SEO and PR for Bloggers

WE BIG TRAFFIC

SEO 102

Alyssa James@aaljames

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AgendaWhat is SEO?

How can I affect where my site appears in the SERPs? Should I?

How SEO works

SEO Metrics and Measuring Them for Your Site

Alyssa James@aaljames

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What do you think SEO is?

Alyssa James@aaljames

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Search Engine Optimisation relates to the optimisation of organic/ natural search results.

Paid search (PPC)

Natural search (SEO)

SEO is...

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How can I affect where my blog appears in the SERPs?

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1. In order to drive visitors to your blog your content needs to be found.

2. In order to be found in natural search, a site needs to rank highly in

the search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant & searched for queries.

3. In order to rank highly in the SERPs a site needs to have been deemed

relevant by a search engine algorithm

So how do you ensure your site is seen as relevant?

How does SEO work?

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It isn’t simply good enough to have a website about travel or jobs.

Your site needs to be understood by the algorithm as being relevant to someone looking for content about travel or jobs.

The way your site is built needs to clearly define what you sell.

SEO helps sites ensure relevance, helping make your site & content visible

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But doesn’t Google frown upon SEO, or trying to influence rankings?

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Well…there’s something you should know:

“Google doesn’t want to make websites popular, they want to rank popular websites. ”

- Rae Hoffmanhttp://sugarrae.com/rants-in-bitchland/google-propaganda-marketers-wake-up/

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BUT…

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On-page SEO Technical considerations Structure Content optimization Continual monitoring of the above

Off-page SEO Outreach Core link building & citations Distributed & owned content

…You can help Google – and people - find you.

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Off-Page SEO Off-page SEO refers to techniques that can be

used to improve the position of a website in the SERPs

The #1 way for bloggers to do this is:

Create awesome content so people link naturally

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Off-Page SEO

Of course, there are white hat ways to influence your SERP results: Guest Blogging Adding value to blog posts by commenting Social Bookmarking

In the “industry” this is called link-building

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SEO Metrics

Google’s algorithm measures the AUTHORITY and RELEVANCE of a website to choose where

in the SERPs to display it.

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Open Site Explorer

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What do those numbers mean?

Domain Authority Established Links

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Follow vs. No-Follow Google only uses “Do-Follow” links to

measure authority

It shows that people trust your content.

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Follow vs. No-FollowNo-follow link

Follow link

• A follow link is the default link in a blog post• A no-follow tag must be added manually or with a program

Alyssa Jamesalyssa.james@tugagency.com

alyssawrites.com@aaljames

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