This document provides an overview of search engine optimization (SEO) best practices. It discusses key SEO concepts like the three pillars of SEO - technical, content, and off-page factors. It also covers SEO strategy, analyzing traffic using Google Analytics, and tips for optimizing content and site structure. The goal of SEO is to influence search engines to rank websites higher in organic search results by improving both on-site and off-site elements related to user experience, content quality, and backlinks. Regular analysis of traffic and optimization is important to continuously improve SEO performance.

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The Best SEO and
Analytics Practices

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3. Table of Contents
3
1. Intro Slide 4
What is SEO?
2. Basics Slides 8
SEO Criteria
The Three Pillars
3. Getting Started Slide 12
SEO Strategy
The Customer Journey
4. Optimizing Slide 22
Analytics and Metrics
Google Analytics
5. Useful Tips and Tricks Slide 33
9 Tips to Maximize SEO
Don’t of Google Analytics

4. What is SEO? 4
SEO = Search Engine Optimization,
but what does that mean?
It is the art of influencing search
engines to rank your content
higher in organic (non-paid)
results.

5. What is SEO? 5
Or we can say it is the practice
of increasing the quality and
quantity of traffic to a site
through organic means.
Quality traffic – getting visitors
to your site who are interested
in your product or service.

6. What is SEO? 6
Quantity of traffic –
more of the right people
clicking through from
search engine results
pages (SERP).
Organic results – unpaid,
non advertised pages.

7. What Year Was SEO Created? 7
In 1990, Archie (or Archive) was created as the first search engine.
The FTP site hosted an index of downloadable directory listings.
Due to limited space, it was only listings, and did not list the
contents for each site.

8. What is the Criteria for SEO? 8
There are over 200 known ranking
factors that Google uses to
determine rankings.
These factors can be combined
into 3 categories or pillars:
1. Technical
2. Content
3. Off Page

9. The 3 Pillars of SEO 9
The Technical part of SEO includes:
• Search engine friendly website
codes and tags
• Error free code
• Mobile friendliness
• The speed of your site
• Internal linking
These address both proper labeling and
better user experience.

10. The 3 Pillars of SEO 10
The Content part of SEO includes:
• What keywords you use
• Where and how you use them
• How you organize the content
• Frequency of new content
added to your site
This addresses proper labeling
and the quality of your site.

11. The 3 Pillars of SEO 11
The Off Page part of SEO includes:
• How many reputable and relevant
websites link to your page
• Social media signals
• For local businesses, “NAP Citations”
which are phone book listings
This helps determine the relevancy and
quality of your site.

12. SEO Strategy 12
A successful SEO strategy
consists of 4 parts:
1. Technical
2. Content
3. Off Page
4. Measurement & Analysis
Each part plays an important
role in optimizing traffic to
your site.

13. SEO and The Customer Journey
13
Why does SEO matter so much?
The majority of web traffic is
driven by search engines.
Search engines are a roadmap to
your site. If they can’t find your
site or add your content to their
databases, you’ll miss valuable
opportunities to be found.

14. SEO and the Customer Journey
14
This is true for any type of website or product, whether B2B or B2C.
The statistic below is for both, and as a result, SEO strategy should be
seen as a necessary step in addressing your entire buyer’s journey.

15. SEO and the Customer Journey
15
How important is it to get
on the first page with
organic search as opposed
to paid ads? Extremely.
People trust Google’s
organic top choices over
all others, and this
statistic reflects that. 90%
10%
Clicks on the first page of Google's
search results
on organic links
on paid ads

16. SEO and the Customer Journey
16
What if I don’t get on
the first page?
How many people
click to to the second
or third?
Only 8.5% of web
traffic go past the
first page.
Percentage of Visits Per Page
Page 1 91.5%
Page 2 4.8%
Page 3 1.1%
Page 4 0.4%

17. SEO and the Customer Journey
17
Capturing customers during
research is more than just
the keywords for products.
In research they’re looking
for information to help
them make a decision.
These should be prominent
on your site and will also
boost your SEO.

18. SEO and the Customer Journey
18
Determine these keywords in 3 ways:
1) Know your buyer persona and all
items they search for related to
your products.
2) Work with an SEO expert to
research all the terms that will
help your rankings.
3) Check what your competitors are
doing and using to improve SEO.
Who
Who are
Your customers?
What
What drives
their behavior?
Where
Where are
they?
When
When will they
buy?
How
How do they
make decisions?
Why
Why are
they buying?

19. SEO and the Customer Journey
19
For B2C, say you have a t-shirt
line. Customers may compare your
pricing and designs to your
competitors.
Related keywords should be part of
your SEO strategy as well.
SEO is not a standalone, set-it-and-
forget-it activity. It fits in the
whole process of capturing leads
online and needs to be tweaked
often.

20. SEO and the Customer Journey
20
This chart visualizes where organic search stands in the buyer
decision process for an ecommerce business:

21. SEO and the Customer Journey
21
Once your SEO is set-up, you’ll
need to monitor traffic closely.
Data on your visitors is a
necessary part of achieving
your goals.
As mentioned earlier, it’s the
4th part of SEO strategy and
will tell you what to improve.

22. Analytics and Metrics
22
Start with Google Analytics.
Think of this as the Who, What,
Where and Why of your traffic.
Who is your audience:
characteristics of who visited your
site (geo location, browser/device
used, language spoken, etc.)

23. Analytics and Metrics
23
What is behavior: what the
user did on your site, how
long they stayed, etc.
Where is acquisition: where
users came from and how
they found you.
Why refers to conversions: if
they completed the goal,
which could be a download,
purchase, or signup.

24. 24
Analytics & Metrics
Tracking results will determine what to improve to meet your goals.
You can track things like: open rate, sequence progress,
engagement, clicks and much more.

25. 4 Key Google Analytics Reports 25
Critical reports to review:
1. Traffic Sources by Channel: where visitors come from.
2. Top Landing Pages: insight into content that draws in your visitors.

26. 4 Key Google Analytics Reports 26
3. Top referring sources: the referral site that lead users to you.
4. Conversions: goals completed by visitors.

27. 5 Steps to Setup Google Analytics 27
1. Set up an account using your URL.
2. Add tracking codes to your site.
3. Define goals to identify critical
actions users should take on site.
4. Link analytics and adwords to the
account.
5. Add tracking codes to each page
you are monitoring.

28. Google AdWords 28
AdWords are the words that
companies bid on in Google for the
paid ads we mentioned earlier.
To the left you’ll see an example for
converse trainers.
This store bid on those terms against
others in order to be first in the list.
It’s labeled with “ad” and bidding is
much like an auction run by Google.

29. 5 Important Google Analytics Terms 29
1. Pages/Session. Average number
of pages viewed during a
session. Repeated views of a
single page are counted.
2. Average Session Duration. The
average length of a session.
3. Bounce Rate. Percentage of
single page sessions, or sessions
where the person left quickly
without interacting with the
page.

30. 5 Important Google Analytics Terms 30
4. Source. The place users are before your site, could be a search
engines or another site.
5. Medium. How users arrived at your content. Values for the Medium
include organic, none for direct traffic and CPC for paid search.

31. Some Google Analytics Examples 31

32. Some Google Analytics Examples 32

33. 9 Tips to Maximize SEO 33
SEO is always evolving and all
businesses need to adapt.
Here are 9 tips to help you
maximize SEO in 2016:
1) Intention is everything. Clicks
used to be the focus, but now
it’s post-click activity. Not only
do you have to get the clicks,
but you have to satisfy user
intent.

34. 9 Tips to Maximize SEO 34
2. Keywords aren’t everything.
Words in the headline are
less important. Now you
need to also focus on
associated words with the
content.
For example: best
restaurants search. Use
words that are associated
with that topic like great
dining experiences, 5 star
service, palatable meals.

35. 9 Tips to Maximize SEO 35
3. Focus on user
experience. Original
content is more
important than ever to
justify someone wanting
to read it or share it.
4. Size Matters. Longer
articles, 1,200 – 1,500
words perform better in
searches on average.

36. 9 Tips to Maximize SEO 36
5. Optimize for mobile. Make
sure Google can understand
the content that's found
within a mobile app.
This image is from a site
“developers at Google.”
Google has many rules for
SEO, but they also provide
free tools and information
online to learn it.

37. 9 Tips to Maximize SEO 37
6. Use unique images and label
them properly.
Give the image a proper name
like “Notre-Dame-Paris.jpg vs
23498_DG.jpg.
Use Alt-text which is added so
there is descriptive text if the
image can’t be displayed, and
make sure it contains your SEO
keyword.

38. 9 Tips to Maximize SEO 38
7. Backlinks. When other sites and blogs link back to your site.
Increases your credibility and ranking. Be careful! If you use spammy
ways to get backlinks, Google will find out and ban you from search
results. Here’s a safe way, try reviews:

39. 9 Tips to Maximize SEO 39
8. Subfolders vs Subdomain.
Google ranks subfolders
higher.
1. Subdomain: the "third
level" domain name;
these are free to
create under your root
domain.
2. Subfolder: Folders
behind a domain
address.

40. 9 Tips to Maximize SEO 40
9. Meta Descriptions. Text that appears below your page in a search
result that gives more info than the title. Write something
compelling to stand out, include a CTA, use targeted keywords
(appear in bold) and make sure no text is cut off.

41. The Don’ts of Google
41
Don’t saturate or stuff your
site with too many keywords.
Google is on to this trick and
you will be blacklisted and get
a bad ranking.
Don’t buy links.
Don’t use links from low
quality, unrelated, spammy
links.

42. The Don’ts of Google
42
Don’t forget to index pages.
Broken or missing pages will
not be included in search
results. It results in a 404 error
messages.
Indexing pages means adding
pages to the Google search.
A no-index tag means that
that page will not be added
into the web search’s index.

43. The Don’ts of Google
43
For higher ranking, only
vital parts of your
blog/website should be
indexed. Submit your
sitemap.
Don’t index unnecessary
archives like tags,
categories, and all other
useless pages.
This tool here to the right is
in Google Webmaster tools.

44. Indexing Continued…
44
Don’t forget to update content
frequently.
Don’t forget to use social media
links as another way for crawlers
to find your site. Add your links
on all your pre-existing profiles.
Your ranking drops if your
content is stale.
Social media can also help your
search ranking, like GE.

45. Bonus Tips 45
Google Search Console,
formerly know as Webmaster
Tools, is a great FREE tool.
It is the only place where
Google will communicate
directly with you about your
site.
Some really important additions
are assessments on mobile
usability.

46. Bonus Tip 46
Shows exactly how Googlebot
is interpreting your site:
•Crawling / indexing errors
•Hacks / malware
•Usability issues
Also shows keywords driving
traffic to your site.
Find it here:
https://www.google.com/we
bmasters/tools/

47. Conclusion 47
Start with a good plan that guides your
tactics for what you want to achieve.
Determine how you will measure your
success.
Familiarize yourself with new SEO
practices constantly.
Make sure you use more than just
keywords in your content. Use related
words for the subject matter.

48. Conclusion 48
Make sure the content is mobile
friendly.
Update site content frequently
(at least monthly).
SEO is a process so don’t have a
set it and forget it mentality.
It takes time and it needs to be
updated and improved to work
effectively.

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