Workshop slides of the Innovation Melange "Introduction to SEO" hosted by Talent Garden Vienna. During this free online workshop, we have explored the fundamentals of SEO as well as some best practices and proven tactics.

1. 28.07.2020
Introduction to
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Online
Workshop

2. /attentionfox
@attentionfox
Founder @ Attention Fox
Scientific Coordinator @ Talent Garden Vienna
Content Strategy, Content Marketing, SEO & Performance Marketing
Dominik Berger
/dominik-berger-atfx

3. SEO SEA
SEM
On-page Off-page
Technical
The Discipline of SEO

4. The Discipline of SEO
SEO
🧭 🤔 🧠
SEA
💰 💰 💰
SEM

5. Why SEO?
• SEO has ± 20X more traffic opportunity than PPC (on mobile and desktop)
• Investments in SEO pay dividends over time
• It increases quantity and quality of the organic traffic
• Depending on intent it can directly lead to sales
• Improves usability, accessibility & UX
Source: Moz.com

6. Hierarchy of SEO Needs
SD
Title, URL,
description
Share-worthy
content
Great user experience
Keyword-focused
Compelling content
Accessible content
RandFishkin/Moz.com

7. Results of SEO

8. How Search Engines Work
• Crawl 🕸
”Scan” the web for content, assessing code/content for each URL they find.
• Index 📒
Store and organize the content found during the crawling process. Once a page is in
the index, it’s in the running to be displayed as a result to relevant queries.
• Rank 🎯
Provide the pieces of content that will best answer a searcher's query, which means
that results are ordered by most relevant to least relevant.

9. How Search Engines Work

10. Google Rules The West

11. Ranking Factors

12. Ranking Factors
Source: Moz.com

13. White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO
• Provide value to users
• Strategies and tactics based on best
practices
• Takes time and patience
White Hat 🐇
• Techniques and strategies that
aPempt to fool search engines
• Puts websites at tremendous risk
of being penalized and/or de-
indexed
• Ethical implicaQons
Black Hat 🕵

14. Understanding User Intent
The purpose of such queries is
to learn something. There are
different forms of
informational search goals. For
example, users may need an
answer to a specific question.
They could also want to get an
advice or a suggestion on a
topic. Search queries of this
type can focus on a narrow or
wide area.
Informational 🤔
Users aim at loca=ng the
website of a specific
organiza=on, ins=tu=on, person
or a similar object. The users
are likely to have a known
website in mind and just use
the search engine to obtain the
specific internet address
(=URL). In other words, the
intent is to reach a par=cular
website.
Navigational 🧭
Users would like to find a
website where some kind of
further interacQon will
happen. This type is similar
to the goal of obtaining a
resource. However, the
intent of transacQonal
search queries is to perform
some acQvity on the
internet.
Transac7onal 🛍

15. Understanding User Intent

16. Basic Principles – Do:
• Make pages primarily for users, not search engines
• Don’t fool your users
• Avoid “tricks” intended to improve search engine rankings
• Ask yourself, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't
exist?"
• Think about what makes your website unique, valuable and/or engaging
• Make sure your content is up to date

17. Basic Principles – Do Not:
• Use automaQcally generated content (although in some cases it works)
• ParQcipate in link exchanges or link farming
• Create pages with liPle or no original content (thin / duplicate content)
• Cloaking — show search engine crawlers different content than humans
• Integrate hidden text and links
• Use doorway pages — create pages to rank well for specific searches to funnel
traffic to your website

18. Listen to Google

19. On-page Optimization
On-page SEO is the prac/ce of op/mizing individual web pages in order to rank higher
and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. On-page refers to both the content and
HTML source code of a page that can be op/mized, as opposed to off-page SEO which
refers to links and other external signals. (MOZ)
Content HTML IAKeywords Media
UX
Internal
Links
Structured
data
…

20. Keywords?
Some basic thoughts:
• What are people searching for?
• How many people are searching for it?
• In what format do they want that information?
à Foucs on producing great content for your audience

21. Great Content (According to Google)
• Make your site interesQng and useful
• Know what your audience want s
• Write easy-to-read text
• Organize your topics clearly
• Create fresh, unique content
• OpQmize content for your users, not search engines
• CulQvate trust
• Make experQse and authoritaQveness clear
• Provide an appropriate amount of content for your
subject
• Avoid distracQng adverQsements
à Follow Search Quality Rater Guidelines

22. Understand the Long Tail
Source:Moz.com

23. Some Quick Wins
• Add website to Google Search Console
• Leverage analyQcs data
• Produce great content
• Focus on great usability + UX
• Check Sitemap & Robots.txt
• Update old content
• Use structured data where possible
• Share your content
• Generate traffic to your website
• Update meta descripQons for bePer CTRs

24. Some Tools
• Google Search Console + Google Analytics
• Google Page Speed Insights + GTmetrix
• Google Keyword Planner
• Google Trends
• AnswerThePublic
• Moz Keyword Explorer
• SEO Screaming Frog SEO Spider
• SEMrush (includes content marketing tools)
• ahrefs

25. One Thing To Remember
Trust official Google resources:
• Quality Rater Guidelines
• developers.google.com
• Webmaster Central (YouTube, Blog, Hangouts, Forum, TwiPer)
+ think customer first! 🥳
Focus on providing a high-quality service is more likely to generate sustainable high
rankings (NN Group)

26. Some Great SEOs
• MaB CuBs
Head of the Webspam Team at Google
• Rand Fishkin
Wizard of Moz (reQred)
• Barry Schwartz
Founder of Search Engine Roundtable
• Larry Kim
Founder of WordStream
• Cyrus Shepard
Founder of Zyppy SEO
• Aleyda Solis
SEO Consultant
• Izzi Smith
SEO Analyst at Ryte (previously SIXT)
• John Mueller
Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google

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