Slides from the October 30 SEO Primer for Accelerate Tectoria clients. Others can feel free to check out the slides but note they won't all make sense without having been at the presentation!

1. October 2012

2.  Discuss some SEO basics.
 Look into keyword research.
 Show how to effectively implement your
keywords.

3.  SEO, although it takes a while to kick in, is
one of the highest ROI long-term activities
you can undertake.
 It’s not that hard (although it requires
commitment and persistence).
 Just about anyone can do it.

4.  SEO can be likened to a 3 legged stool (we know
what happens if one of the legs is missing).
These legs are:
1. Site structure and coding.
2. Great, relevant content.
3. Links from related sites.
 While some of the details have changed, this is a
formula that’s always held true.
 Today we’re going to focus on the content side,
looking at keyword research and organization.
Cont...

5.  Many see SEO as an awkward, artificial process.
 To succeed in having a site that appeals to both
users and search engines you need to get
beyond that. We advocate that you:
1. Use research to find the actual terms (keywords)
people are using to search for your type of product or
service.
2. Incorporate these keywords into your site copy.
3. Optimize the relevant pages on your site for the
relevant keywords.
 Not so hard, but few people do it well!

6.  At a minimum, get basic Search Engine Optimization in place
to get more visitors.
 Page Titles, Page Descriptions, sufficient text, SEO-friendly
copy.
 Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide - Google
Page Title
Page
Description

7.  Meta page titles are a “one per page” piece of
content that Google places great emphasis on when
trying to understand what the page is about (critical
for SEO).
 Meta page titles are also the “headline” on Google’s
search page so they must be clear and coherent.
 Meta page descriptions are NOT seen anywhere on
your site, but appear as the description of your page
in search engine results (as long as you have a
description and it’s relevant).
 Meta page descriptions do not affect your ranking,
but DEFINITELY affect the ctr percentage you get
when your result appears.

8.  Searchers know way less about your business than you do
and may use different language than you do to search for
your type of business.
 Find what language they use and incorporate it on your site.
 https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
(see next page...)

12. Definitions:
•Page Authority - Predicts this page's ranking potential in the search engines based on an algorithmic combination of all
link metrics.
•Page MozTrust - Similar to TrustRank, mozTrust estimates the distance from trusted seeds using a PageRank-like
calculation.
•Internal Followed Links - Number of followable links that come from pages on the same root domain as this URL. - Note
that the very low numbers of Internal Followed Links reported for flickr, ebay and deviantart suggest that they are using a
coding convention where most of their links to the home page are not tracked as being "followed" (i.e. a link that is
understood and "indexed" by Google.
•External followed links - Number of followable links (ie. links where the sites allow them to be indexed by Google) that
come from external websites.
•Followed Linking Root Domains - The number of root domains that have at least one followed link to a page or domain.
•Total Linking Root Domains - The number of root domains that link to a page or domain is a measure of trust and
predicts higher ranking potential.
•Linking C Blocks - A number of linking C blocks close to your number of linking domains indicates link diversity, whereas
a lower number may indicate that links are coming from a few related site groups.

13.  The SEO Matrix

14.  Home Page Keyword? (as a start)
 Google keyword tool (within Adwords OR external).
 Note that we’re looking at Broad and Phrase (“”) matches.
 Broad match = whatever Google thinks might match (you
can’t effectively optimize on broad match).
 Phrase match those exact words appear in the searcher’s
search query (and you can definitely optimize for them).

15.  Check out the current page one results.
 Hmm – looking better than expected, but I wonder about
how much it’s locally influenced...
Note we use
Incognito
mode so
our own
search
history isn’t
taken into
account.

16.  Ad Preview and Diagnosis (in Adwords) showing
results if searching from Vancouver:

17.  Not on first page searching from Vancouver – let’s see
how we stack against 8/9/10 tho...
(mental note that there’s no video results showing up)

18.  Opensitexplorer.org (good for a couple free
searches a day or $99/mo through SEOMoz
 Hmm,
what
about
regional?

19.  Internet Marketing – is there location-
based/regional volume? Interesting – let’s look at
some top ten contenders...

20.  Here’s the top Internet Marketing Canada results (using
the full Open Ad Stream through our SEOMoz
subscription).
 Hmm – PlusROI
could/should be
ranking already if
we added “Canada”
to our Page Title
and improved our
“Social Signal”
 Thought process –
let’s optimize for
Internet Marketing |
Victoria BC Canada
 Now just need to
repeat this for every
other page/section
(note that a simple
site might just
include variations of
this first result).

21.  Make sure to get someone outside your company to
give insight on your Meta descriptions!

22.  If you want to get search traffic you need to find a level of
competition you can “win” at (regional, long tail, etc).
 To find out how competitive you are (or need to be), have
a good look at the 8th, 9th and 10th ranked competitors on
page one of Google results.
 Remember to use Chrome incognito so your own search
history isn’t taken into account.
 Make sure you do a good job on your initial research and
keyword assignment.
 Remember to use your keywords in your page copy,
H1s/H2s and alt tags wherever appropriate on the page
they are assigned to.

23.  The link to the Google Keyword Tool (remember to look at
"phrase match"!): https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool
 Google Guide to SEO
(PDF): http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/u
ntrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-
engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
 A great link-building article (note that it's painful but necessary
to build good links if you want good
rankings): http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-death-of-link-
building-and-the-rebirth-of-link-earning-whiteboard-Friday
 Our blog: http://jumpstartweb.com/blog/ (for now!)
 I'll also sign you up for our newsletter and send a link to the
slides.