Seach Engine Optimization Boot Camp

Your Internet presence should be a vehicle that helps you achieve the goals of your organization or business. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can help you realize that potential. A study by Forrester from 2006 found that 93% of all internet traffic comes from a search engine. You cannot afford to be missing out on that many potential visitors. Studies have shown that 40% of well managed SEO campaigns yield a 500% or greater return on investment. There’s tons of potential when it comes to SEO. Let our Search Engine Optimization training course help your business!

• Entry-level marketing professionals
• Online marketers
• Business owners (small, medium, and large)
• Traditional marketers looking to get up-to-speed on today’s marketing channels
• Marketing professionals of all levels
• Communication Specialists

No prior experience is needed to take and successfully complete this course

• How to research key phrases for global and national target markets
• How to research key phrases for local target markets
• How to optimize for local search
• How to avoid the most common SEO mistakes
• The details and implications of Google’s Panda filter
• Criteria for choosing a prospective SEO vendor
• The importance of social media to SEO
• How to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your in-bound link profile
• The practical implications of the 80/20 rule for SEO
• How to identify, prioritize, and tackle your most important action items related to SEO

Researching your Target Audience

• Market and Visitor Segmentation
• Using prospect personas to identify audience segments
• The practical implications for keyphrase research of
• an audience segment’s motives
• an audience segment’s fears
• an audience segment’s hopes
• (Lab – class exercise for your target audience)
• Visitor Intent
• The practical implications for keyphrase research of visitor path elements including:
• Referring URLs
• Bounce Rates
• Exit Pages
• Time on Page
• Searcher Intent
• Elements that search engines use to determine searcher intent:
• SERP bounce rate
• SERP Click-thru rate
• Related Search Terms – aggregate
• Related Search Terms – personal(ized)
• The practical implications for keyphrase research of keyphrase-specific visitor path elements including:
• Referring search terms
• Bounce Rates
• Exit Pages
• Time on Page
• Keyphrase Research
• Tools: when to use which ones, what for, and why – including:
• Google AdWords Keyword Tool
• Google Insights
• WordTracker
• Keyword Discovery
• Prioritizing your keyphrases
• Organizing keyphrases semantically
• Organizing keyphrases by search volume trend
• Organizing keyphrases by SEO competitiveness
• Organizing keyphrases by potential commercial value
• Implications for the information architecture of your web site
• Planning the structure of your site based on:
• Prospect personas
• Keyphrase groupings

Content Development

• What search engines want to see
• Format diversity
• Benefits for Universal Search
• Content originality
• Content relevance
• Content authority
• Authorship
• Citation strength
• What search engines don’t want to see
• Various types of spam – including:
• Duplicate content
• Scraped content
• Cloaking
• Over optimized
• What searchers want in content
• Authenticity
• Credibility
• Relevance
• Meets a need
• Answers a question
• Implications of Google’s Panda filter
• History of Panda
• How Panda works
• How Panda evaluates quality
• Recovering from Panda penalties
• How to keep up with ongoing releases
• Ways to measure the quality of content
• Keyphrase distribution
• Related Search Terms
• (Lab – class exercise with your content)
• Persuasive copywriting
• Elements of Good Marketing Copy
• Content development strategies
• Organization of content throughout your site
• Plans for using multiple mediums
• Repurposing content for different formats
• Blogging
• Pros and Cons of a blog on your corporate domain
• Pros and Cons of a blog on a different domain
• Finding a voice for your blog
• Blog marketing
• Video
• Uses for and benefits of Video
• Tools for Video Marketing
• Social Media
• The role of social media signals in SEO

Day 2 Website Analytics

• Understanding Analytics Tools
• Tag-based Analytics Tools
• Pros and Cons
• Server-side Analytics Tools
• Pros and Cons
• Essential features for use with SEO
• Digging into Google Analytics
• Key Performance Indicators: knowing which numbers really matter
• Importance of defining business goals first
• Lining up Analytics Metrics with Business Goals
• Making reports make sense
• (Lab – exercises in Analytics interpretation, troubleshooting and diagnosis )

Conversion Rate Optimization

• Content elements that influence conversion rates – The role of:
• Headlines
• First sentence/paragraph
• Credibility
• Social proof
• Call to Action
• Benefits vs. features
• Testimonials
• Guarantees
• Design elements that influence conversion rates
• Color Persuasion
• How the use of color affects emotion and influences a buying decision
• Layout choices
• Navigation choices
• Emotional content
• Learning from your analytics
• Using visitor paths and funnels with Google Analytics
• (Lab – exercise diagnosing different visitor paths)
• Testing
• A/B Split Testing
• Multivariate Testing

Day 3 Improving your SEO Visibility

• On-page Optimization
• Title Tags
• Meta Tags
• Google preview feature
• Keyphrase placement
• Content relevance
• Internal linking
• Source code validation
• Page load time
• Pros and cons of various scripting elements:
• AJAXM
• Flash
• JavaScript
• (Lab – exercise optimizing pages)
• Off-Page Optimization
• Discussion of various linking strategies and tactics
• Reciprocal linking
• 3-way linking
• Link farms
• Paid Links
• No-follow links
• Importance of Link Velocity
• Uses for Majestic SEO
• Measuring link authority
• Methods for acquiring links

Online Reputation Management

• Managing the negative
• Negative Reviews
• Negative web page content
• Negative SEO
• Leveraging the positive
• Timing your broadcast of messages via Social Media
• Identifying and leveraging key influencers
• Leveraging off-line or online PR for SEO benefit

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