(gentle music)
- Hello and welcome to today's workshop,
drive traffic to your website with SEO.
I'm Stasia, lead educator for Grow with Google.
Grow with Google helps people grow their skills,
careers, and businesses by offering free digital skills,
training, and tools.
This workshop will give a quick but information filled look
at search engine optimization.
Just about everyone who has a website asks this question,
how can I get my site to show up in a Google search?
It's an important question since people earn to Google
to shop more than one billion times a day.
The goal for today's workshop is to offer tips
to help your site show up in search.
We'll define search engine optimization,
explain how to adjust your content
and make technical changes to improve your search results.
One caveat, this workshop is based on publicly available
information that our team believes to be true.
We're not members of the Google internal SEO or search team
and nor do we have a specialized connection to those teams.
So the content might become inaccurate
and results are not guaranteed.
You already know that your website is a valuable way
to connect with your customers and audience.
Search engine optimization is a way to broaden the reach
of your site and make stronger connections.
So what is it exactly?
Search engine optimization, SEO,
is simply creating or adjusting your website
so that a search engine like Google can find it easily
and understand its content accurately.
Let's take a step back to understand
how Google search works.
Google and other search engines
compiles information about the trillions of webpages
available to the public.
Google crawls the web, looking for new and updated content.
All of that information is stored in an index
and you can think of it as a gigantic filing cabinet
organizing and categorizing the content.
When you type in a search called a search query,
Google goes to that index to find the right matches
and presents a webpage full of results.
That brings us to Google search engine results page,
the place where you want your website to show up.
This slide illustrates a typical search results page
on a desktop computer.
The section highlighted in the center
shows where Google search results can appear,
where SEO can make a difference.
These results include information that Google
can find in an index.
They are not ads, and you cannot pay to show up
or to show up in a prominent position.
These results are determined only by the relevance
to the search query.
Let's try a quick activity.
You can press pause on this video if you want more time.
Choose a webpage on your site.
If you don't have your own site
visit another website and choose a page.
Now take a moment and review the content.
Then choose a word or a phrase
that best represents that page.
It could be the name of the business or the organization,
a product or a type of service.
Next search for that word or phrase on Google.
Do you see your website in the results?
If you don't see it on the first page
click next at the bottom to see more.
If you do see your website in Google search results
how does it look?
When you click on it does it take you
to the appropriate page on the website?
Now if your site does not appear,
what's showing up instead?
Doing searches like this periodically can help you
figure out where to focus SEO efforts
and show you if your updates are making a difference.
Now, let's look at how to improve SEO with content.
When you created your website you probably thought
about the content that you wanted customers to see.
Content SEO is simply looking for ways to ensure that Google
understands that content
so it can deliver relevant search results.
This is where keywords become important.
Keywords are the words and phrases people type in
when they search.
If a searcher's query includes keywords that are prominent
in your website content,
you have a better chance of appearing in the search results.
Let's look at how to make SEO content improvements.
First, try to think like a customer.
What are they searching for
and what words would they use to describe it?
Start making a list of keywords.
Next review the content on your site.
What does it say?
Do you see those keywords on your pages?
Next you want to find more keywords.
Google keyword planner a Google ads tool can help.
You first need to create a free Google ads account
to access it.
FYI, you do need to enter a credit card when you set it up
but there are no fees
and you don't need to advertise to access keyword planner.
If you input keyword ideas,
keyword planner will suggest related keywords or phrases
plus show you how often these keywords show up
in Google search results.
Another tool called Google trends
lets you see popular search terms on Google
and compare the relative popularity
of different searches over time.
You can use it to compare different words
and phrases to find patterns or seasonality
and to see where searches happen geographically.
Here, we compared the search volume
for the keyword sweater versus jumper.
In the United States the keyword sweater is the more popular
search term but in the United Kingdom,
the keyword jumper is the leader.
If you were optimizing webpages for a UK audience
this information would be incredibly useful.
For more insights like this visit google.com/trends.
After making your list of keywords
think about how they apply to the site
and how to map them to pages.
Try to identify three unique keywords for each page
and then prioritize them.
Which is the primary term that you believe
will bring potential customers?
Your second, and your third.
If you identify an important keyword
but your website doesn't have a corresponding webpage
make a new one.
Priority keywords need a solid place to exist,
to live on your site.
Now let's start placing those keywords.
In addition to the main content webpages have a number
of spots where incorporating these keywords
can help with SEO.
First is page titles.
You'll see the page title in the tab
at the top of the web browser window.
It's part of the frame around the page.
Page titles may also show up as the words that link
to the web page in Google search results
as shown in this example on the slide,
Chelsea kimono, Mer-Sea.
Every web page should have a unique title,
short and to the point reflecting what visitors will find
when they get there.
Each web page can also include a meta description.
It's not visible on the page.
It's part of the HTML code.
However it can appear in Google search results.
While adding a meta description doesn't directly improve SEO
it's important because the text that appears
in the search results can influence a searcher's decision
on whether or not to click that link.
You can see how this works in the example on the slide.
The top box shows the meta description
and the box below shows how it could appear
in the search results.
Next, internal links,
the linked text that a user clicks on to get from one page
to another on your site.
Internal links help visitors and Google navigate your site
and they offer another way to incorporate
keywords into content.
In the example shown the link shop the Lisbon
leads to the Lisbon product page.
When creating internal links use descriptive,
accurate phrases, keywords whenever possible,
and make it clear where the link goes.
Avoid generic copy like learn more or click here.
And the final step, send your SEO optimized content live.
Keep repeating this process.
When it comes to SEO a website should not remain static
so regularly review and create new content.
That covers content.
Now let's look at the technical side of things.
Technical SEO refers to ways
that you can adjust your website code
and configuration to help Google find, understand,
display, and improve your webpages.
Even if you don't deal with the technical side
having a deeper understanding can lead to more
productive discussions with your web development team
and potentially better ranking in the search results.
First, help Google discover your site.
It needs to know about your content
in order to show it.
One way to do that is by creating a site map.
A site map is a file that helps Google
and other search engines understand the content on the site
and find new content.
It's not the same as an index or a table of contents
because it's not a page that humans will see or read.
Another way to help is by adding a robots.txt file.
This helps Google understand what content to crawl
or not to crawl on your site.
If you don't have a site map or robots.txt file
and you want to learn more, visit developers.google.com
or talk to your web developer and ask for help.
Assuming Google can find your content,
it's also important that it can understand it.
Here are a few tips.
First, use structured data to highlight important
information on your site.
Structured data is code that marks up website content
to help Google better understand it.
It can be used to highlight content like recipes,
product details, and much more.
Properly implemented markup can show up in special features
in search results called rich snippets or rich results.
Next, canonical link elements can guide Google
to your preferred webpages.
That's helpful when there are duplicate pages on your site.
And third, using a logical URL structure
helps Google understand the content
and how it fits into the website as a whole.
You can learn more about all these things
by visiting developers.google.com.
Last but not least make your website fast.
Speeding up the site's load time
improves the user experience
which can lead to more visits and longer visits.
This can have a positive effect on search results.
One way to do this is to optimize your images.
Smaller images load faster.
You can use techniques like lazy loading,
delaying loading an image until it's needed,
and caching, a way to store images
so that they're retrieved quickly when your webpages load.
Finally use alt text.
It's not visible on the webpage
but it describes an image.
It's valuable to visually impaired people
who use screen readers
and it gives Google additional information
about the content.
There are a couple more resources I want to share.
Google's test my site tool evaluates speed
and user experience on a mobile device.
It also offers personal recommendations
for ways to improve the site.
Try it.
Visit g.co/testmysite and type in your website address.
It scans your site
and tells you the average load time.
Plus it offers recommendations to improve speed,
personalization, and conversions.
You also have the option to enter your email address
and receive a report with more details.
Finally, Google's central hub of SEO information
is called Google search central.
You can get there by visiting developers.google.com/search.
It is tons of information including a quick start guide
for SEO beginners
plus resources designed for business owners
and marketers, developers, and SEO professionals.
If you're not sure where to start, this is the place.
I mentioned many Google tools
and resources that can help you with SEO.
This slide lists them all.
Make some time to check them out.
They can really help with your SEO work.
Thanks again for joining us.
We hope that you enjoyed this really quick workshop
and learned something new about SEO.
See you next time.