Meetup – DIY Search Engine Optimization

Eric Highland, @erichighland

Austinot.com

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How Search Engines Work

SEO encompasses any unpaid methods used to get a website to rank well on search engine results pages (SERPS)

Content is no longer king, it is one piece in an overall SEO puzzle.

How to find if a site is indexed

site:wpaustin.com

How to find if a specific page is indexed

inurl:wordpress site:wpaustin.com

Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools

Verify your site – use Yoast SEO plugin

Health -> Fetch as Google -> Submit to Index

On-page Optimization – the content of your page that you have direct control over. You need to perform keyword research first.

One very good tool to use is the Google AsWords Keyword Tool

Set your search parameters. Click on the box “exact”. Enter up to 100 terms. Check only show results related to my keywords. Select USA, english, desktops & laptops.

SEOmoz Pro Keyword Difficulty Tool (a paid service)

Keyword Focus

• Title
• Meta Description
• URL
• H1
• First paragraph of text
• In your text (as it reads naturally)
• H2 / subtitles
• Image alt tags
• Proximate to images
• Re-name images to include keywords

 Off-Page Optimization

• Social signals
• In-bound links
• OpenSiteExplorer.org (3 free reports/day)
• Guest writing
• “Battle Rhythm”

Plugins

• Digg Digg
• Shareaholic

How to Dominate Your Niche

1. Build Relationships
2. Content
3. SEO
4. Marketing

 Marketing (“Battle Rhythm”)

1. Email the people featured in your post – “Congratulations…”
2. Next email – publication date
3. Your article is being published tomorrow, with 7 free ways to market it
4. Thank you, with another link to the page

Emails sent over 10 day period

Relationships

• Influencers – In Real Life and on social platforms

Resources

• SEOmoz
• Search Engine Land
• State of Search
• Search Engine Watch
• Search Engine Journal
• Knektion