A small example of what I learned during my day-seminar at IAB Canada, please contact me if you want to learn more.

1. A Look into the beginnings of…
Search Engine
Optimization (SEO)
By Jessica Dunning
Advertising & Integrated Marketing Communications
March 2014 St. Lawrence College

2. Over 2.16 trillion internet searches are conducted each month;
Canadians make up 4.8 billion of these searches – primarily conducted using
Google, Bing and Yahoo with the remainder of the populace using Ask, AOL or
other lesser sites.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about understanding your audience
in order to give them value. It’s about ‘link building;’ the more links you have,
the more popularity you will gain & the more notice you will get creating hits
and ratings. SEO is the process of enhancing the visibility of a brand’s online
web presence in organic search, where organic search results are organized
according to relevance.
A search engine results page is divided into two sections (out of three.)
Paid search results are shown above the top and along the right side (usually in
a slightly different coloured background or box. Paid Search is the process of
gaining visibility and traffic (to your brand’s online web presence) through
sponsored listing and other biddable media, where advertisers only pay for
each click on an ad. The organic search results (unpaid for) are in the middle
and continue as you scroll down the page.
SEO is all about consumer behaviour to gain results; most viewers look to
organic results when they are browsing or doing research on items or
information without and recommendations or reference. Viewers turn to paid
search results when they have made a decision and are looking for a specific
deal or listing that suits what they are looking for.

3. So how does SEO work specifically? They have three steps… spiders,
algorithms and scores. Search Engine Spiders are software programs that follow
links posted from website to website, page to page and index the information
into databases. These databases are used later for scoring and ranking.
Search engine algorithms are basically a unique formula that uses the data
collected by spiders to determinethe significance of a web page. They
determine if a web page is real or just spamand many other features to rank
and list results, making an organized search engine results page.
Finally the website with the highest score gets ranked first; the next is
second…etc. But typically no one looks for results after the first 2-5 pages.
Using keywords helps search engines to rank your page against your
competition – driving your business and help to increase your relevancy when
spiders are looking for you. To think of keywords plainly… think about when you
blog. You tag each post you make with keywords to either a) organize your
posts to make it easier for viewers (e.g. posts about college life, posts about
anaphylaxis, posts about recipes…etc.) and to b) help them show up in organic
search results when you search for these specific words (e.g. your post about
gluten-free chocolate cake may show up 5th
on the 3rd
search results page
depending on how many viewers it’s gotten and how many people share and
forward the post.) Each page of a website van typically target between 1-3
terms & words. The more specific a keyword phrase, the less competition you
will have and the sooner the viewer will find you.
Start off your keyword strategy by brainstorming as many words that have to do

4. with your key products, services and their various names, brand names and
problems (e.g. LCD TVs, LED TVs, TV installation, Plasma, 3D TVs, HD TVs,
grainy LCD TVs, unclear HD TVs…etc.) Also talk to your clients to figure out
what words they use to describe your products/services – they most likely don’t
know or understand your business lingo so why would you use it for your
keywords. Google Keyword Tool, Bing Keyword Research Tool, WordTracker
(free or paid) and Google Trends are some of the most used planners to help
with the entire process.
On-Page Factors work along with your keywords in a way; they are the
details of what your website is about, these details are what you (as the
website owner) communicate to search engines (e.g. when you read the short
1-3 sentence description under the website homepage link-in the organic
search results.) These factors can be your title tag (what’s shown at the very
top of the screen above the URL address and the ‘back & ‘forward’ buttons,)
domain name, internal anchor test (e.g. does your sidebar say ‘Electronics’
instead of divining everything into ‘Cameras, Televisions, Accessories…etc.’)
headings, the first 50-100 words on a page…etc. For example, if your keywords
have to do with televisions then why would you have the title tag in your
webpage state ‘Costco-Electronics-Televisions-Windows Internet Explorer’ it
should be reverse, the important most relevant keywords in order. Never lead
with your brand name.
After your process is all finished and you’re starting to witness and
review your results it’s time to do a Content Audit. This lets you access which

5. keyword terms and content aren’t helping your ranking. First, look into social
metrics against your competitors (likes, shares, retweets, comments…etc.)
Next look into your content hierarchy; does every page have a link to the pages
you are using your keywords with? More frankly, do all of your pages link back
and forth to each other in the first place? Check to make sure that all of your
links work properly. Finally, is there an indexing problem? Check to make sure
that your website is listed in the search engines index (sometimes spiders miss
sites.) Copy your URL address and paste it into the search engines search box
and see if your URL even appears in the results.