Top to Bottom: SEO for Small Businesses
- 2. This deck is originally from a
Seattle SEO Network
Meetup
Visit SeattleSEONetwork.org to
learn about more.
- 13. CHALLENGES OF THE SMALL BUSINESS OWNER
Things BIG Businesses have:
• Giant budgets
• Big teams working on their sites
• Devoted teams and/or consultants
• Lots of locations
• Head start
• Large followings
- 14. CHALLENGES OF THE SMALL BUSINESS OWNER
Things BIG Businesses don’t have:
YOU!
Disclaimer: This is the cheesiest moment of the presentation.
- 16. ADVANTAGES OF THE SMALL BUSINESS OWNER
Things SMALL businesses can do:
• Do what they want
• Keep track of their locations
• See what others are doing
• Be interesting
- 27. SEARCH ENGINES
Figure out the types of answers you get.
See what seems useful to do.
Get a sense of what’s going on in your market.
- 28. SEARCH ENGINES
You need to have something worth clicking on.
If you don’t, then there’s little SEO can do for you.
- 32. ON-SITE SEO
Have x number of keywords in title tags
Have x number of internal links
Use these scripts
Mention all keywords x number of times
- 39. ON-PAGE SEO
Title tags
• Direct SEO impact
• Under 70ish characters
• Unique for every page
• Put the most relevant terms first, then your brand name
• EXCEPT the homepage
Meta Description
• No SEO impact
• Under 155ish characters
• Sales copy to convince people to click
• Relevant keywords show up in bold.
- 40. ON-PAGE SEO
Content
• Use One H1 tag
• Don’t worry about the other H tags
• Use blank sheet of paper test
• People read in chunks (so do search engines, really) so write
for that.
- 44. ON-SITE SEO
You need to be able to get to every page by doing this
Product Page
Category Page
(click!)
Homepage
(click!)
- 46. 46Google tries to use
actual human factors to
determine importance.
Important
Less
Important
Not
Important
The LEAST
Important
- 51. ON-SITE SEO
How do I know if I’m doing this?
• Look at your URLs when you add content
• If you’re delivering content through filters
• If you’re delivering content with Flash
• If you’re worried, copy a chunk of text and do a search for in
“quotations” in Google.
- 56.
http://www.yoursite.com
http://yoursite.com
http://www.yoursite.com/Default.aspx
http://www.yoursite.com/default.aspx
http://www.yoursite.com/default.aspx?mobile=y
https://www.yoursite.com/
https://www.yoursite.com/Default.aspx?campain
https://yoursite.com/default.aspx?mobile=yes&
http://yoursite.com/default.aspx?top_nav
ON-SITE SEO
MOST COMMON CAUSE:
- 57. ON-SITE SEO
How do I know if I’m doing this?
• Copy a chunk of text and do a search for in “quotations” in
Google. See if more than one result comes up
• Make sure it’s the same page, not just a quote or “category”
page.
- 58. ON-SITE SEO
How do I avoid these?
• Talk to your designer/dev
• Don’t use parameters to track behavior on a site
• Don’t use microsites. Seriously. Don’t. Ever.
- 59. ON-SITE SEO
How do I avoid these?
• Small sites are usually ok
• Wordpress is pretty good at this
– If you use WordPress download Yoast SEO Plugin
• If you got these problems, you’ll need a developer
• If you have a new site, bring these concerns up at the
beginning
- 61. LOCAL
Local is complicated
• Different places show different results
• Different factors for different markets
• Constantly changing
• Influenced by location
- 76. LOCAL
Make sure everything is filled out
• You can’t be in the carousel without a picture
• If you’re competitor has something in their Knowledge Graph
box that you don’t, you need to add it to yours.
• Don’t use microsites. Seriously. Don’t. Ever.
- 82. LOCAL
Now what do I do with all these directories?
N.A.P.
(Name Address Phone)
Example – This is Portent’s NAP:
Portent, Inc.
502 2nd Ave.
Suite 1700
Seattle, WA 98104
(206) 575-3740
http://www.portent.com
- 84. MAP MAKER
How to get approved in Map Maker
• It’s like Wikipedia – you have to use it a lot
• Approve lots of changes
• Be polite (“please and thank you”)
• Use preferred categories
• Follow directions
• If you have to, you can try asking for help in the forum.
- 91. LEARNING FROM COMPETITORS
Search tricks
• site: Search within a site. (You can do this in chrome by just
entering a site then hitting “space”)
• inurl: Search for a word in a URL.
• intitle: Search word within a page title.
- 98. LEARNING FROM COMPETITION
Google Keyword Planner
• You need to sign up for AdWords (it’s free)
• Use it to find related terms you might not have thought of
• Find the most popular term people are searching
- 100. LEARNING FROM COMPETITION
Ubersuggest
• No sign up
• Pulls terms from Google’s autosuggest
• Good for exploring topics with lower search volume
• You’ll still want to cross reference this with Keyword Planner
- 102. LEARNING FROM COMPETITION
SEM Rush
• Cadillac of competitive research tools
• Limited to 10 queries a day (on free version)
• Use it to see what terms competitor ranks for
• Use it for most popular variations of a keyword
- 104. LEARNING FROM COMPETITORS
What not to do:
• Create a hundred pages with the most popular term
• Copy your competitor’s pages word for word
• Try to exact match every term that shows up
- 105. LEARNING FROM COMPETITORS
What you SHOULD do:
• Try to use the most popular variation of the term when
writing
• Get some ideas on new pieces of content
- 122. WHY GOOGLE+
And you need to
do everything you
can to make this
happen.
Popular
search
My Google+
Post
(logged in as
my boss)
- 123. WHY GOOGLE+
1. Set up Google+ page for all contributors of your
blog.
2. Set up a business page for your business
3. Setup a local listing if you have an address
4. Yes, you have to do all three.
- 124. “HAVING SAID I DON’T WANT TO
OVERSIMPLY
LET ME OVERSIMPLY BY SAYING
THE FOLLOWING.”
- Me, just now.
- 125. OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS
Broad, awful generalizations:
• Facebook: Friends and relatives
• Instagram: Young people
• Foursquare: Brick and mortar businesses
• Pinterest: Artsy people
• Linkedin: Business people
• Tumblr: Internet people
• Reddit: Really, really Internet people. (also mean people)
• The more niche, the better.
- 126. OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS
What about Twitter??
Use Twitter if…
… you want to use Twitter.
Lots of people will tell you that
you need to use it.
But as a small business you need to prioritize.
- 136. GOOGLE ANALYTICS
But this only works if you have the technical stuff taken
care of.
And you are making content that people are finding.
- 143. ONCE YOU FIND SOMETHING
Go beyond the terms you were originally going for.
- 144. ONCE YOU FIND SOMETHING
I need…
to look nice for my
friend’s wedding.
- 146. ONCE YOU FIND SOMETHING
I need…
to look better than
Carol at my
friend’s wedding
- 148. ONCE YOU FIND SOMETHING
I need…
to match my date’s
Star Wars
costume for my
friend’s wedding
- 149. ONCE YOU FIND SOMETHING
There are companies paying big money
just to pretend to be as in to what you do as you are.
- 150. ONCE YOU FIND SOMETHING
1) Build on a good foundation
2) Establish yourself locally
3) Know what your competitors are doing
4) BE INTERESTING