Search Engine Optimisation

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Search Engine Optimisation

• Anthony Quigley
• Anthony_at_Online-Marketing.ie
• 086 2718485

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Agenda

• Overview of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• How people search
• What keywords people use
• How to make your website search engine friendly -
  6 Steps to Success
• Top SEO Tips and what not to do!

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The SEO Cycle

• Agree Your Websites Objectives
• Optimise for Users (Usability)
• Optimise for Search Engines (SEO)
• Measure Your Websites Performance (Analytics)
• Repeat Steps 1-4

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Overview of SEO

• Search engine optimization (SEO) as a subset of
  search engine marketing seeks to improve the
  number and quality of visitors to a web site from
  "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search
  results.
• Getting visitors to your site from Google

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How People Search
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6 Steps to SuccessON Page and OFF Page SEO

• Competitive Analysis
• Keyword Research
• Determine Current Ranking
• Optimise Your web Site
• Get Your Web Site Indexed
• Optimise Key Pages
• Dont Get Banned

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Competitive Analysis

• Site Age
• Use Wayback Machine at http//www.archive.org/web/
  web.php
• Inbound Links
• Yahoo.com then sitewww.domain.com
• Pages Indexed
• http//www.seomoz.org/toolbox/indexed
• Last Indexed
• www.Google.com/Webmasters
• Home Page PR
• Use the Google Toolbar
• Check Strongest Pages
• http//www.seomoz.org/toolbox/indexed

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Keywords

• Foundation of your online marketing campaign
• Example Low Cost Airline vs Cheap Flights
• Draw up your Keyword List
• Study your web stats program
• Brainstorm
• Competitors web sites
• Use Online Tools to check frequency of use
• http//Inventory.overture.com
• www.wordtracker.com
• www.goodkeywords.com
• https//adwords.google.com/select/main?cmdKeyword
  Sandbox

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Current Ranking

• Benchmark your site vs others using the same
  keywords
• You could do this manually, but .
• Online Tools
• Web Position Gold
• http//www.webtrends.com/Products/OtherProducts/We
  bPosition.aspx
• Trellian SEO Toolkit v2
• http//www.trellian.com/
• Agent Web Ranking
• http//www.agentwebranking.com/
• Web CEO
• www.webceo.com
• Apex Pacific
• http//www.apexpacific.com/webranking.html

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Web Position Gold
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Agent Web Ranking
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Optimise Your Web Site

• Title Tags
• Description Tags
• Keywords Tags
• Alt tags
• Headers Tags
• (On Page) Links Text
• Bold, Italics and Underline
• Site Map
• Content
• URL Re-writing
• Inbound Links

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Title Tag

• Very Important to Google
• Include Keywords (as close to the start as
  possible)
• Avoid keyword Stuffing
• Use if necessary
• Example Online Marketing Dublin Ireland
• Use about 60 characters
• Example
• NOT ltTitlegt Johnson, Mooney OBrien lt/Titlegt
• TRY ltTitlegt Fresh Baked Bread and Scones lt/Titlegt

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Title Tags
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Title Tags
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Title Tags
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Title Tags
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Description Tag

• Used to Describe your business or web site
• If not included, Google will attempt to fill in
  the blanks
• Use your keywords in this Tag
• About 200-300 words
• (Bad) Example

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Description Tag
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Description Tag
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Keywords Tag

• Less important that previously, but still
  valuable
• Will also form the basis for much of the other
  tags and site content
• Process (using procedure discussed earlier)
• Describe your company, products and services
• Extract the salient descriptive words

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Keywords Tag
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Example

• New company that provides a mortgage advice,
  products and services.
• Finance Limited is a mortgage provider. If you
  are selling your house or home, looking for a
  mortgage, need advice on how to sell or buy a
  house, we are affiliated to the main mortgage
  providers

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Alt Tags

• Short for Alternative Text
• Google cant read images, so we give it a clue
  as to what is there
• Alt Tag text appears as a pop up as you hover
  over the image

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Headings

• Headings offer further clues to the search
  engines
• H1, H2, H3, etc
• Format
• lth1gt Title lth1gt
• lth2gt Subtitle lt/h2gt
• Give importance to titles
• Include Keywords where possible
• Can also be used to organise your web site

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Headings
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(On Page) Links Text

• Links provide great clues as to the what the
  web site is about.
• Dont use the click here buttons
• Name the links appropriately
• Even better name the target page appropriately
  as well

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Link Text
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Bold, Italics and Underline

• Bold, Italics and Underline gove substance to
  the text
• Apply these attributes sparingly and ONLY to the
  Keywords
• Close to the top of the page

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Bold, Italics and Underline
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Site Map

• 2 types of Site Maps
• On-Page (and therefore visible)
• On-Page Site Map helps USERS to navigate (and
  also helps Google)
• XML based Site Map is designed for Google
• http//code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html

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Inbound Links

• Possibly MOST IMPORTANT aspect of SEO
• Google rewards Relevancy
• Factors include
• Industry Hubs
• Number of Incoming Links
• Link Context
• Yahoo.com Sitewww.domain.com
• Google.com Linkwww.domain.com

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Inbound Links
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Inbound Links

• Which web sites to link to your competition?
• Google linkwww.domain.com
• Yahoo! sitewww.domain.com
• www.LinkPopularity.com
• www.marketleap.com
• Try to link with them also (if appropriate)
• Relevance is more important than Quantity
• The Link text that is used is also important

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Inbound Links

• Directory Listings
• Yahoo (https//ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/)
• Froogle (http//www.google.com/base/help/sellongoo
  gle.html)
• About.com
• Business.com
• Trade Directories

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Inbound Links

• Online PR
• Write Articles
• Give Awards
• Sponsorship
• Set up an Affiliate Program
• Blog
• Free Service
• Write Great Content

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Inbound Links

• Reciprocal Linking - Guidelines
• Is this (other) site a site that my clients
  would be interested in visiting?
• What is their PageRank?
• Do they value a linking strategy?
• Will the link be in the content or on a Links
  page?
• Sample text to use
• ltstronggtOnline-Marketing.ie lt/stronggtltbrgt lta
  href"http//www.Online-Marketing.ie/"gt
  Online-Marketing.ie lt/agt is a Dublin, Ireland
  based provider of effective search engine
  optimisation services that will get your site to
  the top of the rankings. Whether you operate a
  small business and need regional results or if
  you are the VP of a Fortune 500 company needing
  consulting on new site changes and internal page
  ranking strategies, we have a search engine
  positioning solution to fit your needs.

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Inbound Links

• Directory Listings
• Yahoo (https//ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/)
• Froogle (http//www.google.com/base/help/sellongoo
  gle.html)
• About.com
• Business.com
• Trade Directories

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Inbound Links

• Online PR
• www.webitpr.comwww.prleap.comwww.i-newswire.com
  www.webwire.comwww.pressbox.co.ukwww.24-7pressre
  lease.comwww.clickpress.comwww.przoom.comwww.pr
  .comwww.marketwire.com

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Inbound Linking

• Write Articles and submit them
• http//www.findarticles.com/
• http//www.goarticles.com/
• http//ezinearticles.com/
• etc
• Give Awards
• Sponsorship
• Set up an Affiliate Program
• Blog
• Free Service
• Write Great Content
• Podcasting
• RSS Feeds

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Inbound Linking

• Blogging
• Can be critical to SEO
• Supplies SEs with steady stream of content
• Frequently updated content
• Opportunity to place keywords
• Provides another place to add backlinks (inbound
  links) to your site
• Blog software tends to be uncomplicated URL
  structure, therefore easy to read by the SEs

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Create a Links/Resources Page

• Examples
• http//www.eia.doe.gov/links/links.html
• http//www.php.net/links.php
• http//www.adminjobs.ie/links.asp
• Should You use Link Farms?
• http//www.php.net/links.php

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Get Your Web Site Indexed

• Submit
• Google - http//www.google.com/addurl/?continue/a
  ddurl
• Yahoo - http//search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
• MSN - http//search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM
  WSDD2
• Make sure that there are no broken links
• Dont use Frames
• Minimise Flash
• Please dont use splash pages
• Dynamically Generated Pages Use URL re-writing

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Optimise Key Pages

• Make sure that the keywords and the description
  (containing the keywords) is on your web page.
• Create Keyword specific web pages
• One main topic for each page
• Sometimes called Landing Pages or Marketing
  Pages
• Make it all relevant
• Used in Google AdWords Campaigns
• NO keyword stuffing
• Use Sitemaps

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Dont Get Banned

• Keyword Stuffing
• Alt Image Spamming
• Hidden Text
• Meta Tag and Title Tag stuffing
• Duplicate Content
• Cloaking
• Artificial Linking
• NOTE Anything that your competitor does to harm
  your website will not be penalised by Google.
• Read Googles Guidelines at http//www.google.com/
  support/webmasters/
• Check HTML Validation at www.w3c.org

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Summary

• Overview of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• How people search
• What keywords people use
• How to make your website search engine friendly -
  6 Steps to Success
• Top SEO Tips and what not to do!

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6 Steps to Success

• Keyword Research
• Determine Current Ranking
• Optimise Your web Site
• Get Your Web Site Indexed
• Optimise Key Pages
• Dont Get Banned

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Thank You

• Anthony_at_Online-Marketing.ie