SEO for Small Business

Covers on page and off page optimization factors, measurement tools, and resources for ongoing education.

Transcript

1. October 24, 2013 SEO for Small Business Heather Acton, Helio Interactive Image credit Freshbooks
2. Agenda ✤ Introductions! ✤ What is SEO?! ✤ “On the Page” SEO! ✤ “Off the Page” SEO! ✤ SEO Tools & Resources
3. Introductions ✤ Grew up in Lindenhurst, live in Lake Villa! ✤ Mechanical engineer turned web developer & strategist! ✤ 5+ years & approximately 100 small businesses served! ✤ #1 in unbiased search results for “freelance wordpress developer Chicago”
4. What is SEO?
5. Paid vs. Organic SEO
6. White vs. Black Hat SEO
7. “On the Page” vs. “Off the Page” SEO http://searchengineland.com/seotable
8. “On the Page” SEO ✤ Content! ✤ HTML! ✤ Site architecture
9. “On the Page” SEO - Content ✤ High quality! ✤ Well-researched! ✤ Use key phrases naturally! ✤ Engaging ✤ Not duplicate! ✤ Current topics! ✤ Light on ads
10. “On the Page” SEO - HTML ✤ The following should be appropriately descriptive and include natural usage of targeted key phrases! ✤ HTML title tag! ✤ meta description tag! ✤ headlines and subheads (h1, h2, etc.)! ✤ img (image) alt and title tags! ✤ a (link) title tags
11. “On the Page” SEO - Architecture ✤ Search engines should be able to easily crawl pages of your site! ✤ Avoid table-based layouts and other outdated programming tactics! ✤ Avoid overuse of Flash! ✤ Avoid bloated computer-generated code (Dreamweaver, GoDaddy Website Tonight, etc.)
12. “On the Page” SEO - Architecture ✤ Site load time! ✤ Use solid hosting! ✤ Avoid large, high quality images! ✤ Measure at https://developers.google.com/speed/ pagespeed/insights/! ✤ Every 100ms increase in load time decreases sales by 1%. (Source: Amazon)
13. “On the Page” SEO - Architecture ✤ Friendly URLs! heatheracton.com/seo-for-small-business! vs.! heatheracton.com/?p=987
14. “On the Page” SEO - Architecture ✤ Mobile friendly or responsive view! ✤ Over 1.2 billion people access the web from their mobile devices. (Source: Trinity Digital Marketing)! ✤ Global mobile traffic now accounts for 15% of all Internet traffic. (Source: Internet Trends 2013)! ✤ Mobile-based searches make up one quarter of all searches. (Source: The Search Agency)
15. “On the Page” SEO - Architecture Mobile! Friendly Mobile! Responsive! or Adaptive
16. “Off the Page” SEO ✤ Links to your site! ✤ Trustworthiness of your site and sites that link to you! ✤ Social reputation and activity! ✤ Personal connection
17. “Off the Page” SEO - Links ✤ Trustworthy and numerous links from other sites to yours are very important! ✤ Anchor text should be descriptive! trustworthy commercial refrigeration repair! vs.! http://northeastcooling.com! ✤ Check external link data here:! http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/
18. “Off the Page” SEO - Links ✤ Don’t pay for incoming links! ✤ Don’t spam other sites with your links
19. “Off the Page” SEO - Trust ✤ Many trustworthy sites linking to your site makes your site more trustworthy! ✤ Many trusted sources sharing your site’s content makes your content more trustworthy! ✤ A site that’s been around longer tends to be more trustworthy! ✤ Google Authorship, or another way to verify the author, gives a site identity and is more trustworthy! ✤ Pirated content will hurt your site’s trustworthiness
20. “Off the Page” SEO - Social ✤ Respected networks sharing your content help your reputation! ✤ Number of shares on social networks helps your reputation
21. “Off the Page” SEO - Personal ✤ A person’s location with respect to your site’s can influence where your site shows up in their search results! ✤ Whether or not a person has visited or shared your site before influences where your site shows up in their search results! ✤ Whether or not your friends have shared or favorited your site influences where it shows up in search results
22. Measuring SEO Results ✤ Google Analytics (FREE)! ✤ Overall traffic, search traffic, key phrase quality, social traffic, site speed, visitor flow, e-commerce sales, etc.! ✤ Google Webmaster Tools (FREE)! ✤ Sitemap submission, crawl errors, query data! ✤ moz.com ($99/mo for 5 campaigns)! ✤ Crawl errors, keyword rankings, competitive data! ✤ http://moz.com/tools
23. SEO Tools & Resources ✤ Measuring SEO Results! ✤ Google Analytics (FREE)! ✤ Overall traffic, search traffic, key phrase quality, social traffic, site speed, visitor flow, e-commerce sales, etc.! ✤ Google Webmaster Tools (FREE)! ✤ Sitemap submission, crawl errors, query data! ✤ moz.com ($99/mo for 5 campaigns)! ✤ Crawl errors, keyword rankings, competitive data
24. SEO Tools & Resources ✤ Ongoing Education! ✤ Search Engine Land: http://searchengineland.com/! ✤ Moz.com blog: http://moz.com/blog! ✤ Matt Cutts blog: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/! ✤ Search Engine Journal: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/
25. Questions?