my slides for Women in Digital event in Basel, Switzerland on 6th Feb 2018

1. SEO for
small business websites
Sandra Wendland
6th Feb 2018
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2. Questions
• Do you maintain your own business website?
• Do you outsource technical website tasks?
• Do you write your own web content?
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3. First organic entries
Google Map entries
Google Adwords
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4. Featured snippet (position 0)
First organic entries
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5. Google extracting
info from
Wikipedia
Recipes show
rating
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6. Google
• Over 250 ranking factors
• Rankbrain (machine intelligence)
• Engagement (measuring data off-site and on-site)
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7. • SEO is dead
• SEO is evolving
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8. What to focus on in 2018
• Technical SEO
• HTTPS
• Page speed
• Content
• Search intent
• Voice search
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9. SEO for small business websites: some
questions entrepreneurs have (1/2)
• I don’t want to invent the wheel, so what basics do I need to know
about SEO or do myself?
• What are the top 3 mistakes that I have to avoid?
• Is SEO and web design totally connected, or can I outsource this to
separate providers?
• How do I select an SEO provider?
• How regular should I, or my provider, work actively on the SEO to
keep the good results? Or: what is my decay-time?
• Should I do SEO in every language of my website?
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10. SEO for small business websites: some
questions entrepreneurs have (2/2)
• Is SEO scalable? Meaning: if I have set up my SEO properly, that with every
added search word, I have proportionally more results? Or do I have
diminishing returns, every time I add a search word, or content
improvement? Where do I reach the optimum in money and effect?
• How do I measure success with SEO? Proof that it works!
• What are the content activities I should do that help with better SEO
results? Like: weekly blog publication, news items, reposting other people’s
content… etc?
• Wie kann man sicherstellen, dass man als Firma von den Zielkunden
gefunden wird (und nicht von den «Falschen»)?
• Kann man Adwords durch gutes SEO ersetzen? Wie macht man das am
effizientesten?
• SEO inhouse or extern ?
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11. Small business owner: What to do?
• Limited time
• Limited resources
• Outsource or DIY?
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12. Be nimble, be agile
Use your smallness as an advantage
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13. Do your marketing homework
• What market segment are you trying to reach?
• Who is your potential client?
• What is your core message?
• How would you present your services/products in a telephone call/face-to-
face meeting?
• What kind of words does your potential client use when referring to your
services/products?
• Customer questions and feedback are extremely useful for content
development and keyword research
• See: http://chiperoni.ch/wordpress/2017/11/seo-for-b2b-services-and-
products-how-to-get-started/
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14. Follow best practises for on-page SEO
• Page title/meta descriptions
• Internal links
• Unique page, URL, page title, meta description and content
• Don't copy content from other sites or make duplicates of your own content
• Alt image tag
• Heading 1 and 2
• Primary keywords
• Related terms
• Approx. 500 to 2,500 words
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15. Learn the basics of SEO
• Read an "Intro to SEO" guideline
• MOZ https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
• Backlinko https://backlinko.com/seo-this-year
• Google https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184
• Take an online course (e.g. at Udemy)
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16. Employ words, phrases, and concepts commonly
associated with the query (topic research)
• Research tools
• Google Keyword Planner (only paying AdWord clients see detailed data)
• SEMRush
• Google Search Engine Results (SERP) pages
• Think in terms of topics rather than keywords
• In addition to search volume, look at search intent
• Don’t target content without first understanding the searcher
• Look at Google SERPs, auto-suggest, related searches to determine search intent
• Look for gaps to target
• Related terms
• Moz Bar
• Ryte.com > Content success
• Answer the Public
• Write for humans not bots
• Solve the searcher's query
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17. 17

18. 18

19. Usability matters
• Text fonts and page layout are important
• Use Heading 2s, bullet lists, images
• Add videos, slides, podcasts to increase engagement
• Use plain language, write conversationally
• Use clear messaging for call-to-action buttons
"On an average web page, users read 20% of the words.“
• Test your web pages (e.g. using Nielsen’s Think Aloud method, or A/B
testing)
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20. Check
• Does your site match the intended purpose?
• Does it answer your client's questions?
• Mobile first: Check your site looks good on your smartphone
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21. Plan your content
• Set up an editorial calendar with deadlines
• If you have a business blog, write a blog at regular intervals
• Freshness is (still) a ranking factor.
• Blogging helps you to find out what works or what doesn’t
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22. Promote your site
• Send out regular email updates/newsletter
• Point to new content
• Content amplification/share on social media
• A social media link isn't a ranking factor but it helps with getting attention; getting indexed by
Google bot; building a community
• Network online and offline
• Present at barcamps, meetups, business conferences
• Engage on social media
• Buy some online paid ads at Linkedin, Facebook and Google Adwords
• Integrate your offline and online sales activities
• It is all digital today!
• Earn backlinks from relevant sites
• Your topics must be related; don’t buy backlinks
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23. Expect local search to increase
• Keep your Google My Business entry up-to-date
• Ask your clients to add a review
• Respond to review
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24. Fix your technical SEO
• Fast web hosting
• Page speed
• Get rid of bloat in your CMS (e.g. test your WordPress themes/plugins for speed)
• Google Page Speed Insights
• Lighthouse web developer tool for Chrome
• Make sure your web pages get indexed
• Google Search Console is your friend
• Minimum of crawl errors
• Get rid of duplicate page titles, meta descriptions, broken links
• Get HTTPS
• Add structured data to your web pages
• Schema
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25. Measure. Add improvements. Repeat
• A page isn't getting any traffic?
• Why? Go back and try and figure out why.
• Thin content?
• Improving Low Quality Content is Better Than Deleting It
• How to improve:
• Show the page to 3 to 5 people and ask them for feedback
• Add an additional paragraph, improve the text and layout, add visuals
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26. Resources
• https://searchengineland.com/5-ways-seo-experts-say-optimize-rankbrain-273458
• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-history/rankbrain/
• https://varvy.com/matching-user-intent.html
• https://www.bdc.ca/en/blog/pages/seo-basics-entrepreneurs-easy-tips-optimizing-website.aspx
• https://searchengineland.com/small-business-seo-questions-answered-276500
• https://moz.com/blog/rank-in-2018-seo-checklist
• https://moz.com/blog/how-google-gives-us-insight-into-searcher-intent-through-the-results-whiteboard-friday
• https://searchengineland.com/rank-position-0-3-simple-steps-featured-snippets-primer-275941
• http://chiperoni.ch/wordpress/2017/11/seo-for-b2b-services-and-products-how-to-get-started/
• https://www.nngroup.com/articles/plain-language-experts/
• https://searchengineland.com/add-schema-markup-site-using-google-tag-manager-272516
• https://www.facebook.com/netnode.ch/videos/1703065746381150/
• http://www.sem-deutschland.de/semantische-seo/
• http://www.sem-deutschland.de/welche-bedeutung-hat-machine-learning-fuer-seo-2/
• https://www.seokratie.de/holistik-seo/
• https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/everything-about-semantic-search/
• https://www.netnode.ch/blog/alle-textsorten-fuer-blogs
• https://moz.com/blog/write-for-seo-2018
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27. Tools
• Google Analytics/Google Search Console/Google My Business/Google
Keyword Planner/Google Tag Manager/Google Page Speed
Insight/Lighthouse
• Ryte
• SEMRush
• Linkdex
• Brightedge
• Buzzsumo
• MOZ
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28. Connect
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandrawendland/
Private blog
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