gistfile1.textile

This came from a Digital Nashville talk on 5/17/2011. The speaker was [[http://www.viralorchard.com|Jeremy Scott]].

= SEO Basics (tl;dr) =

• Rule #1: Content Is King.
• Traditionally, Google’s algorithms have focused on keywords and links (inbound and outbound)
• Recently, with Panda Updates, Google has started downrating pages that seem over-SEO’d
• Search Engines are placing far more weight on social signals (shares, likes, retweets, etc.)
• Everyone in the company should click the +1 button in the Google Search results
• On-site optimization means writing web copy that includes predefined target keywords and phrases
• Copywriters and developers should work together to strike a balance between natural copy and optimized keywords
• Utilize PR to produce content that will get linked to from reputable sources (newspapers, blogs, even site-of-the-day galleries like awwwards)
• Leverage content that Google pulls in from its other properties (YouTube, Places, Maps, etc) to get on the search results page
• Use simple, descriptive, keyword-rich URLs
• Non-Profits get an enhanced set of tools for Google and YouTube!

== Resources ==

• [[http://seomoz.com/blog|SEO Moz]]
• [[http://www.seobook.com/blog|SEO Book]]
• [[http://searchenginewatch.com|Search Engine Watch]]
• [[http://www.reelseo.com|Reel SEO]] (video SEO focused)

== 1. Keywords (On-Page Optimization) ==

• Keywords used to be the primary way Google determined rank
• After years of abuse, Google gives less weight to keywords in favor of link building

= Official Keyword Tools =

• [[http://trends.google.com|Google Trends]]
  • Compares two keywords for relative rank (ie, “chiropractic” much more often searched than “chiropractor”)
• [[https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?c=1000000000&u=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS|Google Keyword Tool]]
  • Real-number data about keywords (global monthly searches, local monthly searches, competition)
  • Suggestions for other similar keywords

= Which Keywords to Use =

• Google looks for key phrases (not words) in your webpage called “Code Beacons” – they are all listed on Google’s keyword tool
  • “Keywords” (phrases people commonly use to search)
  • Topic/Theme/Industry
  • Location
• Check competitors websites for keywords – but don’t steal or “scrape” them because Google downranks duplicated content
• Check Google Analytics for searches people are already using to get to your site (check each ranking)
• Choose different keywords for each page – “Each page is its own site as far as SEO is concerned”

= Where To Put Keywords =

• tag</li> <li><h1> and <h2> tags</li> <li>Body copy</li> <li><meta> tags</li> <li><span class="caps">URL</span></li> <li>Domain name (domains with acronyms like “tnchiro.com” are less valuable than “nashvillechiropractic.com”)</li> </ul> <p>= How Many Keywords To Use =</p> <ul> <li>More isn’t always better (especially since recent updates) – you can water down the good ones</li> <li>Don’t overstuff the site with too keywords or the same keywords – Google values “keyword diversity”</li> <li>Google automatically fixes misspellings, so including them as keywords won’t help</li> <li>30-50 is common</li> <li>You can’t rank #1 for every keyword so make some goals and pull out ones you won’t win</li> </ul> <p>= Evaluating Keyword Updates =</p> <ul> <li>How long does it take to see on-page changes? 2~6 weeks</li> <li>Personalized results can affect the results you see: <ul> <li>Your prior search history <ul> <li>Log out of Google account</li> <li>Clear cookies</li> </ul></li> <li>Your geographic location <ul> <li>You can “fake” a geographic location on the search page</li> </ul></li> <li>Rankings based on social signals <ul> <li>Log out of Facebook, Twitter, G+ etc.</li> </ul></li> </ul></li> </ul> <p>== 2. Domains and URLs ==</p> <ul> <li>You want keywords in your domain</li> <li>Google gives weight to older, established domains</li> <li>If you have a bad domain name, create a new one and use the old one to redirect to it</li> <li>.com is always preferable</li> <li>Google is good at separating words: no difference between hello-world, hello_world, helloworld</li> <li>Use descriptive, keyword-rich URLs (pickpuck.com/about-michael-puckett over pickpuck.com/about)</li> </ul> <p>== 3. Crawl Issues ==</p> <ul> <li>Check your Google Webmaster Tools for crawl errors, crawl rates, etc.</li> <li>Google downranks sites with dead links, broken images, redirect errors, etc.</li> </ul> <p>== 4. Links ==</p> <ul> <li>Links are the currency of authority</li> <li>Get linked from other highly-ranked pages (New York Times) – works with PR mindset</li> <li>Stay away from bad links – you don’t want your site linked from spam sites, adult sites, directories</li> <li>Keywords in anchor text is preferred – example <a href="http://iostudio.com">best advertising agency in Nashville</a></li> <li>How to get linked? <ul> <li>Sometimes you can simply ask other website owners to get links</li> <li>Link Bait <span class="caps">DOES</span> still work – ie, Top 10 Lists – see <a href="http://bit.ly/KuKpyM">http://bit.ly/KuKpyM</a> – maybe because it often has a viral social aspect</li> </ul></li> <li>Anything automated, Google usually picks up on and will downgrade the connection</li> <li>Links have decreasing value in Google’s algorithm because of abuse (linkfarms, exchanges, etc.) <ul> <li>Avoid… <ul> <li>Inbound links on website footers (including “Built by iostudio”)</li> <li>Links from unrelated sites</li> <li>Too many links are pointing back with the same exact anchor text as each other</li> <li>Too many exact match keyword links</li> <li>Consecutive Sponsored Links</li> <li>Specific keywords that have recently dropped in ranking added to site (Google Keyword Tool stalking)</li> <li>“Basically what we have spent the last 5 years doing”</li> </ul></li> </ul></li> <li>Link shorteners seem to be OK</li> </ul> <p>== 5. Fresh Content ==</p> <ul> <li>Google will return to your site more often if there is consistent conversation</li> <li>Make sure to have a blog! Link to an archive on every page so Google can crawl more easily</li> <li>Redesigns/recoding sites rarely have a negative effect – unless you change your page URLs</li> <li>Google prefers the newest technologies (HTML5 semantic structure)</li> <li>Basically: Content Is King so if you keep that in mind your site will rank well</li> </ul> <p>== 6. Social Signals ==</p> <ul> <li>The future of <span class="caps">SEO</span> is tied to social media <ul> <li>Likes/Plus Ones</li> <li>Discussion – Comments</li> <li>Shares/Retweets</li> <li>Ratings</li> <li>Reviews – Google Places, Yelp, Google Maps are a “magic bullet” for local businesses – include every location</li> <li>Fans/Friends/Followers</li> <li>Embeds</li> <li>Video subscriptions, etc</li> </ul></li> </ul> <ul> <li>Google started Google+ because it couldn’t get social data about likes/shares from Facebook/Twitter <ul> <li>Google+ integration is key to every brand website because that’s where Google is getting most social data</li> <li>Everyone in your company should be +1’ing any website you launch</li> <li>Facebook data is used in Bing searches (thanks Thomas!)</li> </ul></li> </ul> <p>= Don’ts =</p> <ul> <li>Do Not <ul> <li>Keyword stuff</li> <li>Duplicate content (Do your Mobile Website and Desktop Website have the exact same content? Both will be downrated)</li> <li>Shady server IPs (porn/poker/etc)</li> <li>No shady tricks, scripts, “Black Hat <span class="caps">SEO</span>”</li> <li>Shady inbound links</li> </ul></li> </ul> <p>= Leveraging Video Search Results =</p> <ul> <li>YouTube gets 40 billion video views a month vs. Google’s 12.5 billion monthly searches</li> <li>Most video hasn’t been optimized to show up on Google’s (default) Universal Search (regular search but other content is thrown in)</li> <li>80% of users click on a video if it shows up in Universal Search (40% higher clickthrough rate)</li> <li>Also consider YouTube ads (TrueView system is cheap and efficient)</li> </ul> <p>= How to Get Your Video to Show Up in Google Search =</p> <ul> <li>Create a video (can be simple) <ul> <li>Product demos, etc with lots of <span class="caps">SEO</span>-friendly VO copy</li> <li>Create an instructional video that (audibly) mentions lots of key search terms</li> <li>Write out a piece of content that could go on your website and create a text-based video</li> <li>Basically just have someone read a page of your website into a microphone and add visuals to it</li> </ul></li> <li>Transcribe the video as a .txt file and upload the caption file and the video to YouTube</li> <li>Provide appropriate title, keywords, description, etc for the video – but again, don’t overstuff keywords – focus on 1 or 2</li> <li>Upload video sitemap (<span class="caps">XML</span>) to Google Webmaster Tools</li> <li>Embed the video on your blog, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc</li> </ul>