SEO 101

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s the process by which you learn to make a website that is highly compelling to your prospective visitors; one that can be easily found via search engines. That is different from a pretty website.

I just finished reading the excellent introductory SEO manual Quiero que mi empresa salga en Google, written by Sico de Andres. Since there are low chances that it will be republished in English, here is my summary of the things I learnt. I think this knowledge would be very useful to anybody who isn’t a marketing specialist, either in guiding their efforts, or in having an intelligent conversation with an SEO marketer. I highly recommend the book. It’s very practical, well written, and comes from somebody with years of experience. The one criticism I would point is that it could offer more statistics. I found the links section at the end an excellent research tool for further study.

The golden rule of SEO appears to be: write exceedingly interesting content. The rest will come. That is your biggest lever.

User behaviors when it comes to search

• Roughly two thirds of web users only click on the first few links or within the first search results page, as per this iProspect study (PDF) Full study PDF.
• Eye tracking studies show there’s a golden triangle delimited by the first and fifth Google search results which is where the bulk of eyeballs stay
• As time goes by, users are getting more conditioned to “reformulate and narrow down” rather than page through search results as a more successful search heuristic.
• The typical search query is composed of 2 to 5 words
• While Google has incredible penetration in most countries, in some countries such as Japan, China or Russia, others are the search leader. (e.g: Yahoo Japan, Baidu and Yandex respectively)

Website basics

• This may seem obvious, but if a search bot can’t see your pages they won’t appear on that engine’s results. To find out what part of your website is being indexed you can Google: “site:www.yourdomain.com” and count the pages. If you haven’t done so already, submitting your site to Google, Bing and Yahoo webmaster sites will give you ways to track some useful stats.
• A search engine bot sees your website very differently. Try SEO Browser to get a taste. Or google: “cache:www.yourdomain.com” and then click on “Text only version”
• Navigation: a) don’t use frames of any kind, b) don’t make javascript menus, use CSS instead, c) stick to very simple nav.
• Wait times: if the page doesn’t load under 2 seconds you will lose users. Check load times at Pingdom.
• Flash: if you’re going to use it, make sure it is under a correctly formed web page. Use sparely.
• Robots.txt: this file, which should be findable under the root of your website, provides a search map to the bots about what you would like them to index. Find out more at Robotstxt.org

Keyword catalog — a set of search terms you need to keep

It’s a good idea to maintain a spreadsheet of search phrases that your customers would use to get to your website.

• Brainstorm initial list. Do some research with your customers and prospects. The goal is to brainstorm the first 2-4 words that come to their mind when they want to find about your product or service.
• Then, expand your list with a keyword suggest tool
• Consider misspelling the search terms
• Add your brands and trademark
• Rank your keywords taking into account popularity, competition, conversion effectiveness and relevance to your content.
• Popularity refers to how frequently search engine users enter that keyword in the search engine. You can get an approximation using the Google Keyword Suggest tool and trends with Google Search Insights.
• Competition refers to how many results a search phrase produces. The less results the easier it will be for your content to stand out.
• Conversion effectiveness is a measure of how good a predictor of conversion from visitor into customer a given search phrase is. KEI or Keyword Effectiveness Index. KEI = (search volume)^2 / competition . Generally speaking you’re going to get high KEI on highly specific search terms with a low search volume.

The SEO spreadsheet. –  the key instrument in organizing your efforts

Put together a table. In each row you list one document from your website. For each document, track:

• A target search phrase as its primary optimization objective.
• The page title. This is the #1 optimization opportunity. Make it short, highly descriptive of the content, attractive to the user, truthful, unique within your site, and must include your target search terms.
• The description. This goes under the <meta name=”description”… tag in the HTML <head> section. Pack originality within 165 characters and make it stand out from what the other descriptions state in Google.

With this information, you have a lot of the internal optimization covered. The other page stuff:

• The body of the text. Be natural. Try to keep keyword density between 3 and 5%. Practice good SEO copywriting.
• About formatting: one <h1> per page. Go easy on bold. Use <h2> to split your paragraphs. You’re going for high HTML Code to text ratio.
• Make sure there is only one copy of the content on your site. If there are more than one (e.g. multiple domains pointing to the same content), use <link rel=”canonical”.
• Use friendly URLs

Off-page optimization

• PageRank is how important Google thinks your content is. A measure of the importance adscribed to the content by measuring the importance of the content linking to it. The PageRank of a page = (1 – 0.85) + the sum of all the transmitted PageRanks of the links pointing to the page. Transmitted PageRank = .85 * PageRank of page / number of links.
• PageRank is a logarithmic scale. Obtaining a PageRank of 3 is relatively easy. It takes effort to get to 4. Months to get to 5, and you may never get to 6.
• PageRank sculpting is the process of carefully deciding how to transmit PageRank within your site.
• Link Building is the process of getting others to link to your content. The best approach to accomplish this is to be an outwardly social organization engaged in conversations with its constituencies. The wrong way is to buy links.

SEO and social media

• Make a Facebook page for your business. Better still, make a Facebook application.
• Make a corporate blog
• Do some twittering
• Make interesting, non-gimmicky videos about your product, how to use it, and research about your areas of expertise.

Measuring on an ongoing basis — some key metrics to track on your SEO spreadsheet

• Saturation – % of your documents appearing in searches
• Popularity of incoming links to your site
• Pagerank of each page
• Position in search results of each page
• Unique visitors to each page
• Pages viewed per visit
• Bounce rate — people who leave your site from the page they entered
• Main entry points
• Main exit points
• Sources of traffic

Further reading

• Twelve mistakes most bloggers make
• Strategic SEO for Startups
• The SEO Book
• Some SEO advice for Bill Gates