Slide set from my client workshops on search engine optimisation. There is some generic SEO content, but much is relevant specifically to our CMS.

1. Search Engine Optimisation Client Workshop Google’s mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful Your job is to help it! John Duffy john@nemisys.uk.com @johnrduffy www.nemisys.uk.com/blogs/nemisys

2. Nemisys Client Workshops This is one of a series of workshops we run for our clients Workshops run either in-house or open access where we take up to 5 clients a day The purpose is simple – if your web site works better for you, you may win more budget to further develop it. We also want choosing to work with Nemisys to be a “career-enhancing” decision! See www.nemisys.uk.com/workshops for our timetable

3. Agenda Understanding how search engines work “On page” factors – things you can change on your own site Practical session – let’s optimise some of your pages today “Off page factors” – things you can do on other sites Concentrating on natural results Aiming for a higher number of relevant visitors Or for those of you who have attended our Analytics session – visitors who convert

4. Over to you Introductions and roles How do you use your web site?

5. Why focus on Google? 85%+ UK searches With limited time available to you, it makes sense to focus on the most productive engine

6. How Google works User search Web sites Page repository

7. Our approach – ethical SEO This is all about getting the best value from your site’s content ethically – we will refuse if you ask us to “fool” the search engines For more information about what Google doesn’t like, http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#3

8. Our approach - accessibility Accessibility and natural SEO are bound up together On some sites which we have made accessible with no real focus on SEO, we have seen a trebling of natural search traffic SO, think long and hard about specifying functionality that isn’t accessible. We will almost always insist that there’s an accessible alternative

9. Our approach – “the long tail” People search for weird and wonderful variations of every “obvious” search phrase You will never guess all of those variations So don’t chase “hero” terms (If you have persistent questioning from HIPPOs, we can look at keyword demand analysis later if you really want to!) Some examples:

10. Example – “all england”

11. Our approach – summed up Write about what you do – be literal Write for people not search engines Don’t take short cuts when writing your copy, creating documents etc Make sure your web site is accessible (we do this for you) Make sure your information architecture is “correct” (that’s our job at design/specification stage!) Make sure your link architecture is correct (you’ll get the hang easily when using the CMS)

12. Results – e-commerce

13. Results – e-commerce

14. Results - recruitment

15. Results - ECMK

16. Results – England Hockey

17. On page factors “Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Your mission is to help Google do this!”

18. Our content checklist See course manual Email john@nemisys.uk.com if you can’t find your copy To cover: Page title Short title Meta title Body copy Meta description Headings & subheadings Alt tags Documents Link text Meta keywords

19. Exercise – get stuck in Identify 2 pages on your site and optimise them step by step Make a note of which pages – we’re going to measure the results!

20. Off page factors You’ve optimised your site – what else can you do?

21. Requesting incoming links Look for potential link sites List your “competitor” sites Find out who links to them Ask the best ones to link to you too – give them a reason, linkbait Example Say you’ve just published a “guide to macular disease” Search for “macular disease” to find high ranking sites Then find out who links to the top site And contact the best to ask for links Note syntax of the searches above Wrong: “link:www.maculardisease.org” Right: “www.maculardisease.org –site:www.maculardisease.org”

22. Exercise – incoming links Locate your competitors Produce a list of sites that link to them

23. Incoming links - requesting Ask people to use your keywords rather than just your web address Good: Ovarian cancer information Not so good: www.targetovarian.org.uk Provide the code they need if you can! Who links to your competitors Use Google to find out – search for www.ecmk.co.uk -site:www.ecmk.co.uk NOT link:www.ecmk.co.uk Then ask them to link to you

24. Feeds News feeds Regional structure Sister/affiliated organisations?

25. Linkbait – fishing for links Consider creating content designed to encourage people to link to you Eg England Hockey Star Chat Coverage obtained Other ideas that work well Simple guides to ... White papers Blogs Online conferences Glossaries Directories

26. Exercise Do you have any content on your site that could act as ‘linkbait’ Let’s form an action plan to use it Do you have any ideas for additional site content?

27. Incoming links - evaluating You will be approached by other people and offered links Check their PageRank http://toolbar.google.com/T5/intl/en/ Check the format Do they use “nofollow” property? Check your analytics – what traffic do you get? Note: Google forbids you from buying/selling links to pass on PageRank – but it must be difficult to police!

28. Specialist directories Are there any specialist directories for your sector? Check on http://searchenginewatch.com/links/ Do your staff use any directories? Don’t be tempted to pay for links

29. Other link sources Social networks and forumsDon’t use these for PageRank – but do use them for traffic Online PR servicesMost claim to pass on PageRank – check for ‘nofollow’ tags Partners, customers, suppliers (Nemisys!)

31. Spot new sites linking to you

33. Looking for incoming links Check your most successful referrers And “farm” them Check for errors – people linking to moved pages Build a network of peers People running similar sites People running like-minded sites Network of advocates Network of news sites

34. Landing pages Spot best performers Improve problem pages There’s no “right” or “wrong” figure But don’t just look at rates – concentrate on high volume pages

35. Webmaster tools

36. Webmaster tools – key reports Crawl statistics – check you are being crawled regularly Link text – check the way people are linking to you Search queries – what terms are people using to find you Diagnostics – any problems we should know about? Sitelinks – review & control block any Google sitelinks you aren’t happy with

37. Useful tools Unless SEO is your sole job, and we know that for most of clients it isn’t, we really recommend that you don’t focus down on specific keywords, but instead concentrate on creating lots of lovely high quality content, BUT, if you force us ... Paid Hitwise, but expect to pay £several000 either for your own license, or for a specialist to perform the analysis for youhttp://www.hitwise.co.uk/ Wordtracker, poor man’s Hitwise, but at least it spans different engineshttp://www.wordtracker.com/ Free Google’s Keyword suggestion tool:https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal Seasonal terms – get ready in time for the surge!http://www.google.com/insights/search/# DoubleClick Ad Plannerhttps://www.google.com/adplanner/

38. Homework Optimise 5 more pages – or even better, choose a whole section to optimise Track the performance of the pages you optimise Contact 5 sites and request links from them

39. Further reading Matt Cutts – lots of common sense. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/googleseo/ Google’s basic SEO starter guidehttp://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide.html Webmaster central – keeps you on the straight & narrowwww.google.com/webmasters/ Search Engine Watch – the daddy of them allhttp://searchenginewatch.com Search:Johnston – buy the ebookhttp://www.searchjohnston.co.uk/resources/