Search Engine Optimization: Organic Search

Slides: HTML, SEO and Search Marketing

To add: App Store Optimization: Widespread Apple App Store Search Rankings Change Sees iOS Apps Moved Over 40
Spots, On Average

Is Ranking First on Google All That Matters?

Google Search: What Are Rich Snippets and Why Should I Care?

In order to fully benefit from this content, make sure you view the source code (right click your mouse, and select ‘view source’)

Learning HTML

Key Points:

History, from Wikipedia: Alta Vista to Wikipedia: Google.

Google Algorithms:

1. Key innovation: Wikipedia: PageRank
2. Penguin
3. Hummingbird

The Return of the PageRank
Infographic: The Biggest Changes To Google Search In 2013

Read: Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide and

Watch: Learn SEO from Rand Fishkin CEO of Moz SEOmoz
Old Class Experiment: Snruterxela

1. Two broad areas of importance for SEO
   • Keyword density
   • Inbound links (Gaming example = Google Bombing)
2. Great content, design, and structure
   • Good structure to allow the site to be crawled
   • Fresh content
3. Keyword Research
   • How do your customers search for you, your product
   • Other keyword phrases important to your customers, related to your product (branding content)
   • What are the “Long Tail” keywords you can optimize?
   • Test search’s autocomplete with brand / product (machine learning)
   • Adwords Tool
   • Google Trends (Search Trends Help)
4. Keyword Placement
   • URL
   • Title tag, each page should be unique.
   • Meta tags (keyword and description) each page should be unique. Keyword tag helps with discovery; the description tag can impact the likelihood of someone clicking on the link.
   • Header tags
   • Body copy
   • Anchor text
   • Descriptions for image and video content, with “alt” attribute
   • Blog entries for specific keyword phrases
   • Social media content for specific keywords
5. Inbound links
   • Importance of site reputation: Wikipedia: Pagerank
   • Anchor text on inbound links
   • use of rel=”nofollow” for outbound content
6. Content Marketing impacts SEO (Impact of Hummingbird Algorithm)
7. Search is migrating mobile
8. White hat versus Black hat tactics

   Black Hat techniques

   • Spamdexing: Link Spam: The Golden Era Of Spam Comments Has Ended
     Google Obliterates Buzzy Startup Rap Genius For Trying To Game The System
     
     Example: netmoda.com: KEENELAND OCTOBER 2007

   • Google’s response: Wikipedia: Penguin
   • Keyword stuffing; unrelated keywords (Check the source code, below, for some keyword stuffing techniques)
   • Cloaking
   • Want fans? Hire a social media ‘click farm’
   • 10 Big Brands That Were Penalized By Google, From Rap Genius To The BBC
9. Benchmark re: your competition
   • Explore their web-site’s source
   • Explore their social media presence and strategy
   • Alexa
   • Compete.com
   • Open Site Explorer
     (inbound links)

10. Google Analytics to investigate performance

More keyword stuffing, you can add keywords here, and they only appear in the source, not in the page the user sees. Why ? Because the font color matches the background color. Black hat
tactics.

Search Engine Marketing

About 30% of clicks go to paid ads

From Wikipedia: Overture to Google (Wikipedia: Google Adwords).

Google ad revenue, 2011: $37.9 billion, 2012, $50.2 billion, 2013, 57.8 billion

Russia: Yandex Forecasts Sales Growth on Targeted Online Advertising

Just for clicks: the Google ad model

A combination of the bid for the keyword AND the likelihood of a click-through; the value the offer presents to google.

Why are search engine advertisements more useful than similar
advertisements on social networks ?

Search ad revenue growing with mobile, at about $4.5bn for 2012.