Introduction to Search Engine Optimization by Sebastian Kühn

INTRODUCTION TO

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION AN EBOOK PRESENTED BY SEBASTIAN KUEHN

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Contents

INTRODUCTION .............................................................................. 3 Resources for SEO Beginners .............................................................. 4

BASICS OF SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION ............................ 5 On-Page Search Engine Optimization .................................................. 6 Off-Page Search Engine Optimization .................................................. 7

ON-PAGE OPTIMIZATION .............................................................. 8 Website Architecture ............................................................................. 8 Relevant Content ................................................................................. 13

OFF-PAGE OPTIMIZATION .......................................................... 16 Inbound Links ...................................................................................... 17 Integrate Social Media ......................................................................... 21

CLOSING REMARKS .................................................................... 21

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Introduction

Have you ever asked yourself what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about? Imagine that you have a well designed Website and great content but not enough traffic. Maybe people cannot find you in search engines. In that case you should definitely think about optimizing your site in a way which Google, Yahoo!, Bing & Co. understand easier. These search engines crawl websites via incoming links of pages that are already indexed. Furthermore, they decide which pages are the best match for a search query and built a ranking, based on well concealed algorithms. SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. It is the practice of achieving higher natural rankings in search engine results to increase the number of visitors to your website. Search Engine Optimization is not the only way to increase the number of visitors to your website. Another form of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is paid online advertisement in social networks, search engines or other channels. Finally, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not only the cheaper, but also more effective. Research shows that people are much tend to click much more on natural search results. What you want to do with Search Engine Optimization is simply a high Relevance for the search queries of your target group and Authority of your content. This guide focuses on how to achieve both without being a professional online marketer.

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Resources for SEO Beginners The following free Guides from Google, SEOMoz and HubSpot offer great introductions into SEO-Marketing. It is also worth reading their Blogs to keep up to date with latest developments around Google, Bing & Co. Google “SEO Starter Guide”

SEOMoz “Beginners Guide to SEO”

HubSpot “Introduction to SEO”

There are tons of free tools that offer free statistics, analytics and SEOchecks for your Website. Just try a couple of them and find your favorite. Probably two of the most comprehensive ones are offered by the key players of the search engine market: Google and Microsoft.

Google Developers provides a bunch of helpful Tools to optimize your Website Performance

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Use Bing Webmaster to see your Website from Microsoft’s Perception

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Basics of Search Engine Optimization Search engines rank websites to offer the best possible search results for their users. Google calls its algorithm PageRank and the basic idea behind it is quite easy. The more links (or citations) a website has, the higher is its authority. The incoming links are again weighted according to their own authority. The goal is to get high quality sites to link to your content Authority! The other key point of making your sites ‘findable’, is to know your target group and understand their search query behavior. What you need is a keyword strategy - Relevance! Every search engine is able to understand keywords, your website structure, external links and the content of your page. Robots are scanning your website at regular intervals and looking for several aspects. Since these digital spiders see your website with different eyes than a human visitor, it is important to structure your Page in a certain way.

It is essential to make your website more search engine friendly but never forget that you are providing your content for human visitors - keep it simple and understandable!

Optimizing your website for search engines includes several practices which are divided into On-Page and Off-Page Search Engine Optimization. There are some simple instruments to promote your page and receive more visitors from organic (without paid advertisements) search results. Basically, we can break it down to the following aspects:

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On-Page Search Engine Optimization On the Page Optimization is the easier part of search engine marketing since it is completely under control of the operator of a website. You can choose yourself which content to publish, how to structure your website or blog and which information you want to provide for search engines. The most important on-page factors for search engines are the following: 



Website Architecture (Relevance) o

Link Structure (understandable and logical)

Meta Tags (page descriptions and titles)

Alt Tags (make non-textual items readable)

Content (Relevance) o

Keywords (target and integrate keywords in your website)

Quality and Freshness (qualitative and regularly updated content)

On-Page SEO contains the structure of a website and its content. Following some basic ideas of SEO will help your website to meet higher rankings and eventually

bring

visitors

your

website.

The

mentioned

implementations will mainly help search engines to index your page better. But your main focus should always stay in providing good content for human visitors! Learn in some easy steps how to improve the ranking of your pages with On-Page SEO.

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Off-Page Search Engine Optimization Off the Page Optimization is more difficult since it cannot be directly controlled by the operator of a website. The good news is that there are still many ways to influence the off-page performance of your websites performance. Search engines care especially about factors that determine the relevancy of your content for search queries. Signals for a good search result are the quality and quantity of incoming links to a particular site, mentions in social media and popularity and authority of the website in general. Basically, search engines look for the following off-page factors: 



Inbound Links (Authority) o

Link Values and Attributes (quality of incoming links)

Link Building Practices (engaging others to link to your content)

Different Types of Links

Social Engagement o

Social Networks (influence of social media for SEO)

Content Promotion (spread your qualitative articles)

The main instrument for Off-Page SEO are inbound links. Search engines use them as an indicator for the authority of a website. Some simple ideas can easily result in much better rankings in search results. Learn how to carry out the first steps to more authority with Off-Page SEO.

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On-Page Optimization

The guide uses the approach of distinguishing between on-page and off-page optimization. This part explains the basic elements of On-Page Search Engine Optimization. On-Page SEO is very easy to apply since all necessary steps can be taken by the operator of the website. On-Page SEO contains the structure of a website and its content. This practice aims to offer search engine friendly code as well as relevant and findable content for your target group

There are basically two factors, which need a careful review. In the first place you need to take a look at your Website Architecture. That includes a clear Link Structure, Meta Tags as well as Alt Tags. It is important to provide certain information, which make your site readable for search engines. Secondly, and with equal importance, you have to consider your Content Strategy. In order to be found by your potential target group, you want to track and integrate relevant Keywords in your pages. A great way to ensure quality and freshness of your content is Blogging.

Website Architecture Not only webmaster appreciate a clearly structured website; search engines do as well. Imagine how spiders crawl your pages and try to catch a clatter of HTML, PHP, Java and other code. A little support in terms of a coherent and

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well-organized site will result in better search rankings. Try to follow some easy rules that can improve your relationship with search engines a lot: 

Place important content in HTML-Language (<p>, <div>, <table>, …)



Use headline tags (<h1>, <h2>, …), bold text (<bold>) or (un)ordered lists (<li><ul>) to emphasize important parts



Flash files, JavaScript, iFrames and submission-required forms are hard to read for search engines



Don’t duplicate content, instead use 301 Redirect’s (“moved permanently”)



If needed, create a robots.txt file to show search engines, which sites are not relevant anymore



Most search engines offer manual URL-Removal’s or blocking’s from their search results



The easiest way is to remove websites that are not valid anymore and create a 404 Error Page (“non-existent pages”)

There are a bunch of really helpful free online tools to check the SEO friendliness of your website. It is definitely worth to take a look at them and to sign up for a free account. Google Webmaster Tools diagnoses the Health of your Website

Grade your Website with HubSpot’s free Marketing Grader

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The free Screaming Frog Tool checks SEO Friendliness

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Link Structure SEO architecture starts with the URL. That includes the domain name and the suffix of a hyperlink. It sounds really simple but there are still many websites with absurd URL’s and broken links out there. Naturally, you should make sure that all internal and external links work. Creating readable URL’s is an advantage for visitors and search engines. That means using categories and

subcategories

highly

appreciated

(www.website.com/category/

sub/page.php). Search engines check URL’s for keywords, so make sure to include the focus keyword of the page. Dynamic URL’s are often used blogs (e.g. www.website.com/blog?id372) and are modifiable to a key phrase-rich version by using URL Rewriting. To separate words in URL’s use a hyphen “-“ instead of other separators like underscores or spaces. Internal links help your visitors to navigate and search engines to check the importance of particular sites. It is recommended to use absolute Links and not relative ones (www.website.com/page instead of /page). Finally, you should upload a site map in .xml-format to support search engines and make sure that all your pages are indexed.

Let XML-Sitemaps.com create a free Sitemap of your Website

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HTML Meta Tags Meta Tags are partly invisible lines of codes that describe the content of a website. It helps search engines to categorize your page and is an essential part of your SEO efforts. Unique Meta tags are an essential part of every single page of your website. Managing Meta Tags includes the Page Title, Page Description and Keywords. The lines for your Meta Tags belong in the head section of your code.

<head> ... <title>Space for your Title</title> <meta name="description" content="Space for your Description"> <meta name="keywords" content="Keyword1, Keyword2, …”> ... </head>

The Page Title should include Brand Name and most important Keywords (e.g. Primary Keyword + Category | Brand Name). Limit the title length to 65 – 75 characters, depending on the browser. It is visible for the human eye in search results and browser tabs. The Page Description can have a length up to 150 character and is visible in Search Results, too. It is important to give unique titles and descriptions to each of your pages. Keyword Meta Tags are only visible for search engines and lost some importance during recent years. Still, it cannot hurt to include them. You should not exceed 7 keywords per page.

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Title Referral Link Description

Another kind of metadata are Rich Snippets - descriptions of your page, which are visible in search engines. Rich Snippets are structured markup that provides search engines with information about people, products, reviews, businesses, recipes and events. It is highly recommend to include Rich Snippets

in your website to appear more user-friendly in search

results. Schema.org gives the documentation for microdata. Google also offers a tool to test the visual appearance of your code (Rich Snippets Testing Tool). Original HTML

HTML with Microdata

<p>My Company<br/> Main address: 123 My City, 12345 City, Country <br/> Tel: (01234) 56 78 910 Fax: 01234) 56 78 9101 <br/> Email: info(at)mycompany.com </p>

<p><div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization"> <span itemprop="name">My Company</span><br/> <div itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress"> Main address: <span itemprop="streetAddress">123 My City </span> <span itemprop="postalCode">12345</span> <span itemprop="addressLocality">City, Country</span><br/></div> Tel:<span itemprop="telephone”>(01234) 56 78 910</span>, Fax:<span itemprop="faxNumber”>(01234) 56 78 9101 </span> E-mail: <span itemprop="email"> info(at)mycompany.com </span></div></p>

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Alt Tags Alt Tags help search engines to understand unreadable media, like images, videos or flash. Especially images are a big factor in SEO and need brief but descriptive Alt attributes.Think also about meaningful file name for images and include a title tag, which becomes visible when you scroll your mouse over them. The anchor text for media ist best when it is descriptive, avoid “click here” or “article”.

<body> ... <img src="/path/image.png" alt="Description of the Image"> <a href="path/link.com" title="Description of the Link">Visible anchor text of the Link</a> ... </body>

Relevant Content After setting up the basic SEO architecture of your website, it is all about your content. People visiting your website to see the content and search engines try to find the best matches for search queries of their users. You need to offer suitable content to be relevant for your target group. On the other hand, your content have to be findable, based on keywords. So, think about search terms people would use to find your products or services. What you need is to find these keywords and know how to integrate them properly in your content.

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Tracking and Integration of Keywords Every search engine works with keyword indices. You need to find keywords that have a rather low competition to make it easier to achieve better rankings in search results. “Long Tail” keywords produce billions of different search queries but often convert better since visitors with specific searches are closer to a make a buying decision. Try to track and attract qualitative visitors instead of high quantities. If there are many search ads in your search query, it indicates usually a valuable (competitive) keyword. You can use different Tools, such as the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, Google Trends and Google Insights for Search, to analyze how many searches a keyword gets daily or monthly and how dense the Competition is. Wordtracker is also a nice tool to get suggestions and statistics for keywords. Another way to get search term ideas are your competitors. See which keywords they target while reading their metadata tags in the source code. Concentrate on one or two keywords per page or post and use them accordingly. Don’t stuff your content with keywords and keep it readable for your visitors. Once you found suitable keywords for your website, you have to use them accordingly. As described before, they are effective in titles, text and metadata. Concentrate on one or two keywords per page. These words should have a density between 3-5% (keyword per 100 words). Include your keyword in the first sentence of your page, the title, preferably the URL,

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Headings and spread it in your content. Again, keep your content readable for visitors and don’t stuff keywords too much! Only people, who find on your website what they were looking for, have the potential to convert into a sale.

Blogging Your keywords are only worth something when they are integrated in rich content. Great content is still the best way to develop higher rankings in search engines. The best way to ensure fresh, qualitative content is writing a blog. Offering solutions, tips, answers or knowledge to satisfy the search intention of visitors potentially leads to transactional queries. It will please your human visitors and search engines in the same way. Of course, blogging is a whole topic for itself and will be covered in a later post. For now, just some basic thoughts about blogging from a SEO perspective: 

Blog post title has to be unique and fewer than 75 characters



Summary of the blog post in 150 characters



Integrate RSS Feed makes it easier to keep returning visitor up to date



Social share buttons help to spread your content



Engage readers to comment on articles



Write easy-to-read text primarily for humans, not for search engines



Create fresh and unique posts



Concentrate on one or two keywords per post

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Off-Page Optimization

One part still needs coverage to complete the basics of your SEO Marketing efforts. This section dips into the important factors of Off-Page Search Engine Optimization. The main instrument for Off-Page SEO are inbound links. They serve as an indicator for the authority of a website. Meaning that every linking from a third website serves like a vote or a recommendation for your own page. As better the linking website ranks, as more valuable is the recommendation. Just like citations in scientific papers. What you want to get, are inbound links from high quality websites, which indicates the trustworthiness and credibility of your own content.

Inbound Links or Backlinks are links received from external websites. They serve search engines as recommendations, indicating the popularity and authority of a website.

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Inbound Links The popularity of a website is partly determined by external (incoming) Links. They serve as votes for the quality and relevance of a website. Focus on getting high quality inbound links rather than high quantities of linkings without value. Limit your links to trustworthy sites and avoid bad “Neighborhood” (Spam).

Link Values and Attributes There are many provider out there offering to sell inbound links. I f you are interested in a healthy and sustainable SEO, avoid these method. The value of sold links is often measured with the PageRank of a website. The PageRank, named after his inventor Lawrence Page, indicates the popularity of a link on a scale from 0 to 10. Usually, you will get links from sites with a low PageRank in the beginning. Providing qualitative content will eventually lead to links from more popular websites. Search engines are able to analyse the development of your inbound links and reward a healthy growth of your websites popularity with higher rankings. Here are some general hints on how to value inbound links: 

Get links from websites that target similar keywords like your website



Analyze the links of your competitors with high rankings and try to target the same links

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External links have a higher influence to search engines than internal links



Links from unique domains have a higher value than a high amount of links from the same domain



Links out of the content area have a higher value than the ones in sidebars, menu-bars or footers



Domains which link to overspammed sites devalue their link-credibility and become less important for search engines



Links can decay over time, that’s why relevant “fresh links” matter for search engines



Social sharing via Twitter, Facebook & Co is not as important as conventional links but can positively influence search rankings

Analyze Links for your Domain or your Competitors with the Open Site Explorer

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Different Types of Links There are dozens of possibilities to increase the number of backlinks to your site. To give you some ideas where to look for places, here are short overview about different types of links: 

Authority Links: find directories with high PageRanks that offer links out



Reciprocal Links: build “link cooperation’s” with sites that have complimentary content



Blogrolls: convince other blogger to add your website to their link favorites



Article Bio Links: write guest articles for industry content provider, who accept submissions



Blog and RSS Directories: submit your link in directories



Comment Links: contribute to other blogs or communities with valuable content Useful Search Queries to find Linking Opportunities • “add url” “add site” “add website” “add your site” “add a url” “add * url” “add * site” • “submit url” “submit website” “submit your site” “submit * url” “submit * website” • “suggest url” “suggest site” “suggest a url” “suggest * url” “suggest * site”

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Link Building Practices Try being creative and find opportunities to link your good content. Use existing contacts, ask your partner, longstanding customers or friends to link to your website. Build online relationships and be active in communities around your industry. Write your own blog, take part in discussions in other blogs, raise awareness in social networks and eventually get links and entries in blog directories. In the beginning you might need to convince other webmaster that your content is good enough to be linked. In the end, content which is worth it will get links naturally.

Buying inbound links is not an option for healthy and sustainable SEO! Search Engines recognize these practices already and will even more punish them in the future.

Self-created Links should be handled with caution. They are definitely an instrument to boost your search engine visibility but overstretching them can harm your site’s reputation. Use it properly and submit your articles in a couple of directories, social bookmarking services and forums.

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Integrate Social Media Social Media gets continuously more attention from search engines. Especially company profiles in social networks often ranks on the first page in search results. Noteworthy is Google, who completely integrates its social network Google+ in search results. There is no question that your presence in social media channels will become even more important for search engines in the future. You shouldn’t miss to create pages in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter & Co. Choose the right networks for your business and integrate them in your website. Add Share- and Follow-Buttons to your pages and simply let readers promote your content.

Closing Remarks I hope you enjoyed the Ebook and it helped to provide you with some new knowledge about Search Engine Optimization. Feel free to share this Ebook and send me your feedback, remarks or other requests via your favorite Channel. Please also visit my Social Media Blog for further posts about SEO, Social Newtorks, Analytics and Online Marketing in general. I’m looking forward to stay in contact with you and discuss the latest developments in the online world.

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About the Author Some years ago, I became passionate about Online Marketing and especially Social Media Marketing. I gained my knowledge through Webinars, Manuals and excellent Blogs about the topic. I feel now that it is about time to give something back and I want to provide Know-How about the fast-moving Online Landscape. I'm writing my Blog Posts mainly, but not exclusive, for everyone out there, who just discovers the World of SEO, Website Design, Social Networks and more. I'm currently in Shanghai, working on Social Media Projects and always eager to keep up with the latest developments around Facebook, Twitter, Google & Co. If you need Advice or Assistance to launch your own Social Media Strategy, feel free to contact me:

Email:

Homepage:

sebastian@sebkuehn.com

www.sebkuehn.com

Twitter:

Social Media Blog:

@sebkuehn

www.sebkuehn.com/blog

Google+:

LinkedIn:

Sebastian Kuehn