web presence
DESCRIPTION
SEO Basics and an intro to building a Web Presence.TRANSCRIPT
Web Presence
http://photographyblogsites.com
Not Just a Website
• Website
• Blog
• Social Networks
• Incoming links
• Articles / Mentions
http://photographyblogsites.com
Own Your Web Presence
• not myname.wordpress.com
• not myname.blogspot.com
• myname.com
• twitter.com/myname
• facebook.com/myname
http://photographyblogsites.com
Consistent Voice
Branded / Consistent Look
• Logo
• Site Design
Branded / Consistent Message
• Site Content
• Social Networks
• Forums
• Twitter / Facebook
http://photographyblogsites.com
Get Found
• How do you want to be found?
• I should be found when people search for _______________.
http://photographyblogsites.com
Defining Your Keywords
• Be specific.
• Use locations.
• Use “Long Tail” terms.
• Long Tail definition on Wikipedia
http://photographyblogsites.com
Long Tail Terms
• photography - too general
• portrait photography - a little better
• los angeles portrait photography - location
• Beverly Hills Hilton wedding reception - venue
• Portrait photography prices - anything related, very specific
http://photographyblogsites.com
Keyword Tool
• Google Keyword Tool
• Use to generate ideas
• Start with terms you know
• Shows the number of searches for a term per month.
http://photographyblogsites.com
Types of SEO / Traffic Building
• On-Page ( What you do to the site itself - content, etc. )
• Incoming Links
• Traffic
• Page Rank
http://photographyblogsites.com
Getting Keywords into Your Site
• Search engines see text.
• All sites are text (HTML) on some level.
• But how much text is being seen?
http://photographyblogsites.com
Text
What You See
What Search Engines See
In your browser,click View->Source
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HTML Basics
• HyperText Markup Language
• Structured elements called tags
• Tags have content
• Tags have attributes
http://photographyblogsites.com
Tags
• Start and end in brackets• <a></a>• <p></p>• Some are self contained• <br/>
http://photographyblogsites.com
Content
• Between brackets - the content• <p>This is a paragraph.</p>• <a>This is a link</a>
http://photographyblogsites.com
Attributes
• Attributes describe the tag• Are placed inside opening bracket• <p id=”attribute”>text</p>• <a href=”http://site.com”>Link</a>
http://photographyblogsites.com
“Alt” Attributes
• <img src=”http://mysite.com/image.jpg” />• <img src=”http://mysite.com/image.jpg”
alt=”Some Text That Describes Picture”/>
http://photographyblogsites.com
Meta Tags
• Describe the entire page / site
• Tell search engines what the page is about.
• Three types of Meta Tags:
• Title
• Description
• Keywords
http://photographyblogsites.com
Title
http://photographyblogsites.com
Description
http://photographyblogsites.com
Keywords
• Was the first method of telling search engines about a page.
• Lead to ‘keyword stuffing’.
• Now ignored by Google.
• Need to find other ways to get those keywords into the site.
http://photographyblogsites.com
Using Your Keywords
• The content itself.• Proper use of heading tags• <H1>Page Title</H1>• Ideally only one per page• <H2>Sub Heading</H2>• Can have more of these• Alt Attributes for Images
http://photographyblogsites.com
Your Site is For People
• Keep it readable
• Keep it informative
• Don’t cram as a many keywords as you can.
http://photographyblogsites.com
Incoming Traffic
• Sites with lots of traffic rank well
• Source doesn’t matter
• Famous / well-known person
• Ads
• Lots of Twitter followers / Facebook friends
• Search results
http://photographyblogsites.com
Building Traffic Cheaply
• Rank better in search results
• Be active in social networks
• Leave comments on blogs / sites
• Write guest posts on more popular sites
• Always link to your site
http://photographyblogsites.com
Page Rank• A number assigned to every page by
Google from 1-10.
• Measure of the page’s authority and quality.
• Ranks all of the factors - on page content, incoming links, traffic, etc.
• Exponential -
• 2 is 10 times better than 1
• 3 is 10 times better than 2
http://photographyblogsites.com
Why Page Rank is Important
• Links from high page rank sites are worth more.
• Sites with high page rank show up higher in search results.
http://photographyblogsites.com
You should (almost) forget Page Rank
• Only really useful in determining quality of incoming links.
• No real equation to figure it out.
• Look at the factors that make it up - traffic, quality of site, etc.
• Other than spammy links or paid links, basically all link are good. Just get them all.
http://photographyblogsites.com
Make Links More Powerful
• Meaningful Anchor text
• <a href=”http://site.com”>Anchor Text</a>
• Meaningful Title Attributes
• <a href=”” title=”More info about link”>
• Bad - Click Here
• Good - Visit my Photography Site
http://photographyblogsites.com
Keep Search Engines on Your Site
• You can block search engines from following links.
• Useful when linking out, especially to large sites - a link to your Twitter or Facebook page.
• By block the search engines, you keep them crawling your own site.
http://photographyblogsites.com
External Nofollow
• Within the link, use the ‘rel’ attribute
• rel=”external nofollow”
• <a href=”http://twitter.com/”>Link</a>
• <a href=”http://twitter.com/” rel=”external nofollow”>Link</a>
http://photographyblogsites.com
Link Within Your Own Site
• Reference old posts
• Link to other similar content
• Use strong Anchor Text for those links
http://photographyblogsites.com
Optimizing Images
• Use ALT attributes on all images
• Give the images themselves meaningful names
http://photographyblogsites.com
Which one is a picture of a cat?
• <img src=”http://mysite.com/image001.jpg”
• <img src=”http://mysite.com/cat.jpg” alt=”This is my cat, Snowball” />
http://photographyblogsites.com
Flash
• Flash hides most content
• Might use a ‘mirror’ html site to be readable.
• Can be setup to display text to search engines.
• Hides image info though - Alt Attributes, image names, etc.
http://photographyblogsites.com
Better Flash
• separate pages - not one flash site
• text urls
• Think of flash as an image or movie
• It should be something embedded within the page. Not the whole site itself.
http://photographyblogsites.com
WordPress
• More than just a blog
• Can be any type of site
• According to Google, it is THE best platform for SEO Article & Video
• Takes care of 80-90% of everything SEO.
• With a couple plugins, it does the rest.
http://photographyblogsites.com
WordPress Settings
• By default URLs looks like this ‘/?p=234’
• Should be words, using the post titles
• Change your permalinks
• Settings->Permalinks
• Select custom
• Use month/day structure
http://photographyblogsites.com
WordPress Plugins
• All In One SEO Pack
• Google XML Sitemaps
• SEO Friendly Images
• SEO Image Galleries
• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
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Which WordPress?
• Not WordPress.com
• Download from WordPress.org
• Install on your own hosting account.
• With Cpanel access, look for One-Click installs
• ‘Fantastico’ or ‘Simple Scripts’
http://photographyblogsites.com
Analyzing Your Site
• Google - site:domain.com
• Results are all the pages Google has crawled on your site
• Google - links:domain.com
• Results are pages that link to your site.
• http://www.prchecker.info/
• Find out the page rank of any site.http://photographyblogsites.com
Monitor Your Site
• Google Webmaster tools
• Also use this to submit your site to Google
• Google Analytics
• Track visitors, keywords they found you with, etc.
http://photographyblogsites.com
Marty Thornley
http://martythornley.com
http://photographyblogsites.com