What it SEO, how does web searching work, why are keywords so crucial (and how to optimize them), how to harness Google Analytics to master your campaign; plus- QR Codes, building a trackable URL, Google Trends, AdWords and more!

1. SEO, Keywords
and Google Analytics
09 July 2013 • #UNHCS13
Neil Larson, Technical Lead, New & Emerging Media

3. How will they find you?
Hyperlinks
Other site
Social media
Email or IM
QR codes, texts
Typing in a URL
• Short
• No extraneous characters
• Real words with meaning
• Character clarity
Web Search
Google or Bing
SERP snippet
is your calling card…

4. How will people get to you?
Following a hyperlink
• Other site
• Social media
• Email or IM
• QR code or SMS

5. It All Begins with a Search
it will probably be:

6. …but don’t bank on it!

7. The Science of Search

8. The Science of Search

9. The Science of Search
Relevance
site content | URL | semantics
Authority
markup | trustworthiness | page-links

10. The Science of Search
Keyword Resources
•Google Ad Words
•Google Trends
•Webmaster Tools (Google / Bing)
•Google Analytics
•MOZ

11. The Science of Search
Keyword Stuffing

12. The Science of Search
Frequency
How often is it searched for?
Relevance
How specific is the search?
Competition
How many others are using your keywords?

13. The Science of Search

14. Search Engine Results Page
Paid Ads
Paid Ads

15. SERP Snippet
Page Title (meta)
URL
Description (meta)

16. SERP Snippet
Page Title (Meta Tag)
• Include the name of your site, not just the specific topic.
• Use Vertical Bar to separate entities
• Approximately 65 characters

17. SERP Snippet
Page Title (Meta Tag)
Drupal users take note if changing your title…
Your URL alias may change as well. If you have already shared the link through social media or
otherwise, uncheck the ‘automatic alias’ box so that your URL can remain the same.

18. Webpage URL
• Concise but relevant
• Consider using keywords or phrases
• Separate words with hyphens
• Use real or recognizeable words, keep abbreviations to a
minimum
• Tildes (~) denote amateur websites
SERP Snippet

19. Bad URLs
Since spaces can’t exist in URLs, this
may cause some confusion. Most
people are used to deciphering
strings of text
Avoid tilde characters and try to get
around using “weighty” words like
‘adult’ in your URL.
Link shortener services like bit.ly are great, but
especially for print situations, be sure to
customize them with real words. In this case the
last two characters are unclear. After two failed
attempts to type in a URL, most users will give up
& move on…

20. Bad URLs
come on, really…?

21. Description
SERP Snippet
• 150 – 160 characters; think of this with a Tweet-composing mentality.
• In other words, be compelling.
• If description field is non-existent, search engines will grab either the first
text that appears on your site, or possibly some arbitrary text instead,
which might not have a lot of relevance to your site!
• Drupal users: check in with Web Solutions for a way to optimize your meta
descriptions

22. Preview your SERP snippets!

23. SEO Strategy
• Headers
• <h1> and <h2> tags
• Body text
• <p> element / <em> and <strong>
• Images
• <img> ‘alt’ meta tags
• Navigation
• Organized and consistent
• Page Speed
• Image size, extraneous scripts, etc

24. Why is the Site Slow?
Y-Slow
yslow.com
Google Page Speed
developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/

25. Who’s Linking to You?
Open Site Explorer: www.opensiteexplorer.org

26. Finding Keywords
Google AdWords: www.google.com/adwords

27. What’s Hip & Trending
Google Trends: www.google.com/trends/

28. Google Analytics

29. Google Analytics Concepts
Pageviews vs. Unique Pageviews
A pageview is tallied when a page is loaded. For example, if you click a
link and the page loads, you’ve triggered a page view. If you click that link
10 more times, there will be 10 more page views. Same thing if you refresh
the site or navigate back to the site from a different page, page views are
continuously tallied.
Unique pageviews are tallies of page views that are generated by the same
user during the same session. A session is visits within a period of 30
minutes or more. Future activity is attributed to a new session. Users that
leave your site and return within 30 minutes are counted as part of the
original session. A unique page view represents the number of sessions
during which that page was viewed one or more times.

30. Google Analytics Concepts
Visits vs. Visitors
Analytics measures both visits and visitors in your account. Visits represent the number of
individual sessions initiated by all the visitors to your site.
The initial session by a user during any given date range is considered to be an additional visit
and an additional visitor. Any future sessions from the same user during the selected time
period are counted as additional visits, but not as additional visitors.
Unique Visitors
A unique visitor is an individual user who has accessed your site. It is determined by the IP
address of the computer or device that the user is browsing from, combined with a cookie on
the browser they are using. No matter of how many visits a visitor makes, if he is on the same
device and same browser, only one unique visitor is counted.
For example, if you visit a link once today, you will be counted as a unique visitor. If you come
back to that site 10 more times today, you are still counted as one unique visitor. If you visit the
site from another computer or device (or another browser) it will count you as a new visitor.

31. Google Analytics
Other Terms
Entrances
The number of visits to your website that occurred on that particular page.
Bounce Rate
The percentage of people who entered your site on that page, didn’t
navigate anywhere else & then left – or “bounced”.
% Exit
The percentage of people who exited from your site on this page and didn’t
return (for at least 30 minutes)

32. Google Analytics
Find keywords that organically brought people to your site
Traffic Sources > Overview > Sources > Search > Organic

33. Google Analytics
Reporting: create pie charts!
Traffic Sources > Overview > Sources > Search > Organic

34. Google URL Builder
Create trackable URLs for campaigns
Example URL:
http://www.unh.edu/admissions/visit-
campus/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=
referral&utm_campaign=search
Parameters used:
utm_source=email
utm_medium=referral
utm_campaign=search
(UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module)
More info here!

35. Tracking QR Codes
1) Create trackable URL using URL Builder
2) Create QR code using Kaywa
3) Check Analytics to see campaign activity