Search Engine Optimization - Presentation given to the Texas A&M System Tech Summit, February 2016.

1. Search Engine Optimization
Erick Beck
Director of Web Development
Division of Marketing & Communications
Joe Prather
Web Developer
Department of IT, Division of Student Affairs

2. Perception of SEO
• SEO is, in some ways, for
the insane. It’s an absurd
collection of technical
tweaks, content thinking,
link building and other
little tactics that may or
may not work.
– Ian Lurie (Internet marketing
consultant)

3. Why is SEO Important?
• Search accounts for over half of inbound
traffic, making this the most visible platform
for marketing our sites.
• Over 70% of traffic from search engines
comes from results on the first page
• Up to 20% comes from the first link on the
first page.
• What good is a website that nobody can find?

4. SEO Methods
• On Site SEO – what we can do to optimize
our own sites.
• Outside Influences – elements beyond our
own page which affect returns. Some of
which we can influence.

6. Page Content
• Page content is the single most important
factor in analyzing and ranking web pages.
• Write good content. Google tries to
understand “what the page is about” so
write for your users and Google will get it.
• Include key words. Search engines still
can’t read our minds – include key terms
in the text.

7. Title Tags
• After content, the <title> tag is the most
important factor that we can control.
• It not only adds to rankings, but is also
displayed on the results page. A good title
can catch the reader’s eye even if it is
further down on the page.

8. Title Tags

9. Meta Description
• Not heavily weighted, but important in
enticing users to click your entry.
• These also get shown on the results page,
so can entice users to click your link.
• Developers see writing this as drudgery,
but this content is as important as your
page content.

10. Meta Description
• Be sure to limit yourself to about 150
characters so it doesn’t get cut off.

11. Meta Keywords
• This is what many people think of in terms
of adding meta information.
• These tags have been abused for so long
that they no longer provide any weight in
search results.
• They may still be useful for things that you
want indexed but not shown, such as
common misspellings.

12. Headings
• Heading tags - <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc.
give structure to your page and show
increased levels of importance.
• As such they are given increased weight.
Use heading tags rather than relying on
bold or other CSS modifications.

13. Page URLs
• The URL of your site matters.
• Words in the URL path indicate
organization and importance.
• Use dashes (-) to separate words rather
than underscores (_) or encoded spaces
(%20)

14. Links
• Links are an indicator of a word’s
importance, and so get increased weight.
• Link bleeding – the more links you have on
a site the more each gets devalued.
Consider a no-follow wrapper around
things like tag clouds.
• Broken links can indicate stale content and
subtract from the page’s rank.

15. Domain
• This is less of a concern to us because we
all have a .edu domain.
• This is actually a good thing. A .edu
domain is considered inherently trusted
and so gets higher ranking.
• This is why we also get so much spam
asking us to link to outside sites.

16. Mobile Friendly
• In April 2015 Google began penalizing
sites within mobile search which were not
themselves mobile friendly.
• Responsive design is no longer just a
good idea, it is vital to your site’s search
results rankings.

17. Page Rank
• Page Rank, a calculated score of a web
page’s importance based largely on
weighted values of incoming links.
• A Google specific score named for Larry
Page.
• Not page rank, as in the position of your
page on the returns page.

18. Incoming Links
• Modifications of Page Rank continue to be
a central part of Google’s weighting
process.
• Incoming links are used as a way of
determining how popular a site is, and
popularity implies trust and importance.
• All links are not equal – links from other
respected sites add more than others.

19. Knowledge Graph
• What is the Knowledge Graph and why is
it there? (to allow faster access to data)
• You have influence but not control over
what gets posted here.
• Google regularly changes the information
that gets posted here, so keep up with
their changes so you know what to
emphasize or leverage.

20. Knowledge Graph

21. Keeping Content Current
• One of the leading signals in Google’s
algorithm is freshness of content. This
means sites that regularly update content
tend to have higher rankings.
• These types of sites also tend to have
more regular users, which in turn leads to
more interest, more incoming links, and
higher Page Rank.

22. YouTube
• YouTube is the second most used search
engine after Google itself, with more
searches than Bing, Yahoo, Ask, and AOL
combined.
• YouTube videos are displayed in Google
returns.
• Make YouTube a part of your overall
content strategy.

23. Techniques to Avoid
• Keyword Cramming - repeating a key word
many times in hopes of making it seem
more important.
• Using CSS to create text hidden from
users, meant for the search engine to see
and index
• Using link farms to increase the number of
incoming links

24. Outside Factors
If NOT US then WHO?

25. Centralize Claimed
accounts
Google, Yelp, Apple, ect
google.com/business/
Apple Maps Now
Use
mapsconnect.apple.com
Correct information
Promote Reviews
Add photos

26. Find Your Market Niche

32. Give Users What They Want

33. Finding Trends

34. “The Gap of Disappointment”
You have a ton of effort early on that comes with a lack of results, but,
eventually, things start to click. Your strategy reaches maturity and the
wins arrive.

35. Outside Factors
• Document the outside accounts and resources
being utilized. Friendly websites, social media,
listings, analytics, insight, trends, web tools, all
both GOOD and BAD.
• Space out updates of info, pictures, reviews
over time.
• DO NOT make a large scale changes in a short
period of time.
• DO NOT use personal email accounts when
managing outside resources.

36. Outside Factors
• Find what your USERS
are looking for!!
• Research how potential users could find you!
• Outside factors take persistence over time.
FWD email with time stamp, Re: FWD email
with time stamp, ect
• Make scheduled checkups on goals, page
rank, position changes, user website trends.
Along with following up on outstanding wrong
or bad info.

37. Resources
• Google’s SEO Starter Guide -
http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.googl
e.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
• Webmaster Academy -
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6023933?ref_topic=600117
1&rd=1
• Webmaster Tools -
https://support.google.com/webmasters/?hl=en#topic=4558844
• Google Webmaster Central Blog -
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/
• YouTube – Matt Cutts
• Structured Data – http://www.schema.org/

38. Erick Beck
Director of Web Development
Division of Marketing & Communications
Texas A&M University
ebeck@tamu.edu
Joe Prather
Web Developer
Department of IT, Division of Student Affairs
joep@doit.tamu.edu
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