Search Engine Optimization

Steve Kinney
 Introduction

• Steve Kinney
– President and founder of Search Optimizers
– High-end SEO service for 13 years
– Priced so small companies can afford
– Sage Preferred Vendor for 3 years

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 Learning Objectives
• What is SEO?

• Why is SEO important?

• What affects ranking?

• What are effective SEO Strategies?

• How to employ an effective SEO campaign?

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SERP Review

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 How do search engines work?
• Spiders (a.k.a. robots)

– Always running... 24 x 7 x 365

– Visit frequency… hourly, daily, or weekly

– Purpose… to maintain the freshest content

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 How do search engines work?
• Index database – Google stores over 100 billion
web pages

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 How do search engines work?
• Algorithm

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White hat vs. black hat SEO

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 Learning Objectives
• What is SEO?

• Why is SEO important?

• What affects ranking?

• What are effective SEO Strategies?

• How to employ an effective SEO campaign?

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 Why is SEO important?

• What is happening

• Why it is happening

• The rest of the story

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 What is happening?
• Tighter marketing budgets are limiting choices

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 Why is it happening?
• Lower cost of sales

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 And now, the rest of the story…
• Technology puts consumers in control
– Push marketing
• TV  TIVO
• Talk radio  Pod casts
• Newspaper ads  Online news  Ad blockers
– Pull marketing
• Yellow pages  Online yellow pages  Search
Engines

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 3 parts to an effective Internet
Marketing campaign
• Getting the right people to your website

• Converting some % of the visitors

• Growing your relationship over time

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 Not all visitors are created equal
• 2 types of web site visitors

– Browsers
• Ex. - Reading a blog or twitter posts
• Link, link, link, link

– Searchers
• Type in a specific phrase, click search

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Difference between browsers vs.
searchers

Intent

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 Learning Objectives
• What is SEO?

• Why is SEO important?

• What affects ranking?

• What are effective SEO Strategies?

• How to employ an effective SEO campaign?

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 What affects ranking?
• Quality of traffic
• Links to your site
• Quantity of traffic
• How your site is built
• How long your site has been registered
• Frequency of updates to your site
• Size of your website
• …… Hundreds of factors
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 Quality of traffic
• Visitor comes to your site and stays for 6
seconds – BAD

• Visitor comes to your site and stays for 60

seconds – GOOD

• Visitor comes to your site and stays for 6

minutes – GREAT!

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 Links to your site
• Organic is key
• Circular linking has almost no value
• Using social media sites like Twitter to link has
no SEO value
– Anchor attribute rel="nofollow“
• Link weighting has been devalued in the last few
years

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 Quantity of Traffic
Alexa.com

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 How your site is built
• Use unique page names
– Not:

• Session IDs should be managed in cookies, not URLs

• Use HTML links, not AJAX links

• Create a sitemap.xml and put that name in robots.txt

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 What adversely affects ranking?
• Text displayed graphically
• Linking to a link farm
• Redirecting using refresh meta tags
• Manipulative cross linking
• Keyword stuffing
• Keyword dilution
• Cloaking
• Over optimization
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 Spamming
• Use these techniques and you get put in
the penalty box

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 Search Engine Spamming
• Anything that tries to display different results to the
spiders
– White text on white background
– Cloaking
• Outlier densities
– Use of keyword much more frequent than competition
– Use of SEO techniques much more frequently than
competition
• Link farming

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 Learning Objectives
• What is SEO?

• Why is SEO important?

• What affects ranking?

• What are effective SEO Strategies?

• How to employ an effective SEO campaign?

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 Goal determines strategy

• What is the end goal of an Internet

Marketing campaign?
– Hits – no
– Conversions – not usually

– Sales – optimize for this result

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 Maximize sales
• Where to optimize: ingestion or
conversion rate?
– 200 visitors per month  4 conversions  1 sale

– Optimize conversion rate:

• 200 visitors per month  8 conversions  2 sales
– Optimize ingestion rate:
• 2000 visitors per month  40 conversions  10 sales

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Strategy #1: Focus

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 Strategy #1: Focus

• Search engines prefer focused sites

• The greater your SE credibility, the less

you need to focus

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Strategy #2: Not too hard, not
too soft, just right

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 Strategy #2: Not too hard, not
too soft, just right
• Too hard
– No value going from 800th to 50th
– Lost time

• Too soft
– Leaving $$ on the table
– Allows competition to gain momentum faster

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Strategy #3: Establish/leverage a
beachhead

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 Strategy #3: Establish/leverage a
beachhead
• Find some phrases to begin the SEO process

• As you get those ranked, go after more

• …because if you add too fast and prior phrases

will drop

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Strategy #4: Momentum

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 Momentum example - Space
Shuttle
• Solid Rocket Boosters
– 3,000,000 lbs thrust, 2 minutes, 25 miles

• Main Engines
– 400,000 lbs thrust, 8.5 minutes, 794 miles

• Orbital Maneuvering System

– 6,000 lbs of thrust, 2 weeks, 5M miles
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 Search Engine Momentum =
Search Engine Credibility
• It explains why a new page on Wikipedia will
rank much higher than the exact page on a
brand new domain.

• Some indicators of a site‟s SE cred are:

– Alexa number
– Links to your site
– Google PR
– # of pages indexed for a site

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 Search Engine Credibility
• Why is search engine credibility important
– The keyword phrases (KPs) you pick should be
relative to the SE cred you currently have

– If you pick KPs that are out of your SE cred league,

even the most up-to-date SEO techniques will be
useless

– If you target KPs that are way lower than your current
SEO cred, you are leaving money on the table

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 Strategies in action
• South Bay Ford
– #1 Focus: 6 Initial KPs
– #2 Not too hard…: Locale based KPs
– #3 Establish/leverage a beachhead: Once 6 KPs
ranked, targeted 11 KPs
– #4 Momentum: Now targeting much higher value KPs
such as „Ford Dealer‟

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 Learning Objectives
• What is SEO?

• Why is SEO important?

• What affects ranking?

• What are effective SEO Strategies?

• How to employ an effective SEO campaign?

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 What are the steps to get
started?
• Choosing a focused set of valuable Keyword Phrases
(KPs)

• Getting ranked high for valuable KPs

• Staying ranked high for valuable KPs

• If done correctly, SEO is often the lowest cost form of

lead generation

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 3 step process for choosing KPs
• Choosing a focused set of valuable
Keyword Phrases (KPs)

• 3 step process for picking KPs

– Brainstorm
– Sort
– Filter

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 3 step process for choosing KPs
• Step 1 – Brainstorm
– Think about your ideal client

– What might they be searching for when looking for a

product or service like yours?

– “Be the buyer”

– Build as large a list as possible

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 3 step process for choosing KPs
• Step 2 – Sort
– Use tools like Digital Point or Word Tracker
• http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion (Free)
• http://www.wordtracker.com/ ($$)
• https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
(Free)
– Sort first by # searches per day
– Then adjust by gut feeling and relative probability of
sale

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 3 step process for choosing KPs
• Step 3 – Filter
– Using the following Search Engine Credibility
Indicators
• Google Page Rank
• Alexa Number
• Links to your site
• Pages indexed for your site

– Use these numbers as a baseline to compare against

other sites

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 What to do after picking keyword
phrases?
• Making your website SEO friendly
– Each page on your site has its own page name
– Create a sitemap.xml and put that name in robots.txt
– Any text contained in flash components should be
moved out into html
– Make sure your CMS allows page level updates for
all html <head> components
– Session IDs should be managed in cookies, not
URLs
– Use HTML links, not AJAX links

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 What to do after picking keyword
phrases?
• Now I‟ve found phrases…
– Add the KPs to your meta-tags
– Use the KPs frequently in the text of your home page
– Build a subpage specific to each phrase
– Measure results
– Try new ideas
– Shampoo, rinse, repeat

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 Summary
1. Identify the keyword phrases you should be
ranked for based on your current Search
Engine Credibility

2. Begin targeting your site for those phrases

3. Enlist the help of a professional if you can‟t find

enough phrases in your credibility range

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 Special Offer
• Free Offer
– Initial KP analysis (20-30 minute phone call)
– Within 3-5 business days we will deliver a report that
shows
• Your rankings for KPs that are frequently searched
• Proposal with pricing for our service

– Call Steve Pitchford 949.389.9503

Steve.Pitchford@SearchOptimizers.com

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Questions?

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