SEO 101

SEO

search engine optimization

• It’s the practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of website traffic, as well as exposure to your brand, through non-paid (also known as "organic") search engine results.

• understanding what people are searching for online, the answers they are seeking, the words they’re using, and the type of content they wish to consume

Search engine basics

discovering and cataloguing all available content on the Internet (web pages, PDFs, images, videos, etc.) via a process known as “crawling and indexing,”

and then ordering it by how well it matches the query in a process we refer to as “ranking.”

Organic Search Results

nes that are earned through effective SEO, not paid for (i.e. not advertising)

Crawling

The process search engines use to discover content on the Internet.

Indexing

The process of cataloguing discovered content so search engines can retrieve it in response to searches.

Ranking

The process of ordering content based on how well it matches a search query.

SERP

Stands for Search Engine Results Page. It is the page displayed after someone performs a search.

SERP Features

Dynamic search-result formats such as featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, image carousels, and local packs.

How do search engines make Money?

advertising. Their goal is to better solve searcher’s queries (within SERPs), to keep searchers coming back, and to keep them on the SERPs longer.

SEO vs. Paid Advertising

SEO focuses on organic, non-paid traffic, while paid advertising involves paying for advertisements to generate traffic.

Why SEO Is Important

Search engines drive a large amount of online traffic. SEO can help websites gain visibility, credibility, traffic, and long-term value through organic search.

Long-Term SEO Value

A strong piece of content can continue generating traffic over time, while advertising requires continuous funding to keep sending traffic.

SEO Professional/Consultant/Agency

Businesses can perform basic SEO themselves or hire an expert. SEO providers vary in quality, and poor SEO techniques can harm a website.

White Hat SEO

SEO techniques and strategies that follow search engine rules and focus on providing value to people.

Black Hat SEO

Techniques designed to spam or manipulate search engines. They can result in penalties or removal from search results.

• search engine penalty: A consequence of violating search engine guidelines that can negatively affect a website's visibility or result in de-indexing. (page is removed from search engine results)

Google Webmaster Guidelines

Basic principles:

• Make pages primarily for users, not search engines.

• Don't deceive your users.

• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website to a Google employee. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

• Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging.

Google Webmaster Guidelines

Things to Avoid:

• Automatically generated content

• Participating in link schemes

• Creating pages with little or no original content (i.e. copied from somewhere else)

• Cloaking — the practice of showing search engine crawlers different content than visitors.

• Hidden text and links

• Doorway pages — pages created to rank well for specific searches to funnel traffic to your website.

• Thin content, pages showing mostly ads or affiliate links, or that otherwise redirect visitors away to other sites will not rank well.

  Abusive link tactics that aim to inflate the number and nature of inbound links such as buying links, participating in link schemes, can lead to de-indexing.

  Ensure clean, concise, keyword-inclusive URL structures are in place. Dynamic parameters can dirty up your URLs and cause duplicate content issues.

  Make your URLs descriptive, short, keyword rich when possible, and avoid non-letter characters.

  Burying links in Javascript/Flash/Silverlight; keep content out of these as well.

  Duplicate content

  Keyword stuffing

  Cloaking — the practice of showing search engine crawlers different content than visitors.

Informational User Intent:

Searching for information. Example: “What is the best type of laptop for photography?”

Navigational User Intent

Searching for a specific website. Example: “Apple”

Transactional User Intent:

Searching to buy something. Example: “good deals on MacBook Pros”

KPIs

Key Performance Indicators

Sales

Downloads

Email signups

Contact form submissions

Phone calls

Clicks-to-call

Clicks-to-website

Clicks-for-driving-directions