Presented by Parallel Path Corporation to viaVerio Resellers, May 4, 2010. Describes the basic techniques behind optimizing a website for improved placement on search engine results pages. To learn more about Parallel Path Corporation, visit www.parallelpath.com.

1. SEO Is Easy. Seriously.
Don’t make it harder than it is.

2. The secret to successful SEO is …
Provide quality content, and make it
easy to find

3. GOOGLE’S SEO PHILOSOPHY
“Focus on the user, and all else will follow”
Or, in Google’s words: …

4. What Google Cares About
Three keys to Google’s process that your SEO efforts
must address:
1. Indexing: Can they crawl and index your site?
2. Content: Does the site have good, useful content
relevant to the searched term?
3. Credibility: Do others recommend or reference your
site?

5. It’s Really Just Standard Marcom
The Marcom World
o Audience
o Message
o Medium
The SEO World
o Keywords
o Content
o Linking
Marcom techniques should be
applied on all outbound messaging;
SEO techniques should be applied to
all online communications

6. Keywords Are Not Yours
o Keywords are the connection between what your
searcher is thinking and what you want to tell them
o Here’s how you find the right ones:
• You must put yourself in the mind of the searcher
o How do they describe their problem, not necessarily your
solution?
• PPC data
o Will the keyword lead to a sale?
o All SEO efforts would benefit from PPC data
• Competitor websites
o Can you compete on core keywords, or focus on secondary
ones?
o Look at traffic volume for the keywords on your list

7. Google’s Public Keyword Tool
o https://adwords.google.com/select/
KeywordToolExternal

8. Publish or Perish
o Content is King
o You’re the expert; Google wants to help you tell your
story
o They only care if it’s relevant and fresh
o If you can’t generate it, outsource it
o Remember, content can also be videos, webinars,
images, or podcasts
Put yourself out there!

9. Keywords In Your Content
o Make sure your content has the targeted keywords
• No need to overdo it
• Max 6% keyword density
• Readability is more important than density
o If it’s offsite content, like a press release, make sure
it links to the appropriate web page

10. Maximize Link Value
o Make sure links have descriptive anchor text
Do This
Not That

11. Links: The Map to Your Treasure
o Links from relevant sites to yours tell Google that
your content is valuable
o Similar to the treasure map, linking is the most
valuable aspect of SEO
o Off-site link-building is time-consuming, but doubly
valuable
• Off-site links drive traffic to you
• Off-site links are votes for your relevance
If Content is King, then Linking is
the Queen, and may be more
valuable than the King.

12. Where to Get Links
o Suggestions for link sources:
• Partner firms
• Contributed articles
o Target the most authoritative sites
• Relevant blogs
o Target the highest-traffic blogs
o Links from social media are the dynamic new
element
• Relevant conversations point to relevant content

13. On-Site Links Are Also Valuable
o As you add new content on new pages, link to your
other pages of similar content
o To do this right, start with a content strategy and
map
• Create silos of content categories
o This map has two valuable aspects:
• It makes it easy to add content in an organized
way ..
• .. which lets Google easily digest it, as well

14. Some Valuable Detail
Top 5 Things to Do
1. Keyword research,
including your competition
2. Choose longer-tail
keywords that you can
own
3. Focus on one primary and
two secondary keywords
4. Align all on-page elements
to keyword
5. Build links
Top 5 Things to Avoid
1. Keyword stuffing
2. Impediments to Google’s
crawler
3. Keywords nobody searches
for
4. Duplicating your content
5. Invalid HTML and heavy
code

15. GOOGLE’S SEO PHILOSOPHY
Once you get the traffic to your site, make
sure you give them a reason to take an action
One final thought …