how to stand out in the search results
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How to Stand Out in the Search Results and Drive Qualified Customers to Your WebsiteTRANSCRIPT
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How to Stand Out! in the Search Results and Drive Qualified Customers to Your WebsiteSuccessful SEO Strategies For Small Business
Why care about SEO?
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Popularity
• 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine
• 97% of consumers search for local businesses online
• The majority of web traffic is driven by the ‘Big Three’ search engines—Google, Bing and Yahoo
Source: Search Engine Journal
Organic vs. Sponsored
77%CHOOSE ORGANIC
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Organic vs. Sponsored
25%HIGHER CONVERSION
The “Golden Triangle”
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Is SEO legit?
• Black magic? • Dark art?• Snake oil?
“Black Hat”
• Unethical• Spammy• High-risk
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“White Hat”
• Ethical• Google-approved• User-focused
How search engines workFirst things first
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DISCLAIMER
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Crawling and Indexing
Relevance and Importance
• Does the page address the query?• Is the page popular? • Popularity = importance (according to
Google)
What Google wants
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How people use search engines
Know thyself
Empathy
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The Process
1. Need for answer, solution or piece of information
2. Formulate need in words and phrases
3. Enter keyword/search term into search engine
4. Browse through the results for a match
5. Click on a result
6. Scan for a solution, or a link to that solution
7. If unsatisfied, return to the search results
8. Perform new search with new keyword/search term
Keywords
• Think like your customer• “managed services” vs. “computer
support”• Intention?
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“Build for people, not search engines.”
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Designing + Developing for SEO
How to be a good host
What the spider saw
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How spiders get around
Illustration from SEOmoz
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Robots!
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Sitemaps
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Auto-pinging
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping
URL structure• Short• Static (not dynamic)
• No: www.mywebsite.com/blog?id=123
• Yes: www.mywebsite.org/descriptive-readable
• Descriptive • Hyphenated (not + or _)
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Content creationFeeding the spiders
Who is your buyer?
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“Write for users, not search engines.”
Create compelling content
• Not “link bait”• Always value!• Entertain• Educate
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Keyword research
Keyword competitiveness
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Frequency
• Keep Google coming back for more• You can’t move up the ranks if your site is
ignored
Video• Jump ahead• Great for competitive
verticals• No need to be
Scorsese
List-mania
Title and meta tags
<html><head><title>This Is an Example of a Title Tag</title><meta name="Description" content="Here is an example of what a snippet looks like in Google’s SERPs. The content that appears here is usually taken from the meta description tag." />
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Alt text
Off-page optimization
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Link building
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Social sharing
Start a blog
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Directories
One step at a time
• SEO is a process, not an event
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Need help?
• Just call us!
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Questions?
We’d love to help.
• Just get in touch!
www.losangeleswebstrategies.com
(213) 607-9100