Girl Develop It Philly: Intro to SEO

Intro to SEO: Rocket Your Site to the Top of Search Results
Emma Still
5.9.2016 & 5.11.2016

© 2015 Seer Interactive • All Rights Reserved • Page ‹#›
Welcome!
Girl Develop It is here to provide affordable and accessible programs to learn
software through mentorship and hands-on instruction.
Some “rules”
- We are here for you
- Every question is important
- Help each other
- Have fun

Tell us about yourself!
Who are you?
What do you hope to get out of class?
What’s the best gift you’ve ever received?

EMMA STILL
Team Lead @ Seer
Instructor @ Girl Develop It
@mmstll

Seer Interactive
• Agency: Analytics, PPC, & SEO
• 1 office in Northern Liberties
• 1 office in San Diego
• ~100 full time employees
• Philly 100 & Philly Best Places to Work
• @seerinteractive

What we’ll cover today:
On page optimization
Technical SEO
Link building
Social
Measuring Success

What to expect:
A break(s)
Wide range of topics
Have fun!
Deck online after class
Additional resources online
Feedback survey

… looking to grow your website
sales/ form submissions / registrations / traffic

SEARCH LANDSCAPE
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

• Businesses started to understand that they could reach their customers on
search engines
• Thus marketing where people were searching happened
• SEO impacts the “free” (or organic) section
Search Engines & Marketing

Gaining visibility is becoming more complex
• Knowledge graph – try it out!
• “Bagel vs. English muffin”
• “Famous jazz composers”
• “Britney Spears Toxic”
• Devices
• Personalization
• Local – try it out!
• “pizza places”
• “senior living facilities”
The Present

Gaining visibility is becoming more complex
The Present

“future-proofing” your strategy
• User-first
• Long-term mindset
• Integrated marketing
• Proactive
• Understand search engine goals
The Future

• One of the most popular online
activities
• Key in the purchase process
• Always going to be king
(glasses, mobile, desktop, etc.)
• “…the first interaction point for
many of your current and
prospective users”
Search is…

Understanding how it works
How do search engines rank a website?

SEARCH ENGINE GOALS:
GOOD USER EXPERIENCE

Elements of a good user experience:
RELEVANCY – fresh, unique, quality content

QUALITY – technical, mobile, URL structure, load
times

QUALITY – technical, mobile, URL structure, load
times
AUTHORITY – links, citations, mentions, social

How does a website become relevant, quality, and authoritative?

3 Primary Factors
On-page
In-pageOff-page

Keyword
Research
Optimize
Build
Authority
Measure

On-Page SEO
The things that will help Google find your website

On-Page SEO
Can be summarized, in its simplest form, as:
KEYWORDS
CONTENT
META DATA

Keyword
Research
Optimize
Build
Authority
Measure

• The words people are searching for to arrive on your website
• The foundation of optimizing a website
Keywords / Content / Meta Data

Try it out! Write down what you would type into
Google to find the items above.

Mid ring
Midi ring
Knuckle ring
Mid knuckle ring
Half finger rings
Champagne glass
Champagne flute
Wine glass
Sparkling wine glasses
Champagne stemware
Glass champagne flutes

Keyword research: branded, non-branded
• Branded: containing branded terms (company names, product names, etc.)
• Higher likelihood for conversion
• Non-branded not containing any reference to a brand; general queries

Keyword research: long-tail vs. head terms

Keyword research: long-tail vs. head terms
• Try it out!
• How do search results change as your query becomes more specific? (i.e., long tail)
• Try “shoes”
• Try “blue shoes”
• Try “blue women’s shoes”
• Try “blue women’s shoes size 8”
• Try “buy blue women’s shoes size 8”

Keyword research: trending
• Try it out!
• Google.com/trends
• Try “lemonade”
• Try “cancer”, then “breast cancer”
• Try “sales training”, then “sales enablement”
• Try “fall foliage”

Keyword research: brainstorming and ideation

Take these into consideration
• Relevance
• Search Volume
• Competition
• Seasonality
• Intent
Users
• Offer
• Supply
• Revenue
Business
• Ranking
• Content
• SERP Landscape
Status

• Try it out!
• Choose a page from your website, gather list of 10
keywords that may be relevant. We’ll use these later.
• Remember tools like Ubersuggest, Google trends, and Google suggest

Clarifying what “content” means:
Words on a page
Videos
Infographics
Blog posts
White papers
Calculators or widgets
Images
Etc.

Optimizing content
• Where to put keywords
• Title tags / meta data (we’ll get to this next!)
• Page/article heading
• At least once in the main copy
• Early, evenly, often
• Additionally…
• Alt attributes for images
• Synonyms
• Customer language > jargon

Optimizing content

Don’t do this…

…or this

Do more like this…

…and this

Content: Search engine’s preference
• Videos: search engines don’t know what a video is about
• Images: search engines don’t know what an image is
• Text: search engines can read text
• E-commerce Example: RevZilla
• Images Example
• “See” like a search engine: Chrome Web Developer Extension

• Title & description
• H1
• Alt text
• Body copy
• Linking/URLs

• (strong ranking signal)
• Character limits
• Wordpress Plugins: Yoast, All in One SEO Pack
title
description

• h1 (h tags)
• Commonly the title of a blog post, page, or article
• Reinforces topical relevance

• Alt text (“alternative text”)
• Describes images

Image optimization: file names, alt text, descriptive text
• Save files with descriptive
text
• Always use alt text (logos,
headers, product images,
etc.)

• Try it out!

• Body copy
• Use keywords throughout the
copy
• Semantics
• Comprehensive, useful, relevant;
not “keyword-stuffed”

• Linking/URLs
• Employ empathy, shorter is
better, keywords, hyphens
• Linking absolutely vs. relatively
source

Linking: absolutely vs relatively

Welcome back!
(Open Google Analytics if you have access to an account)

On-page SEO regroup
KEYWORDS – research; head terms vs. long tail
CONTENT – keywords on a page; user experience
META DATA – titles, descriptions, URLs, etc.

• Try it out!
• Write a title tag, description, and h1 based on your keyword research brainstorm
• If you could re-write your page’s URL, keeping keywords, length, structure in mind, would
you? If so, how?

Try it out!
(10 min)
- Choose a page from the website you’d like to optimize
- Choose a keyword you think the page is relevant for (ubersuggest, google suggest, Google
trends)
- Write a title tag (Preview: http://moz.com/blog/new-title-tag-guidelines-preview-tool)
- Where else might you insert that keyword on the page? (Alt text? H1? Within the content?)

In-Page SEO
The code on your site that search engines use to determine relevance

• Crawling & Indexing
• Robots.txt
• Sitemap.xml
• Mobile
• Duplication
• Structured data
In-page SEO: Basics

• Crawling & Indexing
• Robots.txt
• Sitemap.xml
• Mobile
• Duplication
• Structured data
In-page SEO: Basics
Reminder:
Your CMS should default to the
proper settings for most of these
basics!
Article in resources that shows
how to set these up for success.

Start with Google Search Console
• Try it out!
• Google and other search engines “crawl”
your website
• To see the last time Google has visited and
indexed your site, check the cache date.
• Check index status in Google Search
Console
Basics

• Every website should have a
robots.txt file
• Block search engines from
crawling parts of your website
• Meta robots: index, follow
• Most CMSs default to correct
setup
Basics – robots.txt

• Every website should have an
xml sitemap
• Tell search engines about all
pages on your site (no 301s,
404s, etc.)
• Different than an HTML sitemap
• Most CMSs default to correct
setup
Basics – sitemap.xml

• Google recommends
responsive web design
• Easier for users to interact with,
share, and link to
• Easier for search engines to index
• No redirects needed (reduces load
time)
• Saves resources for site and
search engine crawlers
Basics – Mobile

• Page Speed
• The slower your pages load, the
fewer of them are indexed
• User experience
• 40% of visitors abandon a site if
loading takes longer than 3 seconds
• Half of visitors expect a site to load in 2
seconds or less
• All things equal, the site that
loads quicker has higher
propensity for ranking
• Google Page Speed Insights
Basics – Mobile

• Common forms of duplication – Try it out!
• www. to non www., /index.html, trailing slash, https vs http
• Parameters
• Casing
Basics – Duplication

• What to do if you have duplicate pages
• Canonical
• 301 redirect
• So what?
• Wasteful for search engines crawling your website
• Crawl budget
Basics – Duplication

• Helps search engines understand the code of your website in
context.
• Some search engines display more robust information in
search results, & social streams for certain types of structured
data markup: “rich snippets”
Basics – Structured Data

Basics – Rich Snippets

• Authorship – discontinued support from Google
• Reviews
• Rich Pins/Twitter Cards/Open Graph
• Try it out! – “Structured Data Testing Tool” will verify if you
have implemented the code properly

• Rich snippets: recipe
• http://schema.org/Recipe

• Rich snippets: ratings &
reviews
• http://schema.org/Review

• Rich snippets: video
• https://schema.org/Video
Object

• Rich snippets: Social – Twitter cards

• Rich snippets: Social – Facebook Open Graph

In-page SEO regroup
CRAWLING & INDEXING
ROBOTS.TXT
SITEMAP.XML
MOBILE
DUPLICATION
STRUCTURED DATA

Off-page SEO
“earned media” signals sent to search engines. Foundation of Google’s algorithm.

Off-Page SEO
Can be summarized, in its simplest form, as:
LINK BUILDING
CITATIONS

• Link building is the process of getting other
websites to link to your website.
What is link building?

Why is link building important?

Link building = Authority
Authority = Trust
Trust = Rankings
Rankings = ?

• When another website links to your website, google
sees this as a vote of confidence for your website
Off-page SEO: Link Building

>
Quality of Links > Quantity of Links

Principles: why links are important
• Traditional: pass value in the eyes of a search
engine
• Practical: provides users a way to easily navigate
content on the web
Link building

Principles: how to get links
• Content
• Building relationships
Link building
Keyword
Research
Optimize
Build
Authority
Measure

Tactics: how to get links
• Testimonials
• Unlinked mentions
• Brand misspellings
• Media mentions
• Sponsorships
• Local citations
• Speaker bios
• Contribute content on other sites
• Linkable Assets
Link building

Tactics: testimonials
Link building

Tactics: unlinked mentions
Link building
Before
After

Tactics: brand misspellings
Link building

Tactics: media mentions
Link building

Tactics: sponsorships
Link building

Tactics: conferences/speaking
Link building

Tactics: events/citations/media mentions
Link building

Tactics: contributing content
Link building

Tactics: content
• Example: rcs.seerinteractive.com/money
• 10k tweets
• 14k facebook shares
• 800+ websites have linked to this
Link building

Tactics: content
Link building

Tactics: relationship building
Link building
• Outreach
• Comments, social sharing

Try it out!
Brainstorm value that your site, content, or employees have that could potentially
earn you links based on some of the examples that were shared.

Backlinks beware
Link building
• Anchor text
• Link networks
• Remember where Google’s going…
• READ THIS: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en
• Diverse backlink profile

Social Signals and SEO
Do tweets/likes/+1s affect rankings?

The longer answer:
The impact of social engagement is still speculative, but projected to be a critical
ranking factor in the near future.

• Increased visibility & awareness = links = rankings
• Increased positive reviews on G+/Yelp = increased visibility in local
search
• Google+
• Posts are seen by Google almost immediately
• Using social influence to build relationships = links = rankings
• Audience analysis
How social [indirectly] affects SEO

How social [indirectly] affects SEO
Social Shares
Social Impressions
Influencer
Impressions
Links

Remember the relationships we’re
supposed to be building?
Identify influencers
Build relationships = awareness
Understand needs of others

• Identifying influencers
• Finding out what your audience likes; create content for
them that they’ll want to share
SEO Benefits of Building Social Relationships

How to find influencers & earn engagement
• Buzzsumo
• Influencers
• Who shares what
• Topsy
• Find people who have shared content
• Klear
• Find top conversations
• Likelihood for interaction
• Followerwonk
• Influencer identification
Free Social Monitoring Tools

• Klear – SEMrush example

• Followerwonk – analyze your own followers;
competitors

Off-page SEO regroup
LINK BUILDING
SOCIAL SIGNALS

Measuring Success
How do you know when you’re done?

• Traffic
• Conversions
• Microconversions
Setting Goals

• Traffic
• What pages are you optimizing?
• Organic Traffic
• Referral Traffic
• Annotations
• Conversions
Setting Goals

• Traffic
• Try it out!
• SEMrush.com
• Conversions
Setting Goals

• Traffic
• Conversions
• Goals
• Ecommerce
• Your wallet/phone/lead capture
Setting Goals

Measurement regroup
GOOGLE ANALYTICS – traffic, conversions
SEMrush

Please take the survey:
bit.ly/seo-feedback
Additional resources & slides:
emmastill.com/beginner-seo-resources

Girl Develop It Philly: Intro to SEO

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