Build Your Site for SEO with On-Page Strategies

Building Your Site for SEO
On-site traffic-driving strategies.

Megan Ura (@Megan_Ura)
St. Edward’s University Instructional Technology

What is SEO?
“the practice of improving and promoting a web site in
order to increase the number of visitors the site receives
from search engines” – SEOmoz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO

Why?
1. Conversion:
Better visibility =
More customers,
on and offline

2. Trust:
Worthiness and
relevance

image via usercentric.com

How Crawler-based Search Engines Work

1.Crawling
2.Indexing
3.Calculating Relevancy &
Rankings
4.Serving Results

Your mission:
Make your site easily consumable
for humans and search engines.

Search Engine Robot Limitations
1. Crawling and Indexing: HTML text rules
• Forget forms, login fields
• Poor link structures
• Uneven support for plug-in content/media

1. Content to Query Matching: Language, slang
• “fridges” vs. “refrigerators”

1. Is your tree falling in a forest?
• Content must be marketed for visibility
• Generating popularity

Planning it Out
On-site
• what you can control
• “content is king”
• site design, structure

Off-site
• What you try to affect
• “link building”

image via SEOmoz

Search Plus Your World
January 2012 Algorithm Update

• Google+ Bias

• Related Google+
pages from
people and
brands

• A must-have for
businesses,
writers, any
content makers

image via www.google.com/insidesearch/plus.html

Keyword Research 101
What motivates your customers?

1.List most essential aspects of your site
• Review your own copy

• Niche vocabulary and jargon or not?

1. What do you customers want to see, learn about?

2. Learn what your competitors use

3. Use a mix of “popular” and “long tail” keywords

Site structure and navigation
• Simple directory structure
• Help visitors find desired content
• Naturally flowing hierarchy
• Create a sitemap

• Why it matters
• Usability and crawl-ability
• Ease of use
• Watch for orphan pages!

image via Google SEO Starter Guide

Semantic URL Structure
“friendly” URLs
• short, descriptive file names
• avoid symbols, numbers, capitalizations
• have only one URL per page of content!

Better: brandonsbaseballcards.com/cards/majorleague


Rules for Choosing your Domain Name
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-choose-the-right-domain-name

• Get inspired by keywords.
• Make the domain unique.
• Just Say NO to hyphens and numbers.
• Only choose .com available names.
• Make it easy to type and remember. Keep it short!
• Create and fulfill expectations.
• Set yourself apart with a brand. Don’t follow the latest
naming trends. (flickr.com)

<title>The Title Element</title>
Unique, Accurate, Brief
• Site Name/Company Name/Your Name
• Page-specific keyword(s)
• Less than 65 characters, including spaces
• Seen at top of browser, browser tabs and search results
• Users rely on good titles!

Keyword(s) | (Location) | Company Name

“Description” Meta Element
page-specific summaries to encourage clicks

On your site:

On a SERP:

images © Google SEO Starter Guide

Quality Content
Unique and fresh – people first, SE’s second
• Easy-to-read, concise, appropriate
• HTML text equivalent for media
• “keyword density” – frequency of use
• “keyword stuffing” – overdoing it!

Why it matters:
• Keeps visitors coming back!
• Visitors will want to share

Image via pchackz.in

rel=“canonical”
distinguishing copies from an original

To the <head> element, add:
<link rel=“canonical” href=“http://www.site.com” />

• the page is treated as a
copy of the canon URL

• all of the SE link &
content metrics flows
back to the canon URL

Image via SEOmoz

Organize content with headings
• Headings present structure on the page to users.
• 6 sizes: <h1>to <h6>, largest to smallest.
• Use sparingly; only one <h1> per page.
• Serves as an outline for content


Meaningful Anchor Text
Anchor Text: clickable, hyperlinked text
<a href="...">Anchor Text</a>.

• convey the content linked
• Descriptive, not generic “click here” or URL itself
• Stands out visually
• Use for external and internal linking


Use “nofollow” when needed
• rel=“nofollow” is a link attribute
• tells search engines certain links on your site shouldn't
pass your page's reputation to the page linked
• sites you can’t vouch for, “bad sites”
• business competitors

A link on the web = a vote, vouch of quality


Image filenames & alternate text
• Accessibility and search engine relevance
• Used in image search results
• Short, literally descriptive
• Place the image near relevant text content

<img src=“image001.jpg” />

<img src=“SEUlogo.jpg” alt=“St. Edward’s University Logo” />

Analytics
• Record and understand traffic trends.
• Google Analytics is free!

Maintenance
An SEOer’s work is never done.

• Evaluate keyword rankings monthly.
• Watch out for broken links.
• Update your content frequently!
• Integrate social media/blogging.

The Unchanging Core:
1.User Experience
2.On-page SEO and Internal Linking
3.Backlinks: make citation-worthy material

SEO as a Career
• Agency, in-house, consulting
• Work with a variety clients and businesses
• HTML and social media literacy skills

Where to go from here?
• “Resources” handout
• Books & Blogs
• Consider SEM companies
carefully.
• Promote your site
appropriately.
• Humans first, search engines
second.

Build Your Site for SEO with On-Page Strategies

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