Very brief, basics of SEO tailored for audience at Leeds Digital Festival 2016.

1. SEARCH ENGINE
OPTIMISATION
AN INTRODUCTION TO

2. CONTENTS
• What is SEO?
• How does Google determine what ranks?
• What is Google looking for?
• The importance of analytics

3. — Lyndon Antcliff, Cornwall SEO
SEO ISN’T DEAD, IT’S JUST
NO LONGER FASHIONABLE.
WHICH IS GOOD.
”
“

4. WHAT IS SEO?

5. THE FIRST ENGINES
• 1990 - Archie
• 1993 - Excite, JumpStation
• 1994 - WebCrawler, Yahoo & Lycos
• 1997 - Ask Jeeves
• 1999 - Google
• 2000 - Yandex
• 2008 - DuckDuckGo
• 2009 - Bing

6. WHAT IS SEO
ON SITE
OFF SITE TECHNICAL

7. HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES OPERATE
Search engines have two major functions: crawling and building an
index, and providing search users with a ranked list of the websites
they've determined are the most relevant.

8. HOW DOES GOOGLE
DETERMINE WHAT
RANKS?

9. ALGORITHMS

10. ALGORITHMS
• Panda
• Penguin
• Hummingbird
• Pigeon
• Phantom
• Pay Day
• Pirate

11. PANDA ALGORITHM
HOW DOES GOOGLE DETERMINE WHAT RANKS?
Panda is a change to Google's
search results ranking algorithm
that was first released in February
2011.
The change aimed to lower the
rank of "low-quality sites" or "thin
sites", and return higher-quality
sites near the top of the search
results.

12. PANDA ALGORITHM
HOW DOES GOOGLE DETERMINE WHAT RANKS?
• Ensure there is a good level
(500+ words) of unique, relevant
content on a page
• Include links to other relevant
pages on the site as well as
links to authoritative external
sites
• Ensure all taxonomies (tag,
category and author pages) and
any paginated pages (page 2
onwards) are noindexed

13. PENGUIN ALGORITHM
HOW DOES GOOGLE DETERMINE WHAT RANKS?
Penguin is a codename for a
Google algorithm update that was
first announced on April 24, 2012.
The update is aimed at decreasing
search engine rankings of websites
that violate Google’s Webmaster
Guidelines by using now declared
black-hat SEO techniques involved
in increasing artificially the ranking
of a webpage by manipulating the
number of links pointing to the
page.

14. PENGUIN ALGORITHM
HOW DOES GOOGLE DETERMINE WHAT RANKS?
• Don’t submit the site to too many
online directories, if you do, also
use the brand name and link to
the home page
• Don’t buy links of Fiverr
• Vary your link text
• Not all links have to be ‘follow
links’
• https://monitorbacklinks.com/seo-
tools/free-backlink-checker

15. PIGEON ALGORITHM
HOW DOES GOOGLE DETERMINE WHAT RANKS?
Pigeon is the code name given to
one of Google's local search
algorithm updates. This update
was released on July 24, 2014.
The update is aimed to increase
the ranking of local listing in a
search.
The changes will also affect the
search results shown in Google
Maps along with the regular
Google search results.

16. PIGEON ALGORITHM
HOW DOES GOOGLE DETERMINE WHAT RANKS?
• Have a complete Google+
profile and Google My Business
listing
• Use the same phone number
and brand name everywhere
online

17. PHANTOM ALGORITHM
HOW DOES GOOGLE DETERMINE WHAT RANKS?
Phantom 1 (May 2013):
unconfirmed by Google, could be
any change to the algorithm
Phantom 2 = Quality Update 1 (May
2015): The change first identified
and unofficially named “Phantom 2”
was later officially confirmed by
Google and called the “Quality
Update.”
Phantom 3 (Nov. 2015):
Unconfirmed by Google, suspected
to be effectively Quality Update 2.

18. WHAT IS GOOGLE
LOOKING FOR?

19. ONSITE
FACTORS

20. credit: firstpagesage.com

21. SEARCH QUALITY GUIDELINES
• In 2013 Google released a
condensed version of their
Search Quality Guidelines –
however on November 12,
2015 Google rocked the SEO
world by releasing the entire
document.
• The document weighs in at a
substantial 144 insight packed
pages.
• Download link:
http://bit.ly/1YQzJ3I

22. YMYL PAGES - YOUR MONEY OF YOUR LIFE
Your money or your life pages (YMYL) are held in very high regard by Google as they
often contain information that can directly influence a searchers life (either medically
or financially). Google has five categories of YMYL pages, these are
ecommerce/transactional pages, financial advice/information pages, medical
information pages, legal pages and ‘Other’.
While in theory, anyone can create a page about specific medical conditions or
financial planning, Google wants to ensure that the YMYL pages on page one are as
high quality as they can be. You can improve your score by linking to and referencing
high authority resources, being linked to as a resource, including ‘expert’ opinions
and providing additional content (and downloads).
Notably, Google sees ecommerce sites in the same vein as YMYL pages. It’s
therefore vitally important that any site with a store element is functional, secure and
free from glaring errors.

23. IS YOUR SITE TRUSTWORTHY?
Every now and again we all come across an abandoned blog or website
that hasn’t been updated in months (if not longer). However a site could
be active and still active, but if there is no moderation on the blog and it’s
full of spammy, bot generated comments about great pharmaceutical
products or it looks like the site has been hacked/isn’t formatting correctly
– it sends all the wrong signals and that the site is untrustworthy.
If a site owner doesn’t care enough to make sure the site formats
correctly and isn’t full of spam, why should a site user trust the site and
the company supposedly maintaining it?

24. REMOVE LOW QUALITY CONTENT
Your page has thin content – It’s been known for a while now that thin
content is not the Panda update’s friend, however it’s more than having
500 words on a page.
In some cases, short content works – however if your page title warrants
more than a short paragraph explaining it fully, you probably should look
at expanding it.
This isn’t saying that all short content is bad, for example Know Queries
and Know Simple Queries are the driving force behind featured snippets
in SERPs and are often basic questions that can be answered in one or
two sentences (and there is a general consensus that there is one
agreeable answer).

25. PAUL HAAHR - SMX MUNICH, MARCH 2016
GRADING PAGES
• Google measures itself with live experiments:
• A/B experiments on real traffic
• Look for changes in click patterns
• A lot of traffic is in one experiment or another
• Google judges pages on two main factors:
• Needs Met (where mobile is front and centre)
• Page Quality

26. E.A.T.
EXPERTISE
AUTHORITY TRUST

27. libertyvan.com
USER EXPERIENCE

28. INTERNAL/EXTERNAL LINKING
• Link to internal pages within your site wherever necessary, for
example if your bananas page mentions apples and you have another
page dedicated to apples, link the word apples to this page
• If possible, link to other websites that are relevant to the topic - such
as The Guardian, Huffington Post, Wikipedia and other blogs. As long
as this is natural and provides user value, Google will value your page
as a resource

29. OFFSITE
FACTORS

30. COMMUNITY CREATION ON SOCIAL NETWORKS
Also known as online reputation management, this is the first and
foremost step with which you have to initiate your process.
By doing this you can extend your network online, get connect with your
friends, share things with each other, and promote your
company/website to build an online reputation.
This is the same as Web 2.0 (Participatory Web), which means you have
to show your active participation on a regular basis.
It can also be beneficial to create a branded Tumblr, Pinterest, This.cm
and Blogspot account and post to these monthly with unique content, as
these can provide good social links.

31. BLOGGING
This is one of the most powerful ways to promote your site online.
Write a blog of your own for your company/website and include lots of
unique content. Be precise in what you're trying to convey for the users in
your blog entry and promote your blog in blog directories and blog search
engines.
If you're not very good at writing content for blog posts, hire a guest
blogger for your blog and ask him/her to write precise and unique content
so that your blog can gain more credit from a search engine point of
view.
fiverr.com and upwork.com

32. IDENTIFYING BLOGS

34. TECHNICAL
FACTORS

35. SITE SPEED
Slow websites reduce user satisfaction. Simple as that. And since
Google is obsessed with user satisfaction, it measures site speed when
crawling websites.
Google also considers user-generated signals related to site speed,
including clickthrough rate and bounce rate. Load speed directly affects
user engagement.
If your website load speed is higher than 10 seconds, consider reducing
multimedia elements. Also, pay attention to coding errors that may be
creating page load issues.

36. http://tools.pingdom.com/

37. SITE ARCHITECTURE
Your site’s architecture has a significant effect on search engine
rankings.
There’s no exact site architecture that works for every site.
The important thing is to make sure your site is user friendly.
Site architecture affects engagement factors like clickthrough rate, time
on site and bounce rate. Engagement factors directly (and indirectly)
influence search results. Your site should have clear page navigation, a
compelling design, prominent calls-to-actions and social media icons.

39. META DATA
Meta data continues to play a pivotal role in search rankings. The
presence of the description tag is a minor ranking factor. Its importance
is more for getting searchers to click through to your site.
Avoid keyword stuffing in the meta data. It’s no longer part of the ranking
algorithm and can have a negative impact if used improperly.

40. THE
IMPORTANCE OF
ANALYTICS

41. William Edwards Deming

42. YOU CAN’T MANAGE WHAT
YOU DON’T MEASURE.
”
“

43. LEARNING IS NOT
COMPULSORY. NEITHER IS
SURVIVAL.
”
“

44. WITHOUT DATA YOU’RE JUST
ANOTHER PERSON WITH AN
OPINION.
”
“

45. GOOGLE ANALYTICS