Search Engine Optimization for beginners, presented as part of ELTRUN's Open Seminar "eCommerce for Beginners" on 5 April 2014.

1. socialab
SEOFOR BEGINNERS

2. Who is George Anagnostopoulos?
§ Digital Content Creator since 1994 in the first Greek web-zine.
§ Digital Marketer since 1999, in a dot-com in the UK.
§ Search MarkeGng since 2002
§ Blogger since 2004
§ Mobile MarkeGng since 2006
§ Social Media MarkeGng since 2009
§ Judge at Ermis Awards - Digital
§ Has worked with 50+ brands in the last 13 years.

3. SEO Agenda
1. Terminology
2. IntroducGon
3. Process
4. Best PracGces
5. How it works
6. The future
7. Analysis
eCommerce for Beginners
5 April 2014
ELTRUN

5. SEO
TERMINOLOGY

6. Search Engine MarkeGng includes:

7. Terminology
Funnel
The process from making a stranger your customer

9. Terminology
Click
The way customers go from one stage to the next in a funnel.
Can also mean Tap in Mobile or Tablets.

10. Terminology
Conversion
ConverGng users from one stage of the funnel to the next

11. Terminology
CTR
Click-through rate.

12. Terminology
Long tail

13. Terminology

14. Terminology

15. SEO
INTRODUCTION

16. Why SEO is important...

17. #1 priority for e-shops

18. of users click on Organic Results

19. SEO or PPC?
30% of users
click here and
on the right
(Paid lisGngs)
70% of users
click here
(Organic
lisGngs)

20. Google Golden Triangle
Clicks heatmap

21. Savvy users, the ones who actually do buy online, trust organic results more
than ads.
Why? Because anyone can pay a licle to appear on an ad.
Most importantly...

22. BEST
PRACTICES

23. SEO: Process
Planning
On-site
SEO
Off-site
SEO
ReporGng

24. White-hat SEO
On-site
• Good Content
• Lots of content
• Domain name
• Server Speed & Reliability
• URLs, filenames
• Image ALT tags
Off-site
• Gefng backlinks
• Content MarkeGng
• Social media shares
• CompeGtor Research
• Google Keyword Planner
• Webmasters Tool

25. Gray-hat SEO
On-site
• Duplicate content
• No canonical tags
Off-site
• Link building with licle
relevance
• Three-way linking
• Paid links
Remember: Not everybody agrees on what is gray-hat

26. Black-hat SEO
On-site
• Keyword stuffing
• Hidden / invisible text
• Meta-tag stuffing
• Doorway pages
• Scraper sites
• ArGcle spinning
• Machine translaGon
• Irrelevant Gtle
• Cloaking
Off-site
• Link farms
• Hidden links
• Spam blogs
• Page hijacking
• Expired domains
• Forum Spam
• Blog Comment Spam
• Wiki Spam

27. Where the results are...

28. Where the results are...
Low compeGGon queries Higher compeGGon queries Temporary results
Very severe penalGes

29. HOW SEO
WORKS

30. SEO Mechanics
Understand how search engines work:
1. A Search Engine Spider crawls the web.
2. Builds an index of the words it finds and their locaGon
3. When a user searches, they are searching that index
4. The Search Engine presents the most relevant results of the
search from the index.
5. Every search shows a different SERP
(Search Engine Results Page)

31. Custom results
• Results have long been customized per:
• User Country
• Google domain (google.com vs google.gr)
• User’s interface language
• For about two years now, they’re customized for each person
indepependently, based on:
• Search History
• Web History
• Google+ affiliaGons

32. Keyword Research

33. Keyword Research
Recognise common keyword research tools: Google Trends
Bitcoins VS credit cards

34. THE
FUTURE

35. The truth is...
Google is killing SEO.
They’re making difficult to bring back results.

36. Two reasons for Google to kill SEO:
1. SEO tampers with the validity of their core product.
2. Users want a more personalized experience.
3. SEO does not make Google money like Adwords.

37. Google Updates
• More than 600 updates every year.
• Not all at the same Gme in all countries.
• Greece usually 4-6 months behind the US.
• Big updates:
• Panda (2011): Thin sites and over-opGmizaGon penalty
• Penguin (2012): Poor UX, e.g. content below fold
• Hummingbird (2013): Difference in long-tail queries
• More game-changing updates coming soon...

38. SHOPPING
FOR SEO

39. Anything goes!
From “for free with your website”
to €50,000 per annum.
Most importantly:
No guarantees.
Prices for SEO experts

40. MORE SEO
(IF YOU CAN TAKE IT)

41. • Google Adwords Keywod Planner (keyword volume)
hcp://adwords.google.com/keywordplanner
• Google Webmasters’ Tool (site errors)
hcps://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
• Moz (rankings & backlinks -- paid tool)
hcp://www.moz.com
• Open Site Explorer (backlinks and authority)
hcp://www.opensiteexplorer.org/
SEO: Tools

42. socialab
Thanks!