Charlotte HUG April 2014 A 2014 Guide to SEO

Amanda Iglesias @amandalucia

1  An Abridged History of SEO

– Why does SEO matter? – How has SEO changed?

2  Guiding Principles of SEO

– Who are you creating content for? – How do they search? – How to get found.

1 An Abridged History of SEO

Why does SEO matter?

Because we want our content

to end up here?

Sort of...

What we really want is users to end up here.

And yet, we keep fixating on the algorithms...

How has SEO changed?

It depends on who you ask.

It depends on who you ask.

Marketers who try to stay within Google’s guidelines.

Marketers who try beat Google’s algorithms.

– or –

Marketers who try to stay within Google’s guidelines.

Marketers who try beat Google’s algorithms.

– or –

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Let’s look back at what’s happened over the past two decades.

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1994 The first search engine crawls the web, and indexes websites based on the content it finds on the web pages. As long as there were words on your webpages...

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1998 Google’s launches PageRank, which in addition to content, looks at incoming links for a website to determine where it should rank. SEO’s start focusing on best sites to get linked to from...

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2005 Having penalizes link bombing, keyword stuffing, and over-optimization of anchor text, Google releases nofollow tags to combat blog spam.

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Google and Bing admit to using data from Facebook and Twitter to influence search results. Google (1) releases Panda (2) encrypts organic search data, to reward sites with high-quality content.

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2011

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Google releases Penguin to punish websites that are building low-quality links like blog networks and directories.

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2012

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Google releases Hummingbird which recognizes full question searches.

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2013

Every time SEOs try to game the system...

...Google reacted by changing their algorithms.

"We encourage you to...focus on developing high-quality content rather than trying to optimize for

any particular Google algorithm.”

- Amit Singhal, Google Ranking team

So, how has SEO changed?

Marketers who try to stay within Google’s guidelines.

Marketers who try beat Google’s algorithms.

– or –

If you ask these folks...

SEO hasn’t changed at all.

“Google wants to reward companies who develop brands and put their customers first.”

- The History of SEO, and a Glimpse Into Its Future

2 Guiding Principles of SEO

Who are you creating content for?

A human being.

A human being with questions, concerns and needs.

A human being with questions, concerns and needs.

Which gives you fellow human beings a huge advantage!

" Who is this human being?

" What are the problems you help them solve?

" What information matters to them?

" What influences their success?

Where do users search?

How to install a three-prong electrical outlet

Outlet electrician cambridge mass

“Should I hire an electrician to change my outlets?”

How do users search?

Visitors How do I solve this problem

I’m struggling with?

Visitors How do I solve this problem

I’m struggling with?

Search language: Questions Long-tail keywords

Leads What do I need and why do I need it?

Leads What do I need and why do I need it?

Search language: Questions

Long-tail keywords Branded keywords

Opportunities How do I make the right

investment?

Opportunities How do I make the right

investment?

Search language: Long-tail keywords Branded keywords Jargon

How to get found.

f(n) = Relevance + Authority

Ranking Algorithm

SEO

The process of improving the relevance and authority of your site

in order to increase its organic rank in Search Engines .

"The fundamental way to increase your rank is to increase your

relevance,”

- Eric Schmidt, Google CEO

f(n) = Relevance + Authority

You have the power to control your on-page SEO.

" Are pages well-written & have substantial quality content?

" Have you researched the keywords people may use to find

your content?

" Do pages use words & phrases that humans use?

" Are they written by real people? Real businesses?

f(n) = Relevance + Authority

You have the power to control your on-page SEO.

Focus on:

1.  Content that reflects the way humans speak

2.  HTML elements that describe what the page is about

3.  Site Architecture that is well-organized

" Are links from quality, respected sites?

" Do humans trust your content? Link to it?

" Do humans on social media share your content?

f(n) = Relevance + Authority

You have influence, but cannot control off-page SEO.

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f(n) = Relevance + Authority

You have influence, but cannot control off-page SEO.

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Focus on:

1.  Where your links are coming from

2.  How long your site has been around and whether real people

contribute content to it

3.  Whether your content is shared

4.  The people searching for your site

"Google doesn't want you to optimize for search engines, they

want you to optimize for the people that use search engines.”

- Mark Kilens, HubSpot Academy

i Helpful Resources

" The History of SEO, and a Glimpse Into Its Future (HubSpot)

" Being No. 1 on Google is Not Your Most Important Marketing Goal

(Puma Creative)

" More guidance on building high quality sites (Google)

" 9 Questions You Need to Ask When Developing Buyer Personas

(HubSpot

" The Periodic Table Of SEO Success Factors (Search Engine Land)