Founder of Software Promotions Search Agency
Dave Collins Teaches On Page SEO
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some parts of this video may not be fully updated.
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TRANSCRIPT
Hello I’m Dave Collins from Software Promotions. Today I’m going to show you exactly how to optimize your website content from the point of view of search engine optimization. Now don’t roll your eyes. If the thought of SEO makes you feel a little bit sick to your stomach hang on to your breakfast, it’s not that sort of SEO. The type of SEO, the entire process is actionable, it’s practical, it’s completely safe and it works. Why should you care about on page SEO? Chances are it’s something you mean to get around to, but you just never get there. We’ve just got too much work to do each day. It stays at the bottom of our to-do list.
The fact is there are a lot of people out there that who want to actually buy what you sell. Where do they go to find it? They go to search engines. They go to Google. A real SEO is simply about making sure that when they go looking for what you sell, they found you. Hopefully that’s got your interest a little bit. If you’re not interested in these people, fine, go to YouTube. Go look up cats on skateboards, whatever takes your fancy and have a nice day. If however you are interested in talking to these people, let’s go. SEO is not surprisingly based on keywords. My approach is for each page on your website to take one main keyword and supporting or related keywords. These are keywords that Google think are actually related to your main choice of keywords.
Now really common mistake when it comes to choosing key words is to simply pick keywords that are kind of related or loosely related to what you are trying to optimize for. A really common example of this is you’re interested in buying a camera, say Nikon D700 camera, you go searching for Nikon D700 review, you get loads of sites. Each one that you click on, what don’t they have? They don’t have review. They have reviews in bracket zero or be the first to review. That’s not what you’re looking for. You need to have a good fit. To me it’s pretty obvious. If you’re finding that Nikon D700 review is a really good keyword, why not create that content? Why not create a page that actually has a D700 review. Give people exactly what they’re looking for.
Step one, Google analytics. Have a look in your analytics account and see how is the page you’re about to optimize? How’s it forming so far? Is it forming very well for a keyword already? You don’t want to in fact break something that’s already working quite well and you also want to be having a look for whether that particular keyword is sending any traffic at all to your website other than that page you’re about to optimize. If so, where? Step two, applying the keyword to your page. You might think all you have to do at this point is copy and paste a keyword, drop it all over your page, right? Come on, we’re not that sort of [fascio 00:02:44]. You can do better than that.
It’s all about subtlety. The keyword has to blend in and actually the keywords have to be a really perfect fit. This is a vital aspect of the on-page optimization. If it’s not a perfect fit, go about to the keyword research and start again or create a new page from scratch that it fits better. Closest fit isn’t a good idea. Take the analogy of wearing a pair of shoes. You don’t want a pair of shoes and say “You know what, they’re really small, they hurt my feet, but they’re okay.” Or “They’re really big, I can wear six pairs of socks, I’ll be completely fine.” You have to get a pair that fits really well. Then you can have many, many years of happy and comfortable use with them. The keywords need to be blended into the page subtly. They have to be more or less invisible.
You need to be able to look at the optimized content of the page and you need to be able to read it out loud and test a sound good. It has to sound right. If it doesn’t sound right, if it may sound a little bit deranged or just doesn’t flow, then it’s not working. You should be able to insert the keyword subtly, more or less invisibly on the H1 tag, on the [all 00:03:50] tags, image titles, the copy itself, anywhere where it fits without standing out, anywhere where it makes since for Google. Think about this, if your page is an actual review, same example of the Nikon D700 camera, you would expect to see Nikon D700 review on page title and some of the images, on the [all 00:04:11] tags and so on.
When it comes to SEO, anything that looks reasonable, anything that sounds reasonable is reasonable and reasonable never gets you in trouble. Step three is all about supporting keywords. These are the keywords that Google consider relevant and related to your main keyword. In a since, what you’re doing here is paraphrasing. You’re paraphrasing Google. You’re saying to Google “What phrases, what terms are relevant to this particular keyword that I’m going to optimize for?” Then you put them in your text and Google spiders come along and say “Hey it must be relevant, this all much is up. This is what we think the page is about as well.” It’s a really phenomenally effective technique, but subtlety, subtlety is vital here.
The goal here is to help Google, to guide Google, to assist Google in understanding what the actual real content of the page is all about. Step four is about the page title and the description. Now these aren’t obscure behind the scenes, weird SEO weirdisms. That’s not what it’s about at all. The page title and descriptions, they’re not just about guiding spiders, they’re for the actual users. Why? These are what show up in results and search for our given keywords and that’s why focusing on the user is absolutely vital.
Click through rates aren’t just for PPC and Google add words. Click through rates apply to SEO. If when someone searches for whatever it is you sell, if your page title and page description is compelling and relevant to the search, it’s far more likely to be clicked. Think about the signals that sends to Google. It’s a really important aspect to SEO, the process of identifying or serving up the content by Google. It doesn’t stop when the results are displayed; this is just part of the overall process. How people interact with your results is also factored in to how well your page is going to perform.
In a since, Google’s technology of recognizing the content of scanning it and displaying it, serving it up, in a since that only needs to go so far. Beyond that it’s the actual users that actual do the rest. The golden take away pointer is never optimize for spiders, spiders never convert. Step five is the easy one. Wait. Sit back, wait and watch what happens. You do need patience. There aren’t any overnight results when it comes to SEO and don’t forget it’s really important to remember what we talked about here; the onsite optimization of your content is only one small part of the SEO process of your overall SEO strategy. You do need to monitor and see what’s happening on the website from an organic SEO point of view.
You want to look at your organic traffic, but you’re interested in medium to long-term data trends rather than daily fluctuations. [Inaudible 00:07:01] is really useful for the SEO, [inaudible 00:07:03] is a really useful service for monitoring how you rank for keywords, volumes of traffic, call to traffic and that type of thing. Google analytics is really simple. Set up some reports customize to your heart’s content, keep an eye on these things, but you do need to evaluate as you go along. It’s not just fix once, leave it, see what happens. Its fix once, see what happens, give it time, adapt and its part of this ongoing SEO cycle if you like.
Also remember that this state of constant flux of SEO, nothing stays the same and actually more often than not what happens to your own rankings, your own volumes of traffic, can be heavily influenced by outside factors have nothing to do with what you’ve been doing. Keep an eye on things, but keep everything in perspective. Okay, it’s question time. The question is how do I accurately measure the success of my on page SEO efforts? That’s a very good question, thank you Dave. Quantity of traffic that you’re getting from organic search visitors, Google, the quantity of these visitors is actually more or less meaningless. If that doubles and triples and quadruples and starts to grow more or less exponentially, that’s great, but doesn’t really mean anything.
The quality of these visitors is far more important. Factors are for instance how long are they spending on your site? How many page views are they looking up before they leave? How many are actually converting? These are far more important and far more relevant. Again, you’re looking for trends more than anything; you’re looking for the trends over time. If you do this you isolate the factors that actually matter, you got data that’s highly valuable and highly actionable. Hopefully by now you’re fired up with enthusiasm and hopefully with a little bit less distain for SEOs like myself. It’s homework time. Your assignment should you choose to accept it is to optimize at least two pages on your website using your new found knowledge and techniques.
Remember it’s really important; find the keyword that fits perfectly for the page. Perfect fits vital, no force can be used once so ever. Remember your goals in doing so are to assist Google, to help Google understand the pages exactly what people are looking for when they search for your given keyword. Remember also that if your keyword choices are perfect for the page and your SEO efforts are actually invisible, pat yourself on the back, make a note of what you did and when you did it, really important, schedule a review and move onto the next page and never ever let SEO remain at the bottom of your to-do list.
If you’re interested in an SEO audit of your website, take a look at how your website is set up for the search engines, your link structure, your different trends, different opportunities, then please send me an email at Dave@softwarepromotions.com, but please make sure that you mention this course, doing so will mean that you get a discount that will put a smile on your face. I hope you found my session to be useful and now it’s time to stop watching the screen and to get some real actual work done. Go make yourself some coffee, get to work optimizing those pages and start reaping the very real benefits of search engine optimization. Be seen, be sold.
