Seo (w4 - w6) - Lecture notes 4,5,6 PDF

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SEO SEO VS SEM Search marketing: focuses on increasing the visibility & prominence (noticeability) of websites on search engines, particularly Google ads as the world’s biggest search engine, & this can be done through: 1. SEO 2. SEM PPC, advertising The overall emphasis is usually on achieving high search engine rankings for the website, based on keywords that are important to the business & increasing the volume of traffic to the site, but there can also be other important targets such as building inbound links.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 1. Process of growing the quality & quantity of website traffic by increasing the visibility of a website or a webpage to users of a web search engine 2. Free from monetary terms, but requires lots of expertise & time to achieve good results 3. Builds solid online presence 4. Grows the brand 5. Cost-effective

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) 1. Form of internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results page (SERP) through paid advertising 2. A company/brand pay a certain CPC when people click on the ad, which is displayed prominently within search results 3. Boost website traffic quickly 4. Highly targeted at potential customers 5. Give good value for money

Website on first page of SERP → more visibility → higher traffic ∴ more conversions 3 processes of search engine 1. Crawling Pulls info from website back to search engine’s index Search engine sends spiders to crawl your website to create a web of pages - following link & every page & link that they (search engine) hit, they are bringing back to their server 2. Indexing Process of information identified by the crawlers need to be organized, sorted & stored so that it can be processed by the search engine algorithms before made available to the end user 3. Ranking Process of search engine deciding which pages to show in their SERPs & in what order when someone types a query

Before search engines allow someone to type a query & search the web, they have to do a lot of preparation work so that when they click ‘search’, they are presented with a set of precise & quality results that answer the question or query. Robots.txt telles search engine crawlers which pages/files the crawler can or cannot request from the brand/company’s site. ∴ company should create the robots.txt file available for search engine crawlers to better and easier discover & have access to the website

Search Engine Result Page (SERP) Web pages served to users when they search for something online using a search engine (eg Google). User enters their search query upon which the search engine presents them with a SERP

Keywords & Sales funnel, User intent identification & their categorization of what a user online intended or wanted to find when they typed their search terms into an online web search engine for the purpose of search engine optimisation (SEO) or conversion rate optimisation aka query/search intent 3 types of search intent 1. Informational People with informational intent have a specific question or want to know more about a certain topic

2. Transactional People are searching with transactional intent when their purpose is to buy something

3. Navigational People with this intent want to visit a specific website People who search for Facebook are usually on their way to the Facebook website

How to optimise search/user intent 1. Make sure a landing page fits the search intent of the audience If people search for info, do not show them a product page immediately If people want to buy your product, do not bore them with long articles 2. Optimize product pages for more commercial driven keywords

On page SEO What can you do on your own site to increase your rankings It involves optimizing content, meta tags & other elements on your own site’s page. Factors of on-page SEO 1. Page titles & headings 2. Images 3. Meta descriptions & tags a. Meta description - Place target keyword & related topic keywords near the beginning of description 4. URL 5. Fast-loading pages 6. High-quality & regularly updated content 7. Internal linking 2 types of SEO 1. White Hat SEO Usage of optimization strategies, techniques & tactics that focus on a human audience opposed to search engines & completely follows search engine rules & policies

Best practices of whitehat SEO 1. Website optimization a. Improving website speed b. Sitemap (XML file with text list of all pages on website) c. Meta titles & descriptions

Quality characteristics for high quality rating page 1. Expertise 2. Authoritativeness 3. Trustworthiness

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Make it easy to read Consider CTA No keyword stuffing

2. Black Hat SEO Use of aggressive SEO strategies, techniques & tactics that focus only on search engines & not a human audience, & usually does not obey search engines guideline Search engines (Google) do not like this Word stuffing, invisible text, doorway pages, adding unrelated keywords 2. Good quality content a. Look at existing content covering a certain keyword, & then create something that surpasses it in quality 3. Get quality links pointing to website a. The original signal ‘page votes’ Google’s top 3 search ranking factors 1. Links 2. Content 3. RankBrain - uses machine learning to determine the most relevant results to search engine queries

Link, image optimisation Image optimisation 1. Reducing file size of images as much as possible without sacrificing quality so that page load times remain low 2. Getting product images & decorative images to rank on Google & other image search engines Importance of image optimisation 1. Improve page load speed 2. Boosts websites’ SEO ranking 3. Improves user experience Image alt tags HTML attribute applied to image tags to provide a text alternative for search engines Alt text best practices 1. Describe image & be specific 2. Keep alt text fewer than 125 characters 3. Jump right into description, don’t start with ‘picture of’/’image of’ Link optimisation Process of getting other websites to link back to website Building links is one of the many tactics used in SEO because links are a signal to Google that your site is a quality resource worthy of citation

Site structure & sitemap ** site structure is a sitemap, but not all sitemaps are site structure diagrams Sitemap Can be in the form of a list/ diagram An XML site map that uses sitemaps protocol to help web crawlers to browse & index the website Site structure Visual sitemap that outlines the structure & content of the website

404 pages Content a user sees when they try to reach a non-existent page on website 1. 404 error code is displayed is a link points to a page that no longer exist 2. Website should set a custom 404 page Why 404 is bad for SEO 1. Signal that brand does not optimise the site 2. Wastes crawl resources 3. Signal poor quality to website visitors What should be included in 404 page 1. Navigation Provide a link back to home page Provide a search bar Provide full navigation menu Provide chatbots or live chats 2. Tone Keep overall tone and style consistent with the other website pages. Take this chance to strengthen brand’s image 3. SEO 4. Creativity Reason to create custom 404 page (design the 404 page) 1. Turn a potentially negative experience into a positive one 2. Reduce bounce rate & keep users on website 3. Keep people engaged with site & move through sales process 4. Maintain consistent branding across site

If 404 page is bad for SEO, why still create a custom 404 page & not remove it? Sometimes IT CANNOT BE REMOVED! As broken links are inevitable (unavoidable), especially if they are coming from an external website that a brand has no control over.

Indexing inclusion ratio Number of pages indexed divided by the total number of pages on the sitemap to come up with the inclusion ratio. Index inclusion: SEO activity to ensure the right pages & other rich content managed through universal or blended search are within the search engines 1. The higher the inclusion ratio, the healthier the indication 2. A lower inclusion ratio signals an issue with indexation, indicating problematic URLs that should be fixed

Backlinks 1. Each time someone links to your website from another website, the link adds to your website’s search engine ranking. 2. Each good quality inbound link is like a vote 3. The higher your votes, the more likely that you will rank well for your chosen keywords 4. When someone uses a ‘nofollow’ link, they include a modification to the link’s code that tells the search engines to ignore the link. This means it will not add to the brand’s search engine rankings, and the brand will not get any SEO benefit for the particular link

PPC aka paid search (SEM) Benefits 1. Obtain high rankings if organic performance is poor 2. Cost effective for leads & conversions if properly managed 3. Targeting by language, location, demographics, keyword type 4. If combined with organic search rankings, ads build an impression of trust & competency Main elements of PPC 1. Keywords - How products/services are defined - Keywords customers key in on Google to find the product/service - Valuable keywords should be chosen based on - Volume of traffic - Relevance - SEO/PPC competitiveness 2. Ads 3. Landing pages Webpage pointed to in the URL of an ad - Can be any page within a website - It is where marketing traffic is directed - Prompts desired action Landing page should consider - User intent - Where did they come from - What brand wants the visitor to do...