SEO & Analytics Session at Blissdom

SEO & Analytics: Why You Should Care

Angela England, Melanie Nelson, Shelly Kramer

Be smart and write for your readers, but remember…. Google matters.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the art of helping Google figure out what you are talking about.

84% of all internet interactions begins with Google

Melanie Nelson –

What do Search engines do?

Crawl your site

can’t search on

forms, flash, frames, java applets, audio files, video files, non-HTML

How to get around that they aren’t indexing?

• use ALT tag in images (visually impaired readers use software that reads those tags, the keywords are crawled by the search bots). This also helps for visually impaired because the reader will read the ALT tags on pics to describe your picture.
• Use HTML links
• Provide a transcript of the video or audio files

How do search engines determine relevancy & importance?

• popularity
• content
• post size
• clear hierarchy of how your site fits together (find each page with a text link)

Need to have a link to every page that you want searched by search engine. (create a site map)

How can you influence the results?

• Use keywords in posts
• Use ALT tag in images (should rename images to a keyword and add tags) Also optimize your images (make smaller)
• Write for audience not search engines. (need to balance)
• Use descriptive titles & ALT tags

How to Use Keywords

• Title tag
• Post title
• 3x within your content
• bold has more weight
• ALT tag in images
• URL/permalinks – URL address of your blog post (need to change in wordpress, default is not good for SEO)
• META Descriptions

Blog Title is Important because:

• appears at the top of your browser for every page on your site (title tag)
• Customize your title (only displays 70 characters)
• place keywords close to the front of your title

BACK UP YOUR BLOG!!!! STOP, go do it now

Blog Post Title

Put the most important words of title in the first part of sentence (post title)

META Data is Description and keyword

• lives behind all the pretty stuff. It’s the stuff Google reads (ALT tag, description & keywords are examples)
• this doesn’t help rank
• limited to 160 characters
• put commas between each keyword
• META keyword no longer important (Bing & Yahoo don’t use it at all)

Sites That Rank Well Have

• Usability / clear navigation
• Domain name (you rank better if you own your own domain name. It means you are sticking around)
• Professional design

Beyond Beginning SEO

by Shelly Kramer (Marketer, not blogger)

WordPress Plug=Ins to use for SEO

• Scribe
• SEO Nova
• Headspace
• All-in-One SEO

Aim for Speed

• Faster loading time equals better Page Rank.
• Optimize the template to reduce database calls ()
• Install a caching plugin

Social Bookmarking

StumbleUpon, Deliscious, Diigo, etc.

Adds legs to your blog post and drive traffic

(Digg)

Stats & Analytics – tracking Your Success

Related articles

• SEO is for all of us (momblognetwork.com)
• 4 Killer SEO Tools and How to Use Them (techie-buzz.com)
• The Negative Side of Blog SEO Practices (brighthub.com)