Why am I not on the first page?SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

What’s SERP (Search Engines Results Page)?

Search Engines are designed to search for information on the web. Results will be listed based on keywords that a user types. 93% of online experiences begin with Search Engines.

Can you really afford to not be on Search Engines?

What’s SEO?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of improving the visibility of your website in SERP “naturally” or “organically”

How does it work?

Search Engines use software called Bots or Spiders to scour the web.

They find websites by following links and “read” the text-based content and index (store) the information.

Before it displays your results, it uses an algorithm to calculate best matches.

Why is SEO Important?

70% of the links search users click on are organic.75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results.59% of consumers use Google every month to find a reputable, local business.

High ROI (Return on Investment)

Effective SEO campaign can bring a higher return on your investment than any other type of marketing for your company.

SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads have a 1.7% close rate

On average inbound leads cost 61% lower than outbound leads.

Long Term

SEO, done properly is a cheaper and long-term solution. Things done today will have long standing effects to help with positioning.

Plant that seed!

Measureable

Overtime you’ll notice an increase in your website performance. Quantify results of search engine optimization by positioning reports,

site traffic, visitor conversion and other metrics.

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The success of a page should be measured by one criteria: Does the visit do what you want them to do?

-AARON WALL

What can we do to boost our ranking?

Content

Careful Keyword Selection Google recommends making pages for users, not search engines

No cloaking – deception, present different content to search than what is displayed. (No invisible text)

No Keyword Stuffing – Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, Keyword No Duplicate – cause for confusion

Create useful, information-rich site that clearly describes your content. New content gets attention. Create fresh and unique.

Title Tags

Short, unique and a quick sales pitch Shows in results

Accurately describe page’s content Be unique on every page of your site

Header Tags

Use only one H1 element on a page Top level heading

Accurately describe the page’s content This can have links

Image Alt Tags

Google reads text and does not view images. Be sure to choose a logical name for a keyword Text nearby image, should support the image.

<img src="/assets/icons/bottle_shadow.png" class="wine-image-shadow" alt="oval shadow" /> <img alt="Ethos Bottle" class="wine-bottleshot" itemprop="image" src="/files/brands_cms/BottleShot/521/Ethos_CabSauv.png_medium.png" /> </div>

Meta Description

Short and captivating. Describe the pages content For humans and for search engines Connect to title Be unique on each page

URL’s

Pay attention to the entire URL Use descriptive URLs

301 redirect - a permanent redirect from one URL to another. (Think of it as a change of address form.) Not only for changing your website domain, but also:

www.example.com Example.com www.example.com/index.html Example.com/home.aspx

http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/28/media/new-york-daily-news-defends-virginia-shooting-cover/index.html

Link Building

On site links on a given page should be reasonable (fewer than 100) Embed links within your content to relevant pages

Use descriptive text for links Link building Is an art

Inbound links are important Directories and listing on relevant resources Request customers and other connections to link to you. BLOG! (next page) Use Social Networks

We will have more on this later.

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The objective is not to ‘make your links appear natural’; the objective is that your links are natural.

-MATT CUTTS

Blogs

Build a company blog filled with valuable information. Create content that inspires viral sharing and natural links.

Companies that blog have 434% more indexed pages. And companies with more indexed pages get far more leads.

Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links.

XML Sitemap

Helps search engines index your page Tells what page to crawl and index How often and with what priority

Search engines have Webmaster Tools that you can sign up provides insight to how your site is crawled. The simplest way to verify – is to place a designated code on your site.

Design for Mobile in Mind

Responsive Design Easier for Google to find

Adaptive Design Separate Mobile Site

Uses a different URL for configuration that could confuse Google in identifying.

48% of users say that if they arrive on a business site that isn’t working well on mobile, they take it as an indication of the business simply not caring.

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A good way to make it [a site] work in both worlds [mobile & desktop] would be to have a site that uses responsive web-design techniques to adjust to the size of the user’s device/settings.

-JOHN MUELLER, GOOGLE

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Even the best SEOs are not magicians. The can’t simply place a site at the top of the engines when there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of others that offer basically the same thing, and provide basically the same information. If they could, you’d see a whole lot more millionaire SEOs.

-JILL WHALEN

Directory Submissions

• Submit site to online directories such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.• https://www.google.com/business/• https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/local-listings• https://www.bingplaces.com/

• Submit listings to four major database providers:• http://developer.factual.com/contribute-or-correct-data/• https://mybusinesslistingmanager.myacxiom.com/• http://www.neustarlocaleze.biz/welcome/• http://www.infogroup.com/small-medium-businesses/online-listing-management

• http://www.business2community.com/brandviews/act-on/63-digital-advertising-terms-every-marketer-should-know-01303561