Understanding SEO - BritMums Live 16 Presentation

U nd e rs tand ing SEO

@JudithLewis

➡ Run DeCabbit Consultancy doing SEO, PPC, Social Media and

integrated marketing campaigns - working with bloggers for link building

➡ Got on the Internet in 1986 at my school lab

➡ Working online with search since 1996

➡ Worked in-house within e-Commerce, Publishing & High Tech

➡ Have worked with Google (SEO for product sites), Orange, COI,

NatWest/RBS, National Gallery, CIPD, Fidelity, GalaCoral, NBC Universal,

Readers Digest, Bayer, Family Search, Amadeus, AMD, AmEx, TotalJobs,

Virgin.com, Virgin Startup, Zopa, Inspire Malibu & more

➡ Chosen as a founding Modern Muse, contributed to book “Pimp My Site”,

judge of the UK, US & European Search Awards, one of the SEO Chicks,

blog on Huffington Post & run MostlyAboutChocolate.com food blog

AM I

WhoObligatory slide !

Judith Lewis

#BML16SEO @JudithLewis & @MostlyAboutChoc


BritMums #BML16SEO Session Agenda

How Google Works

Algorithm Updates & Penalties

Check Yourself for a Penalty

Keyword Research

Yoast

Tools

#BML16SEO @JudithLewis & @MostlyAboutChoc 4@JudithLewis

@MostlyAboutChoc

If you feel lost please ask a

question & you will be rewarded

with chocolate (and an answer).

There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers

How

Search

Engines

Work


Crawling and Indexing

Spiders & the search engine databases

Spiders only make connections and pull data – they can

be inadvertently blocked and stopped from accessing

your site

The SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) deliver content

from the database only

Technical issues can cause significant duplicate content

as well as lost and missing content – use Yoast wisely!


What is & How Does A Spider Work

A spider is actually just a bit of code sitting on a computer

The computer connects to other computers like your bog

Takes the data of the page and renders it just like someone visiting your page would see it

The Google spider cannot execute anything

Does not revisit often unless it has learned through experience data is frequently updated


How the Search Engine Database works (Index)

Spider deposits collected data into database – at this point data of page fixed

Contents of page analysed & categorised based on predominant theme/keywords on page

Initial analysis of value of page and link value done relative to the established theme/KWs

Searcher query relevance assessed

Search result delivered

Essential to remember: NOT REAL TIME

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Google

Updates

Some new, some old, all

relevant to our blogs


Allow Google to Spider JS & CSS


Hummingbird

Whole new ‘engine’ to the search ‘car’

Maintains Penguin, Panda, Caffeine, et al

Conversational Search

Semantic relevancy

Even faster results

At same time as (not provided) results

increased but not part of algorithm


Panda

Originally not algorithmic, now

is

Content-based

Original content

No cheating or shortcuts

Designed to reduce rankings

for low quality sites


Penguin

Penalises link schemes & exact match anchor text

Penalises cloaking, “sneaky” redirects or “doorway” pages

Bad links devalued

Removed huge numbers of spammylink farms, article syndication sites and related poor quality link sites

Next “update” last before it becomes ‘rolling’


Pirate

“a new signal in our rankings: the

number of valid copyright removal

notices we receive for any given We

will now be using this data as a signal

in our search rankings”

Google announced that they would

penalise sites with repeat copyright

violations, probably via DMCA

takedown requests

Google then later launched another

update to combat software and

digital media piracy


Mobilegeddon Algorithm Update

More mobile-friendly

websites in mobile

search results

More relevant app

content in search results

Not a big impact

AMP now has dedicated

carousel results in mobile

results

Check

Yourself

For a penalty


mozcast.com

insight

serps.com/tools/volatility

serpmetrics.com/flux/www.accuranker.com/grump/

Check the Algorithm


Check Your Site


Check Your Site


Check Your Site


If You Still Think You Have a Penalty

Check for your blog in Google – if the home page is not indexed you probably have a penalty or a bad technical issue

Just because you are not ranking top in Google does not mean you have a penalty

Rankings could be supressed for a number of reasonsBad links from other bloggers with a penalty

Exact match anchor text links

Technical issues with your blog preventing spidering – did you noindexeverything by accident?

Thin content – have you been writing image-heavy blog posts with little visible text?

Do you have *any* links to your blog?

Is your blog down a lot?

Keyword Research

How Some Do Keyword Research

Some Keyword Spinning Tools

http://grepwords.com/

http://keywordsnatcher.com/

https://www.visualthesaurus.com/


http://soovle.com/

http://tools.seochat.com/tools/suggest-tool/

http://www.longtailpro.com/


http://answerthepublic.com/

http://secockpit.com/

http://ubersuggest.org/

http://keywordtool.io/

https://kwfinder.com/


https://www.hittail.com/

http://www.wordstream.com/keyword-

suggestion-tool

http://www.keywordeye.com/

http://www.wordtracker.com/

https://serpiq.com/



https://www.visualthesaurus.com/


http://soovle.com/

http://tools.seochat.com/tools/suggest-tool/



http://answerthepublic.com/

http://secockpit.com/

http://ubersuggest.org/

http://keywordtool.io/

https://kwfinder.com/


https://www.hittail.com/

http://www.wordstream.com/keyword-suggestion-tool

http://www.keywordeye.com/

http://www.wordtracker.com/

https://serpiq.com/


Google Adwords Tool/Planner

Your Content & User Keywords

Identifying Seed terms

Identify existing keywords on site

Locate new keywords from press/blogs

Do research

Refine newly enlarged list

Identify competition level

Refine list

Map

https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner

https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner



There are two ways in which to generate a list of

keywords: Inputting a seed list of terms by just brainstorming and using your

most valuable tool – your brain ;-)

Inputting a URL from your site and letting the tool decide (I don’t

recommend it)

Many limitations exist particularly with inputting a URL

where page content may be sparse or image-led.



Important to Note

Values from Google are approximate

There is no context to the search

We have no depth of data (what are the searchers thinking or

desiring? Do they really want a recipe?)

Country targeting does not guarantee language targeting

Can’t see what converts to clicks

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30


SEMRush

| 31

SEMRush

Designing

Title Tags &

Meta

Descriptions


It’s Your Advert – Make it Count


Optimising Title Tag

Implementing best practices for title tags:

Keep Length Controlled

Search engines will truncate titles in search results over 50-60 characters

Place Important Keywords Close to the Front of the Title Tag

The closer to the start of the title tag a keyword is, the more helpful it will be for

people in tabs, search results and search engines

Leverage Your Brand

You are the brand – stand out

Consider Impact

Creating a compelling title tag will pull in more visits from the search results


Optimising Meta Descriptions

Write Compelling Ad Copy

The meta description tag draws readers to a website from the SERP. Crafting a

readable, compelling description using important keywords can improve the click-

through rate.

Recommended Length

Meta descriptions generally truncate at 160 characters.

Not a Google Ranking Factor

Neither meta descriptions nor meta keywords are used by ranking algorithms.

Quotes Cut Off Descriptions

Any time quotes are used in a meta description, Google cuts off the description.

Remove all non-alphanumeric characters.

Sometimes it is Okay to Not Write Meta Descriptions

If the page is targeting between one and three heavily searched terms or phrases,

go with a meta description that hits those users performing that search.

Use Yoast

But Not

Blindly


Wordpress Blog - Use Yoast





Use Yoast (but not blindly)

@deCabbitDeCabbit Presentation 42

Tools


https://gtmetrix.com/wordpress-optimization-guide.html


Secure your Blog

Tools

@JudithLewis

@MostlyAboutChoc

?

Questions?

47

If you found this useful, please consider

giving either my business

http://www.decabbit.com or my blog

http://MostlyAboutChocolate.com a link or

a recommendation. THANK YOU!


You Can Stalk Me OnlineTwitter: @JudithLewis

@MostlyAboutChoc

LinkedIn:http://uk.linkedin.com/in/judithlewis

Google+: https://plus.google.com/+JudithLewis

Web: http://www.decabbit.com

Blog: http://MostlyAboutChocolate.com

SEO Blog: http://www.SEO-Chicks.com

HuffPost: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/judith-lewis

...and the list goes on

T H AN K YOU FOR YOU R T I ME

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Marketing

Understanding SEO - BritMums Live 16 Presentation