Search Engine Optimisation

1. Search Engine Optimisation Anthony Quigley Anthony@Online-Marketing.ie 086 2718485

2. 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!

3. The SEO Cycle • Agree Your Website’s Objectives • Optimise for Users (Usability) • Optimise for Search Engines (SEO) • Measure Your Website’s Performance (Analytics) • Repeat Steps 1-4

4. 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

5. How People Search

6. 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 • Don’t Get Banned

7. Competitive Analysis • Site Age • Use Wayback Machine at http://www.archive.org/web/web.php • Inbound Links • Yahoo.com then “site:www.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

8. 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?cmd=KeywordSandbox

9. 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/WebPosition.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

10. Web Position Gold

11. Agent Web Ranking

12. 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

13. 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 <Title> Johnson, Mooney & O’Brien </Title> • TRY <Title> Fresh Baked Bread and Scones </Title>

14. Title Tags

15. Title Tags

16. Title Tags

17. Title Tags

18. 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

19. Description Tag

20. Description Tag

21. 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

22. Keywords Tag

23. 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”

24. Alt Tags • Short for “Alternative Text” • Google can’t 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

25. Headings • Headings offer further “clues” to the search engines • H1, H2, H3, etc • Format • <h1> Title <h1> • <h2> Subtitle </h2> • Give “importance” to titles • Include Keywords where possible • Can also be used to organise your web site

26. Headings

27. (On Page) Links Text • Links provide great “clues” as to the what the web site is about. • Don’t use the “click here” buttons • Name the links appropriately • Even better – name the target page appropriately as well

28. Link Text

29. 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

30. Bold, Italics and Underline

31. 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

32. Inbound Links • Possibly MOST IMPORTANT aspect of SEO • Google rewards Relevancy • Factors include • Industry Hubs • Number of Incoming Links • Link Context • Yahoo.com – “Site:www.domain.com” • Google.com – “Link:www.domain.com”

33. Inbound Links

35. Inbound Links Which web sites to link to your competition? • Google “link:www.domain.com” • Yahoo! “site:www.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

36. Inbound Links • Directory Listings • Yahoo (https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/) • Froogle (http://www.google.com/base/help/sellongoogle.html) • About.com • Business.com • Trade Directories

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

38. 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 <strong>Online-Marketing.ie </strong><br> <a href="http://www.Online-Marketing.ie/"> Online-Marketing.ie </a> 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.

39. Inbound Links • Directory Listings • Yahoo (https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/) • Froogle (http://www.google.com/base/help/sellongoogle.html) • About.com • Business.com • Trade Directories

40. Inbound Links • Online PR • www.webitpr.comwww.prleap.comwww.i-newswire.comwww.webwire.comwww.pressbox.co.ukwww.24-7pressrelease.comwww.clickpress.comwww.przoom.comwww.pr.comwww.marketwire.com

41. 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

42. Inbound Linking • Blogging • Can be critical to SEO • Supplies SE’s 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 SE’s

43. 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

44. Get Your Web Site Indexed • Submit • Google - http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl • 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 • Don’t use Frames • Minimise Flash • Please don’t use splash pages • Dynamically Generated Pages – Use URL re-writing

45. 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

46. Don’t 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 Google’s Guidelines at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/ • Check HTML Validation at www.w3c.org

47. 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!

48. 6 Steps to Success • Keyword Research • Determine Current Ranking • Optimise Your web Site • Get Your Web Site Indexed • Optimise Key Pages • Don’t Get Banned

49. Thank You Anthony@Online-Marketing.ie