Easy Introductory Guide on How to Optimise your website to show up better in Search Engines. Touches on Social Media Marketing and Content Marketing from a Designers perspective. Basic HTML knowledge is useful to follow the examples.

1. SEO Basics
Introduction to
Search Engine Optimization
Guest Lecture
Copyright - Louis Slabbert
Twitter.com/LouisinLondon

2. About Me

3. What is SEO
Adjustments (to your website)
which make it easier for search
engines to crawl, index and
understand your content."
My Addition:
So that your content can be found and understood by
humans and systems
Source:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

4. Why Do SEO
Design != Marketing
Just by creating a Website doesn't mean you
or your clients business will get more customers
Without SEO and Marketing
a website is equivalent to
having Business cards designed but
keeping them locked in your cupboard
Design + SEO + Marketing = New Business and Loyalty

5. What are your Goals with SEO?
Determine what your
market wants
Rank High in Search
Engines
Drive more traffic to
your website
Increase conversions
(get more people who
WANT to buy from
you)

6. Different ways to rank in Search Engines

7. Pay Per Click Advertising

8. Google Local, Google Maps ,Shopping

9. Organic Search Results
We will focus on Organic Results today

10. Hundreds of factors
determine the SEO of a
website.
Different Search Engines
have different guidelines.
Guidelines change…
We'll focus on the
factors that you can
change on your website
during your practical
sessions
Source:
http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors
(2009)

11. Main types of SEO
"ON-Page" SEO
"OFF-Page" SEO
Creating and Optimizing content of
your website correctly
to enable Search Engines
to crawl
and index your site correctly.
Strategies for SEO that are done off the
pages of a website
Website Structure, Filenames and
Design
(CSS animation instead of Flash)
for target keywords related to the page
content
to maximize its performance in the search
engines
Some aspects of Off-page SEO
are content creation, and others are
considered Online Marketing
Both On-page SEO and Off-page SEO
and Social Interaction
is required for a Successful website

12. On-Page SEO factors
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Title ( Keywords in Title Tags)
Domain name (Keywords in Domain name)
URL (Keyword in URL)
Description (Keyword in META Description)
Headers (Keyword in Header Tags)
CA (Google Cache Age)
Content, Image ALT tags, Anchor Text on website

13. On-Page SEO in Practice

14. Bad ON Page SEO
• Bad Titles - "Welcome to our website" or "New Page 1"

15. Good On Page SEO
Title Tags
<title> AirPrint Printer List</title>
Heading Tags (h1,h2,h3)
<h1>About AirPrint</h1>
Emphasis on words
<strong> </strong>
<em></em>
Image ALT Text:
<img scr=".." alt="Airprint ..." />
Link / Anchor Text
<a href=".." >Airpint in Windows</a>

16. More Bad On-Page SEO
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no index.html/php (welcome.html etc)
no ALT text for images
No usage of H1, bold, underline tags
copied / plagiarized text (DON’T DO IT)
No internal links to other pages
Broken links to pages that don’t exist
strange characters file names
• Slow website (non optimised imaged / page loading
slowly due to badly written code)
• Links to bad websites (link exchanges / link farms)

17. "Off-page" SEO factors (Promotion)
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Amount of Backlinks to the site
Amount of Backlinks to the page
Anchor Text used for the backlinks (click here vs “list of Airprint Printers”)
Video's linking to the website
Online Directories linking to the website
Social Media and networks linking to your website
• 2012 update: now links from “Bad networks”
can negatively affect your ranking
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-page_optimization
Yahoo Site Explorer

18. Off Page SEO for Designers
Anchor Text Links
should contain your/your clients preferred keyword / search term
<a href="http://.....co.uk">Dentist in Islington</a>
For Static Websites:
Submission to Search Engines
www.google.co.uk/addurl/?continue=/addurl
Create a sitemap:
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com
Social factors:
Make it easy for people to Share your website

19. Where do you Start?
Always start with Keyword Research
Why Should you Do keyword research?
Imagine being able to find out whether people are looking for
what you have to offer, before you spend days or months
creating a website for something that no one ever looks for?
Where can you do Keyword research?
Google Synonym Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Google Search Keywords - generated keywords will come from the Google
http://www.google.com/sktool/#
Advanced Tools:
Market Samurai: http://www.internetmarketingmagic.org/marketsamurai

20. Basic keyword research

21. Long Tail Keywords
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Search Phrases Longer than 4 or 5 keywords
Lower search volume
Less competition
Better chance of ranking well in Search engines
Often contain "How to" , "Where can I"
Advice:
Yahoo Answers -> Find a question being asked many times.
“Spy on the competition” by analysing what is working for them.
(advanced tools like Market Samurai required)

22. More in depth Niche Research
Google Keyword Tools
Google Insights / Trends
google.com/insights
Google Alerts
alerts.google.com
Forums - Google "Your Niche + Forum"
Magazines
Commercial Competition Analysis Tool (Free Trial)
Market Samurai - Great for Testing and Analysing Competition
http://www.marketsamurai.com/a/accessgranted

23. What's next: Off Page SEO
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Article Marketing
Building Links / Networking
Video Marketing
Online Directories
Blogging or guest blogging
Social Media - Facebook / Twitter etc
RSS Newsfeed submission
Online Press releases
Depending on Niche:
• Classified sites
• Paid Advertising (with lower cost due to On-Page SEO)
- Louis Slabbert
http://www.LondonMarketingLab.com

24. Summary
Planning your website with the customer in mind is crucial
Properly formatted HTML with keyword rich articles and
Search Engine Optimized images, links and content is required
Being actively Social online is a necessity in some niches and beneficial
in most
When SEO is done correctly it benefits:
a) the website owner with more visitors and customer
b) the general public with finding information or services faster
SEO can bring customers to your website, and Design can convert them
into customers or participants
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