Maybe you don’t even know what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is? Search Engines are the first place that nearly everyone goes when looking for something. Having your site displayed at the top of results for relevant searches is a powerful way to get visitors to your website. In a sense it’s a way to provide free traffic to your site. Also because when people search, they are usually looking for a specific thing being and able to provide it to them you are gaining a relevant visitor.

1. SEO Best PracticesHitting the Low Hanging Fruit Kyle James jameskm03@gmail.com twitter.com/kylejames linkedin.com/in/jameskm03 kyle-james.com doteduguru.com hubspot.com nuCloud.com

2. No Need To Take Notes doteduguru.com doteduguru.com/seo

3. Why Am I Talking to You? ?

4. What I Do?

5. If a tree falls in a forest and noone is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

6. If people can’t find it,does it matter?

7. Outbound Marketing

8. Outbound Marketing is Broken 800-555-1234 Annoying Salesperson

9. Inbound Marketing

11. Blogging

12. Social Media

13. SEO

14. Offers / CTAs

15. Landing Pages

16. Emails

17. Lead Intel

19. Optimize

20. Promote

21. Target

22. Capture

23. Nurture

24. Test

25. Analyze

28. SEO is Usability and Accessibility

29. Search Engine Crawlers are your blindest users Yahoo Microsoft Google

30. By the Numbers (on one site) 30% of traffic is delivered by Search Engines 82% of that traffic is delivered by Google On a large school website w/ 1,000,000 visits per month that is 300,000 visitors

32. Optimize your content

34. Are you optimized to get that traffic?

35. It All Starts With Keywords “It’s NOT about what you want or what you call it, it is about what people are actually looking for.” “Nobody cares about your products (except you)” – David Meerman Scott

36. It All Starts With Keywords Key Phrase Curve HIGH COST & COMPETITION LONG TAIL SEO 1 Word Phrases“shoes” accounts for 70% of searches 2-3 Word Phrases“mens shoes” Yields average of 36% conversion rate More descriptive Phrases“Nike mens running shoes” LOW COST & RISK LOW PROBABILITY OF CONVERSION HIGH PROBABILITY OF CONVERSION

37. Long Tail Keywords List of Boston Massachusetts Private School Boston Massachusetts Private School Massachusetts Private School Private School School

38. Search Trends Yahoo = navigational Bing = transactional Ask = informational Google = commercial investigation

39. Keyword Research

40. Adwords Keyword Tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

41. Google Insight http://www.google.com/insights/search/

42. Thesaurus http://thesaurus.reference.com/

43. An SEO Breakdown

44. Powerful Keyword Tools

45. Two Parts of SEO On-Page Off-Page

46. On-Page Optimization PageTitle URL Meta Description Headers MetaKeywords

47. Page Title Describe The Page Include Keywords 70 Character Limit PageTitle

48. URL Describe The Page Include Keywords A Dynamic URL is hard to understand What are the following two pages about? http://tomahawktake.com/2009/04/11/game-no-5-recap-braves-5-nationals-3/ http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090411&content_id=4225972&vkey=recap&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb URL

49. Headers Semantic Markup Include Keywords Describe sections of the Page Headers

50. Example: Using Headers in Word

51. Meta Description & Keywords MetaKeywords Unique for Each Page Only Viewable in Source Meta Description limit 150 characters Meta Keyword limit 10 keywords max Meta Description

52. Off-Page Optimization We’ve all heard Content is King, so Links must be the Queen?

53. Off-Page Optimization Inbound Links Site Authority Anchor Text

54. Inbound Links Content Creation Strategy “If You Build It, They Will Come”

55. Publish Content Worth Sharing

56. Videos & Slideshows http://www.wofford.edu/sightsandsounds/

57. Audio http://itunes.stanford.edu/

58. Student Blogs http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/campus_life/studentblogs

59. Interactive Campus Tours http://uscupstate.edu/map/

60. Social News http://engineering.tamu.edu/news/

61. RSS & Calendar http://www.allegheny.edu/news/feeds.php http://www.utk.edu/events/events/

62. Site Authority

63. Anchor Text Count!

64. What are those buildings called?

65. What are people looking for?

66. What are people looking for?

67. Getting Ranked

68. Search Call To Actions Page Title Meta Description Page Title and Meta Description are all you get in search results. Make sure that they count.

69. Content is More Important than Design!

70. Importance of Relevance Being able to easily update content is more important than flashy complicated graphics

71. Navigation Helps SEO Usability Cross Linking Content Sitemap Footer

72. Web Analytics Helps SEO

73. Internal Site Search SEO also helps with your Internal Site Searchand good for Keyword Research

74. Visits By Keywords Know what keywords you are already getting search traffic from

75. Web Analytics Helps SEO Quickly make sure your page titles are optimized

76. Web Analytics Helps SEO Scan referral sources to see where you are getting links from

77. 404 Pages 404 Reporting tells you where you are failing to better optimize your site

78. 301 Redirects (Almost) Always use 301 Redirects because they pass search authority http://delicious.com/jameskm03/301redirects

79. URL Canonicalization Avoid “Double Vision” Every page on your site becomes duplicate

80. Splash Screens

81. Flash Websites Flash should add not dominate Search Engines aren’t very good at reading flash

82. SEO Tools

83. The Lynx Browser http://bit.ly/lynx

84. SEOmoz Tools http://www.seomoz.org/tools

85. SEO Book Toolbar The Only Firefox Toolbar you will need for SEO Competitive Research Keyword Research Link Information Rank Checker Page X-Ray More… http://tools.seobook.com/seo-toolbar/

86. Free Website Grader Report http://website.grader.com/

87. Create Optimize Link

88. Final Thoughts

89. SEO is NOT a sprint… it’s a Marathon

90. Help People FindYour Buried Treasure

91. Additional Reading www.seomoz.org/blog sphinn.com searchengineguide.com searchengineland.com

92. SEO Best Practices: Hitting the Low Hanging Fruit Questions? Kyle James jameskm03@gmail.com twitter.com/kylejames linkedin.com/in/jameskm03 kyle-james.com doteduguru.com hubspot.com nuCloud.com