1. Is Your Event Website Optimized? SEO Part II Arran Coole, ASP Inc Dave Lutz, Velvet Chainsaw Stephen Nold, MeetingTechOnline
2. Ground Rules ASK Questions Cell Phones OFF Keep ?’s Relevant To all NO Speeches Do Not Run with Scissors NO Vendor Plugs Simple Rules Share your experiences
Dave – Show video and turn over to Arran after doing ground rules.
Dave Say No to Frames and Flash, No automated URL’s, Fresh Content, page length – not too long or wide, don’t bury content – 4 levels max.
Arran - Submit to google yahoo, have a useful site map. Make sure each page has one primary focus.
Arran Typical page. In order of importance for Google relevance: The domain name (yes keywords in the URL!) Page title (the title at the very top of the browser) Header Content So think about headers, for example don’t do ‘Exhibiting’ as a page title but ‘Exhibiting to the electronics industry’ if you were an electronics show. Image ALT tags (when you hold a mouse over an image a tag should appear – that is an ALT tag) are important for image SEO as well as disability compliance. TIP: Don’t worry about making the show name appear everywhere, concentrate on the industry you represent. Building the Ideal Title Tag The Title Tag is the most important element to optimize on a your webpage because: Search engines place significant weight on the words used in the Title Tag when determining ranking . It is used as the title for the search engine results page listing. Therefore it is the first impression a search engine user will have when deciding which page to visit. When someone bookmarks your page, the title will be used as the bookmark heading. So have a title that stands out and is relevant to the site. How should a Title Tag be formatted for best results? Here's a simple formula we've developed in-house that seems to boost rankings: Start the title with the keyword phrase for which you are trying to get high rankings. Be sure that the keyword phrase is well used on your webpage so the Title Tag is clearly synchronous with the relevance of the page as a whole. Insert a breaking character of some type such as a hyphen or double-colon to separate the initial keyword phrase from what comes next to make the title more readable. Then either: Describe the webpage in five words or less while using all or part of your target keyword phrase again, or I nsert the name of your company or website, but make it three words or less so the second half of the Title Tag does not overshadow the first half. This option is generally best when the site name or website address includes the keyword phrase or a portion of it, such as a Houston car dealership that has the domain HoustonCarDeals.com. In shortened form here is my formula for an great Title Tag: [Keyword Phrase] :: [Description of Page or Website Name] Building the Ideal Description Meta Tag The Description Meta Tag is the next most important tag, since search engines frequently use it as the description for your page's listing, thus increasing the chance that your webpage listing will be clicked on. Begin the Description Tag with the same keyword phrase you used in the Title Tag. Then either use it to start a sentence describing your webpage or follow the same formula used with the Title Tag; just increase the length of the description from 5 words to a maximum of 15. Here are a few guidelines to keep in mind when writing the description: The entire tag should be no longer than 22 words. It should succinctly describe the webpage and entice users to click on your link in the search results. The keyword phrase should appear no more than two times in total. In some cases the phrase can be used three times but only if it does not detract from the quality of the writing. Optimization should never interfere with a customer's experience. In shortened form here are two formulas that can be used to create a great Description Tag: [Keyword Phrase] - [Description of Page] OR, [Description of page beginning with the keyword phrase]
Stephen – Conversions, traffic, KPI’s Google Analytics, Compete.com
Dave
Arran - Use key words in titles, page descriptions and headings DO NOT cheat – else you get ‘Death of Google’
Arran - 85% of searches are 2+ words thus key phrases.
Dave Research keywords for your target audience/subject matter 2. Add keywords to the press release to create keyword-rich content a. Add keywords to your H1 header tag b. Add keywords strategically within your press release copy c. Add keywords in links back to your site 3. Make sure density levels are appropriate (I recommend an 8-15% overall density) 4. Make sure your optimize the first 250 words of your content PR are fresh content
Dave/Arran Fresh content, Keyword Density, Relevant links Blogging isn’t cool because you can tag, because you can use RSS, because there are all kinds of hot templates. Blogging improves a company’s organic SEO, gives their leadership a voice in the conversation, brings potential wide-funnel sales activity into a business. Arran - Invite bloggers to you show as press people
Arran - Fresh content, good for linking and usually comes with high density of keyword/keyphrases.
Arran
Dave
Arran - Fresh content, good for linking and usually comes with high density of keyword/keyphrases. Video on Youtube, Flickr, images. Archive content – webinars, handouts, slide decks.
Stephen –
Arran - Wikipedia page, blogs are link bait, bookmarking/sharing
Arran
Dave 1) spreads your content across the Web by making it easier for your visitors to bookmark and share it with other people 2) provides insight on the types of content our users like to share and how they share it
Stephen – Forward webpages, twitter, widget, gadget’s, Social Media, banners Design compelling email campaign with actionable response that sends traffic to your website Use of social media tools that captures eyeballs – i.e. LindedIn Events, Facebook Links with partners/customers