A presentation by Chelsea Whitaker and Lissa Lee on how search engine optimization can help the Lupus Research Institutes National Coalition increase their impact on an online audience.

1. Search Engine Optimization:
Connections that Matter
Melissa Lee
Chelsea Whitaker

2. On the Agenda
• Introductions
• What is SEO and why does it matter?
• How do search engines work?
• The SEO process
• How organizations can use SEO
• Off-Site connections and linking
• Lupus Research Institute SEO goals
• Questions

3. Who is SankyNet?
• Team of 18 web specialists
• 14 years of online experience
• Email marketing
• Website design and development
• Comprehensive analytic reporting
• SEO Specialists, focusing on website visibility
Fun fact: When SankyNet started, AskJeeves was the
most popular search engine. Times have changed!

4. How SankyNet is Helping LRI
• Analyzing LRI/Coalition website
• Providing a full report of SEO recommendations
• Making sure LRI is in the top few search engine
results for important keywords

5. What is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process
of improving the visibility of a website or a web
page in search engines via "natural" or
un-paid search results.
source: wikipedia.org

6. Search by Keyword
Keyword: What the person searches for
Paid ad targeted to keyword
Unpaid results that
match the keyword
Google and Bing remember your previous searches!
Each person and computer has slightly different
results based on past search history.

7. What SEO Really Is
• The Facts – Each day, millions of people search
for information. If your site is not well optimized,
people will not find you in search engine results
listings.
• “You build it – they will come”

8. What SEO Really Is
• The Facts – each day, millions of people search for
information. If your site is not well optimized,
people will not find you in search engine results
listings.
• “You build it – they will come”
SEO…
– Makes sure your website gets found by people using
search engines, by having it show up on the first page of
Google, Bing or Yahoo.

9. What is the payoff of SEO?
• Connect the right people to your mission
• More visibility and brand awareness
• More potential to help patients and find donors

10. What happens without SEO?
Your site gets buried by more optimized content!

11. How Search Engines Work
• The Internet is a network of websites, pages,
documents and images, like LRI’s.
• Search engines look at the LRI website periodically
– Automatic crawling
– Snapshot of current site is indexed
• Each engine has a unique ranking algorithm
– Ranked based on links

12. How Search Engines Look at Links
• Each link is like a vote for the website.
• When two sites link to each other, that is like two
votes!
• Both Google and Bing use links to and from
websites to gauge the relevance of content,
more so than keywords or coding.

13. LRI’s Current Results
- First page results for “Lupus Information” and
“Lupus Research”
- These terms alone gets 22,000 searches monthly!

14. LRI – Strong Visitor Base
In one year:
• 110,469 visitors
• 286,780 views of the site
• 61,572 came from a search engine
• 85,571 visitors from 5,796 cities in the USA

15. What Kind of Visitors Come to LRI?
Top Keywords:
• Lupus Diagnosis – 18%
• Lupus Research Institute – 7%
• Lupus Criteria – 3%
40% of all traffic is from “diagnosis” keywords

16. Links on Website
News: Link to Partners
Promoting
Coalition Goals
Text Links

17. Vistors Pathways
Traffic Moves from Google to LRI to a Coalition Link

18. Build a Hub for Lupus

19. Cross-Linking: A Symbiotic Relationship
• Both pages are able to reach the audience that
needs them
• Both pages increase in Search Engine rank
Like a bee and a flower… both get the benefits of the connection!

20. How Do We Build Links?
• Add linked LRI logo to the homepage
• Pre-linked HTML code is available on LRI site

21. How Do We Build Links?
• Add text links into blog posts
• Integrate links into the story

22. How Do We Build Links?
• Link to news item
– LRI site has content you
can use!

23. LRI Linking to Partners

24. Reciprocal Linking: Example
LRI Link to Partner
Partner Link Back to LRI

25. Linked Pages Move Up in Results
• Every link is a vote to get to the
top of Search Results
• Every link connects traffic to each other
• Every link helps to amplify advocacy

26. Every Site
• Post to website about 2012 Advocacy Day
• Include links to LRI, and other partners!
• A template of text and link insertions are
available to personalize for your site
• Together, we can amplify our impact!

27. Wrapping it Up
• Linking helps increase placement in search
results
• Higher placement in search results means
more website traffic
• There are easy tools to create links
• Be a part of a lupus resource hub

28. QUESTIONS?

29. Melissa Lee & Chelsea Whitaker, SEO Seminar
THANK YOU!