SOME SEO BASICS

Malcolm Coles, 1/9/2010

WHY SEO IS IMPORTANT

Why SEO matters

What SEO isn’t

http://powazek.com/posts/2090

What SEO isn’t

What SEO isn’t

What SEO isn’t

SEO is about

Working out what people search for Optimising your site and its pages for

those terms Getting attention for your website Converting the resulting traffic into

customers

Why SEO matters

Source: http://www.redcardinal.ie/search-engine-optimisation/12-08-2006/clickthrough-analysis-of-aol-datatgz/Based on some data AOL accidentally released two years ago.

Why SEO matters

http://research.microsoft.com/~ryenw/papers/ClarkeSIGIR2007.pdf

What search results look like

Anatomy of a search page

An individual result

You can control thisYou can

control this

You can control this

How you’re doing

How do you look in Google?

How do you look in Google?

How does Google see your site?

I’m so pretty …

WHAT YOU NEED TO THINK ABOUT ON YOUR SITE

Html titles

Make your page titles

There’s a bit of HTML called <title>. It’s not the on-page headline, and you

can’t actually see it on a webpage. Most web publishing software defaults to

“page headline – site name” But it doesn’t always … and you may not

want it to. Google pays A LOT of attention to it

Celebrity Big Brother

Set them!

Make your page titles

Make your page titles: descriptive, compelling, uniquePut the keywords you want to rank

for in the title – preferably at the front

This is all good for search engines AND for users.

Don’t get carried away …

X Factor Dermot O'Leary Jedward death threats Louis Walsh sexuality Britney Spears miming Never Mind The Buzzcocks: 3am

Think about what people search for

Meta descriptions

Make meta descriptions compelling There’s a bit of HTML called the meta

description. You can’t actually see it on a webpage. It doesn’t help your site rank. It affects

clickthrough rates.

Make your descriptions

Make them: Unique Compelling DescriptiveInclude the keywords you want to rank

for – google will make them bold

Or else don’t bother and let Google decide …

Images

Help Google out

Give the image a descriptive file name Use alt text Use a caption

Google can’t understand images

Don’t be naughty …

URLs

URLs: how Google organises the web

Don’t have the same content on multiple URLs

Don’t delete URLs without directing them

… not as Google does

Google’s SEO report card

Don’t be too helpful

These all work: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/HPV-vaccin

ation/Pages/Introduction.aspx http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/HPV-vaccin

ation/Pages/Introduction.aspx http://www.nhs.uk/CoNdiTioNs/HPV-

vaCciNatiOn/PaGes/Introduction.aspx

Redirect broken URLs

Internal linking

What words do you link with?

How important is a page?

Content

Technologies

Beware of Flash Beware of javascript

WHAT NOT TO DO

Don’t do any of these things … Hidden text Cloaking Keyword stuffing Irrelevant keywords Get hacked

Welcome to our church!

We welcome all worshipers.

Daily Mass, 8 am, Monday to Thursday.Communion service at 8 am on Friday.Weekend Masses: Saturday, 5:30 pm; Sunday, 10:30 am

101 Main Street, 555-4242

Welcome to our church!

We welcome all worshipers.

Daily Mass, 8 am, Monday to Thursday.Communion service at 8 am on Friday.Weekend Masses: Saturday, 5:30 pm; Sunday, 10:30 am

101 Main Street, 555-4242

CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM

OFF SITE

Links, links, links

Links, links, links

Links, links, links

X

Never mention toolbar pagerank

Don’t cheat

You can cheat by …Adding links to other people’s sites (EG blog comments). That usually doesn’t work.You can buy links. That sometimes works –but long-term penalties can be ruinous.You can set up fake websites to get links.You can do all sorts of things!

Or you could have a quality website withcontent people want to link to andpromote that to get links …

TOOLS YOU CAN USE

Two easy Google ones

NEARLY THE END

To sum up

Have the content people are searching for

Focus pages on individual search terms. Make it clear what pages are about – to

search engines and to searchers Make sure Google can find your content Don’t cheat Then do your off-site SEO

Any volunteers …?

For a quick site review?

@malcolmcoleswww.malcolmcoles.co.uk

Me