Beginners guide to SEO for journalists.

1. Journalists & SEO
Chris Snider • chrissniderdesign.com

2. What would you do
if you wanted to learn
more about SEO?

3. You would go to....

10. In the month of May 2008, Google processed
nearly 6.7 billion U.S. searches. This is equal to
approximately 214 million searches a day. An increase
of 38 million search queries a day since July 2007.
Source: http://www.internetrix.net

11. Therefore: Search is a great
way to drive traffic to your site.

12. What you see when you perform a search...

14. paid search results
paid
search
results
natural search results

15. • 5 search engines receive more than
90 percent of all search traffic
• Google,Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Ask

16. Eyetrack and search...

18. How does SEO work?
And how can it work for you?

19. Simplified SEO
• Build a great site with great content
• Find the right keywords
• Get other quality sites to link to you

20. What are the
elements of SEO?

22. title

23. title
URL

24. title
URL
headlines

25. title
URL
headlines
text

26. And also your source code...

27. And also your source code...

28. What Google shows...

29. What Google shows...
title

30. What Google shows...
title
meta description

31. What Google shows...
title
meta description
URL

32. But what if Google
doesn’t know I exist?

33. You need to get Google to crawl your site
One way to do that is to submit your blog to Google
Search “submit site” or “submit blog”
Or/and get other sites to link to your site.
When their site is crawled, it will crawl your site.

34. How to know if your site is being crawled:
Search cache:http://www.yoursite.com

36. How to improve
your ranking

37. Figure out what words people should
search to find your site.
Remember: The goal is to be helpful
to readers, not to trick them.
Then: Research those words.

38. Why research?
• To find words people actually search
• To make sure you’re not trying to optimize
a word you will never get ranked for

39. http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/gtrends/

41. Warning: People don’t know how to use the internet!

42. What people search to find DesMoinesRegister.com

43. Therefore, be sure to optimize for the
(possibly incorrect) words people will search.

44. Don’t use abbreviations
People search des moines not D.M.
People search Shawn Johnson not
WDM gymnast Johnson

45. Write straightforward headlines
Put the best info up high in your articles/posts

46. Use the keywords in your post

47. Try to get other credible sites/blogs to link to you.
Best way to do that is to link to them.

48. Read other blogs - and comment on other blogs.
Be sure to leave your URL when you comment.

50. Promote your best work on:
• Digg
• Delicious
• Reddit
• Newsvine
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Other blogs
Just don’t overdo it.

51. Occasionally dip into Google Trends to see
what topics people are suddenly searching.
If those topics are relevant to your site/blog,
take advantage of that fact (and optimize appropriately)

54. Write articles/posts that people will want to link to.
Look closely at your metrics to see what is popular.

55. Remember the Chris Brogan list...

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