The Icing! SEO, Show Notes, Enhanced Podcasts, Pitches 27 June 2008.

The Icing!

SEO, Show Notes, Enhanced Podcasts, Pitches

27 June 2008

Agenda

• SEO

• Show Notes

• Ehanced Podcasts

• Pitches

SEO

• SEO – search engine optimization– The art of increasing legitimate site traffic from search

engines using targeted keywords

• White Hat– Practices that are related to good design

• Black Hat– Practices that are frowned upon (ie, not legitimate)

such as “invisible” or “hidden” text or cloaking (serves different page depending on if the request is a “human” or a spider)

– SE look at meta and javascript redirects as spam

How Do Search Engines Work?

• New content added and linked to; existing linked content modified

• SE spiders (bots) crawl the site– Look for robots.txt file or metatag– Text, metadata, page titles, URL– Follow links – looking for # links “in” and #

links “out”– Index key terms, count word frequency

• Weigh these things somehow (algorithm)

Search v Findability

• Consumers use “search” to “find”

• It’s not that they “want to search” … it’s that they “want to find…”

Terms

• Unique visitors (IP address)

• Bounce rate (visit 1 page and leave)

• Average visit, page duration (seconds!)

• Most requested, entry, exit pages

• Hits v Page View

• Referrers

• These data come from your server logs!

What Stats To Use?

• Referrers tell you where your visitors are coming from

• For example: some referrer data

• Google: Webmaster Tools

• Also, Trellian keyword discovery or WordTracker

Who To Study, Read?

• Danny Sullivan, SearchEngineWatch.com, Search 101

• Aaron Wall, SEOBook.com

• Slideshare

• Google: – What is a sitemap and why should I have one

?

Show Notes - Relevance

• How to increase traffic – good content!

• Link Sharing

• Update your content

• Know your keywords

How Do We Read (erh, scan)?

• Eye-tracking research– Top to bottom– Left to right

• Then there’s the “above the fold” thing

Enhanced Podcast

• Apple implemented in 2005– AAC format– Chapter Markers– Images

• MAKE Magazine “how to”

• Jake Ludington’s “how to” for WMP

• Example from the BBC

• Naked Scientists (!)

The Pitch

• Effective presentations– Presentation Zen (buy the book!)– 5 Steps to Slide Design for Non-Designers

• Guy Kawaski– The “Pitch” (mp3)