With 1,000's of new sites being born every minute, how SEO can help you stand out from the crowd? Learn how to unleash your SEO potential in the region. This presentation will be covering key aspects of SEO & how to get started to build online visibility on Google by driving quality traffic. • Things you Must Do for an Effective SEO Campaign • 5 Free Tools to Audit your Website Like a Pro • How to Localize your Website for the Region through Arabic SEO • Most Effective Link Building Opportunities

2. SEO Specialist at RBBi
www.rbbideas.com
lin.aljabri@rbbideas.com
With a passion for Digital Marketing, Lin has joined RBBi in 2016 & where she is working across
various industries and clients such as Al-Futtaim Automotive & Qatar Airways to name a few.

6. How do search engines operate ?
Search engines have 4 major steps :
• Crawling the Web with robots
• Indexing collected web pages
• Ranking results by relevance (algorithm)
• Returning results with results page

7. SEO Main Elements

8. What are the most Important elements of Technical SEO
Indexation &
Crawlability
Duplication Issues
URL Structure
Internal linking
Page Speed
Mobile Optimization

9. Indexation and crawlability
• Make sure your robots.txt is not blocking the crawling of all
Search engines:
User agent: *
Disallow: /
• Block folders that you don’t want the crawlers to access.
E.g: confidential pages, terms & conditions, privacy policy,
thank you pages.
• Add the robots.txt file to Google search console.
Example of robots.txt: http://rbbideas.com/robots.txt
Robots.txt
“The first file on a site that a search engine will
look for before indexing a website”

10. Indexation and crawlability
• Add the unique pages to the sitemap and make sure it doesn’t
include 404 pages, redirected pages or duplicated pages.
• Add sitemap.xml to the robots.txt file to enhance crawlability
Of your website.
• Submit the sitemap.xml to Google Search Console
Example of robots.txt: http://rbbideas.com/sitemap_index.xml
Sitemaps.xml:
A sitemap is a file where you list the pages of a website to
tell the search engines about the structure of your website,
what content it has and how frequently it’s updated.

11. Duplication Issues
• Duplication via www. and non www.
E.g: http://www.mydomain.com - http://mydomain.com
• Duplication via trailing slash
E.g: www.mydomain.com/ - www.mydomain.com
• Duplication via http and https
http://www.mydomain.com - https://www.mydomain.com
• Duplication via staging website
301 Redirection
OR
Canonical tag
301 Redirection
to https
Password protection
“ Duplicate content causes confusion for search engine crawlers as
they wouldn’t know which version of the page to rank for query results”
301 Redirection

12. URL Structure
Bad URL structure:

13. URL Structure
Best practices for URL structure:
- Readable by Human Beings
- Use Keywords within the URL
- Avoid Parameters
- Use hyphens to separate the URL words
- The shorter the better
- Use only lower case for all the url characters
http://mydomain.com/blog/maltese-puppies-dancing
Good URL structure:

14. Internal linking
A
B C
D E
Best practices for Internal linking:
- Make sure all your website’s pages are linked and
you don’t have orphan pages.
- Link the important pages from the homepage
- Link content in your blog to other relevant pages on
your website
“Internal links are links that go from one page
on a domain to a different page on the same
domain and help both the crawlers and users
navigate the website”

15. Page speed insight
• A slow page speed means that search
engines can crawl fewer pages using
their allocated crawl budget
• Pages with a longer load time tend to
have higher bounce rates and lower
average time on page.
• Longer load times negatively affect
conversions.

16. Google PageSpeed Insights
• Get a score for your website pages
speed
• Find out what issues you have
• Get a solution for each issue and see
how to do it
• Directly download optimized versions
of the images on your page.
Free online tool:
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

17. Google Mobile Friendly Test
1) Check if your Website is mobile
friendly or not.
2) Find out exactly what issues you have.
3) See the solutions of how to fix those
issues.
Free online tool:
https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-
friendly

18. SEO Main Elements

19. What is Optimized content for SEO?
Content is the 1st point of contact between the users and your
website.
Optimized content means its optimized for both users & robots,
your content must be:
Unique - & not duplicated (Google Panda)
Relevant – Useful information for users & targetting specific
queries
Readable – Easly readable for users & technically accessible
by robots
Relevant
Readable
Unique

20. How to identify relevant keywords for your content ?
1. Identify your keyword universe
Identify a comprehensive list of words that are relevant to your business
and that indicate that the searcher may be interested in your content.
2. Expand the keyword list
Use Google Keyword Adplanner to expand the keyword list and to
understand relative search volumes of all your keywords.
3. Prioritize your list with competition level
Choose the most important keywords that you will be targeting with your
content strategy. Identify the competition level for each keyword with
Moz Keyword Explorer.

21. How to identify relevant keywords for your content ?
4. Identify preferred landing pages
Mapping the priority keywords to specific pages that they are most
relevant to. These pages will be the primary target of your optimization
activities for your priority keywords.
5. Refine your keyword list over time
Review these data sets monthly to identify any new opportunities that
should be integrated into your SEO campaign.

22. Optimizing content with Keywords
• The first 100 words – are focal points for search engines
and users alike so it’s highly important to optimize them.
• Include your main targeted keyword in the title and
introduction of your content
• Diversify keywords in the content
• Be specific about your topic
• Add location
• Avoid stuffing keywords

23. On-page elements (Title tags)
Optimized Title tag:
- Use main keyword as closer to the beginning as possible
- Don’t exceed 70 characters limits
- Include the brand name
- Unique title tag for every page
“One of the most important on-page elements used by Search engines to
understand the proposition of the page and to rank it accordingly”
Ranking Factor

24. On-page elements (Meta-descriptions)
Optimized Meta-descriptions:
- Doesn’t exceed 156 character limits / blog article 139 characters.
- Includes variation of the keywords targeted
- Make it appealing to be clicked on
- Add call to action
- Unique meta-description for every page
“META description tag is used by search engines to populate
the two-line description of a SERP entry, it gives the user an
idea what the page is about” Not a ranking factor

25. Image ALTs
Recommendations for the Image ALTs:
- Make sure that the image alt describes what the image
is about and not completely random.
- Start the image alt tag with “Image of”
- Include the keywords targeted
- Include the location (e.g: dubai abu dhabi….etc)
“The image alt text helps search engines and
people with vision impairment to understand what
an image is about”

26. Semantic Markup Structure
• Every page should have only one <h1> tag and contain a
variation of the keyword the page is intended to rank
for.
• any sub-headings on the page should be marked up
with an <h2>.
• Lastly, the <h3> does not relate to the page’s
proposition at.

27. Screaming Frog
• Get a full list of all the title tags and meta descriptions
and see if they are duplicated or shorter/longer than the
character limit.
• Use the SERP emulator to check how your title tag and
meta-description will look on the SERPs( Search engine
result pages).
• Know which images are missing an Image ALT.
• Identify the h1 – h2 – h3 on every page.
Free Version:
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

28. Copyscape
• Find stolen copies of your pages
• Check the Originality of the articles
you buy from writers
Basic copy:
http://www.copyscape.com/

29. Arabic localization
Why you should localize?
+420 million
Arabic speakers
You are operating
in an Arab region
Very low
competition
Source: Wikipedia – Google events
72.4% prefer buying a product
provided information in their native
language
72.1% prefer visiting websites
using their native language.
Can’t read, Won’t buy…

30. Optimizing for the Arabic Users
1) Don’t Use Google translate
2) Localize your content using
terms used in the region
3) Keep in mind the local culture

31. SEO Main Elements

32. What is link building?
“Link building is the process of
outreaching other websites to
acquire links to your own website”
Things to consider :
• Is it relevant to your industry?
• Does the link adds value to your user?

33. • Creation of paid site-wide link
• Directory submissions
• Creation of unnatural reviews or submission of topics/comments on blogs or forums
• Creation of fake business or social profiles
• Article Submissions
• Submission of Press Releases to PR directories or news sites
• Reciprocal linking, link exchanges or link wheels
• Submission of content to blog networks
• Submission to social bookmarking or sharing sites
outdated link building techniques

34. • Creation of paid site-wide link
• Directory submissions
• Creation of unnatural reviews or submission of topics/comments on blogs or forums
• Creation of fake business or social profiles
• Article Submissions
• Submission of Press Releases to PR directories or news sites
• Reciprocal linking, link exchanges or link wheels
• Submission of content to blog networks
• Submission to social bookmarking or sharing sites
outdated link building techniques

35. Competitors backlinks
“This strategy revolves around
analyzing the link profile of our
competitors and filling the gap between
websites that are linking to
our competitors and not linking to us”

36. Unlinked Brand mentions
“This Strategy is about finding websites
that have mentioned your brand
name without adding a link to it”

37. Partners & Sponsors
“This Strategy is about identifying your
partners or sponsors and outreaching
them to gain links for your website”

38. MOZ PRO
1) Identify if there’s any mention of your
brand name in the last month using
Fresh Web Explorer
2) Find out what backlinks your
competitors have by using Open Web
Explorer
Free 30 days trial:
https://moz.com/products/pro

39. References
URL structure Best practices:
https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls
Guide to Google Search Console:
https://moz.com/blog/a-beginners-guide-to-the-google-search-console
Things to do with Screaming Frog:
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/screaming-frog-guide/
Dealing with Duplication Issues:
https://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content
Beginners guide to link building:
https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building
Technical Audit checklist:
https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015

40. Any Questions?

41. Thank you!