SEO & aNALYTICSREPORT

Search Engine Optimization Report by Courtney Benson courtney-benson.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

From Clueless Beginnings..............................2

SEO, What is it good for?...................................3

2. MOVING FORWARD

Findability: If No One Can Find You...............6

Accessibility.......................................................7

Keywords............................................................9

Google Analytics...............................................12

See What’s Trending: Google Trends...........11

Attractive Design or Accessibility?

Keyword Tools

Define A GoalsMaking a Content Strategy

This Is Getting <META>Written ContentUtilizing KeywordsMixed Signals...Social Signals

Initial Site............................................................17

The Importance of Content

Search Engine Optimization

Developing A Content Strategy....................13

Google Analytics

Site Results................................19

Written ContentAccessibility

3. RESULTS

Future Site Goals.........................22

Takeaway.......................................24

4. FUTURE DIRECTIONS

5. CONCLUSION

ii

Starting off

27

Stricchiola, “Search Engine Basics.”The Art of SEO, 2nd ed.,O'Reilly, 2012.

Starting Off

FROM CLUELESS BEGINNINGSWhen I created my first portfolio website in my Front-End Development class, my initial knowledge of SEO was bare minimum. The focus for my site was maintain a curated space for my portfolio by making something that was somewhat visually appealing with the HTML and CSS code I had learned from this particular class.

Unsatisfied with the site I had laid out from code I’d written myself, I settled for using a web hosting domain , Squarespace, to create my current site.

I started off with a simple template, focusing on the visual appeal to a potential audi-ence. I spent numerous hours creating high-res graphics and made sure that only the highest quality images would be included onto the site. How my site looked was the top priority. After taking numerous visual design classes, I had been taught that visual elements should always be considered first, while everything else was sec-ondary.

In doing so, I didn’t give my site’s functionality a second thought. As long as it proper-ly translated that it was “aesthetically pleasing”, nothing else mattered within my site maintenance.

However, I would soon find out that focusing only on site visuals wasn’t exactly a good thing and that I had been missing critical information for a better site health and success.

2

3

Starting Off

SEO, WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?Well, everything..

“ The process of increasing the number of visitors to website by achieving high rank in search engine results returned by asearch engine. The higher a website ranks in the results, the greater the chance users will visit the site.”

(Stricchiola, 2012)

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

Besides what the actual words stood for, I had no idea what the central idea behind “SEO” truly consisted of. Working with my Squarespace site, I’d come across the ‘analytics’ features from time to time, but I’d shrug it off thinking “that’s not for me” or “I don’t need that”. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Spending time on the Internet led me to coming across these terms more and more before finally diving into world of SEO & Analytics.

SEO revolves around the practice of increasing site traffic via organic search results, and keywords. In short, my site lacked any type of direction or plan in regards to forming proper SEO.

4

Starting Off

Searching for my site would land anyone searching for it in a sea of Google SERPs. If one could find my site in that endless wave, they’d be met with a 404 error after land-ing on my homepage.

Numerous accessibility errors made my content unreadable:

+ Poor contrast

+Lack of alt-tags

+Non-existent descriptions for images

+Little to no visual hierarchy

In every iteration of my site, I had a habit of making text either too small or too faint (thin / light typefaces) to the point where my written content would blend into the back-ground.

Majority of my images had no alt tags or where name something completely irrelevant.

I was too wrapped up in visual appeal to fully understand that my site was nowhere near being functional.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

Moving Forward

6

moving forward

Being able to market and sell yourself to companies, clients, and other people is a strong skill to have in today’s market. Meeting people through networking or on the web is one of the best ways for other to connect with you in a sea of millions across the web. But what good is your URL in your Twitter bio, or your name on your business card if when people look up your site, no one can find / reach it?

Findability allows you to stand out among thousands of others, and makes you distinctive across the web. But being findable isn’t something that just happens through marketing alone; proper SEO practic-es amplifies and optimizes content that’ll make you more findable across the web

. But how do I get my website up to the “SEO” standards to make it FINDABLE anyway?

IF NO ONE CAN FIND YOU...

“ The findability of a site refers to how easy it is to find a website and its content through an organic search. This makes FINDABILITY. of the most important aspects behind increased site traffic.

(Stricchiola, 2012)

MAKING A PAGE FINDABLE

“

7

moving forward

My strategy for making the content of my site FINDABLE begins with creating SEO-friendly content.

Text. Images. Links. No matter the context, site content is indexed by search engines that are looking for SEO-friendly content to provide users with for search inquires. When a site is crawled, these “BOTS” are looking for sites that display relevant content that doesn’t spam or trick the search engine with bad links, hidden or questionable content, or overloaded keywords in the site’s META DATA. This was some-thing my site suffered from heavily. In the meta data of my site were numerous keywords that had little to no relevancy to my site or my site’s content. Unknowingly I had given any crawler that had accessed my site the ‘okay’ to demote mysite listing in the SERP.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTENT

META DATA

Site meta data contains infoabout your site’s content like the name, dates, or any other relevantinformation. This info can be edited or injected directly into your sites live code, making it readableto search engines.

Ensuring that a site and its content is up to these standards is a step in

the right direction for implementing proper SEO that allow your site to

found by users

1. Utilizing Content Development2. Creating Proper Site Metadata, Keywords and Descriptions

3. Keyword Research

How Do I Fix This?

(dataedo.com)

8

moving forward

There are numerous features and resources available that can help insure that a site is accessible ensuring that anyone can it. Audio transcripts, completing alt-text for figures and images, and proper textual hierarchy are a few aspects that can be used to help ensure a site’s accessibility. Online tests such as the WebAIM Accessibility Evalua-tion tool (fig.1) evaluates a sites content making it easier for designers to see what links, text or structure errors they may have with on their site. After using the WebAIM for the first time, I was blown away by the amount of errors my site received. Taking away what I learned, I was able to go back into my site and properly format it to make my site’s content more accessible to users.

Accessibility not only refers to the content you write but it also applies to the structure of your website as well. People use web browsers, media players, assisting technology, or other “user agents” to get and interact with the content (w3c.com).

Discovering the importance of site accessibility was one of the most factors of understanding proper site functionality. While having an accessible site isn't always at the top of the to-do list for when designing a web-site. Interactive Designers like myself can benefit from understanding that accessibility not only provides a better experience for more users, but will also boost your site SEO in the progress.

ACCESSIBILITY

Is your content readable?Can your site be accessed by others withvisual and hearing impairments?

What barriers would hinder people with disabilities to use your site?

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9

moving forward

Utilizing the features of the WAVE, helped me understand that all of your site’s con-tent ultimately impacts whether or not it is or isn’t accessible. Stylistic choices such as low contrast text or choosing an H3 title over an H2 can impact your site. Ensur-ing that Alt-text and tags for images are identifiable and links are properly placed are only a few things that will affect the readability of your site. This is where my site started to run into problems from being a template-based site. Because of the template I chose, my site constantly runs into errors. Contrast issues with text, redundant links, null alt-text, and style errors were only a few of the issues that I encounter after running a WAVE check.

This is where I feel many designers will run into issues as well. Many of us decide to use templates out of personal choice and or need to have a “good-looking site” but fail to understand that problems behind using one can give people with disabilities a true headache when accessing a site.

Designers need to be taught that creating content that is accessible is just as im-portant as having an attractive site. By understanding that accessibility is another key behind good user interface design and user experience implementing accessi-ble content is another step toward insuring that a site’s content can be accessed by everyone.

ATTRACTIVE DESIGN OR ACCESSIBILITY?

Figure 1: WAVE WebAIM Site Summary

10

Moving Forward

Keywords are the key phrases and words in your site content that make it easier for people to find your site through search engine queries. The more relevant your keywords the better user return you will receive. Part of the process of using keywords to drive traffic is understanding how people search for information, services, and products on the web.

By implementing relevant key phrases in your content that describe what your content is about, the more likely a site will receive a higher rank in SERPs. Search engines will use this information to determine relevancy, and authority within a particular query and decide how a site will rank in searches. This practice can seem daunting and is easy to get wrong without proper research. If done incorrectly, it can cost a site traffic and earn a lower rank in results pages.

When looking for keywords that matched my site content, it was important to focus my content on a different keyword or phrase. It is not as simple as thinking of a string of words and applying them to site. Instead, by coming up with a content strategy it becomes easier to understand and know what terms can be used by knowing who and what you want to target.

When conducting research , it was important to keep in mind that relevance is far more important than the number of keywords; ensuring that phrases aren’t used over and over again leading to keyword cannibalization.

Prior to any knowledge of key phrases, I filled my meta-data with multiple terms and unrelated wording, assuming I was going in the right direction. However, my first step was removing all the irrelevant terms and phrases and starting from scratch by brainstorming my site plan and content for a clearer direction of site SEO.

KEYWORDSGET WITH THE ALGORITHM1. Sites across the web crawled by

search engine bots

2. Optimized pages with keywords And phrases are indexed, while the rest

are kicked to the bottom3. The best indexed results are shown

first based on optimized key phrases

Moving Forward

KEYWORD TOOLS

Keyword relevancy is a qualitative method when creating a content strategy . Creating terms shouldn’t be guesswork but approached with a potential audience in mind by brainstorming and searching Google for related term.

One way to improve keyword research is by taking a look at Google Trends. This tool shows trends related to a phrase or keyword. Typing in “hiking” will provide data showing overall popularity of the term over time (fig. 2). Google Trends shows data filtered by location, date, specified categories, regions and related topics. This allows users to see real-time data related to any keyword and see what other users and potential site audience are searching as well.

There are a number of tools and software available that can assist with finding the phrases and keywords to get your content viewed by more people. During my research, I came across sites such as WordStream, Keyword Tool .com and Google’s Keyword Planner* that provided insight that could help build content and improve SEO.

Ideally, I wanted each page on my site to target a unique prima-ry keyword, hence the in depth research. Using keywords in essential parts of my site, is simple yet helpful way to boost SEO rank.

Figure 2: googletrends.com

*Requires paid Google Ads/Adwords account

SEE WHAT’S TRENDING: GOOGLE TRENDS

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Figure 3: Google Analytics

Moving forward

Google Analytics is another popular tool that can be used to measure and track site data through reports. Analytics generates these statistics (fig.3) that assist a user with SEO practices by analyzing traffic and gives an overview of a site audience often in real-time. Insights such as, session duration, bounce rates, user retention, active users, and device session allow users to narrow down how a site is performing.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Setting up my website analytics began with creating an Google Analytics account that was connected to my URL, creating an analytics property and inserting an assigned tracking ID into the <head> of my site code. This code records various spikes in traffics and activity, along with factors such as location, gender, or age. Once this data is collected, it is sent back to Google Analytics where that information is recorded, and processed. Once the information is recorded it is then sorted by: Session (time spent), Location, Page-view (pages visited), and Interactions (button clicks, link clicks, etc.)

While Analytics can be difficult to understand to the ‘uninitiated’, Google provides a free training course, Google Analytics Academy, that breaks down the data analysis tool. Apart from the standard help pages Google offers within Analytics dashboard, I felt prepared and more confident approaching my site analytics after completing the training courses Google offered.

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13

moving forward

An SEO business plan acts as a blueprint that maps out definitive goals for site optimization. This acts a long-term solution to content and site marketability through a carefully constructed plan.

A critical component behind making a successful and functional website, is having a plan for the site and its content. When I initially created my website, I did not grasp the severity of developing any type of web strategy and assumed making content was something that came as you went along. However, in order to insure that my site properly reflected my vision for a portfolio, I needed to clearly define: 1. what I wanted on the site and 2. the type of audience I wanted to attract.

TAKING IT ALL IN: DEVELOPING AN SEO PLAN

DEFINE A GOAL

SpecificS.M.A.R.T. GOALS

MeasurableAchievableRealisticTime-Bound

Taking into consideration how I wanted to define my site, and what my potential audience would be expecting to find. This led me to define a set of S.M.A.R.T. goals for my site. These goals set a criteria of objectives that are crucial to site success.

S-Increase organic search SERP traffic via keyword usage

M-Gain a better bounce rate (having better content that keeps users on site

A-Rank in SERPs for target keywords

R-Increase SERP rank and traffic

T-Increase leads from organic search with target keywords by 12 month mark.

results

Discovering the importance of site accessibility was one of the most factors of understanding proper site functionality. While having an accessibile site is’nt always at the top of the to-do list for when designing a website. Interactive Designers like myself can benefit from understanding that accessibility not only provides a better experience for more users, but will also boost your site SEO in the progress.

DEVELOPING CONTENT

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Creating content strategies is another way to help a site with SEO planning. Content strategies consist of the what, why, and how behind content creation. It looks at the entirety of your content that audiences will encounter. Understanding this will ultimately help figure out what type of content to create, how to market it and how it will effect site traffic. For my content strategy I wanted to focus on: <meta> tags,

Meta tags (stylized as <meta>) are pieces of text that describe page content within the site code (fig.4). The tags are a way to let search engine crawlers know what your site is about. There are different types of tags that do vari-ous things within the site code: creating a site description (fig.5), keywords attributes, site title, or locations.

A key factor to understand about the <meta> tag is, while they are easy to use, they are also easy to misuse. Sticking to what necessary and using tags that are relevant to the pages content is a good practice to follow.

THIS IS GETTING <meta>

MAKING A CONTENT STRATEGY

Figure 4: Google site description

Figure 5: <meta> tags

moving forward

15

Figure 6: minimal written content example

WRITTEN CONTENT

Figure 7 updated written content example

moving forward

As a designer creating a ‘design portfolio’ I was oblivious to posting written content on my site, instead I leaned more into the ‘let the work speak for itself’ space when it came to writing. However, it was easy for me to come to the conclusion that I wasn’t entirely comfortable writing about my work (or myself as a designer) in general. I didn’t know where to start or how to properly translate what being an interaction designer entailed.

Initially, actual text on my site did not exist and this needed to be fixed. Most of the pages in my site consisted of multiples images with very little blocks of text describing the context of the images(fig.6). Without context to backup my work, it becomes difficult to understand the page purpose.

I started off by building work or process pages for projects that were already in my portfolio. By writing detailed accounts of projects I’ve worked on ,in practice, it will help me understand how to properly

16

When working on my written content, keywords are something that I can keep in mind to utilize as well. Including key phrases ans words that signal my site purpose and interests will increase site rank and influ-ence my site’s findability. Research combined with well-written content that are not only implement in site code but in public-facing content can help increase traffic.

Social media and I have a very odd relationship, meaning I don’t like it very much. However social media plays a vital role in self-marketing and signaling to the world who and what you are. SEO and social media are factors that rely heavily on visibility, quality content and presence to drive an audience. Having a social media presence can significantly increase site and search ranking. However this isn’t that happens overnight. Amping up a social presence takes time,

UTILIZING KEYWORDS

MIXED SIGNALS...SOCIAL SIGNALS

Figure 8: twitter, facebook, linkedin, and instagram icons

dedication, and effort in order to gain a steady audience (that will in tow drive traffic to a site or links). By having a presence on sites like Twitter, or Linkedin (fig. 8), users can interact with external inbound links that encourage followers (or people your connected with) to visit a site. Currently I don’t use Facebook at all and use my ‘professional’ Twitter every now then to interact with others. In the future, I plan on learning more about how to use Linkedin and utilize Twitter to drive traffic to my portfolio.

moving forward

17results

moving forward

MY SITE THEN... Prior to implementing any content or changes, my site had poor SEO health and lacked any differentiation from the original template I used. There were no clear goals or direction for the site and lacked any true content (aside from placeholder images). Taking what I learned from SEO and research, I decide to revive my site with an content strategy and SEO plan. Doing an analysis on my site, I was able to find issues that could be fixed to improve SEO. Issues such as:

Using the WebAIM Accessibility Tool (WAVE), was able to show me numerous errors around my site. From contrast and header issues, to missing alt tags, it became clear how important header placement and alt tags were to accessibility.

1. POOR ACCESSIBILITY

I needed to work on creating more written and visual content for my potential audience. Working on rich descriptions and relevant imagery will help increase user retention over a lacking or empty site.

2. LACK OF CONTENT

3. NO SOCIAL SIGNALS Better use of social media will help drive traffic to my site, however I was lacking this. I would like to work on improving a social media presence and using this to drive site traffic.

COURTNEY BENSON

results

19

ACCESSIBILITY

results

SITE RESULTS Making changes based off feedback, research and my own analysis, my site still has a lot of work that needs to be done and its far from being over. How-ever, I am able to utilize what I know about SEO and my site goals to make proper changes and updates whenever I can.

Looking over the issues I had previously with accessibility, I knew I needed to tackle this issue first. I started by renaming images and using alt-tags that are descriptive instead of random text. Using proper header hierarchy, fixing contrast issues is another issue that needed to be fixed. Though some of these issues exist simple because of the template my site uses, it will be an ongoing process to ensure that the rest of my site is user friendly for everyone.

Using the WAVE tool (fig. 9), is an easy way to look at my site under a different light. In the future I know I want to make my site more accessible by getting rid of my issues and errors. Its a continuous process I plan to keep working on that will prove useful and benefi-cial over time.

Figure 9: Current WAVE Evaluation

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Figure 10: example of current written content

Results

WRITTEN CONTENT Making revisions, I wanted making written content a top priority. Currently, I am in the process of creating well thought out process pages (fig.10)for the projects in my portfolio. I wanted to make sure my writing was clear, descriptive, and didn’t gloss over main points with fluffed or confusing language. This an on-going project that I want to see improved and revisited over time.

A goal for my written content is, through social media implementations, I can drive engagement from social plat-form to my site with some outbound links. It may seem like a simple request, however in time it can prove to be an impactful one.

Thus far, my site content is a continuous ‘work in progress’ that has to be updated and improved as I continue trying to improve my site SEO.

21Figure 11: Active User Report, Google Analytics

results

GOOGLE ANALYTICS It was interesting to see how much my site data had changed over the course of the semester and be able to under-stand the charts and statistics without feeling daunted. I feel like most of what I learned about Google Analytics owe to simple experimentation, researching something I didn’t understand, and utilizing the Google Analytics Academy.

After I created and edited my content for my site, I began to see more traffic on my site(fig.11), lower bounce rate and user sessions. It was pretty interesting to see the results a simple site revision could make over time.

COURTNEY BENSON

Future Directions

22

FUTURE SITE GOALS Though my site has seen some improvements, it is far from being at a place where I feel comfortable, but with practice and updates it is possible. Implementing the tools and key factors I’ve acquired, I’d like to continue working on my site SEO reach the goals I’ve set. Of course my site may continue to have issues as I continue, but in prac-tice I want to keep learning and improving my SEO skills.

1. CONTINUE WORKING ON ANALYTICS

2. IMPROVE SITE ACCESSIBILITY

3. IMPROVE SOCIAL SIGNALS

4. INCREASE ORGANIC SEARCH TRAFFIC

Future Directions

Conclusion

24

CONCLUSION After taking time to learn about SEO, feel confident in being able to understand certain actions, terms, functions when handling the analyt-ics of my own site. Using the tactics I’ve gained, this knowledge will assist me with future endeavors whether it be for job opportunities or by continuing my own SEO efforts. Even though my own portfolio site isn’t where I’d like it to be, I can continue using this site as a space for trial and error by utilizing the tools I gained over this journey.

Conclusion

Citations

26

Stricchiola, “Search Engine Basics.”The Art of SEO, 2nd ed.,O'Reilly, 2012.

“Essential Components of Web Accessibility.” W3C.com, ww-w.w3.org/wai/fundamentals/components

Citations