Week 1 – SEO
6 factors contribute to Google search:
1. Volume search
2. Growth in volume search
3. Accessibility
4. Time spent on Google – Unique searches and Unique visitors
5. Importance of search in shopping behavior
6. Role of search in website traffic – 30% of website traffic comes from search engines.
SERP: Paid ads, organic search, rich snippet (map, feature, knowledge graph snippet): more visually appealing and
frequently changes.
SEO
Why it is important? For more CTRs and website traffic, it is important to be ranked higher in SERP.
How does Google Search work?
Crawling: Scanning all webpages on the Internet
Indexing: Adding the webpages in a dataset like creating a dictionary.
Ranking: Uses its algorithm to determine the order of page results.
Some of the main ranking factors in Google’s algorithm:
1. Website factors:
- Domain factors: age, keywords, title tags, description tags
- Technical mechanics: page speed, mobile friendliness
- Content: keywords on the website (Caffeine)
2. Reputation: authority status of website, visitors, historical performance (bounce rates, clicks), how new is the
website?
3. Trustworthiness: Black links (inbound link), outbound links, internal link, signaling, references
4. User profile: Geographic location, web history, language
Steps of SEO
1. On-page optimization: means all the changes/ optimizations that you can make on your website.
o Content optimization:
1. Understanding Consumer’s Intent to Search: Figure out what consumers search for as keywords
when they’re trying to search your company/market on your search engine. List these words.
2. Keyword Research: Look for a keyword’s monthly search and keep in mind. Consider keyword
difficulty and competition (what keywords are competitors ranked for)
3. Integrate keywords on your site: Home-page is a good way to start with. A good rule of thumb is to
have each keyword you’re trying to rank for used in your website copy at least 5-7 times per page.
4. Up to date content: Frequently update your content such as adding new articles and etc. While
doing this, consider the keywords.
, o Optimizing the Technical Mechanics of Your Page
1. Style and Structure of the Website: There should be a hierarchy among web pages. Parent and child
relationship. Deep content can be difficult to reach. Ideal level is 3-4. Simple content is important to
avoid bounce rates and lower rankings.
2. Breadcrumb Navigation: Going back to previous pages without returning the main page.
3. URL: should be with the keyword, eliminate string or numbers or different symbols. Hypens or
dashes can be used.
4. Page names: Name the pages relevantly with your content and keywords
5. Meta Tags: You can see it with HTML by right clicking. Meta tags don't affect the web page layout,
but rather provide important information about the page's content, which is used by search engines
to index your site. Make it relevant.
Title tag
Description tag
6. On-page headings: Headings range from H1 H6. How you divide your content to sub-parts also
indicated with headings. Heading 1 should not have much words and include the keywords.
First Paragraph
Body Paragraph: For general web pages related to the product or service you provide is
at least 300 words. Articles, white papers, and case studies should have 1,000 words
minimum. With blogs, you should be aiming for between 1,500 and 2,500 words.
Research has shown that articles containing 2,500 words garner higher rankings than
articles with fewer words. Bolding keywords in your web page content in the belief
that doing so will increase ranking is a common misconception. Doing so is perceived by
Google as keyword stuffing and is taken very seriously.
Anchor Text hyperlink shown as clickable text within your content. (Don’t use: click
here)
Images and Alt Text: Alt text is an alternative for image it describes. 4-6 words
Social sharing Provide shareable links
Site map: map of your website’s structure
7. Site speed, compatibility: Mobile friendliness became important.
2. Off-page optimization.
o Setting up a Google My Business Page
o Research Competition: Look at competitors’ website and how high they are ranked with which keyword
and how many times they used it.
o Domain Authority (measures domains and sub-domains and decides the position that website will be
ranked on SERP) and Page Authority (predict the ability of a specific page to be ranked on SERP): Higher
is better.
It is better to use an existing domain instead of building a new one to be ranked higher.
o Link Building:
Internal links keep visitors on your website
Backlinks: number of links leading to your website. Indicates popularity and trustworthiness.
Local Links: Use it mainly if you’re a local business.
Authoritative websites: Government websites are automatically high authority but normally
have policies about not linking to third-party websites. Contact companies you've used before,
offering a well-written testimonial to be featured on their pages.
Flash Links: Avoid them. Search engines may not be able to read them. Flag any inbound links
like this.
, Brokers and Sellers: A lot of link-building sellers operate link farms—a group of websites set up
solely for linking to one another. Algorithms understand these SEO malpractices and penalize for
low-quality links. This cause lower ranking for that website.
Broken Links: Always check for and replace broken inbound links. Deleted pages also result in
broken links so check it.
SEO Advanced
- Blogging: Improves ranking and so that traffic. Use keywords smartly. Increases trust and authority status of
your website. Include inbound links to other blogs.
- Track your rankings
- Structured Data Mark-Up (Rich Snippet): “Schema mark-up” makes your listings stand out.
Increase search result accuracy.
Refine the way your listing appears in SERPs.
Enhance the way information is displayed.
SEO Metrics and Tools:
Website Assessment: Check your website and assess it with various parameters.
Position: where are you ranked, effectiveness of SEO, what keywords lead you there?
Competition: what are their ranks? what keywords they are using?
Traffic: what traffic is coming and from where, when?
Conversion: Is your SEO results any conversion?
Week 2 – SEA
Organic Paid Ad
Pros Higher trust & credibility Give instant results
Higher ranking translates to Highly targeted ads
authority status High purchase intent
90% + CTR
Cons Slow process, builds over Costly
time Short-term campaign
Need to have appealing Less credible
content and strong SEO Quality score also matters
strategy apart from bidding.
Youtube, paid search, display, gmail ads are done by Google Ads.
CTR for Paid Search is lower than organic search. So why companies still do Paid Search Ads?
o Conversion
o Local intent: searches for people who are nearby
o Competitors advertise, we need to advertise too.
