SEO Training Workshop Search Engine Optimisation Classroom Based. 2018 Agenda.
Agenda (Part 1)
SEO course objectives Part 1 (Day 1) Background - business, marketing and SEO goals Introduction to SEO Google algorithm updates & penalties SEO checklist Keyword planning SEO research and competitor analysis On-page SEO Off-page SEO SEO and website copywriting SEO strategy and action plans SEO tools (basics)
Agenda (Part 2)
Part 2 (Day 2) Revisit day 1 Competitor research for link building Recommended business directories Social media, blogging and content marketing Getting to grips with Google and Bing Webmaster Tools 301 redirects, canonical tags and duplicate content Getting the most from Google Analytics Things you can do to improve click-throughs and conversions SEO plugins and best practice Joomla, WordPress or Magento (if applicable) Social media best practices and tools (time permitting) Questions and Answers
SEO course objectives Understand the basics of SEO and best practice Learn how to carry out competitor research and identify the right keywords Learn how to write for SEO and your audience Learn how to apply on-page SEO techniques Learn how to apply effective off-page SEO strategies Learn how SEO and search is changing Appreciate the impact of recent Google algorithm updates, including Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird and how to avoid Google penalties Implement tools to monitor and review the effectiveness of your SEO Have a practical action plan for progressing the SEO in-house
Part 1
Background
SEO, technical and marketing knowledge within the team Amount of resource to support SEO Previous SEO work carried out Effectiveness of current SEO and marketing Anything that that the search engines may not have liked
Business, marketing and SEO goals
Business vision and goals Competitors Target market USPs / competitive differentiators Website, SEO and marketing objectives
Workshop: Define USPs related to your business and SEO (Start to think about what users would search for in Google, what would they expect to find, what would make them click a link to your site, etc.)
Introduction to SEO It’s as simple as…. 1. Keywords 2. Links Or is it? SEO definitions and popular terms Keywords Links / Anchor Text Meta Data ALT Tags Nofollow Domain Authority Schema, Structured Data & Rich Snippets Canonical / 301 Redirects …
Google algorithm updates & Penalties Overview of Google algorithm changes: Panda – 2011 Emphasis on websites with unique meaningful content Penalties include duplicate, plagiarised or thin content; usergenerated spam; keyword stuffing Penguin – 2012 Emphasis on websites with natural/organic link profiles Penalties for spammy or irrelevant links; paid links; unnatural growth, links with over-optimised anchor text
Google algorithm updates & Penalties Hummingbird - 2013 Emphasis on matching user search queries and intent, more focus on concepts rather than keywords Penalties include keyword stuffing; low-quality content Mobile (aka Mobilegeddon) – 2015 Emphasis on mobile-friendly websites, speed and user experience Penalties include lack of a mobile-friendly web pages; poor mobile usability
Google algorithm updates & Penalties Possum - 2016 Emphasis on location specific ranking
Fred - 2017 Emphasis on clean high-quality content Penalties for affiliate heavy or ad-centred content
Medic - 2018 Emphasis on Trust and Authority signals Penalties for sites offering questionable advice. Favour given to sites having good “trust” signals (reviews, accreditations, press coverage, etc)
Google penalties How do you know whether you’ve been penalised
Drop in rankings Drop in traffic (Google Analytics data) Drop in enquiries or sales Warning or manual actions (Google Search Console)
What you can do to overcome a penalty Audit your website and SEO Content analysis Backlink analysis
Fix any issues Fix duplicate or thin content, keyword issues, etc. Remove and then disavow links (submit a reconsideration request)
Workshop: Review Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools data (Have you suffered any issues?)
SEO checklist Key factors which are known to play a role in SEO: Keywords – do you know what users are searching for? https://ads.google.com/intl/en_uk/home/tools/keyword-planner
Meta data and keyword optimisation – have you optimised your meta data and content for your keywords? https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider
Content – do you have content your visitors will like? Is it fresh and up-to-date (e.g. blog, news, updates) Is it high quality, meaningful and does it match what the user is looking for? Could you add more value to visitors? Is it rich with interesting media to break up the text? Is it easy to find (good navigation and internal linking)
SEO checklist Uniqueness - Is your content unique, both within your website and externally? http://www.siteliner.com https://www.copyscape.com
Domain authority – does your website have good social signals, inbound marketing and backlinks? https://analytics.moz.com/pro/link-explorer https://sharescount.com
Structured data – has your website been designed to highlight important data to Google (reviews, products, etc) https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/
SEO checklist Site speed – is your website quick to load https://tools.pingdom.com https://gtmetrix.com https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights
Mobile-friendliness – does your website display well on different mobile devices and screen resolutions https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly https://www.responsinator.com
Trust – do you have reviews, testimonials, team pages, ‘about us’ information, legal information. Are you GDPR compliant?
Workshop: Audit your website (Using our checklist, audit what’s working well and what may be missing from your digital marketing strategy?)
Keyword planning Keyword brainstorming and research Get ideas - ask team, customers, prospects, friends and family… Brainstorm ideas (there’s no right or wrong answer) Research competitors (see next section) Use the Google Keyword Planner Tool! Deciding on the right keywords for each page Do you have the right keywords and content to begin with Prioritise keywords based on business/marketing objectives Map keywords to pages and identify gaps within your content - pages, sections, categories, products, etc.
Workshop: Brainstorm keywords and try mapping to pages on your website (Do you have any missing pages missing? Do you have keywords/content missing on existing pages?)
SEO research and competitor analysis
Search Google to discover who’s ranking for your keywords How to spot what keywords they are optimised for: look at competitor link anchor text https://analytics.moz.com/pro/link-explorer get suggestions from Google https://ads.google.com/intl/en_uk/home/tools/keyword-planner review competitor traffic (although not always accurate) http://www.semrush.com http://www.alexa.com get other ideas based on industry/niche http://www.wordstream.com/keyword-niche-finder How to check competitor rankings for keywords – there are lots of tools to choose from, some free, but to get all of the features you will most likely have to pay!
Workshop: Try to identify new keywords based on competitor research
On-page SEO (optimisation of keywords, meta data and content) Keywords (short or longtail phrases) URLs and meta data optimisation Important HTML elements - headings, sub headings, image ALT tags, links and body text Blogging and content freshness SEO optimised content (keyword densities)
Off-page SEO How can you build high quality backlinks? Create sharable content (content is king!) Blogging and content marketing Visual content – video, images, infographics Social media marketing and social sharing Link baiting techniques original content, ideas and research - anything interesting enough to catch people's attention ground breaking news (get there first) quirky content which could go viral don’t be scared to be controversial
Off-page SEO (2) What should you avoid?
Low quality article and press directories Poor quality business directories that have been built for SEO Duplicating / spinning content and submitting to multiple sites Over-linking content to your website Over-use of anchor text in links – keep your links varied and natural! Over-use of keywords in content (keyword stuffing) Spammy blog/forum commenting Buying links for SEO Anything that looks artificial
SEO and content optimisation Write for your target your audience first while appreciating SEO at the same time - use compelling ‘calls to action’ and engaging content that users will read and share Be mindful of keyword and keyword densities but don’t obsess on them https://www.seoquake.com/index.html Consider what is a meaningful and appropriate amount of content and what media to use – look at a range of competitor’s content who rank well for your keywords Structure your content well using a main heading/H1 and sub headings – make sure you have a friendly URL
Workshop: Based on your keyword research, write a well optimised page or blog post for your website (Define the meta data, H1, sub headings and URL. Look at competitors to gauge how long the content should be)
SEO strategy and action plans 1. Create a digital marketing strategy which integrates SEO with your other online marketing activities (e.g. social media, PPC, PR, blogging, etc). Ensure these can all be tied back to the business vision and goals. A 6-12 month plan is ideal 2. Ensure larger sized SEO / marketing teams are clear on their individual roles and accountabilities and ensure they are working together, towards the strategy 3. Plan your SEO activities each month – create smaller action plans and set targets 4. Monitor results, review effectiveness and revise the action plans accordingly
Workshop: Try to define a suitable monthly action plan and clearly define any roles, responsibilities and accountabilities within the team (What will you measure and how will you track progress?)
SEO tools (the basics) Google and Bing Webmaster Tools for monitoring your backlinks and keyword searches Google Analytics for monitoring your traffic XML sitemaps, HTML sitemaps and robots.txt to inform search engines about your website SEO plugins (e.g. Yoast for WordPress) Rank tracking and other SEO tools
Workshop: Set up Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics if you don’t already have accounts & review the data (What important data can you find?)
Part 2
Revisit day 1 Any questions?
Competitor research for link building There are lots of methods: Simply search for your competitor’s name or website address in Google enclosed by quotes e.g. “competitor x” or “www.competitor-x.com” to see where they are listed Check free and paid backlink checking tools, e.g. https://analytics.moz.com/pro/link-explorer, https://ahrefs.com or https://majestic.com Use traffic analysis tools to identify where traffic and referrals are coming from, e.g. https://www.semrush.com, https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo There are lots of other tools online which can be easily found
High quality business directories for link building There are still some good quality free business directories but there are also thousands that are low quality ‘designed for SEO’ directories that should be avoided like the plague Submitting your site to the high quality business directories and social media sites will help, search, visibility and referrals
http://www.yell.com https://plus.google.com http://www.freeindex.co.uk http://www.yelp.co.uk http://www.citylocal.co.uk http://www.crunchbase.com …
Workshop: Research competitor links using one of the tools mentioned. Look at Linking Domains. Order by those you think have the most authority and identify five potential sites to acquire links from.
Social media, blogging and content marketing Refer to earlier section about dos and don'ts of link building PR / news content (only use high quality moderated sites). Focus favourable press coverage as Google is pretty good at knowing which parts of sites are written by journalists who can be paid off vs staff journalists who are truly uncovering the news. Blogging – maintaining a high quality blog will be the simplest thing you can do to aid your SEO and enhance content freshness. Consider on-site blog vs. externally hosted blogs Consider the options available - WordPress.com, Tumblr and Blogger
Social media, blogging and content marketing (2) Social media – Google has been said to favour social signals (social votes). At very minimum reserve you social media accounts and link to social media accounts from your website where you are active High quality Infographics – infographics are very popular. If you can come up with visually appealing original content (the quirkier or more fact based the better), then people will want to share your content – each share equals a vote towards your SEO! Video content – YouTube is considered as the no. 2 search engine by many and there is no doubt that people engage better with video than text. Video content also tends to rank very well in search results providing it has been optimised properly
Workshop: Create a content marketing ideas document - identify ideas and topics for blogs, news/press, infographics and videos. Consider how you would share or promote the content
Building brand credibility, authority and Trust (1) Following the Google Medic Update, it’s important than ever to consider the whether your website presents you as a credible and trustworthy source of information: Is your content written by people who are truly known as authorities in their field? Does your business and your writers have a good reputation? Are you selling products that are potentially either scams, not helpful, or even harmful to people? If you are lacking business or author reputation or have products that don’t inspire trust, then re-establishing trust and ranking well again may be difficult.
Building brand credibility, authority and Trust (2) • •
E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust) is the new buzzword. To review how well your site demonstrates E-A-T: • Ensure there is a strong and easily identifiable About page. Make it clear why you are known as the most authoritative business in your sector. Boast about awards won, press recognition, years of experience and more. • Ensure authors are clearly labelled and it’s clear who’s responsible for the content. Ideally link to an author bio that boasts about their E-A-T. • Improve E-A-T by fostering reviews and generating discussions • Encourage user comments/dialogue on the website to show expertise (perhaps consider social media feeds)
Building brand credibility, authority and Trust (3) • Review existing content that may be giving Health, Financial or Wellbeing advice to ensure it has scientific backing. • Include scientifically backed evidence where possible, referencing/linking the data correctly. • Ensure legal information about the business is easily accessible • Ensure customer service information is easily accessible, identifying who is responsible for this • Improve internal linking and website architecture • Continue to focus on known algorithm factors like PageSpeed, HTTPS, mobile responsiveness, and making sure your site is technically correct • Continue to focus on building great content
Getting to grips with Google and Bing Webmaster Tools
Monitor your messages through Webmaster Tools Monitor errors and clean-up any technical issues highlighted Watch out for manual actions (Google Penalties) Ensure your sitemap is up-to-date and pages are getting indexed properly
Workshop: Review your Google Webmaster Tools account (Can you spot any technical errors or potential issues? If so, what can be done to fix them?)
301 redirects, canonical tags and duplicate content Duplicate content can happen for lots of reasons – glitch in your CMS, website migration (copy+paste), outdated SEO practices, etc. Be aware of the dangers of duplicate content and how to overcome them 301 redirects (htaccess) Canonical tags Robots (noindex meta tag) 301 redirect checker - http://www.redirect-checker.org Duplicate content checkers http://www.copyscape.com http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php
Getting the most from Google Analytics What does the data mean?
Visits Bounce Rate Time on site Landing page Keywords and issue with (not provided) data
Setting up goals Tracking conversions/sales Funnel visualisation
Workshop: Review your Google Analytics account (Which are your most popular pages and which are your worst performing pages?)
Things you can do to improve clickthroughs and conversions Improving click-throughs from search results Goolge+ / My Business and Knowledge Graph Rich snippets – reviews, ratings, videos, recipies and products data for e-commerce (price, brand, quantity) Improving conversions KISS - "Keep it simple, stupid" Above the fold vs below the fold Keep users engaged (video content) One page checkout – a MUST for e-commerce!
Workshop: Identify ways to potentially improve click-throughs and conversions
SEO plugins for Joomla, WordPress or Magento (if applicable) Magento Rich snippets http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/rich-snippets-s uite.html SEO suite (option a) http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/seo-suite-ultim ate.html SEO suite (option b) http://www.mageworx.com/seo-suite-ultimate-vs-pro SEO suite (option c) http://mirasvit.com/magento-extensions/advanced-seo-suite.html And much more… see
SEO plugins for Joomla, WordPress or Magento (if applicable) Joomla AceSEF http://www.joomace.net/joomla-extensions/acesef-joomla-seo-sef-url s sh404 http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/site-management/sef/10134 And more… see http://extensions.joomla.org WordPress All in One SEO Pack - http://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack YOAST - http://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo And more… see http://wordpress.org/plugins/
Social media best practices and tools (time permitting) Platforms https://en-gb.facebook.com https://twitter.com www.youtube.com https://www.pinterest.com https://uk.linkedin.com https://plus.google.com http://instagram.com Which platforms are right for you?
Social media best practices and tools (time permitting)
Uses of social media Writing compelling content for social media Frequency of updates and investment required Generating engagement (likes, tweets, pins, comments, shares, +1s) Tools for social media management and reporting Using social media hand-in-hand with SEO
Any questions?
Thanks for Attending
