterHelp’s Channel on YouTube

106. Matt Cutts – posts and videos

107. SEOmoz – blog and tools

108. SearchEngineLand

109. Local Search – David Mihm

110. Local Search/Technical – Mike Blumenthal