1.
Search Engine Optimization
The eye-opening presentation for beginners
Date: 1st Nov 2012
Name: Kalin Chernev

2.
Agenda
• Background information
• Preparations: research and analysis
• On-page and off-page optimizations
• Monitoring and maintenance

3.
Agenda
• Background information
• Preparations: research and analysis
• On-page and off-page optimizations
• Monitoring and maintenance

4.
What is SEO actually?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the
process of affecting the visibility of a website
or a web page in a search engine's "natural"
or un-paid ("organic") search results.

5.
How effective is SEO?

6.
How search engines work?
1. User makes a query
2. User location information
is taken for better targeting
and search personalization
3. Index server searches for
the query information
4. Search results are
returned
5. Results are sorted and
filtered
6. Results are shown

7.
Facts on online/offline shopping

8.
Paid vs organic results statistics

9.
Why do we optimize for Google?
Information source:
http://www.statowl.com/search_engine_market_share.php

10.
Click-through rates by site position

11.
SEO factors

12.
SEO factors

13.
SEO factors

14.
Remember: focus on the big picture
• Effective keywords
• Website technology
• Links
• Competition
• Trends
• Content
• Control and maintenance

15.
Types of optimization - overview
On-page (on-site) optimization
– Unique content
– Accessibility (bots can access the website and crawl it)
– URL structure (domain)
– Internal linking structure
– Sitemap
– Title, Meta tags, Heading Tags, Internal Anchor Text
– Images, Maps, Video
Off-page (off-site) optimization
– Link Building
– Social networks
– Forums and other viral marketing

16.
How you start? Bottom-up approach.

17.
The SEO process

18.
Agenda
• Background information
• Preparations: research and analysis
• On-page and off-page optimizations
• Monitoring and maintenance

19.
Practical SEO: Step by step
Step 1: Select effective keywords
Step 2: Prepare your website
Step 3: Prepare for competition and trends
Step 4: Generating content and links
Step 5: Monitoring and controlling your results

20.
Long-tail analysis

21.
Keyword phrase length conversion

22.
SEO Master Toolbox
• Keywords research and analysis
– Google AdWords Keyword Tool
– Google Search-Based Keyword Tool
– SEO Book Keyword Tool
– Wordstream Keyword Tool
• Checking the trends
– Google trends
– Google Insights for Search
• Software tools
– SEO Powersuite
– SEOMoz

23.
Agenda
• Background information
• Preparations: research and analysis
• On-page and off-page optimizations
• Monitoring and maintenance

24.
Practical SEO: Step by step
Step 1: Select effective keywords
Step 2: Prepare your website
Step 3: Prepare for competition and trends
Step 4: Generating content and links
Step 5: Monitoring and controlling your results

25.
The perfectly optimized page
• Web page content as text;
• Title, Meta tags, Heading Tags;
• URL, anchor links, meta descriptions;
• Alt tags and descriptions for images;

26.
On-site factors for better results

27.
On-page factors
• in the page meta description tag - this is the advertisement of the
page;
• in the page title tag, especially in the beginning;
• in H1 tag, especially in the beginning;
• in the first 50-100 words of the HTML of the page;
• in the other headings <h2> to <h6>;
• in the alt text of images;
• file name of the image file;
• <b> is for styling, <strong> is for semantic representation;
• Keyword Density Formula - Google it, simple rule => don't overdo
optimizations;
• in list items <li> of the page;

28.
H1 and H2
• Always with text, not cufon or images;
• H1 should be 1 per page, not more;
• H1 tag length should be about 3-5 words;
• h2 is like sub-headings;
• Target keywords are placed in the beginning;
• Don't forget to use synonyms;

29.
Title and description
About titles
– The title should be between 65 and 70 in length;
– Use pipe | for separations, for example title of page | title of website;
– Target keywords are placed in the beginning for more weight;
– Maximum 2 target keywords are used at the same time per page;
About descriptions
– Description should be about 150 and 167 symbols in length;
– This is your advertising message seen in the search results;
– Should be unique, catching and meaningful;
– Target keywords are placed in the beginning for more weight;

30.
Titles and descriptions lengths

31.
Domain
Domains and extensions factors on the optimization
• Domain name - important, should contain the keywords
• Domain extension - avoid spammy .cc, .info, etc
• Subdomain - OK, if a lot of traffic and content
• Domain names in Cyrillic - sometimes help

32.
Keywords in the domain influence

33.
Website accessibility
• Spider / Bot
• initial crawling
• robots.txt
• .htaccess
• Robots meta tag
• Index / noindex
• Follow / nofollow

34.
Sitemaps
• HTML sitemaps - for website visitors and users, better navigation
• XML sitemaps - for SEO purposes, for Google Webmaster Tools
Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site we might
not otherwise discover. In its simplest terms, a XML Sitemap — usually
called Sitemap, with a capital S — is a list of the pages on your
website. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that
Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs that
may not be discoverable by Google's normal crawling process.

35.
Performance
Good performance is growing to be more and more important.
Build your website well from the start.
Google guidelines on best practices
Tools:
– Google PageSpeed Tools - checklist of website components to optimize
– Speed Tracer - identifying performance problems
– YSlow - just another performance tool from Yahoo!

36.
Practical SEO: Step by step
Step 1: Select effective keywords
Step 2: Prepare your website
Step 3: Prepare for competition and trends
Step 4: Generating content and links
Step 5: Monitoring and controlling your results

37.
Competition
Approach: research what and how your competitors are achieving their
current results, and do the same with a bit more
To start with: find out which are their target keywords?
• Research paid search prices to define level of difficulty
• Make the homework checks:
– the number and quality of their inbound links
– their social networks presence
– the number of indexed pages they have in Google
– the age of the domain
• Analyze your competitors code and learn from the good practices

38.
Trends
Idea: Be careful with the trends. Some campaigns include season-
dependent target keywords, which are not effective throughout all parts
of the year. For example, all kinds of winter sports and hotels should be
optimized during winter.

39.
Practical SEO: Step by step
Step 1: Select effective keywords
Step 2: Prepare your website
Step 3: Prepare for competition and trends
Step 4: Generating content and links
Step 5: Monitoring and controlling your results

40.
Content and links
Content and links should be inter-related focus categories.
If you build good content, other websites will link to you.
If you have many links to your website, search engines give you credits
for being important, and give you better positions.
With better positions in search results, your website gets more traffic.
And the more traffic you receive, the more important your website is
accepted to be, which brings you even better positions and more traffic

41.
Link baiting
Link baiting is the process of getting links to your website.
You can stimulate inbound links by many ways
– listing your website in directories such as the open directory and Yahoo!
– participating in social networks as facebook.com, linkedin.com, etc.
– participating in twitter.com
– participating in website competitions, such as "best website of"
– viral marketing in video sharing websites as youtube.com
– sharing presentations on slideshare.net and related
– sharing documents into document sharing websites
– participating in forums with target audience
Remember:
Focus on the value of the content, and links will come naturally.

42.
Agenda
• Background information
• Preparations: research and analysis
• On-page and off-page optimizations
• Monitoring and maintenance

43.
Practical SEO: Step by step
Step 1: Select effective keywords
Step 2: Prepare your website
Step 3: Prepare for competition and trends
Step 4: Generating content and links
Step 5: Monitoring and controlling your results

44.
Monitoring metrics
• Website position by target keywords
• Traffic to the website by target keywords
• Users' time spent on the website
• Conversions of visitors to buyers

45.
Monitoring tools
• Google Analytics
• Google Webmaster Tools
• link-assistant.com tools
• SEO Book Tools
• Chrome and Firefox Extensions
• Many, many others

46.
Thanks and final words
Conclusions are that SEO is not that hard. But you need strategy and
clear vision. And you need patience and consistent work.
Focus on:
1) effective target keywords
2) your website (the things you say to the world)
3) competition and trends (your environment)
4) the value of your content (to make the world talking)
5) monitoring and maintenance (to keep your good results)

47.
Kalin Chernev
Drupalist
E-mail: k.chernev@up2.nl
http://www.up2technology.com