SEO Techniques: More Than Just the Basics

Advanced SEO Techniques

Presented by Arnie [email protected]

http://twitter.com/arniek

http://www.linkedin.com/in/arniekuenn

A Few Quick Questions(Know your audience)

• How many of you are not sure what SEO is an acronym for?

• How many of you consider yourself pretty good at SEO?

• How many of you do NOT feel your site is optimized very well for the search engines?

My Background(Know your presenter)

• Doing Internet marketing for about 12 years• Formed Vertical Measures about 4 years ago• Primarily an SEO company, however everything is

geared around link building & website promotion • We have 70+ clients• About 25% of our business is outsourcing from

SEO & Web Development Agencies

What is SEO?

• SEO is an acronym for "search engine optimization" or "search engine optimizer."

• Basically you want to be ranked highly in the natural search results, especially Google, since they have 70-80% of the search market

Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

Indented Listing

Local Listing

Why Invest In Higher Rankings?- 60% of listings in

the #1 position will get a click!

- Natural search results receive 250% more clicks than paid search

- Natural search converts 30% better than paid search

- Clicks are Free!!!

How Does it Work?

Magic 3 step formula:1. Create Good, Unique Content

2. Optimization each page you want to rank

3. Get Quality Inbound Links

Bot or Spider

#1 What Makes Good Content?

• Build pages around your keywords

• Add real value to the web visitor– Unique– Informative– Entertaining

• Who do you link to?– Good neighbors– It’s your reputation

#2 What is Proper On-Page Optimization?(in order of importance)

1. Links - internal & external

2. Freshness of content & keyword usage

3. Title tag

4. Alt text

5. H1 tag

6. Bold & italics of keywords seem to matter but minor

#3 Title tag

#2 Content

#5 H1 tag

#1 Link from Home page

#4 Alt text#6 bold

Anatomy of a Page

What NOT to do

• Try to fool the search engines

• Keyword stuffing

• More links than text

• Any content that is not of value to your visitor

#3 The Biggest Factor is Inbound Links

• The best links:– From trusted sites– Have proper anchor text– Have varied anchor text– Are from many different domains

• I am not too worried about:– Relevancy– Reciprocal– PageRank

How Do You Get Links?• Internal links (from content)• Friends & family• Associations• Social Profiles• Clients & Suppliers (see next slide)• Directories (but not thousands of free ones)• Articles (focus on good article directories)• Blogs (guest posts or your own blog)• Blog & Forum participation (signature links)• Send emails to webmasters asking for a link

Example: Your Clients & Suppliers(the twist here is how you approach them)

• Ask your clients & suppliers for links!– Offer company shirts, gift cards, discounts,

etc. or even a good old fashion reciprocal link – Send letters → via the US mail!!– Include an offer or request in your invoices– Use the phone! Set aside some time for a

telemarketing campaign

What are Bad Links?

• Link farms

• Links pages

• Multiple links to same site on same page

• Non-relevant or spammy footer links

• From same pages that have PPC – porn, pills and casinos

• Side bar links do not carry much weight

Advanced Linking Strategies

• Look at your competition’s backlinks– SEOMoz Linkscape– Yahoo Site Exlporer

• Promote your content (is it link worthy?)

Example: Contests & Promotions• What makes a good contest?

– A great offer or prize, valuable to the people you want to attract • Why should they put in the effort to have a chance to win? • Can you obtain sponsors to help you out?

– Something reasonably innovative, not a “me too” contest • Avoid something your competitors have already done

– Proper time frame, enough time to enter but not so long they lose interest

• 3 days may be too short and in 30 days they may forget about you

– Create a buzz, who will help you promote it and how? • Your panel of judges, press releases, LinkedIn, Twitter,

Facebook, etc. Offer prizes to those who help you promote it.

Small Companies Can Run Contests!

• Bridal Contest• Answer 3 questions:

– Your engagement story– Your wedding day theme plan– What is special about your wedding

that you shall win this free sponsorship?

• Facebook Ad• Increased followers on Twitter

through regular tweets

Big Companies Too!• Major hotel chain has us working 6

different promotions– Attend a Motor Sports event, get a

discount– Visit Disney, get a discount – Attend LPGA event, get a discount– Go to a Little League Baseball game, get

a discount– Multi-night stay, get Double Rewards– Multi-night stay, get $50 Gift Card

Even Link Building Companies!

• Vertical Measures’ contest

• Boost Your Juice– $5,000 Grand Prize and $1,000 for 2nd Place– Submit video or essay– 2 week duration– Recruited a panel of judges (who help

promote it)– Offered “socialize prizes” (Rebecca Lieb)

Our Contest Results• Over 700 references on Google for “boost

your juice” AND “vertical measures”• Own all 10 results on the 1st page of

Google for “boost your juice” (branding)• Over 600 visitors to just the contest page• Contest page became a PR3 in 30 days• Links from more than 30 different sites• Dozens of new leads for link building

services

SEO Video Tutorials

• If you would like free access to 10 very good SEO Video Tutorials, email me at [email protected] or hand me your business card, just write SEO Video Tutorials on the back.

That’s a Wrap – Questions?

My Contact Info:

Arnie Kuenn

[email protected]

http://twitter.com/arniek

http://www.linkedin.com/in/arniekuenn

www.VerticalMeasures.com