Nadia King of Apogee Search, gives a rundown on SEO and it's key factors.

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Head to Toe SEO
Steps to Optimize your Website
Presented By:
Nadia King
Manager of Natural Search Services
king@apogee-search.com
March 4, 2009

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Thanks!
Pam Knight – Plainview Press
Christine Botha – Drake Industries
Tim Vasquez – Margarita Store

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What is Site Optimization?
SEO = Search Engine Optimization
• Making your website more friendly to search engines
• Finding/Indexing all pages of site
• Valuing all pages of site & keywords on them
When to do it: Best done during development & coding
of site, not after!

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Don’t Forget: SEO is a Process
Before: Pick Keywords
After: Link Building
Other things to consider:
• When people come to your site, do they fill out your
lead form or actually buy things? What is your
conversion rate?
• Drive traffic to your site thru Paid Search

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Steps to Optimizing your Site
1. Help search engines find all pages of your site!
(Indexing)
2. Tell the search engines what your site is about
(Keyword Optimization)
3. Site Transitions
4. Ongoing Optimization

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Step 1: Help search engines find all
pages of your site!
Indexing

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Indexing
What coding language SHOULD I use? Are there any I
should NOT use?
• Focus on what you need your site to do and go with
that solution
• It is possible to build an SEO friendly site almost any
language
• HTML – it’s the oldest, and the best!
• PHP, ASP – also good

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Indexing
Drupal best practices
• Open source coding language that is friendly to non-
programmers
• URLs are not typically friendly- download & install
modules to make them friendlier:
Enable Clean URLs
Token & PathAuto Module
Global Redirect Module
Meta Tags (Nodewords) Module
Page Title Module
Links Module

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Indexing
Javascript
• Not readable by search engines
• Avoid using for Navigational Links & Content
• Use it to make your page “smaller” to the search
engines
Flash
• Not fully indexable by search engines
• Consider what exact page you want search engines
to return for your different products & services
• Avoid using for Navigational Links & Content

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Indexing
Um, it’s 2009. Are there some Tools that can help me
automatically figure out some of this??
• Google
Webmaster
Tools

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Indexing
Google Webmaster Tools – Overview

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Indexing
Google Webmaster Tools - Settings

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Indexing
Sitemaps - HTML
• Traditional list of links on your site

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Indexing
Sitemaps - XML
• Created for machine use, not human use
• Gives weight to pages of your site
• If you set up GWT, you already have an XML file
created for you!
• Use www.xml-sitemaps.com for smaller sites
• Search “how to create an xml sitemap” for Google
Support Instructions

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Indexing
Robots.txt

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Indexing
Robots.txt

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Now, on to Step 2 in Head to Toe
SEO:
Keyword Optimization

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Keyword Optimization
SEO in Real Life:
Why is Page A ranking?
If Page A is ranking, how do you correct that to get
Page B to rank?

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Keyword Optimization
Make sure search engines are finding the RIGHT page
for your keywords
Mapping

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Keyword Optimization
Optimizing URLs with Keywords
• Include Keywords in folder structure AND page
names
www.homebuilder.com/consulting/green-energy-remodels
www.academicsoftware.com/math-and-geometry-software/smath-game
• Use hyphens to divide words
www.computerequipment.com/wireless+mouse
www.triathalontraining.com/articles/race_day_preparation
• Keep them short

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Keyword Optimization
Optimizing Tags with Keywords
Title Tags
• Example keywords: Product Labels, Custom Product Labels
<title>Custom Product Labels from Drake Industries in Austin,
Texas</title>
Header Tags (H1, H2)
• Example keywords: Modern American Literature, Understanding
Contemporary American Literature
<h1>Understanding Contemporary American Literature</h1>
Alt Tags
Meta Description Tags

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Keyword Optimization
Optimizing Content with Keywords
• Keyword Density = # of times Keyword is used /
# of Words per Page
• Recommended Keyword Density?
• ~300 words of content per page

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Keyword Optimization
Internal Linking
“About Us” Page Opportunity for internal linking:
http://plainviewpress.net/pages/PVPconcept.html
<a href="authorlist.html">
Contemporary and Emerging
Authors</a>
Help search engines find all pages of your site!

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Steps 3 & 4 are quick--
Site Transitions
Ongoing SEO

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Site Transitions
3 Tips:
• Transition in sections
• Launch a wireframe first
• My favorite numbers: 301s & 302s

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Ongoing Optimization
Yes, you do need to optimize your site ongoing!
• Make sure no tags have been changed
• Make sure no other pages on your site are outranking
the target page

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Thanks!
Nadia King
@naja2183
king@apogee-search.com