An introduction to SEO by iProspect Ireland's SEO Manager, Brendan Jackson.

1. SEARCH ENGINE
OPTIMISATION
February 4th, 2013
Brendan Jackson
SEO Manager at iProspect
Copyright © 2013, iProspect, Inc. All rights reserved.

2. AGENDA
What is SEO and why is it important?
How Google works and how we can drive traffic
Link building
The future of SEO
10 SEO tips
2

3. What is SEO
and why is it
important?

4. WHAT IS SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of
a website in search engines via the “organic“ search results.
Paid
Organic
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5. WHY IS SEO IMPORTANT?
30%
click these
70%
click these
GroupM/ Nielsen, August 2012
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6. ORGANIC CLICK-THROUGH RATES
40%
62%
of searchers go no
35%
further than page 1
30%
25%
90%
20% of searchers go no
15%
further than page 3
10%
5%
0%
Position #1 Position #2 Position #3 Position #4 Position #5 Position #6 Position #7 Position #8 Position #9 Position #10
Chitika , May 2012
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7. How does Google work?

8. HOW GOOGLE WORKS
Relevant
Google User and Pages
Pages are
crawls carries out important shown to
indexed
web pages search pages are user
chosen
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9. How do we
make sure
Google crawls
our pages?
Relevant
Google User and Pages
Pages are
crawls carries out important shown to
indexed
web pages search pages are user
chosen

10. LINKS FROM SOCIAL MEDIA AND EXTERNAL SITES
Fastest
way to get new pages
crawled by Google
Twitter and Facebook
links also help
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11. How do we
make our pages
attractive to
Google?
Relevant
Google User and Pages
Pages are
crawls carries out important shown to
indexed
web pages search pages are user
chosen

12. SITE ARCHITECTURE
Homepage
6 clicks
to get here!
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13. SITE ARCHITECTURE
Homepage
3 clicks
maximum to every page
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14. SITE CONTENT AND MEDIA
What we see What Google sees
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15. How do we
make sure we
target
relevant
keywords?
Relevant
Google User and Pages
Pages are
crawls carries out important shown to
indexed
web pages search pages are user
chosen

16. HOW DO WE CHOOSE KEYWORDS TO TARGET?
Use tools to get
Create initial Clean keyword
more keyword
keyword list list
suggestions
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17. HOW DO WE CHOOSE KEYWORDS TO TARGET?
Find search
volume for
each keyword
Monitor, refine
Use PPC data
and compare
for conversion
with PPC
rates
performance
Target high search
volume, high
converting, low
competition
keywords first
Calculate
Final keyword
difficulty to
list
rank on page 1
Check for
blended search
problems and
opportunities
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18. How do we make
our pages
important and
relevant?
Relevant
Google User and Pages
Pages are
crawls carries out important shown to
indexed
web pages search pages are user
chosen

19. HOW GOOGLE DETERMINES RELEVANCE AND IMPORTANCE
Traffic Data
Social Media
Authority of
Website/Links
On-Page from Other
Factors And Sites
Text
Link Text
SEOmoz, 2012
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20. AUTHORITY OF WEBSITE/LINKS FROM OTHER SITES
Spam Porn Viagra
I should treat
these pages
very
differently
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21. HOW TO CHECK LINKS FROM OTHER SITES
1. Go to OpenSiteExplorer.org 2. Enter
website address
3. Or click
‘compare pages’
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22. HOW TO CHECK LINKS FROM OTHER SITES
Shows page
authority and
link information
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23. LINK TEXT
I guess this
site is about
Dublin
Dublin Dublin Dublin Dublin Dublin
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24. ON-PAGE TEXT
OK! This page
is all about
Dublin.
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25. HOW TO QUICKLY FIND ON-PAGE TEXT
1. In Google
Chrome, Ctrl+f
2. Type
keyword here
3. Keywords
are highlighted
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26. IMAGE ALT TEXT
Good keyword
usage in alt text
can improve
rankings and
drive traffic
through Google
Images
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27. OTHER ON-PAGE FACTORS
Meta title visible at
top of browser
<meta name="description" content="Search for used Ford Focus cars for sale on
Carzone.ie, Ireland's no 1 website for buying second hand Ford Focus cars. Visit us
today!" />
Meta description
hidden on page
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28. OTHER ON-PAGE FACTORS
Both meta title
and meta
description
appear on result
pages
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29. OTHER ON-PAGE FACTORS
H1 tag to show
page topic
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30. HOW TO FIND META DATA AND H1 TAGS
1. Install free toolbar from SEOmoz.org/seo-toolbar
2. Go to the page you want to check
3. Click this
button
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31. HOW SOCIAL MEDIA INCREASES IMPORTANCE
More
Stronger
Build Increased searchers
More links presence
influence brand directed
to content in search
and fans searches towards
results
content
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32. TRAFFIC DATA
Bounce rate
Click through rate
Broken pages
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33. OTHER SIGNALS – DUPLICATE CONTENT
The UK and Ireland versions What happens if we try to
of this page are almost find this page on Google?
identical
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34. OTHER SIGNALS – DUPLICATE CONTENT
Very specific search
term but no visibility
in rankings
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35. How do we
influence click
through rates?
Relevant
Google User and Pages
Pages are
crawls carries out important shown to
indexed
web pages search pages are user
chosen

36. BRAND RECOGNITION
Ah, Entertainment.
ie. I’ll just click
that.
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37. META DATA
Meta title
Meta description
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38. META TITLE AND DESCRIPTION TIPS
1. Put important keywords at start of meta title
2. Include brand at end of meta title
3. Maximum title length of 65 characters including spaces
4. Include keywords in description
5. Include call to action in description
6. Maximum description length of 156 characters including spaces
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39. Link building

40. WHY BUILD LINKS?
Improve rankings
Increase brand awareness
Drive qualified traffic
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41. LINK BUILDING TECHNIQUES
Create great on-
site content
Leverage
Guest blogging existing/ make Social media
new relationships
Link
Copy competitor Steal competitor Optimise existing worthiness
links links links
Blog/forum
Buy links Directories
comments
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42. What’s the
future of
SEO?

43. GROWTH OF MOBILE SEARCHES
Only 1.25%
of websites are
mobile friendly
Google, 2011
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44. MORE SOCIAL INTEGRATION
1 billion users
600 million users
500 million users
20 million users
Results in...
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45. HEAVY PERSONALISATION OF RESULTS
Brands you follow on
Google+ get more
visibility
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46. MORE GOOGLE PENALTIES
Penalty for link
spam causes huge
traffic drop
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47. 8 SEO tips

48. SEO TIPS
Make content shareable
Build links – carefully!
on social networks
Focus on usability – SEO
Optimise meta data
will follow
Make sure content is Constantly measure
readable by Google performance and refine
Add great content to your
Use keywords your
site. Think “Would I read
customers are using
this?”
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49. THANK YOU