A presentation on the basics of search engine optimization I gave to local business owners at the Arizona Small Business Development Center in September, 2009.

1. Are You Hiding from Customers?Tune Up Your Site for Search EnginesSeptember 10, 2009

3. President of Eight Trails

4. Smarter websites and online marketing20+ years advertising and marketing Interactive director Creative director Writer Led the design and development of more than 50 websites

5. Now Tell Me About You How many B2B businesses? How many B2C businesses? Business size? Already have a website? Have done some SEO? DIY DIFM

6. Tune Up Your Sitefor Search Engines Today’s agenda

7. What Is SEOand Why Does It Matter?

8. What is SEO? AKA Search Engine Optimization, Search Optimization Improvements to your website – and related to your website – that improve your site’s ranking in search engines

9. Why Does SEO Matter? Traditional advertising is interruptive Conversely, when someone does a search, they have self-identified as a potential buyer Get found by the people who are looking for your product or service Don’t hide from your customers!

10. SEO vs PPC SEO or Search Engine Optimization helps you with your organic or natural search rankings PPC, Pay Per Click, or Paid Search is not affected by what you do with SEO

12. Top 10 Rank is Critical Source: http://www.seoresearcher.com/distribution-of-clicks-on-googles-serps-and-eye-tracking-analysis.htm

13. What is Google’s Purpose? To deliver useful, relevant results to their searchers

14. What determines your rank? It’s all about relevant results for searchers On-site factors, such as Page title Headings Text Off-site factors, especially In-bound links

15. Optimizing Your Site

16. Optimizing is a 5-Step Process Keyword research Site updates Submit to search engines and directories Build links Measure and adjust

17. Step 1: Keyword Research Generate a seed list Ask your customers Ask your front-line employees Look at analytics or server logs Use tools to expand your list Evaluate and rank your keywords by High search volume High relevance Low competition

18. High Search Volume Get search volume estimates Google Keyword Tool adwords.google.com/select/keywordtoolexternal Wordtracker freekeywords.wordtracker.com Keyword Discovery www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

20. High Relevance Are the people searching for that term likely to be buyers? The more precise the search, the closer they are to buying Bicycles Mountain bikes Mountain bike reviews Cannondale mountain bike Cannondale hardtail Cannondale F3 Caffeine Cannondale F3 Caffeine Phoenix

21. Low Competition You can’t be number 1 for everything Use long tail keywords

23. Select Your Keywords Start with a manageable number – 10-20 Match the keywords to relevant pages of your site One keyword per page

24. Step 2: Optimize Your Site Focus on content Fix the major problems Get help with the tougher things

25. Content – Visible Domain name Page title URL Headings – H1, H2, H3 Text

27. Content – Hidden Keywords Description Image alt tags

28. Structure Separation of content and presentation Important stuff first Text-based navigation Flat directory structure

30. Structure Don’t build your site in Flash! What Not to Do: Yeti Cycles

31. Other On-Site Factors Custom error page Currency of content Site map Robots.txt

32. Off-Site Factors Inbound links Domain authority Quality of anchor text Bad Good

33. Step 3: Submit Your Site Search Engines Google Bing Directories Yahoo Open Directory (dmoz.org) JoeAnt Business.com

34. Step 4: Link Building Blogs Forums Press Releases Don’t buy links Don’t bother with link exchanges Most social media sites use “nofollow” tags so they don’t helpyour site get better ranking

35. Step 5: Measure Google Analytics Referrers Search terms Authority Labs Position monitoring

37. Adjust SEO is a process Give it a few months to see results Adjust and refine regularly based on what you measure

38. The Eight TrailsBaseline SEO Audit

39. Resources EightTrails.com SEOmoz.com SEObook.com SearchEngineLand.com

40. Questions? Comments? Ed Tankersley EightTrails.com ed@eighttrails.com @EightTrails 602-361-2001