Introduction to Search Engine Optimization - Lecture Prepared for the American University in Dubai. #SEO #SearchEngineOptimization #Marketing #Dubai #UAE

1. PREPARED BY: MAIS ABUSALAH
@MAISABUSALAH
ABUSALAH@PROMOSTEER.COM
Introduction to Search Engine
Optimization

2. About the Speaker
 Mais AbuSalah is a passionate marketer who’s been living
and breathing the online media for more than 10 years.
 Ex-Maktoob Marketing Manager and Ex-Yahoo! MENA
Marketing Manager.
 Certified Site Usability, Search engine optimizer and
marketing from Google and Search Engine College of
Australia.
 Social Media Club member – UAE Chapter.
 Speaker and Social Media Forum for Entrepreneurs –
SMMF2015 Bahrain.
 Turjuman Consultancy Trainer.
 She’s currently the Co-founder of Promosteer, a company
that creates and promotes sites/systems to meet business
needs. It also does the marketing setup and training for
clients.
@maisabusalah

3. Outline
Measuring results, refining and redoing
Google Webmaster Tools
Competitor Analysis
Link Building
On-Page Optimization
Keywords Research
What is SEO

4. What is SEO?
Making modifications to your
site, and links sending to your
site, in order to get good
rankings on SERPs for certain
targeted keywords.

5. What are your audience looking for? What
keywords do they use? How to find out?
Keywords Research

6. Keywords Research:
Before you start
Define your
audience
Define your
market
Define your
goals

7. Keywords Research:
Brainstorm
Research
Google Analytics
Site Search Box
Google insights for search & Adwords
Keyword Planner

8. Keywords Research:
Break Down the Keywords
General Focused Laser
Focused

9. Keywords Research:

10. Keywords Research
Examples
General
- Plates
- Blue Plates
- Dinner Plate
Focused
- Buy Dinner
Plates
- Set of Dinner
Plates
- Cost of Dinner
Plates
Laser Focused
- Buy Dinner
Place Settings
- Replacement
Dinner Plates
for Sale

11. What can we do on our own site, to improve its
search engine ranking and visibility?
On-Page Optimization

12. On-Page Optimization
URLs
Text Links
Alt Image Tags
Header Tags
Descriptions
Titles

13. <Title>Page Title</Title>
Do
• include the most
important keywords for
each page.
• Unique Title.
• Avg of 65 chars. (Keep
it short & descriptive).
• Keep it relevant.
• <title>Targeted
Keywords 1st</title>
Don’t
• Irrelevant Title
• Default of Vague Title
“Untitled”
• Duplicate Title
• Very Long Title
• Keywords Stuffing

14. Description
• Why is it important?
• It gives the user and
the search engine an
idea whether or not
this page is relevant to
what they’re looking
for.

15. Description
Do
• Have your keywords.
• Descriptive text
• Unique description
• 150 – 200 character.
• Keep it relevant.
Don’t
• Use general description
“web page”.
• Duplicate Description.
• Very Long description
• Keywords Stuffing

16. Keywords Tag
 It’s not very important, but if we have to have it we
need to have keywords that are relevant to the
content in the page.
 Don’t repeat or stuff keywords.
Ex: <meta content="Maktoob, Business, Press Release"
name="Keywords" />

17. <H1>Header Tags</H2>
Header Tags
H1 – H6
Highlight important areas
Turn text in headline (bigger).
Important for SE & users
H1 is the largest font
Can be used for important images (logo), or links

18. Header Tags
Don’t
Use it for irrelevant text.
Over user it.
Put all of your text in it

19. Alt Image Tag
Alt Image Tag
Alternative text that the browser displays when a Web surfer
is unable (or unwilling) to see the images in a web page.
All images should have alt image attribute to provide
alternative text for the image.
Provides additional information about images.
Was initially utilized to help those with visual disabilities

20. Alt Image Tag
Don’t
Using generic text
Writing very long text
Stuffing alt tag with keywords

21. Text Links Tag (Anchor Text)
Format <a href=“link”title=“Title”></a>
Tool tip that shows up when the mouse is over the link
Crawlers use links to navigate sites, and they depend on the text or
title tag of those links to tell them about their destination pages.
If so many trusted pages linked to a certain page with “Mais”,
search engines will assume it’s about Mais, and will give it a higher
rank on SERP on “Mais”.
Text links pass PR (heat) to destination pages.

22. Text Links Tag (Anchor Text)
Do
• Use descriptive
anchor text.
• Write concise text
(short but
descriptive).
• Use your keywords
Don’t
• Generic anchor text, like
“more”.
• Use irrelevant text.
• Use the url as the anchor
text.
• Long anchor text.
• Keyword-stuffed text
• Create unnecessary links.

23. URLs
Do
• Use Friendly URLs.
• Use your keywords.
• If in Arabic, encode it.
• Keywords in the url are
highlighted in SERP.
• Provide only one version of
the URL.
• 301 redirect for changes.
• Use (-) instead of (_).
Don’t
• Use lengthy urls
• Use unnecessary parameters and
session ids.
• Choosing general page names:
“untitled1.html”.
• Keyword-Suffing: “business-site-
business-site- business.html”.
• Deep nesting of subdirectories like:
“…dir1/dir2/…/dir6/example.ht
ml
• Using directory names that are
irrelevant to the content of the
page.

24. site’s navigation,
look and feel of
site(Design), layout
and structure of
various elements on
page.
Site Structure

25. Good site
structure Helps
users and Search
Engines get to
know what this
site is about.
Site Structure

26. Site Structure
*Image from: the professionals guide to page
rank optimization - SEOmoz

27. Site Structure
*Image from: the professionals guide to page
rank optimization - SEOmoz

28. Site Structure
*Image from: the professionals guide to page
rank optimization – SEOmoz

29. Site Structure
*Image from: the professionals guide to page
rank optimization – SEOmoz

30. Site Structure
*Image from: the professionals guide to page
rank optimization – SEOmoz

31. Site Structure
BackEnd
Error
Free
Code CSS & JS
in an
external
file
Use
Breadcru
mbs &
HTML
sitemap
Use XML
sitemap
No
Frames,
Flash or
JS in
navigati
onText in
page <
Code
Accessib
ility of
pages
from HP
Proper
Pages’
interlinki
ng
Use
keyword
s in links
Pages
are > 3
clicks
away
from HP
Use
useful
404
pages

32. Content (on going content addition)
Front End
Quality
Content
Easy-to-
read text
Proper
text
layout
Unique
content
Keywor
ds-rich
content
2-3
keyword
s per
page
Fresh &
Updated
Content
Content
for Users
& SE
Use
keyword
s in 1st
paragra
ph
Page
length:
200-600
word
Call to
action
Site Structure

33. Content (on going content addition)
DON’T
Spelling
Mistakes
Embed
Text in
images
Duplicate
Content
Stuff
Keywords
in text
Hidden
Text
Image-
based
pages
Flash
Pages
Site Structure

34. Now that you have selected your targeted
keywords and finished optimizing your site, you
can start working on your “online” PR campaign.
Off-Page Optimization

35. Links and Link Building
Links show search engine that other sites think that you provide
worthy information.
Each link is like a vote for your site.
Links are not only for search engines; they can also be good for
referring visits.
The higher the PR of the site/page linking to you, the more heat
you’ll get to your page.
Check your back links: http://www.bestrank.com/tools/back-link-
check
Ex: <a href="http://www.domain.com">My Relevant Title</a> is
better than <a href="http://www.domain.com">Bla Bla Bla</a>

36. Links and Link Building
Do
• Focus on relevant sites.
• Link bait (Give something
for Free and ask people to
link back to you with certain
keywords)
• Connect your site pages
properly.
• Write posts in Blogs and link
back the site with the
targeted keywords.
• Use Social Media Platforms
to promote your site
Don’t
• Sell and buy links.
• Use Link Farm sites.
• Add more than 50 links per
page.
• ask for links from a page
that has more than 50 links.
• use the same keyword for
all links

37. What are your competitors doing right?
Competitor Analysis

38. Competitor Analysis:
What keywords are they using?
What is their foundation (site structure)?
What on-page optimization do they have in
place?
How many back links do they have?
Who’s linking back to them?

39. Competitor Analysis Tools
- SeoDigger: http://seodigger.com/
- Compete.com: http://www.compete.com/
- Who is: http://www.domaintools.com/
- Quantcast: http://www.quantcast.com/

40. Very helpful tool provided from Google to assist
webmasters and owners.
Google Webmaster Tools

41. Google Webmaster Tools:

42. Google Webmaster Tools:
Diagnostic Tool: shows the errors Google found in
your site
Statistics Tool: Top search queries and top pages
Google Index Tool: How many pages are
indexed?
Sitemap Tool: Submit and verify your sitemap
Other Tools

43. What’s next?
Measuring results, refining and redoing

44. Maintenance, Measure Results and Tracking
SEO is an on-going process that never stops.
You need to keep monitoring your rankings, and follow up on the
results of your SEO campaign.
Keep monitoring your search engine traffic through analytics.
Check PV/V, Bounce rate, average time on site, search engine
referrals, keywords and any other metric you think is necessary for
you.
Keep Experimenting and testing

45. Q & A
Questions and Answers