SEO Basics Revisited

I recently conducted a table session at an AMA event in Tampa on SEO basics. It’s funny how when you revisit basics sometimes things click in a new way. I didn’t learn anything new in conducting this session other than maybe a way to communicate SEO basics.

I began by explaining how search engines work. I explained that search engines attempt to crawl a website starting on the home page and seek to “find” as much of the website’s content as possible. As marketers our goal is to make it as easy as possible for search engines to find (and index) our content.

When we describe search engine optimization we refer to optimizing the chance that search engines will list our web pages high for our most desired keyword phrases.

I explained Google’s explanation of their search technology which boils down to two factors: 1) PageRank which is an analysis of your website’s link structure (external and internal), 2) Text matching.

Google explains how their patented PageRank technology looks at the complex link structure on the web to determine the extent to which others link to your website and the extent to which your website pages link to each other. BUT, Google also considers the text matching that takes place among all those links.

For example, say you want your website to be found for the keyword phrase “accounting software,” your website would need to have a lot of incoming links from this phrase and a lot of text within the website matching this phrase as well internal links from this phrase. The truth is there are a lot of websites that have text and links for “accounting software.” So, often it’s wise to optimize for more targeted keyword phrases which are less competitive. For example, “project accounting software,” is more specific to a particular type of accounting software and is less competitive. This SEO strategy is known as a long tail keyword strategy.

Sometimes a short tail keyword strategy (accounting software) is realistic but only when the competition factor is not exceedingly high and you have the ability to produce enough of a link structure (both external and internal) to win that SEO strategy.

When we deliver SEO services to our clients we discuss both long tail and short tail strategies to explore the trade offs and the realities of both approaches.

Another factor when considering basic SEO strategies is the URL structure of each web page. Optimizing for a keyword phrase should ideally be done for a web page that contains the search phrase in it, such as ….project-accounting-software.com. Note the keywords are separated by a dash, not an underscore.

The simple rule of thumb in basic SEO strategies is to remember that we want to make it as easy as possible for search engines to find and rank our website content.

Bernie Borges

http://twitter.com/berniebay

Sweat the SEO Details!

Below are show notes from this podcast.  Click the play button, or download it or subscribe to hear this podcast.

Sweat the SEO Details

Target Audience: SEO for marketers with websites with less than 100 pages of content. 
Content is still king
The more content the better
Search engines crawl your website to learn what your site is about
Commit to writing more content
Google measures who is linking to your content
A foundation of content is needed to get the full value of external links
Add sections to your website dedicated to content for search engines, e.g., Resources

Add “how to,” “faq,” “tips”, “best practices,’ “things to avoid.” Etc.

Links are important but content is the foundation of a good SEO plan
Great content will attract links
Add video with a text summary of the video

Home page is very important!

Has the greatest PageRank (PR)
Share home page content with other pages selectively
Don’t give away all your Google PR
Use Anchor text to link to other pages
Think SEF
Search engine friendly architecture
Good URL structure using keywords in the URL string
Use dashes to separate words in the URL
Clean, light and fast loading code
Put javascript files into a separate file and make a call to it
Meta data
3 components: Title, Description and keywords
Description very important: it’s what people read in the search engines
Test to see how your rankings are displayed.
Header tags (H Tags)
Tells the search engines which headings are intended to be noticed by them
Sitemap
Give the search engines something to crawl with links to every page in your website
Google sitemap
Give Google an XML based sitemap so they can score your site’s pages, links and other valuable statistics
Also lets you see how Google sees your website
You can fix problems like broken URLs you didn’t know existed
Google penalizes sites with technical problems
Think local
Set up a local listing in Google and Yahoo even if it’s only for your home office
Use a Google map on your contact page
Think multi media
Google and other search engines index images, videos and maps.
This outside the box
Outside links from authority sites, e.g., directories, blogs, syndication sites
Final thought
Remember that organic traffic is the most valuable traffic
More time spent, more pages viewed, lower bounce rates
Content is still king!
Links are important but must be supported by good content
Use SEF URLs
 

Linking Building for SEO

Link Building Strategies for SEO (Podcast Show Notes)What is a link? Links from other websites into your website. Links are critical to SEO. Remember that the web is about links – that’s why they call it the web: Google’s PageRank defined: PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance. Google’s search algorithm was originally designed to measure “back links.” Check Google’s original history: Backrub.

Ways to create links for SEO:

• Content produces links naturally (weeds grow in dirt)
• Press releases
• Syndicated content comprised of articles with your theme-specific and keyword rich content
• Blogs – content in blogs grows rapidly and attracts links
• Special requests – outsourced link building through experts like Find and Convert

Not all links are created equal:

• Relevance of the content of the page linked from
• The PageRank of the page linked from
• Importance of anchor text linking
• Importance of quality of linking page
• Mix up sentence or description with the anchor text
• Link to home page and inside pages to diversify the mix of back links

Study link stats as well as search stats:

• Yahoo: link:www.website.com to check the links back to this website.
• Set up Google Webmaster services to track links: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/.

Quality of links is very important. Build links slowly for specific keyword phrases. Build them at a pace according to the size of your website. Ranking improvements will happen eventually but it’s not an exact science. Improvements depend on quality of links anchored from relevant keyword phrases.

Be patient, give it time (3 to 12 months). Build links for many keyword phrases (diversify).

Link building is a must in any SEO strategy.