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Making Your Website Search Friendly
- 1. Search Engine Optimization ErickBeck 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 SEOImportant? • 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 • OnSite 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 • Pagecontent 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 • Aftercontent, 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.
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- 9. Meta Description • Notheavily 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 • Besure to limit yourself to about 150 characters so it doesn’t get cut off.
- 11. Meta Keywords • Thisis 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 • TheURL 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 arean 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 isless 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 • InApril 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 • PageRank, 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 • Modificationsof 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 • Whatis 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.
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- 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 isthe 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 NOTUS 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 MarketNiche
- 32. Give Users WhatThey Want
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- 34. “The Gap ofDisappointment” 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 • Documentthe 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 • Findwhat 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 SEOStarter 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 ofWeb Development Division of Marketing & Communications Texas A&M University [email protected] Joe Prather Web Developer Department of IT, Division of Student Affairs [email protected] Download slides at slideshare.net
Editor's Notes
- #35 The first is having a high-quality Google My Business profile. When you verify your listing on Google My Business, you'll gain authenticity and authority on the category you've selected. You've given Google a very strong signal as to who you are and what you're about. The second is having really relevant on-page content. Your Google category is fairly broad, so carrying on the example of cupcake bakeries, if you've categorized yourself as a bakery, you need to confirm on your website that you are indeed a bakery, but also introduce the fact you're a cupcake bakery. This is where on-page keyword optimization is crucial. Third is listing your business name, address and phone number around the web. Authoritative local sites such as the Yellow Pages and Yelp are all beneficial in reaffirming to Google that you are who you say you are. Fourth is collecting great links. Google wants to know that people are interested in your site. If you've got quality sites linking back to yours, Google is going to take note. The more inbound links that you have, the more popular you probably are. And the fifth component is reviews. Now, I'd argue that Google reviews are of significant value, but reviews on Yelp and other sites are going to be helpful as well. The reviews should be authentic, but we'll talk more on that later. These five ranking factors are tied together with the theme of consistency. They're better together than they are in silos, so make sure that you've got consistent information across all of your efforts to maximize the impact. Scott Clark of Buzzmedia created a great illustration I wanna share with you. Here he charts what he calls "The Gap of Disappointment" in SEO. 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. This gap is the hardest part to press through. I want to set the right expectation for you. SEO is hard, and it'll be an uphill battle at times. But if you've implemented the right strategy, you'll eventually see meaningful results. Now, another mistake is looking at the roadmap ahead and deciding to put local SEO off for later.