SEO for Social Change -- Netroots 2016, Debra Cleaver and Jim Pugh

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Using SEO for fame, fortune,and social change Debra Cleaver @debracleaver Jim Pugh @dr_pugh

Transcript of SEO for Social Change -- Netroots 2016, Debra Cleaver and Jim Pugh

Page 1: SEO for Social Change -- Netroots 2016, Debra Cleaver and Jim Pugh

Using SEO for fame, fortune,and social change

Debra Cleaver @debracleaver

Jim Pugh@dr_pugh

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presented by

and

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Why should you listen to Debra?❖ Debra founded and

lead longdistancevoter.org from 2008-2016.

❖ LDV was the top hit in Google for almost any voting related query within about a year

❖ Debra has a nice smile

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Debra was responsible for LDV’s SEO strategy

❖ Almost 70% of LDV’s traffic resulted from organic search

❖ Only 13% was via paid search, despite LDV being able to spend $40,000 per month on Google Adwords (we got a grant)

❖ This is why we pay attention to SEO

Acquisition from 1 January - 1 May 2016

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Why should you listen to Jim?❖ He’s got a PhD in Robotics

❖ He’s the founder of ShareProgress and knows more than almost anyone about virality

❖ He’s who Debra calls when she has SEO questions

❖ He’s got a great smile

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SEO is a dark and mysterious art practiced by internet wizards

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Ha, ha, no, just kidding❖ SEO is a series of best-practices designed to ensure that Google

and other search engines can find your content.

❖ Ignore SEO at your own peril: the vast majority of internet users turn to search engines when trying to find content on the internet.

❖ The web properties that are near the top of search results get the most traffic.

❖ You can use online advertising to make up for poor SEO, but that’s an expensive solution to a relatively straightforward problem.

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SEO is easier than you think❖ SEO is about making small changes to existing parts of your

site, and about adhering to best practices when adding new content.

❖ The small changes add up to big results.

❖ You’re already familiar with all the aspects of SEO (URLs, page titles, meta tags, etc), but you’re probably not making the most out of them.

❖ Don’t worry: the basics of SEO are easy to master and you’ll be up and running in no time.

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Write awesome and unique content

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SEO is about content❖ Listen, people will tell you to keyword stuff the hell out of your

content. We won’t tell you to do that because it’s douchey and lame (and because we don’t work for the Huffington Post).

❖ We will tell you that one of the best things you can do to improve SEO is write awesome content that users can’t find anywhere else.

❖ This will all but ensure you’re the only useful site that appears in the search engine results.

❖ How you write that content is another story. There are some best practices you should follow to ensure that Google indexes your content properly.

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Best practices for writing search engine friendly content

❖ Use proper headings (H1s, H2s, etc).

❖ Only one H1 per page, and make sure this is used for the actual Title of your content (the human readable title, not the title metatag)

❖ Don’t capture vital information in images or flash files that some users might not see or be able to access

❖ Always provide “alt” and “title” tags for images. This is useful for both SEO and people who are browsing the internet using a braille reader

❖ Use your keywords in your text (and especially in your headers) — more on this in a minute

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Keywords, keywords, keywords❖ Use keywords in your awesome and unique content.

❖ Search engines measure how keywords are used on pages to help determine the relevance of a particular document to a query.

❖ One of the best ways to optimize a page's rankings is to ensure that the keywords you want to rank for are prominently used in titles, text, and metadata.

❖ Obviously, if you want your page to have a chance of ranking in the search results for "dog," it's wise to make sure the word "dog" is part of the crawlable content of your document.

From the Moz.com “Beginner’s Guide to SEO”

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Best practices for keywordsUse your keywords often.

❖ In the title tag at least once. Try to keep the keyword phrase as close to the beginning of the title tag as possible.

❖ Once prominently near the top of the page, preferably in the H1 tag

❖ Once in the URL.

❖ At least once in the meta description tag.

❖ At least two or three times in the body copy on the page.

❖ At least once in the alt attribute of an image on the page.

Don’t go nuts, however: Google will know if you’re keyword stuffing.

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Pay attention to meta-tags

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Specifically title and description tags

❖ The <title> and <description> tags live in the <head> section of the HTML.

❖ The title tag is what appears on the first line of a Google search result.

❖ The description is below the first line

❖ Google tends to bold the parts of the title tag that match the users search query.

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Best practices for title tags❖ Keep your title tag short and descriptive. 50-60 characters is ideal

❖ Put the most important words first in the title tag — Google will cut off long tags

❖ Use a unique title tag for each page

❖ Google will penalize you if your title tags are repetitive.

❖ Use a consistent format for the title tags. I’d recommend {{title}} - {{site name}}

❖ Don’t lead with the name of your site

❖ Putting the site name first won’t help you if people are searching for anything other than your site

❖ If you can’t think of a good title tag, just reuse whatever you put in the <h1>. So the main heading of the page that the user sees onscreen

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Best practices for description tags❖ Keep them short, human readable, and keyword rich.

Shoot for between 150 and 170 characters

❖ Make them unique — each page should have a different description

❖ Write copy that makes people want to click on your link.

❖ Google doesn’t actually use the description in its rankings, so you’re writing these for actual humans.

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Write better link text

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For the love of all that is holy, do NOT use “here” or “click here” as

your link text.

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❖ Link text should be descriptive.

❖ The user should know almost exactly what is going to happen when she clicks on the link.

❖ The link text taken out of context should still make sense. Here’s why:

❖ Google pays more attention to link text than regular text.

❖ Some people actually do use braille readers to surf the internet, and “click here” is especially unhelpful to those users.

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Best practices for link text❖ Never, ever, ever user “click here” or “here” as anchor text.

❖ If you really must use “click here” make the entire sentence the link. Ex: Instead of “click here” to adopt a kitten you could write “click here to adopt a kitten ”

❖ Make sure the anchor text accurately describes what will happen when the user clicks on the link.

❖ If you’re having trouble figuring out what the link text will be, ask yourself what you would write after “click here” and then use that text.

❖ So “click here” to see adorable kittens would become “see adorable kittens”

❖ Try to use keywords in your anchor text

❖ Google pays more attention to anchor text than regular text, so you’ll want to use your keywords in your anchor text whenever possible

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Create great URLs

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Google loves URLs.URLs matter A LOT. This is why people will pay tens of thousands of dollars for a good URL (ask Debra how much vote.org cost).

❖ Use keywords when possible in the URL

❖ Use dashes instead of underscores when connecting multiple words.

❖ like this: www.adorablekittens.com/adorable-tabby-kittens

❖ not like this: www.adorablekittens.com/adorable_tabby_kittens

❖ Only use lowercase letters in your URLs.

❖ If you have a directory structure, make sure it makes sense and includes only human-readable terms.

❖ Good URL :www.adorablecats.com/house-cats/kittens

❖ Bad URL: www.adorablecats.com/2342308/23423342/2342323.html

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If you change a URL, please remember to 301 redirect it using .htaccess.❖ Be a decent person.

❖ Do not be like the government.

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Help Google find your site.

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Make your site crawl-able❖ Mandatory: Create an XML sitemap and submit it to

Google’s webmaster tools (webmaster.google.com)

❖ Suggested: Create an HTML sitemap and stick it in the footer of your website

❖ No-orphaned pages. Make sure every page in your site is linked to at least one other page. Preferably, many other pages.

❖ Google finds new web pages by crawling existing pages. Google will never, ever, ever find your orphaned pages.

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Get some inbound links❖ Inbound links are your friends

❖ The best inbound links are from reputable websites

❖ sites that end in .gov, .edu, or .org are generally considered more reputable

❖ Link to your website from social media — facebook, twitter, tumblr, etc

❖ Consider creating a blog on Medium. This is a great way to get quality inbound links

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Architectural considerations

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Google likes fast and modern sites

❖ It’s 2016. People surf using their phones.

❖ If you’re site isn’t responsive, Google will penalize you.

❖ Updating isn’t as hard as you think. All modern CMSs come with responsive themes (WordPress, Drupal, etc)

❖ Do not let anyone rob you blind for a new website. Seriously, this isn’t hard.

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Make your site faster❖ Pay for better hosting. This one is important. $7 a month

shared hosting isn’t going to cut it. Let’s set $30 a month as the minimum for hosting.

❖ Get set up on a CDN.

❖ We use cloudflare at vote.org

❖ It makes our site fast and hacker proof

❖ You can get setup today for $20

❖ No, they’re not paying us for this referral. They’re just great.

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Wrapping this all up

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Your action itemsHere is a prioritized list of action items.

1. Makes sure every page has a <title> tag — 55 characters

2. Ditto the <description tag> 150-160 characters

3. Rewrite all the H1s on your site — insert keywords throughout

4. Rewrite all your link text — I will kill you dead if you have “click here” as the link text past Sunday

5. Create an XML sitemap and submit it to webmaster.google.com

6. Set up Cloudflare — make your site go faster for $20 a month