Search engine optimization best practices

1. SEO – what you should know
Catherine Elder
March 2015

2. What is SEO…
Search engine optimization – getting found when someone
searches on a keyword relevant to your
organization/services
Source: How to make any content SEO-friendly by Anvil and Act-on

3. Keeping up with changes…
The average SEO-engaged brand saw its natural traffic rise by 19.8 percent year-
over-year in 2014.
…data indicate that there’s a 58/42 split between desktop and mobile site visits
coming from natural search, compared to 63/37 just a year ago.
Google has also promised more moves in its SERPs later this spring around mobile
optimization, calling out and boosting sites that have a good mobile
experience, and punishing the rankings of those that don’t.
Google and Bing are becoming apps rather than search engines, and making your
site the answer to customers’ questions will take more than typical SEO tactics.
Semantic markup, a robust presence on Wikidata when it takes over from Freebase
this summer, and making your content richer and more Hummingbird-friendly will all
determine how well you thrive in the new world that Google and the search engines
have planned for us.
Source: SearchEngineWatch
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4. Search engines
Search engines - crawl sites and then build an index so they can
serve up relevant results when someone conducts a search.
Search engines do this by using automated robots (also called
crawlers and spiders).
Once the search engines have gathered the data they use
algorithms to determine relevancy so that it can be associated to
the search query.
There are hundreds of components involved in these algorithms to
determine relevancy and these are modified by the search engines
on an ongoing basis (you can search on search engine ranking
factors for more information).
Popularity of the page is also considered
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5. Why people use search
People search in B2B to:
understand a product category
learn about a product/solution
solve a specific problem
Who is coming to your site via search engines?
Assess your Google analytics to determine:
The percentage of visitors coming to your site from organic search
The keywords they are using to find your site
(if you’re already using ad words use the keyword planner to help)
Transactional queries
Can people complete a transaction? Can they purchase a product or service? how easy is it
for them? are they assured of security in the transaction? Are the steps clearly defined to
complete the process?
Informational queries
Can people search your site and easily get information?
Is information written for the web so its scannable?
Is it easy to print?
Do you have helpful checklists, tip sheets, whitepapers etc?
Is content aligned so its clear which problem it can solve?
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6. Long tail search results
People will often put in a very exact term and get highly
relevant but few results.
6Source: How to make any content SEO-friendly by Anvil and Act-on

7. What does it all mean?
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Although paid
advertisements show at
top and side of page,
organic results tend to be
trusted more.
However, 75% of people
only look at the first
search engine results
page (SERP)

8. 8
Next steps

9. Create a cohesive content management
plan
“Too often we treat the various aspects of our marketing programs as
individual things. Social media lives over here, content marketing lives
over there and SEO is somewhere off in the distance”. (source: Brick
Marketing)
A cohesive content management plan is key to creating a strong
digital strategy and should include:
Content written for online
With key messaging (defined by brand and service line objectives)
Optimized for search engines
 Supported with a search engine marketing strategy (if you have the ad budget)
Designed for responsiveness including mobile devices, and accessibility
Identified channels for content
 Including social media strategy
 Multi-purpose content for multi-channels
An editorial calendar
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10. Best practices for SEO
Websites written for people, with a focus on being clear and user friendly –
know your audience and write to them
Where feasible, keywords should be included in:
page titles, headings (h1,h2,h3), and emphasis
Only the first 65-75 characters of a title tag display in the search results
- this is also the general limit allowed by most social media sites.
Headings should be 65 characters max. (long headings can be
interpreted as spam by Google)
Bolding or italicizing keywords can also aid search engines to know
what words are important – but emphasis must be appropriate, i.e.
done for a reason the reader understands
within content, especially within the first paragraph (have about 300 words
per page)
Link content (contextual links), including navigation/menu items and
anchors 10
Source: What is search engine optimization? by Mike Hanson (slideshare); SEO MOZ – The beginners Guide to SEO

11. Best practices for SEO
Search engines also look at:
age of site (how long has it been in existence, is it a credible source of information on that keyword)
Neighbourhood – who is linking to your site and where is your site linking to (is there a high degree of
relevance especially for the keyword) (also called backlinks)
Having a blog that you link to and links back with relevant links can support better results
Create content that is of high valuable so people will share it and link to it
Search on Google for allintitle:resources directory – and find resources directories that you can approach to link to you
Note: bad links – pages that only contain links and no content
Fresh content – frequently update your content (stale content will get pushed down in the results)
URLs – should be readable and the shorter the better (115 characters max as shorter urls have higher click
throughs)
Meta data - description (up to 150 characters including spaces), page title, ALT (less than 65 characters
incl spaces), tags
Use questions in subheadings (users often pose questions in SE)
Hierarchy of content and information architecture; Flat sites do better as spiders view low level pages as
less important
Social sharing can aid in improving search results
Multiple formats can aid in improving search results (e.g. videos, articles, tools)
Format considerations (images need ALT; video needs transcripts)
Content behind a form may not be indexed, therefore a summary of what is in it, using keywords, is
important
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Source: What is search engine optimization? by Mike Hanson (slideshare); SEO MOZ – The beginners Guide to SEO

12. Things to consider
Algorithms change
(Google makes 500-600 changes per year – source: ActOn
“SEO 101”)
Page ranking changes – your place on SERP is never
guaranteed or permanent, continual work is required
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13. Approach
First step is to understand what your keywords are for your services, how people refer to
your service and what words they would use when conducting a search.
Write for people and for web consumption incorporating in the best practices.
Choose a primary keyword/phrase as well as secondary
Do not assign the primary to more than one page (secondary keywords can be for
multiple pages)
Use synonyms in body copy
Review your site content
What are your URLs, page titles and headings – do they support what you think your
keywords should be?
Use a keyword density tool to find out how often keywords (and phrases) are used
within your site
(note, increasing keyword density is not a guarantee to impact SERPs; content should be
written for readability)
You may want to brainstorm to find out what your keywords should be
ask your business development team what people talk to them about,
What are RFPs asking for and what terms do they use
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14. Approach
Verify the appropriateness of your keywords:
Is the keyword relevant to your website's content?
Will searchers find what they are looking on your site when they search
using these keywords?
Will they be happy with what they find?
Will this traffic result in financial rewards or other organizational goals?
Test the keywords in search engines – do your competitors
appear?
To give your site and keywords a boost, consider using ad words
for defined periods and test which ones work best for you in the
ads
Continually assess and tweak your approach
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(SEOMOZ)

15. Conduct research
Conduct a keyword density search of your site (or of the
main pages) and analyze which words you are using and
identify those you aren’t
Assess your analytics for the main search terms used to find
your site – what terms do people use to find you
Conduct search engine searches on your services
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16. Next steps
Assess keywords
currently used on your website; and
where your site appears within search engine organic search
results for those keywords or keywords you think you should have
if your competitors are being returned in organic results this may be the
right phrase; if your competitors are also advertising with this keyword
you will have to determine if you want to compete for it
Identify gaps – what are the words you want to be known for (that
are relevant to your products and services)
Incorporate the keywords into your content
Choose what keywords will be best utilized in online ads to support
boosting your profile of that keyword in organic results
Begin content management strategy and plan
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17. Tools
Google
Information http://www.googlekeywordtool.com/
Webmaster tools (login) - https://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/#utm_source=en-
wmxmsg&utm_medium=wmxmsg&utm_campaign=bm&authuser=0
key word planner (need to login to ad words) - https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner
http://ubersuggest.org/
http://mergewords.com/
Keyword Density analysis http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density/
Keyword density http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/
Markup help for SEO results http://schema.org/
http://www.seo-browser.com/
https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner (login required)
http://www.google.com/trends/
Bing http://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/bing-ads-intelligence (download required)
https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/sign_in/ (free trial available)
Read my blog post: Get discovered – Understanding search engine optimization
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