How to Stand Out in the Search Results

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How to Stand Out! in the Search Results and Drive Qualified Customers to Your WebsiteSuccessful SEO Strategies For Small Business

Why care about SEO?


Popularity

• 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine

• 97% of consumers search for local businesses online

• The majority of web traffic is driven by the ‘Big Three’ search engines—Google, Bing and Yahoo

Source: Search Engine Journal

Organic vs. Sponsored

77%CHOOSE ORGANIC


Organic vs. Sponsored

25%HIGHER CONVERSION

The “Golden Triangle”


Is SEO legit?

• Black magic? • Dark art?• Snake oil?

“Black Hat”

• Unethical• Spammy• High-risk


“White Hat”

• Ethical• Google-approved• User-focused

How search engines workFirst things first


DISCLAIMER


Crawling and Indexing

Relevance and Importance

• Does the page address the query?• Is the page popular? • Popularity = importance (according to

Google)

What Google wants


How people use search engines

Know thyself

Empathy


The Process

1. Need for answer, solution or piece of information

2. Formulate need in words and phrases

3. Enter keyword/search term into search engine

4. Browse through the results for a match

5. Click on a result

6. Scan for a solution, or a link to that solution

7. If unsatisfied, return to the search results

8. Perform new search with new keyword/search term

Keywords

• Think like your customer• “managed services” vs. “computer

support”• Intention?


“Build for people, not search engines.”


Designing + Developing for SEO

How to be a good host

What the spider saw


How spiders get around

Illustration from SEOmoz


Robots!


Sitemaps


Auto-pinging

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

URL structure• Short• Static (not dynamic)

• No: www.mywebsite.com/blog?id=123

• Yes: www.mywebsite.org/descriptive-readable

• Descriptive • Hyphenated (not + or _)


Content creationFeeding the spiders

Who is your buyer?


“Write for users, not search engines.”

Create compelling content

• Not “link bait”• Always value!• Entertain• Educate


Keyword research

Keyword competitiveness


Frequency

• Keep Google coming back for more• You can’t move up the ranks if your site is

ignored

Video• Jump ahead• Great for competitive

verticals• No need to be

Scorsese

List-mania

Title and meta tags

<html><head><title>This Is an Example of a Title Tag</title><meta name="Description" content="Here is an example of what a snippet looks like in Google’s SERPs. The content that appears here is usually taken from the meta description tag." />


Alt text

Off-page optimization


Link building


Social sharing

Start a blog


Directories

One step at a time

• SEO is a process, not an event


Need help?

• Just call us!


Questions?

We’d love to help.

• Just get in touch!


(213) 607-9100

How to Stand Out in the Search Results

Technology

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search enginesgoogle

search engine journal