What
Chris HortonDr. Rankwellhttp://www.DrRankwell.com
Wants To See
What Does Google Look At?• Who is this person that is searching? • What have they searched for before? • Where do they live? • What exactly are they searching for?• Does your website offer the best info possible for this query? • Are people actively talking about your website on social networks?• Are people linking to or buying your products or services?• Where is your business located compared to the searcher?• How current is the information on your website?• Do you have categories or pages dedicated to what they searched for?• Have other people come to your site for the same query, then turned around
and left without clicking anything else (bounce rate)?• Does your site have a lot of spelling errors or coding issues?• Do any popular or authority sites in your industry link to you?• Does your site have legitimate information on the topic or is
it just structured for SEO purposes to try and “trick” Google?• And many, many more questions..
http://www.DrRankwell.com
What Google Wants To See - WhoGoogle has to make multiple decisions when someone types in a search query, but first it looks at the person searching.
• Where are they located? • What have they searched for previously? • What websites did they visit before?• What things have they purchased before?• What topics interest them?• And much more data that they have.• It’s not intrusive. It’s just data.
You give Google all of this information when you login to a Google account (Gmail, Google+, even Youtube)
http://www.DrRankwell.com
What Google Wants To SeeWhat can you change on your website to take advantage of this data that Google is looking at?
• You have no control over what the person looked at previously or their interests, but location is very important for your business.
• Google wants to push for convenience first, so if the search pertains to a product or service that’s normally provided locally (plumber, wedding planner, electrician, florist, etc.), one of the first options on the search results (after paid advertising) will be businesses that are close to the searcher.
• That means getting listed with any directories for your state, county or city that focus on your industry and other important directories.
http://www.DrRankwell.com
First step:Get on Google Placeswww.google.com/places
Here’s what it looks like for
the search “wedding planners
in San Francisco”
Google presented this infobecause the person addedSan Francisco to the searchterm. If they don’t, it pulls thatdata from the Google account.
http://www.DrRankwell.com
What Google Wants To See
2nd step:Do a Google search for your product or service category with the word “directory” or “listing” & location. Location is very important to Google in most cases, but more important is relevancy.
This search for “California Wedding planner directory” shows a list of sites that offer directories for wedding planners to get listed on and there are a lot of them.
Whatever industry you’re in, Google needs to see your site listed on related directories.General directories that serve all businessesare fine, but relevance is paramount.
What Google Wants To See
http://www.DrRankwell.com
Easy tip: Sign up with Yext. Visit DrRankwell.com/offers for a special link to check where your listings are for free. You can submit your business totons of directories and make sure all of the information is correct on them.
What Google Wants To See
http://www.DrRankwell.com
What does that accomplish for your site?• When Google sees the location of the searcher, your
business appears if you’re in close proximity to them.• It creates multiple links to your website on relative websites.• It causes Google to re-crawl your website content.• It adds your business listing to many directories and a lot of
which are directly read by searchers.• Directories get “scraped” by many other minor sites
and directories, which then creates even more links.• Tip: Create an email address on Gmail and use
that for all of your signups to keep your real email box uncluttered from spam and newsletters.
What Google Wants To See
http://www.DrRankwell.com
The goal of Google is to send the searcher to the very best site it can for whatever it is that they’ve typed in the search box. There’s a lot that Google has to know about the query.
• What exactly are they trying to find? • Are there multiple “right” answers?• Are they wanting to buy a product or service?• Are they just looking for more information?• Are other people also looking for this same query?• Are there multiple places Google could send them?• Should Google show local or international results? • And many other questions…
http://www.DrRankwell.com
What Google Wants To See - What
If a person searches for Prince, what do they want?
• The singer? What about him? Do they want his songs, tour dates, his bio, his discography, pictures or videos?
• The royalty? Who exactly? Prince George, Prince Henry, or Prince Caspian? Or is your daughter simply looking up the word that she saw on a Disney film?
• The tennis racket manufacturer? Do they want news about the company, latest models, pictures of tennis rackets?
• Which do you think would display on the list first?• The singer. Why?• The search term Prince is conclusive. It’s his name.
Google knows the searcher probably would have added more data if they meant something else.
http://www.DrRankwell.com
What Google Wants To See - What
If it’s not specific, Google decides which answer is most likely by:
• Search activity - Is there an increase in searches for one of them?• Social activity – Is there a lot of talk about one of them on social
sites like Facebook and Twitter or video sites like Youtube?• Media – Are any of them in the current news events?• Bounce rates – When someone has searched using this broad
search term before, what websites did Google display?
And when the searcher clicked on one of those selections, did they stay on that website or did they come back to the search results to choose something else in the search results?
http://www.DrRankwell.com
What Google Wants To See - What
A searcher using broad terms is tough, but what about questions?
• What is that movie with Patrick Swayze where he’s a dancer?• Dirty Dancing• What is that daytime talk show with 4 women & Whoopi Goldberg? • The View
Google did an update called Hummingbird that associates a lot of relative words with other terms and phrases. Just like the red words are associated with the answers above.
Dirty Dancing = movie, dancer, Patrick SwayzeThe View = daytime talk show, Whoopi Goldberg, 4 women
This is referred to as Latent Semantics Indexing
http://www.DrRankwell.com
What Google Wants To See - What
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) – An indexing and retrieval method that uses a mathematical technique called singular value decomposition (SVD) to identify patterns in the relationships between the terms and concepts contained in an unstructured collection of text.
The super easy way to understand it:• If I say
DungareesTrousersJeansSlacks
• I’m talking about
PantsGoogle treats words that are semantically relevant the exact same way during searches in order to better understand what the person is searching for by cross referencing relative words.
http://www.DrRankwell.com
What Google Wants To See - What
• If I sayLoafersHigh heelsSandalsFlip-flops
• I’m talking about
Shoes
Google looks at all of that data including social activity, what people clicked before & much more to create a list from the millions of sites it has on file (including yours) by determining things like;• Does your site contain the keyword at domain level? AtlantaWedding.com• Do any page titles have those keywords in it?• Are people actively talking about or linking to your site?• Do any industry specific authoritative sites link to your site?• Are you buying links or are you involved in bad SEO tactics?• Are you verified in Google Places or industry directories?• Do you have a high bounce rate for that keyword or phrase?• Do you use semantically related keywords normally found
on sites with this content? i.e. - if you’re in the wedding industry,are you using words like bride, groom, bridesmaid, etc. in your content, titles, photos and descriptions
• and 100+ other things…
http://www.DrRankwell.com
What Google Wants To See - What
OMG. What does this have to do with my website and how do I apply that Lactose Symbolic Imprint thing?
Here’s how you can take advantage of Latent Semantic Indexing
• Don’t use the same keyword phrase or term repeatedly. • Look at semantically related keywords and use them a lot. Use those
relative terms throughout your blog posts, bios, About Us pages, etc. • Get on those relative directories also. Not just “wedding
planning directories”, but “bridal fashion directories” also. True, it’s not the same, but it’s relative and powerful.
• Major Tip: Apply that strategy to title tags, descriptions, blog post titles, tags, page addresses, etc.
• Major Tip: Don’t forget to label your photos. Not just their file names (i.e. – WhiteWeddingGown.jpg), but also ALT tags.
• Use Onlywire to get Google to re-index new content
http://www.DrRankwell.com
What Google Wants To See - What
One of my favorite tools; Onlywire
Any time you create a new page, add a new product, send out a press release, put up a new blog post, you need to use Onlywire. Just login, enter the web address to the new content & Onlywire sends it to;
Blogster Diigo Feedspot Folkd FriendFeed
MyAOL LiveJournal Hi5 Newsvine LinkaGoGo
Plurk Pheed Facebook Skyrock Reddit
Slashdot Scoop.it Sonico Storify Tumblr
Stumbleupon Tagged Typepad Wordpress Blogger
But.ly Digg Delicious Bibsonomy & more
http://www.DrRankwell.com
What Google Wants To See
Go to DrRankwell.com/offers for a link to Onlywire.
Taking Google out of the equation for a moment, look to see how you’re presenting your information to the searcher. Ask yourself these questions;• Are my title tags clear, so that the person knows what’s on my site?• Is the description for the page short, concise, and….descriptive?• Ultimately you want a buyer to come to your site
In this example, I searched for Fort Lauderdale Wedding Planner. • Only locations in the title and description• Both title and description get cut off with ellipses (…)• Convince the searcher to click, not Google.
http://www.DrRankwell.com
What Google Wants To See
• The above example is clear and concise. It explains what they do and where they are. Got enough space? Add a phone number.
• Fix this and you can almost guarantee that your site gets clicked on more and Google will notice the increase & reward accordingly.
• But when they go to your site, do they turn around and leave without clicking anything else? Bounce rate.
• The better question is, would you even know?• Do you use Google Analytics? Google.com/analytics
• Are you tracking conversions to see what works?• Do you use Google Webmaster Tools to insure
nothing is technically wrong? Google.com/webmaster
• Google gives you these tools to show anything wrong
http://www.DrRankwell.com
What Google Wants To See
Bonus Bounce Rate Trick
• Create a call to action on the main landing pages to entice people to click through to a 2nd page such as “Download our FREE wedding checklist” or “View this special offer only available in November!”.
• This will reduce your bounce rate which shows Google that your site is relevant for that search term and can increase your rankings.
High bounce rates can causeyour rankings to drop!
http://www.DrRankwell.com
What Google Wants To See
Quick recap. Important bullets;• Use title tags, description fields wisely.• Use a lot of relevant terms throughout the content & don’t stuff keywords• Use Onlywire to push out new content• Use Call To Actions to get people clicking & reduce your bounce rate• Use Yext and Google Places to get your business listed quickly• Use the tools Google gives you: Google Analytics/Webmaster Tools• Create content for the reader, not Google• Don’t get discouraged by the “Google Delay”.
Go to DrRankwell.com/offers for links & deals on sites I mentioned, download this presentation, as well as a ridiculous SEO consultation deal only being offered to ISS attendees.
http://www.DrRankwell.com
What Google Wants To See
What
Chris HortonDr. Rankwellhttp://www.DrRankwell.com
Get this presentation & offers at:
DrRankwell.com/Offers
Wants To See
http://www.DrRankwell.com
Top Related