seo for small business
DESCRIPTION
The aim of this webinar is helping small businesses owners effectively promote their sites online on their own or familiarize themselves with the service of SEO.TRANSCRIPT
© 2011 Promodo [email protected]
United Kingdom+44 0203 1376 681
United States+1 347 809-34-86
SEO for Small Business
Anna Moseva, SEO analyst
Webinar
© 2011 Promodo [email protected]
United Kingdom+44 0203 1376 681
United States+1 347 809-34-86
Why traditional means of advertising are a bad option for small businesses?
high cost
complexity of tracking the effectiveness
lack of interest of potential customers at the moment of contact
© 2011 Promodo [email protected]
United Kingdom+44 0203 1376 681
United States+1 347 809-34-86
Advantages of online marketing:
you are only reaching your potential customer when he is looking for something you can offer
you can choose to target specific audiences
you can track the effectiveness of the campaign easily
you can advertise and sell 24/7
you can present much more information about your business and services and in a more organized way online
it all comes at a very low price!
© 2011 Promodo [email protected]
United Kingdom+44 0203 1376 681
United States+1 347 809-34-86
What makes SEO the best online marketing mean for small businesses?
high return on investment – you do not have to pay for each new visitor your get
excellent analytics software allows effective tracking and timely correction of the campaign
successful SEO campaign provides a steady flow of free search engine traffic, which will not stop abruptly after you stop spending money on it
© 2011 Promodo [email protected]
United Kingdom+44 0203 1376 681
United States+1 347 809-34-86
Building SEO Campaign: Stages
Setting goals
Competitors research & Market Analysis
Keywords research
On-Site SEO
Link building campaign
Results analysis
© 2011 Promodo [email protected]
United Kingdom+44 0203 1376 681
United States+1 347 809-34-86
Competitors Research & Market Analysis
© 2011 Promodo [email protected]
United Kingdom+44 0203 1376 681
United States+1 347 809-34-86
Remember that innovation is adorable but it is actually rarely successful.
Innovation vs Imitation
vs
vs
vs
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Who to spy?
Type into Google a couple of the most popular queries in your niche. Sites occupying top 20 positions in the SERPs are worth studying and copying.
© 2011 Promodo [email protected]
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How to spy?
Study the SERPs with SEO Quake plug-in turned on
After you have figured out the sites that have the smallest Alexa rank number, go to Semrush.com site and add your competitors url into the field.
© 2011 Promodo [email protected]
United Kingdom+44 0203 1376 681
United States+1 347 809-34-86
How to spy?
© 2011 Promodo [email protected]
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United States+1 347 809-34-86
Keyword Research
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Keyword ideas got from competitors’ analysis + a nice big list you have brainstormed + Google AdWords Keyword Tool ideas = rough sketch of your target queries
© 2011 Promodo [email protected]
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Rules essential for a quality keyword research::
Do not focus on too broad and general queries, develop a good list of long tale keyword phrases.
© 2011 Promodo [email protected]
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Mind the competition.
Stay reasonable, choose only relevat keywords.
Try to find your golden middle – make up a full and exhaustive keyword list, but do not forget that you will have to optimize for all the words you have chosen.
Understand the search volumes Google Keyword Tool hints you right.
Do not forget about the keywords your site is already ranking for.
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Choose correct landing pages, do not focus on the home page only.
On-Site SEO
Meta tags
Title
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Rules to observe when creating title tags:
Make sure it is grammatically correct, readable, good for SEO and remember that only the first 70 characters of the title will be visible in the Google SERPs.
Put the most relevant keywords to the left of the title and end it up with the brand name.
<title> Baltic Amber Jewellery, Mammoth Ivory and Gemstone Handmade Jewelry at Amberexpert </title>
Make sure every single page of the site has a unique title.
Use the maximum of 2-3 keyphrases.
© 2011 Promodo [email protected]
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Description tag
Snippet is only 150 characters long in the SERPs so try to fit into it the summery of the webpage described + call-to-action + a couple of keywords
Create unique description tags on all significant pages
Mind that the description tag will appear in the SERPs along with the title tag, make sure they look natural togather.
Remember that the use of competitor brands in meta tags is illegal in most countries
© 2011 Promodo [email protected]
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Text optimization.
h1, h2 tags
Put a different keyword in each ‘h‘ tag you are usingMake h1 different from the title as thus you will cover more target keyphrase variantsUse CSS to reduce the huge font h1 tag creates by default
Hyperlinks with the relevant anchor text
<a href=http://www.exemple.com>Anchor text which forms link when viewed in browser</a>
Rather than something like «click here» or «see more» put your keywords into the anchor text and point the link to the relevant landing pageTry to use the same relevant anchor text both in the navgation menus and in body copyMake the link useful for the user, they should follow it naturally and intuitively
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Outbound linking
Some outbound links to trusted and highly authoritative resources will make your site look better in the eyes of most search engines
Keep the overall number of links per page (both external and internal) not
exceeding 100of most search enginesLink to non-competitive relevant third-party sites that might be really helpful for your visitors
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Means to ensure proper indexing of your website
First of all it is very important and convenient for site owners and webmasters to add their sites to Google Webmaster Tools.
Helps you track:
site’s loading speed
crawl errors
duplicate title and description tags
pace of site’s indexation
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Robots.txt
Full set of commands and names of different bots can be found at this link http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/exclusion-admin.html
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Sitemaps
Document that lists all the pages of your site and is placed in its root directory.
.xml .html
Page on your site that lists the links to all its pages.
Can be generated with a help of online http://www.xml-sitemaps.com and downloadable tools - Xena and SiteMap Generator
Serves an additional mean of navigation for the users..
Do not forget to add the link to it in your Google Webmaster Tools
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Link Building Campaign
Directories submission
Social bookmarks submission
WordPress themes sponsoring
“Do follow” relevant to your niche blogs commenting
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Link building – maximize your effort
Use your keywords for the anchor text of your backlinks
Chose sites relevant to your niche for backlinking
Pay attention to authority rather than page rank
Remember about the variety of your backlink profile
Also remember that you can get links through onsite optimization. Give out stuff! Offer guides, widgets, downloadable tutorials etc.
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Monitoring and results analysis
To fully understand all the causes and effects of the campaign we strongly recommend you to install a complete set of Google Analytics tracking code onto your site
Monitor your site in Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools regularly
Check your site rankings in the search engines at least once a week with a help of different tools (e.g. Rank Checker)
21.3.11
Alternative ways of small businesses promotion and new trends in SEO
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Alternative ways of search:
local search
shopping search
video search
images search and etc.
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Local search or Google places
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Local search or Google places
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Register with Google Local Business
Some things to pay attention to in order to rank better in local results:
Company address must conform to the address mentioned in its local business profile and the city of search or geographical modificator
Citation of a Company (Infobel.com, Kompass.com, Leonardo.com, Hotfrog.com, Tupalo.com, TripAdvisor.com (for travel agencies) etc.)
Categories associated with the registration
Fact of registration in Google Local Business
Keywords in a Business Listing Title
Traditional SEO
Amount of reviews in Google Maps
Address on a landing page
Make use of micro formats
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Microformats
Currently Google supports 8 microformats, including:
people (defining name, job, address)
products (defining brand, price, reviews, category of the product and etc.)
recipes (cooking time, reviews, type of the dish, date published)
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=146897
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Google Products or Shopping Search
Great opportunity for online shops to get one more traffic source of people 100% ready to buy
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Google Products or Shopping Search
To make use of this terrific tool you need to go through the process pretty much similar to Google local business registration:
sign up for an account with Google Merchant center, fill in the information about your business type and location, verify your account
upload a data feed containing the info about your products manually or with a help of Google API
Mind that for now you can only target 10 countries through Google Product Search: the USA, the UK, Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, Japan, China and the Netherlands.
http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/topic.py?topic=30061
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Video and Image Search
If you place some interesting and relevant to your site tutorial or snapshot make sure to optimize this kind of content too.
alt tags for images.
<img id="image" src="http://site.com/bracelet_11.jpg" alt="Baltic amber star shape pieces bracelet. Cognac colour" title="Baltic amber star shape pieces bracelet. Cognac colour" />
great tool for both images and video optimization is creating special sitemaps
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Video and Image Sitemaps
An entry for a page containing a video would usually look like this:
Here you need to put the url of the page containing a video, its title (make sure it has one or two target keywords), description of the video, tags of the video and its category.
Images sitemap looks simpler:
It allows you to add image location data, image title, caption, geographic location and even license.
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[email protected] Kingdom+44 0203 1376 681
United States+1 347 809-34-86
Takeaways
SEO is a perfect tool for small businesses promotion
Plan your SEO campaign carefully, monitor and spy on your successful competitors
Spare no effort on keyword research as it is the foundation of your future success
Examine your landing pages and optimize them both for search engines and real visitors
Pay attention to the content — the text of the title and body needs optimization first of all
Treat link building seriously, be patient and get great results in the long run
Follow the latest trends in SEO, optimize for alternative ways of searchesTrack, monitor and analyze your performance regularly
© 2011 Promodo [email protected]
United Kingdom+44 0203 1376 681
United States+1 347 809-34-86
Thank you for your attention!
Anna MosevaPromodo