1. Definitions
   1. Terms
      1. SERP
         1. Search Engine Results Page
         2. In other words, a results page from a search engine like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Etc
      2. SEO
         1. Search Engine Optimization
      3. SEM
         1. Search Engine Marketing
      4. White Hat SEO
         1. Optimization techniques and strategies that will get you consistent, long-term results
      5. Black Hat SEO
         1. Optimization techniques that might get you some short term results and are very likely to get your site removed from the search engines
      6. URL
         1. A web address
         2. Technically refers to an exact page on a web site
      7. Landing Page
         1. A web page geared around a particular topic, product or conversion goal. e.g. buy now
      8. Meta Tag/Data
         1. Special HTML data found in a webpage's code
         2. Used for keyword ranking in the very early days of SERPs
         3. Most commonly: META Description and META Keywords
      9. Backlink/inbound link
         1. A link from another website which refers to a page on your site
         2. Used by SERPs to estimate the "importance" and "authority" of your website
         3. Can have a significant impact on your ranking for a keyword
      10. Spider/robot
          1. Automated software used by SERPs to scan the pages on your site to be added to their index
      11. Bad spider/robot
          1. Automated software used by spammers to scan the pages on your site for email addresses and private data
      12. Crawling
          1. What good and bad spiders do to your site
          2. Follows the links on your site to find all pages
   2. What is the point of SEO/SEM?
      1. Free traffic
         1. Free, compared to paying for advertising to get the traffic
         2. Still requires time and effort
      2. Authority
         1. Sites that are found through organic search are more trusted
         2. Quality content brands you as an expert in the eyes of the visitor
      3. Conversion
         1. Visitors who find you as a result of searching for what you have is more likely to lead to sales, signups, etc
   3. How is it done?
      1. Pages are added to a SERP's database
         1. Discovery
            1. Most SERPs have a page where you can submit links
            2. Also found by linking from a page the SERPs already know about
            3. Not necessary to submit every page
            4. Your site will get crawled once a single page is discovered by the SERP
         2. Crawling
            1. SERP spider visits your site and follows links
            2. May take several visits before entire site is crawled
            3. Every SERP has their own spider
         3. Analysis
            1. Some SERPs may analyze each page on its own
            2. Newer SERPs may look at all pages holistically to determine a site's "theme"
      2. SERP analyzes content
         1. Relevancy is the goal
         2. SERP has a vested interest in providing the searcher with the pages that are most relevant to what he or she is searching for
         3. Because you have a vested interest in high rankings that last, you have a vested interest in creating quality content that matches the needs behind the keyword being optimized for
      3. Fundamentals
         1. Content is king
            1. As long as it's quality
         2. 80/20 Rule
            1. Focus on the basics leads to consistent, long-term results
   4. What kind of content is indexed?
      1. HTML
      2. Office Documents
         1. Word
         2. Excel
         3. PowerPoint
      3. Text
      4. PDF
      5. Multimedia
         1. The SERP can't read the actual content of a video file, but it does index it based on the description and title
   5. Considerations
      1. SERP Algorithms
         1. Unpublished
         2. Secret
         3. Inferred through experimentation
         4. Change at irregular intervals
      2. SERPs are not universal
         1. Each comapany treats their search results and algorithms as a competitive asset
      3. Online Environment
         1. Ever-changing
            1. New content is always being created and/or discovered
            2. Your competition is also tuning for SEO
      4. Think virtual real estate
         1. The more quality content you create, and the more long-tail keywords you target, the more solid your overall rankings and traffic will be
      5. Promote your content
         1. Don't just create content and sit back
         2. Think of ways to market and promote your quality content
         3. Long term strategy is to build site reputation and authority with the SERPs
2. Process
   1. Keyword research
      1. Create list
         1. Root keywords
         2. Long tail keywords
   2. Build content
      1. Articles
      2. Blog posts
      3. Videos
      4. Podcasts
      5. Landing pages
   3. Repurpose content
   4. Optimize
      1. Work in 1-2 keyword phrases
      2. Don't force
   5. Publish
      1. Article sites
      2. Blog
      3. Video sharing
      4. Podcast
      5. Social media
      6. Your own site
3. Keyword research
   1. Definitions
      1. What's a keyword?
         1. Root
            1. The one or two words describing your product or service
            2. BBQ
            3. Cell Phone
            4. Energy Drink
         2. Long tail
            1. A more detailed phrase containing your root keyword
            2. Reviews for BBQ grills
            3. How to use a cell phone overseas
            4. What nutrition is in an energy drink?
            5. Represents greater motivation from the visitor
            6. Converts better than a visitor finding you through a short keyword
   2. Considerations
      1. Product/Service
         1. What is it?
         2. What isn't it?
      2. Target audience
         1. Who are they?
         2. Who aren't they?
      3. Search
         1. How would you search for your own product or service?
      4. Volume
         1. What is the search volume for your keywords?
         2. Jargony and vanity keywords often under-perform compared to what people are really searching for
            1. Toastmasters International vs...
            2. Public speaking
            3. How do I start a presentation?
            4. Powerpoint tips
      5. Competition
         1. What keywords are other sites using in your market?
         2. Don't pretend you have no competition
            1. Your competition is the site(s) being found by people you'd rather were finding you
   3. Targeting
      1. Short (root)
         1. Make a list
            1. Group into silos
            2. Cell phones
            3. Smart phones
            4. iPhone cases
            5. Blackberry charger
            6. root keywords can be used to categorize content on your site
         2. Why they're not worth the effort for top ranking
            1. Unmotivated visitors
            2. Low conversion
            3. Someone searching for "golf" is just getting started in their online research
            4. Traffic expense
            5. There's no such thing as "free hosting"
            6. High volume traffic from people who don't buy, takes away bandwidth from those who do
      2. Long tail
         1. Low competition
            1. No real magic number
            2. 95% of the results for a keyword are not optimized
         2. Motivated visitors
            1. Solve problems and satisfy curiosity with your content
            2. Make a call to action clear
            3. Great example: Amazon.com provides very detailed product listings with customer reviews, positioned beside a clear buy now button
         3. Individual keywords have lower total searches, but combined can produce more traffic and better conversion and short keywords with more total searches
      3. What to look for
         1. People searching online are "researches"
            1. Help them find what they're looking for
            2. Get inside of your customer's head
         2. Motivation
            1. Drill bits vs holes
            2. When someone is buying a drill bit, what do they really want?
            3. They want to make a hole
         3. Problems
            1. A visitor may not think of a need as a "problem," but think about what they're trying to do
            2. What is their trigger?
            3. Why does someone really want whiter teeth?
            4. To be more attractive
            5. To feel accepted
         4. Solutions
            1. Present the solution your visitor wants, not yours.
            2. A safer tooth whitening solution is meaningless if your visitor doesn't perceive that as an issue
      4. Vanity keywords
         1. Ok to include
            1. Build a bridge from searched content to you
            2. Unless you have a BIG brand, these keywords will not be a significant source of traffic
         2. Company name
         3. Product/service name(s)
   4. Tools
      1. Google
         1. Search
            1. Who else is coming up?
            2. Study content for ideas and inspiration
         2. Sktool
            1. Analyze
            2. Keywords
            3. Your site/pages
            4. Competion site/pages
         3. Wonder wheel
            1. Related keywords
            2. Alternative phrases
            3. Generated by Google from their own relational algorithms!
         4. Trends
            1. Compare different keywords to find the best value for your time
      2. WordTracker
         1. Free keyword tool
            1. Use to build keyword questions lists
            2. [Who, what, where, when, why, how] keyword
            3. Match content to questions people are literally asking the SERPs
         2. Also has a great paid keyword research service
         3. Data is based on lower-volume SERP sources
4. Optimizing your content
   1. Site construction
      1. Money site
         1. Go deep with information
         2. Make home page a hub for your info
         3. Treat informaton as "silos"
            1. Directory structure
            2. Products
            3. Services
            4. Community
            5. Blog
         4. Internal linking
            1. Use links to make your site more navigable for the visitor and the spiders
            2. Link from within content
            3. Create "mashups" of content
      2. Balance
         1. Rank vs conversion
            1. Highly optimized content tends not to convert well
         2. Use landing pages for ranking
            1. Link to conversion page
            2. Multiple landing pages can hop traffic to a conversion page
         3. Hubs
            1. Optional
            2. Not as effective as in the past
            3. Social media
            4. Use as a hub
            5. Some sites provide backlinks
            6. Provides more "trusting" traffic
            7. Sites
            8. Squidoo
            9. Facebook Fan page
            10. YouTube
            11. Podomatic
            12. Twitter
            13. Wikipedia
            14. Hubpages
            15. Delicious
            16. Stumbleupon
   2. Onpage factors
      1. <TITLE>
         1. Important
         2. Mention keyword early
         3. Add your brand
         4. examples
            1. Chicken BBQ Recipes | BBQGuys
            2. How to close a sale | Bob Sterling the Sales Guy
      2. <META>
         1. Once used as the primary means for ranking a site
            1. Easily manipulated
            2. Keyword count alone could determine #1 ranking
            3. META data may not match with the page content
            4. Poor relevancy
         2. Description
            1. Used by some SERPS in the listing
            2. Assume human reader
         3. Keywords
            1. Not used by any modern SERP
      3. <H1>
      4. <IMG>
         1. <img src="filename.gif" alt="Alt description goes here">
      5. <BODY>
         1. 1-2 keywords per page max
         2. Mention early in your content
         3. Make it natural
      6. Domain name
      7. Filenames
   3. Offpage factors
      1. Backlinks
         1. Quantity
         2. Quality
         3. Anchor text
         4. Site relevancy
      2. rel="nofollow"
         1. Common on blogs
            1. SERPs do not count these as links to your site
            2. Used to discourage comment spamming
         2. Can still pull in traffic
            1. Get noticed for good contribution
            2. Site owner may link to you in real content
            3. SEO is not the end game--visitors are
      3. How to get them
         1. There are no shortcuts
            1. Directory submission services don't work
            2. Comment spamming doesn't work
         2. Create quality content
            1. Build your network
            2. People will link to quality content
         3. Write quality articles
            1. Write articles as a guest blogger for other blogs
            2. Submit to top article services
            3. EzineArticles.com