30-45 minutes
Google is where ~80% of all user searches originate. If you want your users to find your website, using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in your content helps your site stand out to Google's mysterious algorithms.
Apprentices will be able to:
- Define SEO, its purpose, and how it works
- Learn a few tools (Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google My Business) to measure and experiment with SEO and site performance
- Learn the basics of creating SEO-friendly content
- What we know about Google search algorithms (what it prioritizes in ranking a site)
- Technical details to improve local search results (backlinks, reviews, city, etc)
- Generating SEO-friendly content (content length, titles, meta descriptions, alt tags, custom/secure URLs, etc) to optimize for search rankings
- SEO and analytical tools to analyze site performance-- for mobile-friendly use, understanding the keywords used to find your site, and speed suggestions for optimal user-friendliness
- Google Search Console: https://gsuite.google.com/products/admin/
- Google Analytics: www.google.com/analytics
- Google My Business: www.google.com/business
- Must-Have Social Meta Tags for Twitter, Google+, Facebook and More
- Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/13ROF6Eq4sQwUMFOwDYQPxvCw-vhz5A-Q5gACalNXQyU/edit?usp=sharing
- Video: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iJIUdqWgkZe-8xAHdIIGXOSImIk2-CTI
The overall goal is to make your site findable, but don't forget about:
- Positive user experience (site looks professional, easy to navigate, meets expectations)
- Sustainable/maintainable strategy (SEO shouldn't be so complicated you can't keep up)
- Ensuring you're targeting and securing the right users
- Find and review a screenshot or actual dashboard for Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google My Business.
- Browse and identify a few real examples of SEO-friendly content at work-- from initial search to opening the page and examining its metadata. May be helpful to prepare some examples in advance, especially if Internet access is unreliable.
Review/identify SEO-friendly principles in another example set of content you find yourself. Consider the page title, SEO title, meta description, content, how quickly it loads (try opening it on a mobile device, if possible). What might this site do differently to improve? Or what is it doing that's likely working well?
Review your own portfolio site, connect it to some of the tools learned in this lesson, and make more SEO-friendly updates to the content, metadata, tags, etc.
Have apprentices present/summarize SEO at work (and potential suggestions for improvement) to a partner. Apprentices can use an example of their choice-- such as a random site from the Internet or their own portfolio site.