Search Engine Optimization 101

What is SEM? SEO?

How can I use SEO on my blogs and/or my personal web space?

Search Engine Marketing 101

• Marketing a website via search engines, whether this be improving rank in organic listings (SEO), purchasing paid listings (PPC), or a combination of this

Why SEM?

• 1,262,000,000 internet users in 2007• 1/3 of consumers who have internet

access buy something online• 85% of all traffic on the web is referred by

search engines• 90% of al SE users don’t look past the first

30 results

• Cost-effective advertising

• Clear and measurable ROI

• More relevant traffic + Good conversion rate = more sales and/or more leads

Why SEM?

SEO: Free Traffic• SEO vs SEM / SEO vs PPC

How do search engines work?

• Spider “crawls” the web to find new documents• Search engine indexes the content, adding it to

their huge database; updates database periodically

• SE searches its own database when a user enters in a search term

• SE ranks resulting documents using an algorithm (mathematical formula)

How are pages ranked?

• Page Relevance (on-page factors)– The degree of relevance matched to the

user’s search query

• Link Popularity (off-page factors)– Quantity and quality of links referring the site

Search Engines love blogs• Blogs: from online journals

to new media• Blog posts are content

heavy (text & images)• Unique titles• Fresh content• Easy Navigation• Linking across blogs

(networking)• Simple URL structures

On-page SEO Techniques

• Title Tags

• Meta Descriptions

• Body Content

• ALT Tags (images)

• Header Tags, Boldface

• Internal Linking

Place your keyword on your Blog Title!

All-in-one SEO Pack Wordpress Plugin

Make image’s filename keyword-rich, Use ALT Tag

Keyword-rich ancho+ texts (links)

Things to avoid on-page

• Java or JavaScript navigation• Flash-based or overly graphical website• Keyword spamming• Too many parameters in the URL• Nonstandard characters in the URL• Mirror sites• Same title tags on all pages

Off-page Optimization

• Competitor’s Link Profile Analysis• Submissions

– Articles, Press Releases– Web Directories

• Interactions– Forum postings, Blog comments– Social bookmarking– Link exchange

USAP’s SEO Team

Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Optimization Pay Per Click

On-Page Off-Page

SEO Project Managers / Specialists

SEO SpecialistsCopywriters, Designers,

Programmers

Internet Marketing Specialist

“Everything you need to know is in the Internet,

you just can’t find it.”- Anonymous