claninmarketing.com/workshops Public Relations Social Media Development + Management Search Engine Optimization Graphic Design Logo + Branding Design Website Design + Management Strategic Planning Marketing Audits Consulting Scott Clanin Owner & President Agenda What is SEO and why is it important? How Google Ranks Content How Search Algorithms work Ways to improve SEO Simple checklist My site isn’t showing up. Why? • The site isn't well connected from other sites on the web • You've just launched a new site and Google hasn't had time to crawl it yet • The design of the site makes it difficult for Google to crawl its content effectively • Google received an error when trying to crawl your site What is search engine optimization (SEO)? SEO is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. Why is SEO important? Users are searching for what you have to offer. High SEO rankings will increase traffic to your website! Source: Google SEO Googlebot Search bot software that Google sends out to collect information about documents on the web to add to Google’s searchable index Crawling Process where the Googlebot goes around from website to website, finding new and updated information to report back to Google. The Googlebot finds what to crawl using links. Indexing The processing of the information gathered by the Googlebot from its crawling activities. Once documents are processed, they are added to Google’s searchable index if they are determined to be quality content. SEO Serving (and ranking) When a server types a query, Google tries to find the most relevant answer from its index based on many factors. How Search algorithms work Google ranking systems sort through hundreds of billions of webpages in their Search index to give you useful and relevant results in a fraction of a second. Here are ways Google uses Search algorithms to return useful information from the web: Source: Google Analyzing your words Understanding the meaning of your search is crucial to returning good answers. So, to find pages with relevant information, Google’s first step is to analyze what the words in your search query mean. Google builds language models to try to decipher what strings of words they should look up in the index. Source: Google Matching your search Next, Google looks for webpages with information that matches your query. When you search, at the most basic level, Google’s algorithms look up your search terms in the index to find the appropriate pages. They analyze how often and where those keywords appear on a page, whether in titles or headings or in the body of the text. When you search for “dogs” you likely don’t want a page with the word “dogs” on it hundreds of times. Google will try to figure out if the page contains an answer to your query and doesn’t just repeat your query. So Search algorithms analyze whether the pages include relevant content — such as pictures of dogs, videos, or even a list of breeds. Source: Google Ranking useful pages To help rank the best pages first, Google also writes algorithms to evaluate how useful these webpages are. These algorithms analyze hundreds of different factors to try to surface the best information the web can offer, from the freshness of the content, to the number of times your search terms appear and whether the page has a good user experience. In order to assess trustworthiness and authority on its subject matter, Google looks for sites that many users seem to value for similar queries. If other prominent websites on the subject link to the page, that’s a good sign the information is high quality. Source: Google Returning the best results Before Google serves your results, Google evaluates how all the relevant information fits together: is there only one topic among the search results, or many? Are there too many pages focusing on one narrow interpretation? Google strives to provide a diverse set of information in formats that are most helpful for your type of search. Source: Google Ways to increase SEO Search Console’s tools and reports help you measure your site's Search traffic and performance, fix issues, and make your site shine in Google Search results Optimize your content with Search Analytics See which queries bring users to your site. Analyze your site's impressions, clicks, and position on Google Search. Get your content on Google Submit sitemaps and individual URLs for crawling. Review your index coverage to make sure that Google has the freshest view of your site. Source: Google Get alerted on issues and fix your site Receive email alerts when Google identifies issues on your site. See which URLs are affected by these issues and tell Google when you’ve fixed them. Understand how Google Search sees your pages The URL Inspection tool provides detailed crawl, index, and serving information about your pages, directly from the Google index. Source: Google Analyze user behavior on your site If you've improved the crawling and indexing of your site using Google Search Console or other services, you're probably curious about the traffic coming to your site. Web analytics programs like Google Analytics are a valuable source of insight for this. You can use these to: • Get insight into how users reach and behave on your site • Discover the most popular content on your site • Measure the impact of optimizations you make to your site, for example, did changing those title and description meta tags improve traffic from search engines? Source: Google SEO Mobile Friendly Page Load Time Image Optimization Broken Links Contact Us Page Submit Site Map / Highlight Data High-Quality Content Different Multimedia Readability Layout and Formatting Make your site mobile friendly The world is mobile today. Most people are searching on Google using a mobile device. The desktop version of a site might be difficult to view and use on a mobile device. As a result, having a mobile ready site is critical to your online presence. Test your mobile pages with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to see if Google thinks your website works well on mobile devices. Meta Titles & Descriptions Meta Titles & Descriptions Meta Title: An element in the head section of a site that defines the title of each page of the website. Meta Description: A snipped of up to 155 characters which summarizes a page’s content. Meta Titles & Descriptions Write a description that would both inform and interest users if they saw your description meta tag as a snippet in a search result. Avoid: • Writing a description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page • Using generic descriptions like “This is a web page” or “Page about baseball cards” • Filling the description with only keywords • Copying and pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta tag Use unique descriptions for each page Having a different description meta tag for each page helps bot users and Google, especially in searches where users may bring up multiple pages on your domain. Avoid: • Using a single description meta tag across all of your site’s pages or a large group of pages. Source: Google Simple URLs Creating descriptive categories and filenames for the documents on your website not only helps you keep your site better organized, it can create easier, "friendlier" URLs for those that want to link to your content. Visitors may be intimidated by extremely long and cryptic URLs that contain few recognizable words. Source: Google Know what your readers want Think about the words that a user might search for to find a piece of your content. Users who know a lot about the topic might use different keywords in their search queries than someone who is new to the topic. Write easy-to-read text Users enjoy content that is well written and easy to follow Avoid: • Writing sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes • Embedding text in images and videos Organize your topics clearly Organize your content so that visitors have a good sense of where one content topic begins and another ends. Avoid: • Dumping large amounts of text on various topics onto a page with paragraph, subheading, or layout separation. Source: Google Know what your readers want Create fresh, unique content New content will not only keep your existing visitor coming back, but also bring in new visitors. Avoid: • Reusing existing content that will bring little extra value to users • Having duplicate (or near duplicate) versions of your content across your site Optimize content for your users, not search engines Designing your site around your visitors’ needs while making sure your site is easily accessible to search engines produces positive results Avoid: • Inserting numerous unnecessary keywords aimed at search engines but are annoying to users Source: Google Link text tips & examples • Aim for short but descriptive text – usually a few words or a short phrase. • Make it easy for users to distinguish links • Pay attention to internal links to help navigate site better. Click here to find out more about next weeks’ conference. Find out more about the conference next week. Source: Google Write good link text Link text is the visible text inside a link. This text tells users and Google something about the page you're linking to. Links on your page may be internal—pointing to other pages on your site—or external—leading to content on other sites. In either of these cases, the better your anchor text is, the easier it is for users to navigate and for Google to understand what the page you're linking to is about.