seo 101
DESCRIPTION
Want to know what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is? Start here.TRANSCRIPT
SEARCH ENGINE
OPTIMISATIO
N
WH
A T I D
I DN
’ T K NO
W A W
E E K A GO
…
WHAT IS SEO?
• Methods to improve the ranking of a website on search engine results pages.
• Pages that are authoritative and relevant rank higher up in the search results.
• Relevance measured by page content.
• Authority measured by number and quality of links.
• Top 3 listings on the search engine results page attract 60% of click-through.
(Source: http://seoroi.com/latest-news/google-click-through-rate-blended-serps-seo-strategy/)
3 CORNERSTONES OF SEO
Technical
ContentTrust
TECHNICAL• Originally, search engines relied on
webmasters’ submissions and keywords.
• Technical issues may prevent the website from being indexed or result in lower search ranking.
• Media-rich files (images, movies etc) cannot be read by search engines.
• Keywords should be in plain text within the content.
• Crawlers can tell the difference between relevant content and keyword stuffing.
CONTENT• Content is king when it comes to search
rankings.
• Search engines are geared towards providing the end-user with what they want.
• Should be well written (spelling, grammar) and provide value to the end-user.
• Relevant content keeps users coming back.
• Fresh/updated content will improve search rankings and give people a reason to visit regularly.
• Blog posts are a good way to keep content fresh.
TRUST
• Search engines use links to assess trustworthiness.
• Links to your website from other trusted websites will increase your search ranking.
• Links can also work against you if they are from untrustworthy sources.
THE FIVE R’S OF SEO
Relevant
• Content needs to be relevant to what people are looking for.
Reputation
• Develop a reputation for good content.
Remarkable
• Stand out from the crowd. Provide something unique.
Readability
• Make it easy to digest the content (for customers and crawlers).
Reach
• Explore niches, but don’t exclude potential customers.
GOOGLE PANDA UPDATE
• Released February 24th, 2011
• Penalised low quality websites.
• Uses machine learning to assess which websites are low quality.
• Websites that had thin content or were copied from other websites.
• Site-wide penalty.
• Has gone through 15 versions so far.
GOOGLE PENGUIN UPDATE
• Released April 24, 2012.
• Targeting “webspam” used to influence SEO results.
• Keyword stuffing, exact match anchor text etc.
• Black-hat SEO techniques being penalised.
• Currently version 1.1
USEFUL READING
SEOmoz - http://www.seomoz.org/blog
Search Engine Land - http://searchengineland.com/
SEOBook - http://www.seobook.com/blog
Search Engine Watch - http://searchenginewatch.com/