Intro to SEO

Journalists & SEO
Chris Snider • chrissniderdesign.com

What would you do
if you wanted to learn
more about SEO?

Google processes 6 billion searches per month.
Yahoo! processes 1.3 billion searches per month.
MSN/Live/Bing processes 1.1 billion searches per month.
Source: Nielsen Feb. 2010

84% of internet users conduct searches

2nd most popular daily Internet activity (behind e-mail)

drake university is searched 100,000 times each month
iowa state fair is searched 60,500 times each month
des moines restaurants is searched 33,000 times/month
west des moines is searched 450,000 times each month
des moines is searched 5,000,000 times each month
organic gardening is searched 165,000 times each month
Source: Google Keyword Tool

Therefore: Search is a great
way to drive trafﬁc to your site.

And very likely the best way
to drive trafﬁc to your site.

What you see when you perform a search...

paid search results
paid
search
results
natural search results

• 5 search engines receive more than
90 percent of all search trafﬁc
• Google,Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Ask

top 3 spots are seen 100 percent of time

10x trafﬁc difference for 1st vs. 10th position

How people search
• Users no longer scroll down the page
• Instead, they submit multiple queries to
narrow information
• sandals > women’s sandals >
women’s merrell sandals >
blue women’s merrell sandals

How does SEO work?
And how can it work for you?

Simpliﬁed SEO
• Build a great site with great content
• Find the right keywords - and put them in
the right places
• Get other quality sites to link to you

title
URL

headlines

text

What Google shows...
title
meta description

URL

But what if Google
doesn’t know I exist?

You need to get Google to crawl your site

One way to do that is to submit your blog to Google

Search “submit site” or “submit blog”

Or/and get other sites to link to your site.
When their site is crawled, it will crawl your site.

How to know if your site is being crawled:

Search cache:http://www.yoursite.com

Figure out what words people should
search to ﬁnd your site.

Remember: The goal is to be helpful
to readers, not to trick them.

Then: Research those words.

Why research?
• To ﬁnd words people actually search
• To make sure you’re not trying to optimize
a word you will never get ranked for

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/gtrends/

Great resource tool is Google Keyword Tool

Where to use those keywords

In your page Title
In your URL
In your headlines <h1> and <h2>
On the page
In your meta data (not as important for SEO)
In links to your site

For individual posts:
Use your keywords in your headline, at the beginning.
Use your keywords in the ﬁrst paragraph of the article.

Spelling
is hard

Be sure to
optimize for
the misspelled
words
people will
search.

Don’t use abbreviations

People search des moines not D.M.

People search Shawn Johnson not
WDM gymnast Johnson

When people search
online, they are far
more literal.

Use the keywords in your post

Particularly important for newspapers, who seldom
use the name of their town or state in posts
(because it’s assumed by print readers).

Try to get other credible sites/blogs to link to you.

Best way to do that is to link to them.

Write posts that people will want to link to:

Read other blogs - and comment on other blogs.

Be sure to leave your URL when you comment.

Promote your best work on:
• Digg
• Delicious
• Reddit
• Newsvine
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Other blogs

Just don’t overdo it.

Occasionally dip into Google Trends to see
what topics people are suddenly searching.

If those topics are relevant to your site/blog,
take advantage of that fact (and optimize appropriately)

Write articles/posts that people will want to link to.

Look closely at your metrics to see what is popular.

Chris Brogan’s most-linked-to posts:

link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link

ChrisSniderDesign.com

@chrissnider

Linkedin.com/in/chrissnider2

Intro to SEO

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