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Search Engine Visibility: How Can Everyone Be #1?

Search Engine Visibility: How Can Everyone Be #1? Website Stimulus Seminar Sponsored by Webb Design August 25, 2009 Taos, NM presented by Jan Zimmerman Author, Web Marketing for Dummies, 2nd ed. Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing www.watermelonweb.com

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Search Engine Visibility: How Can Everyone Be #1?

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  1. Search Engine Visibility: How Can Everyone Be #1? Website Stimulus Seminar Sponsored by Webb Design August 25, 2009 Taos, NM presented by Jan Zimmerman Author, Web Marketing for Dummies, 2nd ed. Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing www.watermelonweb.com 4614 Sixth St. NW Albuquerque, NM 87107 info@watermelonweb.com 505-344-4230 © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  2. Why? © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  3. Why? © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  4. Why? © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  5. Why? © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  6. What You’ll Learn • What search engine optimization (SEO) entails • How to select good search terms • How to write good metatags • How to optimize pages for search-engine friendliness • How to find inbound links © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  7. Search Engine Jargon • Search Engine Optimization (SEO) • adjusting sites and pages to gain better placement • Natural or Organic Search • results from review of unpaid submissions • Paid Search • fee paid for appearance or for pay-per-click ads • Spiders, Crawlers, or Robots • automated programs used to index content of web sites • Search Engine Marketing (SEM) © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  8. Search Engine Relationship Chartbruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipchart.htm Red: receives natural search -------- Yellow: receives paid results © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  9. Search Engine Market Share 7/09comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2009/8/comScore_Releases_July_2009_U.S._Search_Engine_Rankings # Searches Share Google Sites 8.8 B64.7% inc. YouTube Yahoo Sites 2.6 B 19.3% Microsoft/Bing 1.2 B8.9% ASK Network 0.5 B 3.9% AOL Sites 0.4 B 3.1% © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  10. Search Engine Notes • Search volume generally goes down in the summer • Facebook.com experienced the highest growth of the top ten expanded search properties with a 35% increase compared to June 09, but still only 0.27 B searches • Other search sites: eBay, mapquest, craigslist, myspace © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  11. Choose Search Engines by Audience Google Gets 80% of B2B Searches © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  12. “Natural” Search Engine Ranking • Need to be on 1st page of results to be noticed • Different search engines have different rules • Keywords & tags for Yahoo • Even different keyword-based engines weigh things differently • Inbound links and page rank for Google © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  13. Basic Approach (except Google) • View>Source on high-ranking competitors • Select search terms • Wordtracker.com, Google Keyword Tool, or others • Write metatags • Optimize pages and Web site • Check position, tweak & re-submit if needed or when add new content • No need for monthly re-submissions © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  14. What Makes a Good Search Term • Avoid single words except for proper nouns, technical terms, and topic-specific “terms of art” • Keep terms to 3-4 words maximum • Use quotes around terms that must appear together, e.g. “santa fe” • Separate terms by commas for easy monitoring • Ignore articles, prepositions, hyphens • Use all lower case • Simple plurals include singulars © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  15. Keywords Tool: Free Trial or Paidwordtracker.com © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  16. Interpreting Word Tracker Results © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  17. Google Keyword Toolhttps://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  18. Meta-Tag Guidelines • Tags appear in source code for search engines to review. Right click or >View > Source • Keyword tag: maximum 30 per page • not required but helps you organize your text • Optimize pages for 4-5 search terms each • Title tag and page description tags important © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  19. Good Metatags © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  20. Title Tags • Maximum 7 words • Include 1-2 search terms • Put your company name after the tag • search term: company name • Title tag does not need to display directory or site index placement • Different title tag for each page © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  21. Title Tag Display © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  22. <Alt> Tags • Tags appear when hover over photos on PCs • Originally designed as captions for speech synthesizers used by those with low vision • Try to use some of the same 4 search terms that page is optimized for © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  23. Page Description Tags • What viewers see in search engine results • Goal is to get searchers to click on your site • Maximum 256 characters • most search engines truncate • Include your 4 primary terms for that page • Write in 2nd person, active voice • Include a benefit and call to action © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  24. Page Description Tag Display © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  25. Page Optimization • Selected keywords (4-5) need to appear in first paragraph of text on a page • use soft returns (shift-return or <br>) • Keywords get “special value” when in: • domain name • navigation • internal links • headlines (H1) or subheads (H2) in different size, font, or color © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  26. Site Optimization for Search Engines • Put text above photos in code (i.e. near top) regardless of where it appears on the page • Use linkable footers on every page • Site index • Outbound links page • If you have a database-driven site, ask developers to feed Google and Yahoo an XML index https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  27. Frames Pictures Flash (in general) Splash pages Dynamically-generated or some active server pages (.asp, .jsp) Database contents whose URLs have a ?, &, or = (use special database search and shopping search engines) URLs with more than 3 non-alpha-numeric characters What Search Engines Don’t See © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  28. No-No-No • No “black hat” tricks • No magic pixels • No hidden search terms • Don’t over-populate with high keyword density © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  29. The Search Engine Maze: 3 DIY Must-Have Sites • google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl • search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html • bing.com/docs/submit.aspx • others are “gravy” • don’t need 100,000 search engines © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  30. Google Ranking: Special Case • Need inbound links from high Google-ranked sites that share a keyword • Google Page Rank >5(toolbar.google.com) • Alexa Traffic Rank (alexa.com) • To view links (yours or competitors) • On Google: link:www.website.com • Linkpopularity.com • Internal and outbound links also count © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  31. Google Page Rank © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  32. Spider To Check Inbound LinksLinkPopularity.com © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  33. Inbound Linking • Find your audience online • Check links on high-ranking competitors • Remember directories, maps, yellow pages • Send email request • Be selective about reciprocal links © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  34. Other Ways to Increase Google Rankings • Inbound links from blogs • Press releases online with links • Links from .org and .edu sites • Check all the organizations you belong to • Check trade shows or fairs where you exhibit • Check local, regional, state sites • Avoid • Free-For-All link sites; Link exchange services; Web rings or alliances; Gray market paid links © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  35. Identify Specialty Search Engines & Directories • Meta-indexes • searchengineguide.com/searchengines.html • pandia.com/shopping/index.html • Shopping search engines • shopping.yahoo.com • google.com/products • Price comparison/review sites • shopping.com • buyersindex.com © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  36. Tourism Directorynewmexico.org © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  37. Art Directoryyourartlinks.com © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

  38. Monitor Search Engine Rankings Quarterly • New sites in Google sandbox for 6 months • Update content at least monthly • Page rank & search position can vary daily • Search ranking software • sitereportcard.com/checkranking • digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords • seochat.com/seo-tools • webposition.com (fee) © 2009 Watermelon Mountain Web Marketing

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