SEO Training: Search Engine Optimization Course

1. Introducing the search engines and basic concepts
   1. Why are search engines, and their traffic, so important?
      1. A brief history of the not so connected web
      2. One or 1000s: who are the major players, domestically and internationally
         1. Google, "Yahoo", Bing, Yandex and others
         2. Key differences
      3. What is Search Engine Marketing?
         1. Natural, or organic, Search Engine Optimization – SEO
            1. The three C's of search engine optimization
               1. Content
               2. Community
               3. Coding
            2. SEO Goals
               1. Qualified vs. Indiscriminate traffic
                  1. Positioning? Conversion, actually.
                     1. Converting visitors into clients
            3. Common approaches
               1. Merit-based™, a.k.a. White Hat
               2. Trick or Manipulate engine, a.k.a. Black Hat
         2. Sponsored results
            1. Transparent pay per click – PPC / SEA
               1. Advantages and disadvantages
               2. When to use
               3. Compatibility with SEO
            2. Paid Inclusion; express inclusion
2. Search engine optimization strategy
   1. Benefits
      1. Site Traffic
         1. Demographics
         2. Cost relative to PPC / SEA
         3. Eye tracking studies
      2. Site quality and usability
      3. Applicability to different search engines
   2. Prerequisites for success
      1. Internal staffing
      2. Site updates
3. How users search the web or how search marketing is different
   1. Navigator's mindset
   2. Typical search queries
4. Overview: definitions
   1. SEO – Search Engine Optimization
   2. SEM – Search Engine Marketing
   3. SEP – Search Engine Positioning
   4. SEA – Search Engine Advertising = PPC – Pay per click
5. Behind the scenes: how search engines work
   1. Search engine crawling and indexing
      1. How it works
      2. Tools to see what the search engines see
      3. Depth and frequency
         1. How to get a site indexed quickly and often in Google and the other search engines
      4. Exclusions: use robots.txt, meta tags noindex, noarchive, noodp to keep content out of search engines
   2. Relevance weighting – search engine ranking algorithms
      1. Google PageRank™ & TrustRank
         1. How Google PageRank is calculated
         2. How to view Google's page rank
         3. Is Google's PageRank important?
         4. How often is Google's PageRank updated?
         5. What is TrustRank?
      2. Yahoo! Web Rank
      3. Microsoft Bing
      4. Ask
   3. I'm not seeing what you see.... (why ranking reports are obsolete)
      1. Data centers
      2. Algorithm changes
      3. Selective user interface tests
      4. Personalization
   4. Latest developments
6. Compelling content
   1. Content types
      1. Text
         1. html
         2. the others: pdf, doc, odt et al.
      2. Audiovisual
         1. Images
         2. Audio, i.e. mp3 podcasts
         3. Video
   2. Uniqueness
   3. Freshness
   4. Length
   5. Keywords
      1. Keyword selection
         1. Audience demographics
         2. Lookup tools
            1. Publicly accessible tools
            2. Paid usage tools
            3. Internationalization
            4. Data source considerations
            5. Current state review
         3. Spelling
         4. Grammar: plurality, gender
         5. Broad and narrow matching
         6. The long tail
         7. Competitor analysis
      2. Integration into page
         1. Important on-page elements
         2. Linking
            1. Anatomy of a link
            2. Importance
               1. User
               2. Search Engine
         3. Internationalization issues
         4. Usability issues
         5. Keyword density and frequency – use and limits
         6. Proximity
   6. Written for whom?
      1. How users read a web page
      2. Is there a call to action?
      3. The number one problem with content on most company websites
   7. Getting visitors to click on your content in search engine results – regardless of the position
   8. Make vs. buy: the cost of quality content
7. Community: off-site presence and traffic generation
   1. External linking strategy, a.k.a. link development basics
      1. Why a linking strategy is important
         1. Direct traffic
         2. Search Engines
      2. Hanging out in bad company
      3. Did say you paid for it?
      4. Some links are more equal than others
      5. Quantity? Quality?
   2. Who are your friends
      1. Tools to identify existing links
         1. Tools that work
         2. Unreliable Tools
      2. Review and improve existing links
      3. Reciprocal and triangular linking
   3. Who's linking to the competition?
   4. Blogs and forums
      1. Comments
      2. RSS feeds
      3. Pings and trackback
   5. Social Media
   6. Directories and similar resources
   7. Online PR
   8. Viral and other campaigns
   9. Appraising the quality of a link
8. Code: optimizing a site
   1. Choosing and managing domains
      1. Top-level domain
      2. Sub-domains
      3. Multiple languages
      4. www vs. non-www
      5. dashes yes, dashes no
      6. hosting
      7. expiration
      8. redirects
      9. seasoning
      10. prior life
      11. Stacking the decks
   2. Designing or relaunching a site
      1. Directory structure
         1. Subject silos
         2. Facilitating the two for one!
         3. Depth
      2. URLs
         1. naming
            1. dashes vs. underscores
            2. length
      3. Pages
         1. Titles
            1. Usability issues
            2. Search engine issues
            3. Company name, yes or no? At beginning or end?
         2. Meta tags
            1. Facts and fiction
            2. Meta description tag
            3. Meta keywords tag
            4. Meta content tags
               1. language
               2. character set
            5. Order and placement
         3. Headings
         4. Alt attributes (images)
         5. Templates
         6. JavaScript
            1. Navigation
            2. Include files
            3. Search engine use
         7. CSS
            1. Tables vs. CSS
            2. Include files
            3. Printable pages
         8. Validation
            1. Tools
            2. Usability issues
            3. Search engine aspects
         9. Comments
         10. Renaming
             1. Redirecting
      4. Security: area is off-limits
         1. robots.txt pros and cons
         2. meta tag pros and cons
         3. password protection
         4. file types indexed
      5. Duplicate content
         1. Printable pages
         2. Blog entries
         3. Multiple domains
         4. Index pages
      6. Session IDs
      7. Content Management Systems (CMS)
      8. Flash animation based sites
         1. Full vs. partial
         2. Typical problems
         3. Valid solutions
         4. What to avoid
      9. Gotcha!
         1. Drop-down lists
         2. JavaScript links and navigation
         3. Passwords
         4. Frames
         5. Forms
         6. Database driven dynamic pages
         7. Application action + get request
         8. Ajax
   3. Internationalization
      1. How search engines identify a page's language – and what to do
      2. Language «dialects», e.g. US vs. UK English, German in Austria, Switzerland and Germany
      3. Multi-lingual websites
         1. How to best structure multi-lingual websites for search engines and users
            1. Automatically directing users to «theirlanguage (and letting them override your choice)
            2. Optimizing for search engines
            3. accented characters
9. Managing a site
   1. Submitting a site
      1. Submit a URL manually or with software (and why you shouldn't bother)
      2. Sitemaps, pros and cons
      3. Other techniques
   2. Site Maintenance
   3. Changing a site's domain name
10. Local Search
    1. What is it and why do I care?
    2. Where does the data come from?
    3. What should I do?
11. Reputation management
    1. Monitoring
    2. Protecting
    3. Stolen content
       1. Verification
       2. Reporting
12. Aggressive SEO: Innocent traps, dubious techniques and guideline infringements
    1. Is your brand worth risking?
       1. A bit of history: sites banned from Google
    2. What's worth doing is worth overdoing?
    3. Landing / doorway pages
       1. Campaigns vs. search engines
       2. Avoiding the appearance of impropriety (while improving your campaign accuracy!)
       3. Every page is a landing page!
    4. Cloaking vs. browser or ip delivery: selective targeting to users or search engines?
       1. What is it?
       2. Why search engines prohibit cloaking
       3. Can I target different users with different content?
    5. Hidden text
       1. Style or CSS attributes
       2. Comment text
    6. What to do when your site gets banned from a search engine
13. Measuring success – a brief introduction to tracking SEO results with Web Analytics
    1. Basic Web Analytics metrics to watch
    2. Web Analytics Tools
       1. Types: server log files vs. browser JavaScript tags
       2. «Freetools
       3. Commercial tools
    3. Measuring ROI (return on investment)
       1. Defining KPIs (key performance indicators: goals / objectives)
       2. Capturing the baseline
       3. Measuring improvements (or regressions!)
    4. Getting feedback from the search engines
       1. Dashboards
       2. Commercial tools and some considerations
       3. APIs – application programming interfaces
    5. Crawling check – are search engines deeply crawling your site?
14. Searching on mobile devices
    1. What qualifies as a mobile device?
    2. Putting things in perspective: a few statistics on mobile use
    3. Types of mobile searches
       1. Text
       2. Voice
       3. Predictive
       4. Local discovery
    4. User behavior
    5. Design and implementation considerations
       1. Mobile site development and search engines, e.g. responsive design
       2. Landing pages
       3. Mobile sitemaps, yes or no?
    6. Engaging with mobile users
    7. Trends
    8. Measurement
15. Search niches – verticals and other media types
16. Next steps: defining and implementing a SEO strategy
17. In conclusion
    1. User vs. search engine or user and search engine?
    2. Seeing into the (near) future
    3. Selected readings and resources
18. Q & A
    1. Ad hoc site reviews of sites suggested by course participants
19. Participant feedback

¹Subject to modification. We adjust the content of our courses based on student needs and current industry developments.

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