SEO at a Glance | Understanding Search Engine Optimization

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HOW WE USED TO SELL THINGS:

Newspaper Ads

Yellow Pages

HOW WE SELL THINGS NOW:

Pay Per Click Search Advertising

Re-targeted display ads

Organic Search

ALL THAT TO SAY…WE SELL ONLINE

The process we use to sell things hasn’t really changed, but the mediums have

And…

The process of buying has changed completely

HOW CONSUMERS BUY THINGS TODAY

1. Identify a Need

2. Research Options

3. Ask Friends

4. Seek Feedback

5. Convert

WHAT IS SEO?

Definition courtesy of Search Engine Land

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.”

It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” listings on search engines.

All major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing have such results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users.

Payment isn’t involved, as it is with paid search ads.

ORGANIC VS. PAID SEARCH RESULTS

Despite this extreme difference in click percentage, paid traffic was invested in to the tune of $31+ Billion in 2011. Unpaid search marketing received just $5 Billion in investment…

ORGANIC SEO IS SUBSTANTIALLY UNDER-VALUED

WHAT IS A SEARCH ENGINE

Think of a search engine as a librarian that is responsible for organizing EVERY BOOK ON EARTH

As the librarians of the web, search engines have a process by which they organize every page on the web.

That process is their indexation algorithm. Search engine robots use the stipulations of the algorithm to crawl through websites and index them in a useful way.

THE JOB OF AN SEO IS TO OPTIMIZE WEBSITES SO THAT THEY CAN BE FOUND IN SEARCH RESULTS WHEN USERS INPUT QUERIES FOR WHICH THE SITES PROVIDE ANSWERS.

THE 2 ARENAS WHERE SEO’S PLAY

1. On-siteOn site optimization refers to the process of adjusting a website in order to allow search engines to easily determine the relevance of the website and it’s pages (technical optimization) as well as adjusting the aesthetics and functionality so that it is most likely to produce the desired behavior of the site’s visitors (visual optimization).

2. Off-siteOff-site optimization refers to the breadth of activities that SEO’s perform outside of the website they are optimizing in order to influence search engine rankings. The primary form off-site optimization takes is Link Building.

1. ON-SITE OPTIMIZATION

When we optimize a website for search engines, we are trying to make it as easy as possible for the search engines to access and index the website according to relevance.

How do we show the search engines

relevance when they crawl our site?

PAGE TITLES

Page title as a human sees it:

PAGE TITLES

Page title as a search engine sees it:

META DESCRIPTIONS

Meta descriptions as a human sees them:

META DESCRIPTIONS

Meta descriptions as search engines see them:

HEADING TAGS (H1, H2, ECT.)

H1 tag as a human sees it:

HEADING TAGS (H1, H2, ECT.)

H1 tag as search engines sees it:

<h1>Car Accident Lawyers Los Angeles Accidents</h1>

PAGE CONTENT

Page content as a human sees it:

PAGE CONTENT

Page content as a search engine sees it:

2. OFF-SITE

Search engines use the quantity and quality of incoming links to a given site as a major indicator of where that site should be placed in their results for relevant search queries.

While a good link builder isn't always a good SEO, a good SEO is always a

good link builder.

WHAT IS A LINK?

A link (or hyperlink) is a reference to a page that a user can follow. Links help search engines evaluate the content of different pages on the Web.

A link looks like this:

WHAT IS AN INBOUND OR EXTERNAL LINK?

An external link is a link that points at an external domain:

WHAT DO INBOUND LINKS COMMUNICATE TO SEARCH ENGINES?1. Authority

Think of an inbound link to Site A from Site B as a Vote cast by Site B for Site A. This vote passes some of Site B’s authority to Site A.

2. Relevance

There are 2 primary ways that search engines use links to determine the relevance of a site:

Anchor TextContext

ANCHOR TEXT

The anchor text is simply the words that appear in the link.

Example:

This sentence is about cars.

The anchor text in this example is “cars”. Search engines read that text, in a similar way that humans do, and are able to recognize the relevance of the website that is linked to accordingly.

In this case, they see that the website is related to cars.

CONTEXT

Search engines also use the context surrounding the link to determine it’s relevance.

If I had a roofing supply website and that website was linked to from an article about the best roofing supplies, the search

engine will be able to infer the relevance of my site because of

the context surrounding the link.

HOW DO WE BUILD LINKS?

The bottom line is that link building is hard. The best SEO’s are the best link builders. We can’t go to in-depth here, but here are the 2 basics ways to build links at the highest level:

Naturally

Publish content, and hope other websites link to it.

Manually

Find places on the web where you can put a link to your site, and put your link there.

WHEN ON-SITE AND OFF-SITE

OPTIMIZATION ARE DONE PROPERLY,

YOU GET:

HIGHER RANKINGS FOR RELEVANT SEARCH PHRASES

MORE LEADS

MORE CONVERSIONS

MORE HAPPY DANCES