Seo 101 in 2019

@radkitten – angie.lif
SEO 101 in 2019
Presented by: Angie Bergmann

10+ years of experience in digital marketing, with a
specific focus on SEO. I view a win based on conversion
and organic growth, not increasing keyword rankings.
Beyond SEO I am passionate about infertility and
adoption advocacy work, gaming, dogs, WordPress, and
accessibility.
Angie Bergmann
Senior SEO Strategist at

SEO as ART
SEO can be easily broken down into 3 categories –
which my team refers to as the “ART of SEO”.
Authority, Relevancy, and Trust.
Topics vs Keywords
Topics are not the hot commodity given the state of
search. How to shift your focus away from
keywords and to topics and why that is important.
Title, Meta, and Content Optimization
What it is and why it’s important. Including some
basic guidelines anyone can follow to help right
away.
Backlinks and Citations
Offsite linking and citations are important, I will go
over they, and what to look for when working on
both.
Intro to Technical Considerations
Technical problems can have a significant impact
on the organic performance of your website. I’ll
teach how to troubleshoot these issues and where
to start.
SEO 101 Takeaways

What is SEO?

SEO as ART

A R T
TRUST
RELEVANCY
AUTHORITY
Foundational
Ability to find and trust the
information published
Core
Information provided related
to users needs
Critical
Perceived strength and
influence
of the information provided

Topics VS Keywords

SEO has always been synonymous with
keywords
This is now a dated methodology.
Why?
Due to the changes and numerous ways people now search,
and increased AI the way forward is through topics, not
keywords.
Writing content into pillars builds relevancy across all levels
Topics are the way forward

Title, Meta,
& Content Optimization

The single most important tag found within a page
Why is it so important? It’s the declaration of what the content found within the page is about.
That makes it a critical element. So what are the baseline criteria?
 60 characters long – 600 pixel container – overage truncated as “...”
 Don’t stuff keywords, pick the most specific topic for the page
 Give every page a unique title tag
 Put the keyword first, then geo, then branding
Title Tag

This is your call to action
A meta description is not actually a ranking factor. It is a critical part of your SEO though as it is
your moment for a call to action from the SERP’s. With that in mind, what are some of the criteria
for them?
 50 to 160 characters – anything longer will be truncated as “...”
 Be written in a compelling format that includes the topic of the page, as well as a call to
action
 Avoid duplicate meta descriptions
 Don’t use quotation marks
Meta Description

Answer peoples questions
This is the key to great content. Instead of
focusing first on the KPI, or on the keywords,
start with the question someone is asking to find
you and work your way back. Create the list of
questions, then do the research to find the topics
based on your KPIs.
Where can I find the questions?
 http://answerthepublic.com/
Content Optimization

Content Guidelines
Once you’ve done the research and you are ready to write, here are some things to keep in
mind:
 Focus on readability. The majority of content should be written at a 7th grade reading
level.
 The average word count for a page of content that appears on the 1st page of the
SERPs is 1200 words.
 Add visuals. Not surprising, people love to have relevant imagery or videos within
pages of content.
 Break up the formatting. Use subheads, subtitles, lists, etc to help make the content
more digestible.
 Link to related content - both within your own website, or if there is external content
Content Optimization

Backlinks &
Citations

Backlinks are still an important ranking factor in SEO
The key is to do organic backlink building. Backlinks are still a ranking factor, as search engines treat
them as a vote of confidence. The more votes of confidence you have from different highly valued
external websites, the more trust search engines put in your website being an authority for your
brand.
To see how your brand is doing, you can use a tool like Majestic (https://majestic.com). It can also
help you find quality backlinks to do outreach to.
Backlinks

NAP rules the day
NAP = Name Address Phone #
Local citations are an area where search engines very much
still operate as a robot. Consistency is key and having exact
matching name, address, phone number, URL, and
business descriptions across all citations, as well as your
website and location pages is key.
You can use a tool like Moz Local to check your citation
standings.
Citations

Intro to Technical
SEO Considerations

Ranking factor since 2015
Having a mobile friendly website, preferably a responsive site has been a ranking factor since 2015.
Google took this a step farther in May of 2019 and finished rolling out what they are calling a mobile
first index. What does that mean? That means when Googlebot comes out to visit your website, it
comes out to view the mobile version first, not the desktop.
 Test you site with Google: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
Mobile Friendly

Recommendations
 Start with a responsive design
 Have the same content on mobile as you have on desktop
 Remove pop-ups on page load
 Don’t block JavaScript, CSS, etc
 Check overall user friendliness from the menu to scrolling
through pages within the website
 Lastly, but most importantly, check your page speed...
Mobile Friendly

Desktop Page Speed became a ranking factor
in 2010
Page speed as a ranking factor started here. When Google
made the announcement however, they specifically said it
was focused solely on desktop searches only.
Mobile Page Speed became a ranking factor in
2018
This was a critical change. Mobile page speed had long
already been impacting your user experience, but was not a
Page Speed

You can test your page speed through Google
You can run a quick test with recommendations here:
 https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
For in-depth action items and there impact, you can use a Google tool called lighthouse:
 https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/
Page Speed

Recommendation Examples
 For CSS and JavaScript
 Minify
 Combine into singular files
 Remove unused snippets
 Defer any scripting you can
 Optimize image sizes
 Eliminate render blocking resources
 Leverage server caching
Page Speed

Having a secure site became a ranking factor in 2014
The type of SSL you purchase is a personal decision, just have on installed. Once installed it is
critical to verify that all pages of the website are redirected to only load using the secure version of
the URL.
HTTPS

2019’s hot topic in SEO – schema.org
Schema markup and other microdata formats have been around
for a while now. They’ve finally hit the top tier of importance with
Google’s focus on rich snippets on the SERPs.
Schema is best described as semantic markup you can add to
your HTML to improve the way search engines read and
represent your page in SERPs.
Recipes are a prime example of schema, but there are
multitudes of types that can be leveraged across websites, with
more being regularly added.
Schema.org Markup

Here are some great sites to learn more:
 Beginners Guide to SEO
 https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
 Blogs
 https://www.searchenginejournal.com/
 https://www.semrush.com/blog/category/seo/
 https://searchengineland.com/
 Google & Bing Webmaster Blogs
 https://webmasters.googleblog.com/
 https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster
Learn More SEO

Questions?

Seo 101 in 2019

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