VF_SEO_Playbook_012419

VISIT FLORIDA SEO Best Practices Guide January 2019 This playbook is intended to provide a general overview of some key components of SEO, why they’re important, and best practices to follow. It is organized into two broad categories: 1. On-page SEO, or optimizing content that you control and author in order to attract visitors via search engines. Search engines find, catalog and rank website content based on user queries and provide that content back to the user in the form of search engine results. 2. Off-page SEO, or the practice of working with other sites and website partners to gain links to your site. This not only drives site traffic from clicks on those links but can also help influence search engine ranking for your content. Consider a link a vote or +1 for your search rank. For a quick free on-page SEO audit of your website, visit www.beebyclarkmeyler.com/vf-seoaudit

Table of Contents Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................. 2 General Introduction: Definition and Importance of SEO....................................................................... 3 SECTION 1.1 ON-PAGE SEO: Page Content..................................................................................... 4 SERP (Search Engine Results Page) Overview .................................................................................... 5 Page Content Theme............................................................................................................................. 6 Keywords and Keyword Research ......................................................................................................... 7 Internal Site Search ............................................................................................................................... 8 Page Body Content................................................................................................................................ 9 Video SEO........................................................................................................................................... 10 Location / Local SEO ........................................................................................................................... 11 Duplicate Content ................................................................................................................................ 12 SECTION 1.2 ON-PAGE SEO: Meta Data ......................................................................................... 13 URL Optimization................................................................................................................................. 14 Optimizing Page Titles......................................................................................................................... 15 Headings – H1, H2, H3… .................................................................................................................... 16 Meta Description.................................................................................................................................. 17 Image ALT Tags .................................................................................................................................. 18 SECTION 1.3 ON-PAGE SEO: Technical SEO.................................................................................. 19 XML Sitemaps ..................................................................................................................................... 20 Robots.txt Optimization........................................................................................................................ 21 Redirects ............................................................................................................................................. 22 Canonical URLs................................................................................................................................... 23 NOINDEX Directive ............................................................................................................................. 24 Crawl Errors......................................................................................................................................... 25 Page Speed......................................................................................................................................... 26 Mobile Friendliness.............................................................................................................................. 27 SECTION 2.0 OFF-PAGE SEO: Links and Domain Authority ............................................................. 28 External Links – “Backlinks”................................................................................................................. 29 Domain and Page Authority ................................................................................................................. 30 Internal Links and Anchor Text ............................................................................................................ 31 Social Sharing ..................................................................................................................................... 32 APPENDIX .......................................................................................................................................... 33 Free Tools and Resources................................................................................................................... 34 SEO Anatomy of a Web Page ............................................................................................................. 36 2

General Introduction: Definition and Importance of SEO SEO is the art and science of optimizing a website to increase the quality and quantity of organic traffic through search engine results. Done well, SEO turns a website into a powerful marketing tool: • Higher search rankings deliver greater visibility, traffic, and perceived credibility • Cost-effective, with traditionally higher ROI than other marketing channels • Evergreen and 24/7 • “Free” traffic lowers customer acquisition costs • Reaches consumers in all stages of consideration funnel • Highly measurable • Generates powerful 1st-party data about customers and provides a means to retarget them • Search queries signal consumer intent and inform product/service development • If you don’t, your competitors will In the case of visitflorida.com, nearly 70 percent of all site traffic comes from Organic Search that is driven by SEO. VisitFlorida.com Traffic Source Share Social (Other) 4% 6% Paid Search 8% Direct 11% Organic Search 69% 3

SECTION 1.1 ON-PAGE SEO: Page Content In SEO, content is still considered KING. Yes, links are important, but without good content, there will be nobody linking to your site or its pages. First and foremost, it is critical to develop high-quality, useful content that people will spend time reading and want to share with others. This is the type of content, if optimized for SEO, that Google will give the most love to in search rankings. The best practices in this section speak to those aims. 4

SERP (Search Engine Results Page) Overview Desktop Paid and Organic Search complement each other, Paid and yet each offers unique value: Search • Paid Search can target important terms currently not ranking well for organic search and it’s completely controllable in terms of timing and creative messaging. • Organic Search is “evergreen,” continually driving awareness at a generally lower cost. It’s important to remember that we ultimately want Our Organic clicks on these results, and yet even without a click, Search there is strong awareness value in the impression Competitors share of simply getting your business in front of the viewer. Organic Google is constantly evolving to monetize its Search platform, increasing the challenge to rank organically. Mobile The challenges to appear above the fold in desktop are evident, but they are even more accentuated in mobile, where organic results are almost always on the second and third downward scroll on most devices. As mobile usage is starting to surpass desktop for both search and website visitation, and Google continues evolve to monetize, it’s extremely important to work to rank as high as possible in organic to gain maximum impression share. SEO requires continual efforts to gain – and maintain– rank over our competitors.

Page Content Theme BACKGROUND Upon finding a page, search engines will “index” that page. Essentially, the search engine will analyze the page content and determine where the page should rank against pages with similar content when a user makes a query related to the content. Helping the search engines find and understand the contents of each page is the primary goal for on-page SEO. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS Search engines review many elements of a site and its pages to determine what a page is about. Together, these elements make up the page content “theme.” The more elements of a page we can affect with SEO, the better the chance of achieving the desired content rank. ~~~ CONTENT THEME • Each page should have a unique content theme. A page comprised of multiple themes will split the SEO strength of search keywords related to that topic. • Utilize primary keywords as well as related or semantically equivalent keywords within your content, body copy and META tags. • Ensure that your page is unique and not a theme duplicate of other pages within the site. If it is, alter the themes of the competing pages so that each is unique, and you can direct full SEO strength to those of your choosing. 6

Keywords and Keyword Research BACKGROUND Search engines understand content primarily via examining text, focusing on a single topic by way of specific keywords. Research and prioritization of target keywords generally consider overall marketing objectives, search volume, and search engine competitiveness. This research serves to identify the priority keywords that will become the focus of ongoing optimizations and content development. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS Keyword research will, at the very least, give a directional view of keywords that people are already searching for and have “monthly search volume.” While in-depth research can be lengthy and include competitor reviews, paid search data reviews, multiple third-party tool reviews, etc., there are some basic means to get a high-level read on top keywords related to your subject matter. ~~~ KEYWORD RESEARCH BASIC METHODS • Utilize Google Suggest by simply typing your topic into Google Search. The auto-populated results text is driven by actual search volume and is a quick first clue for keywords. • Create a free Google AdWords account and utilize the “Keyword Planner.” Keyword Planner will show keywords related to your inputs as well as directional search volume. • Don’t be afraid to use “long-tail keywords,” which are keyword phrases with three words or more. Although these keywords may not have the same volume as one- and two-word keywords, you will likely have greater opportunity to rank for these terms because they’re not utilized by as many competitors. Ex. “beach” vs. “beaches with lifeguards on duty.” There is a balance between search volume and opportunity to rank that must be taken into consideration. 7

Internal Site Search BACKGROUND Another great way to do some easy keyword search is to look at the search queries that people use when they’re on your site. (This assumes, of course, that you have a search option built in to your site.) ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS People may come to your site with an idea of what they’re looking for and use your site’s search feature to seek that content. Your site’s analytics should track those search queries. If you note a large number of searches for a particular keyword, that’s a strong indication that people are interested in that kind of content. ~~~ SITE SEARCH • If your site doesn’t have an embedded search feature, speak to your developer about adding one and how you can track the searches made. • Based on this search data, consider adding content to the site in line with the user queries. In addition, if you already have this content, consider updating navigation to make this content easy to find. 8

Page Body Content BACKGROUND Search engines look at hundreds of factors, especially text, when determining the rank for a given page. Optimized body copy is a primary factor. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS Well written, useful content will have the best chance to rank high for the keyword phrases that you’ve decided to target. And, if your content is found by readers to be useful, it has a higher likelihood of being shared and linked to, which is also beneficial to search engine rank. Keep in mind that searchers are looking for answers to questions. Their questions may be as direct as “best beaches for weddings in Florida” or as vague as “best beaches in Florida.” Try to anticipate and answer in your body copy the questions a user may have searched for. ~~~ BODY COPY BEST PRACTICES • Copy length matters… to a degree. When all other optimizations are considered equal, longer, more useful content usually has a greater chance to outrank competitors. Consider 600 words a content minimum for any given page. • Write naturally and include your primary keywords, secondary keywords and semantic equivalents. This helps search engines further understand the page content theme. • Use your primary keyword in the first 100 words and use it 1-2 times for every additional 100 words. But, be careful not to overuse it. “Keyword stuffing” can hurt more than help. • Use bulleted lists to help the user understand a multifaceted topic. • Consider using italics or boldface to call out important keywords where it makes sense. • Include links to related pages within your site. • It’s ok to include 1-2 links to other informative sites if this is in line with business goals. • Search engines like fresh content. Small updates to your content over time will let search engines know you are keeping it updated and they will come back more often to index it. 9

Video SEO BACKGROUND As with still images, adding contextually relevant text that describes a video helps search engines understand what that video is about. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS Google certainly favors videos on YouTube vs. those on a website, but there’s opportunity to increase rank if your site has video embedded—most notably when videos are shared. Creating useful, sharable video content has potential to gain backlinks, which are valuable to increasing search engine rank. ~~~ Video Content Best Practices • Describe your video. If it makes sense, consider adding a transcript (or a portion of it) to the page content. • Name your video with a file name that includes your primary and/or secondary keywords. • Enable sharing. • Use an attractive thumbnail image. This entices users to play and watch the video and may also be displayed in search results. • More info and best practices from Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156442?hl=en&ref_topic=2370565 10

Location / Local SEO BACKGROUND Local SEO is the practice of optimizing page content to attract searches for products or services in the same area from which searches are being made -- or if your location is included in the search query. Making sure that search engines know where you are located is of prime importance in order to take advantage of these types of searches. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS Local SEO is key for businesses that are specific to a region, have multiple locations, or are in a very competitive locale. Local search has become increasingly important because… 1. Search engines have become smarter and more adept at understanding the location of a searcher and providing results that are most convenient to the user (even when specific locations are not included in the query) 2. Mobile devices have become the primary device by which people access information 3. Proliferation in virtual assistants has driven major increases in voice searches, which are 3x more likely to be local-based than text-based queries ~~~ Local SEO Best Practices • Ensure your “NAPU” (name, address, phone, URL) are accurate and consistent in your page content and Meta Tags. This can be on an “about us” or “contact page,” but also consider including your address in the site footer as well. • Create content on your site that speaks to your general location. Include mentions of neighboring towns and cities that you serve. • Set up a Google My Business page here: https://www.google.com/business/how-it- works/?ppsrc=GPDA2. This will give searchers – as well as Google - your information. • List your business on Yelp, Bing, YP.com, etc. See a list here: https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/06/top-free- business-listing-sites.html • Request links from other local partners and businesses in your area. 11

Duplicate Content BACKGROUND For good SEO, a primary goal is to ensure that search engines can easily crawl your site and understand and index the content of its pages. When we make things more difficult for search engines, we will likely lose favor in the search engine results pages (SERP’s). Duplicate content between different URLs forces the search engine to decide which page it should rank higher for a given search query. Also consider that each site gets something of a search “budget,” and a search engine will spend only a short amount of time when indexing your site. If we’re offering to a search engine duplicate or unimportant content, that will take search budget from other pages it should be finding. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS If your content is duplicative, search engines will split SEO “juice” to both (or more) pages, thereby reducing the strength across those pages. This allows a competitor page to take more of the SEO strength and possibly rank higher than yours. ~~~ Duplicate Content Considerations • Ensure the content you’re creating isn’t exactly the same as other pages in your site or other sites. • Find differentiators in your content to add some focus to one page vs. another. • Do not duplicate any aspects of page content, i.e., Content, Titles, Descriptions, Image Tags, etc. • More info from Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en 12

SECTION 1.2 ON-PAGE SEO: Meta Data Meta Data is, quite simply, data within the markup of the page HTML code that describes other data. It is generally not visible to the viewer of your web pages, but search engines DO find and read this Meta Data and use it to inform search engine rank. 13

URL Optimization BACKGROUND The words in your page URLs are a part of your content theme and should include keywords that are in line with your page content. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS At one point, the words in a domain name were very influential to search engines, but this has become less of a factor in recent years. URLs in general, though, still command some strength for SEO. That includes the domain name and the other words in the URL. URLs that are easy to read help not only the viewer of the page, but also give search engines a starting point to understand what your page content is about. ~~~ URL Naming Best Practices • Include primary keywords in your URL. • Include subdirectories that make sense to the user but also have some benefit to the search engine. For example, the URL https://www.visitflorida.com/en-us/cities/lakeland.html includes a hierarchy made of beneficial keywords -- “Florida,” “cities,” and “Lakeland” -- that makes it easy for the visitor and the search engine to understand what the content of this page is likely to be about. • More info from Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/76329?hl=en • Keep URL’s to a total length of 75 characters whenever possible 14

Optimizing Page Titles BACKGROUND Early SEO practice focused almost entirely on optimizing Meta tags (most commonly the Meta Keywords, Meta Description, and Title element tag), but most SEO professionals agree that today, the ability to manipulate a site’s ranking in the major search engines by optimizing Meta tags alone is limited. Some Meta tags, such as the Meta Keywords tag, are largely ignored by the leading search engines and others, such as the Meta Description tag, have relatively little impact on actual ranking. The TITLE element tag, however, is still an influential element for on-page SEO and is used by all major search engines to help classify and rank content. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS While a title is not technically a “Meta” tag, it is usually part of Meta updates. If only one change can be made to a page, it should be to the Title attribute. For terms that are not very competitive, a good Title element can often be enough to secure a high placement in the SERPs. Since Title elements are one of the most important on-page factors, ensuring that they include keywords designed to generate rankings and search traffic is important. Too often, marketers choose Title elements at random or use an ineffective keyword like “home page,” “welcome to Brand X,” etc. The goal is to include targeted, meaningful keywords in a site’s Title elements, written naturally and then supported throughout the rest of the page with deep, keyword-rich content and correct HTML structure. ~~~ Page Title Best Practices • Utilize priority keyword in beginning of Title. • Write naturally, while limiting use of superfluous words. • Keep Titles to about 60 characters* so they don’t get truncated in search results (which are dictated by width in pixels for Google). • Do not duplicate Titles. As with the entirety of the unique page content theme, the Title should also be specific to a given page’s theme. * Titles are actually measured by Google to a maximum of 600 pixels, so character count can vary and is usually between 55-65 characters • More info from Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?hl=en 15

Headings – H1, H2, H3… BACKGROUND Page and Section Headings are usually defined in a site’s style sheet and are used primarily to format text on a page, or even globally throughout the entire site. The primary Heading tag is usually encoded by an “<H1>” html tag and sub content headings are “<H2>”, etc. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS Though they are formatting tags, search engines consider Headings to be important to the page’s content. If you have identified such tags as a section focus in your content, a search engine will also give them some importance in understanding and ranking the page. Make sure to use your primary keyword in your primary H1 tag and your secondary and equivalent keywords in your tags for H2, H3, etc.. ~~~ HEADING TAGS BEST PRACTICES • Tag the lead page heading as an <h1> • Utilize primary keywords within your lead heading. • Utilize <h2>, <h2> tags for sub-headings. • Use secondary and tertiary keywords in your tagged sub-headings. 16

Meta Description BACKGROUND Meta Descriptions are part of page code not seen by users as part of the page content and don’t have any value as far as search engine ranking. However, Meta Descriptions are part of search engine results pages, and along with the Page Title, are the first opportunity to engage with the searcher and entice them to click. Consider this copy as soft ad copy. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS While the Meta Description is not seen by page viewers and the Description content does not influence rank on Google search engine results pages, optimized Meta Description copy can entice your user to click through to your site from search engine results. A first-place rank can take as much as 30-35 percent of all clicks from Organic Search. ~~~ Meta Description Best Practices • Keep Descriptions to about 160 characters. More than that and search engines may truncate your Description. • Write naturally and include your primary keywords. They will be bolded in SERP’s. • Include a soft Call To Action that may further entice the user to click on your link from search. • Consider gaining data from the paid search team on high-performing ad copy for a keyword they promote that you also want to use. Don’t copy it word for word, but allow it to influence your final Description • More info from Google: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2007/09/improve-snippets- with-meta-description.html 17

Image ALT Tags BACKGROUND Though search engines have become progressively smarter, they still aren’t 100 percent accurate in retrieving information from the contents of an image. This is sure to change over time but for now, search engines rely on text added as meta information (ALT Tags) or caption text around an image to better understand the image contents. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS Google processes trillions of search queries annually, and estimates are that about 20 percent of all search is image related. Helping search engines better understand the contents of an image will allow a better chance for that image to rank for a given user query. Image ALT Tags are also used by screen readers for those with visual impairments. Plus, the text of an ALT Tag contributes to the search engine’s understanding of the overall page content theme. ~~~ Image ALT Tags Best Practices • Describe your image as you would want a screen reader to read it to someone who can’t see it. o E.g. “Family playing beachball on a beautiful beach in Destin, FL.” • Use 128 characters or less. • Include primary keywords, and when more than one image is included on a page, make sure to use keyword equivalents. • If your image allows for a text caption near it, include a short one that utilizes your keywords. • More info and best practices from Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/114016?hl=en 18

SECTION 1.3 ON-PAGE SEO: Technical SEO Technical SEO, as its name suggests, refers to technical aspects of a site’s pages that also facilitate the finding and indexing of content by search engines. These include elements such as site maps, proper implementation of redirects, optimization of page speed, and mobile friendliness. 19

XML Sitemaps BACKGROUND As sophisticated as they may be, search engines don’t crawl all pages on the web. Every site has a crawl budget that search engines develop depending on the size of the site and how often it learns that content is updated. An XML Sitemap is a list of pages provided to search engines that helps them understand the highest priority pages of your site. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS For a large site, having every page found and indexed by the search engines can be a challenge. An XML Sitemap increases the chance for this to happen. ~~~ XML SITEMAP BEST PRACTICES • Develop your XML Sitemap and save the file in the root of your server. • Submit your sitemap file to Google using Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster tools. • For other search engines, add a reference to your sitemap to your robots.txt file so that the engines can find and read it. • Add parameters for frequently updated pages that tell search engines the frequency at which the pages are updated. • Separate sitemap files can be created to media files. Create separate xml sitemaps for images and videos on your site. • More info from Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156184?hl=en 20

Robots.txt Optimization BACKGROUND We can’t force search engines to do what we want them to, but we can encourage them by using elements that inform them of certain parameters of our site. One of the ways we can do this is with a robots.txt that is saved in the root of the server. The robots.txt file may be used to give direction to search engine “spiders,” which are the automated robots that crawl the web finding content to index. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS These instructions may be inclusive and help guide spiders to your XML Sitemap. Exclusion directives can be very helpful to block certain areas of your site where you may want to prevent a server from being overwhelmed by requests, prevent certain media files from appearing in search results, or block unimportant script or style files. ~~~ Robots.txt Best Practices • Name your file robots.txt and place it in the root directory of your site. • Use the disallow directive to block pages you don’t want search engines to find such as an admin area or a customer login area. • Disallow known spambots from crawling ANY area of your site. • Add a reference to your XML Sitemap file so that search engines will know where to find it. • Use robots.txt to block search engines from finding your staging and development domains. • **A WORD OF CAUTION: The robots.txt file can be used to block your entire site from search engines. Be careful when using the disallow directive. • More information from Google: https://developers.google.com/search/reference/robots_txt 21

Redirects BACKGROUND Redirects are used when a URL is changed or removed. When a URL changes, there will still be requests for that URL, whether from clicks on search engine results, user bookmarks, referring sites or other sources. The requested URL that no longer exists should be redirected to a working URL. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS For SEO, when a URL is indexed by a search engine, it is given a score that determines its rank. When URLs occasionally need to change for optimization reasons or business needs, the right type of redirect will pass the SEO value to the URL you’ve redirected it to. If there is no redirect, that SEO value will be lost. Redirects can be implemented at the page level but should be implemented at the server level before the page has a chance to load. There are different types of redirects that are all implemented at the server level. It’s the “301” server redirect that essentially tells search engines that “this page has moved to a new URL, so please send with it any SEO strength it had to the new page.” ~~~ REDIRECT BEST PRACTICES • Utilize 301 redirects at the server level for passing SEO strength to the new page. • Redirect pages to URLs that are similar to the URL that was removed. This will provide a better opportunity for the new URL to rank well for similar keywords. • Make sure that there’s only one redirect for any page. A “redirect chain” where a page redirects to a URL that redirects to another, etc. will confuse search engines and can create a poor experience as users wait for final pages to be delivered. • Update any links that pointed to the old page to now point to the new one. Although the 301 redirect is a useful tool, it’s always a better situation when search engines crawl the primary page and not one that redirects to another. • More info from Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93633?hl=en 22

Canonical URLs BACKGROUND A Canonical URL tag is an HTML element that helps prevent duplicate content issues. It does this by specifying the “canonical URL,” the “preferred” version of a web page that might be considered duplicative. The canonical reference will tell search engines, “don’t index this URL, index this other URL.” ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS Avoiding duplicate content isn’t always easy, but having duplicate content is usually problematic. CMS logic or other issues may create multiple versions of URLs. When this happens, the strength of all these pages is likely weakened because the search engines are forced to decide which URL to rank for a given query. The canonical tag directs the search engine to give strength to only one primary URL and display that one in search results. ~~~ CANONICAL URL BEST PRACTICES • Use canonical reference URLs whenever you have duplicate content pages. • Do not use canonicals to reference other, unrelated pages. • More info and examples: o https://yoast.com/rel-canonical/ o https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en 23

NOINDEX Directive BACKGROUND Content that is irrelevant for your site’s visitors is also problematic for search engines and, like duplicative content, can prevent ranking well against competitors. When you have content that you don’t need people or search engines to find, the NOINDEX directive should be used. It directs search engines to not index the content on a page level basis. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS Search engines are very hungry for content. They’ll find all pages of your site given enough time. Sometimes these pages, such as admin or other private areas of the site, should not be found. You want to prevent search engines from finding these pages for obvious reasons, but also because you don’t want search engines wasting their crawl budget on pages you don’t care for them to find. The NOINDEX directive to search engines will keep them from reading any of that content on your pages. ~~~ NOINDEX BEST PRACTICES • Use NOINDEX to completely block a page from being indexed. • Use with CAUTION! You are telling search engines to ignore the pages you have NOINDEX on. • More info and implementation examples from Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en 24

Crawl Errors BACKGROUND Search engines “crawl” through websites to find new and changed pages. The easier you make it for search engines to crawl your site, the better chance you have that all of your pages will be found and ranked. Crawl errors might involve broken pages or images, redirect issues, blocked resources, etc. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS Errors on pages will slow down a search engine’s attempt to crawl and may deter it from crawling the entire site. Also, if there are too many errors found, the site will appear to be unfriendly to human users as well, and you may lose search engine rank. ~~~ MANAGING CRAWL ERRORS • Use Google Search Console (https://www.google.com/webmasters/) to actively monitor the number of errors Google finds when trying to crawl your site. • Google Search Console provides detail on the errors found, which can be addressed by content or development teams. • More info from Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35120?hl=en 25

Page Speed BACKGROUND Google has made it a priority to favor the highest quality websites in its ranked listings. High quality comes in many forms, including content quality, positive user experience, usefulness, etc. Page speed plays a big role in the “positive user experience” category as well, especially in mobile and e-commerce environments. Users are more likely to spend a greater amount of time on a site that loads fast vs. one that loads slowly. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS When site content is equally strong across competing pages, Google will favor the faster- loading page as the higher-ranking page. It’s becoming imperative to ensure that pages are optimized not only for content, but to load fast. ~~~ TRACKING AND OPTIMIZING PAGE SPEED • Use Google Page Speed Insights (https://developers.google.com/speed/ pagespeed/insights/) to review the load time for your pages. • Page Speed Insights will provide a list of potential optimizations that developer and content teams can employ to help boost page speed. • More info from Google: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/v5/about 26

Mobile Friendliness BACKGROUND Since mobile has become the primary means for people to get online, search engines have placed more emphasis on the experience had by the mobile user. Google now also favors using mobile indexing of site content over desktop indexing, so your mobile experience must be optimized for users as well as search engines. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS A good mobile experience is what users expect today. Websites are becoming more mobile friendly and designed with mobile as a priority. Search engines prioritize mobile users’ behaviors over those of desktop users. ~~~ OPTIMIZING FOR MOBILE • Google offers a mobile optimization checking tool at https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/ • The Test My Site tool will provide optimization options and page speed. It will also provide estimates on how many viewers left your site due to poor optimizations. • A developer can address the optimizations suggested. • More info from Google: https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/ 27

SECTION 2.0 OFF-PAGE SEO: Links and Domain Authority Backlinks are links that point to your site’s pages from other sites. Links are an important factor in determining rank for your pages. They should be considered online word-of-mouth. Word of mouth is considered one of the most influential forms of marketing, and search engines treat backlinks very similarly. 28

External Links – “Backlinks” BACKGROUND Link-building campaigns were common at one point but have lost favor as search engines have become smarter at recognizing links from poor quality sites and link farms which are sites built wholly for the purpose of linking and not providing quality content. The best links are now gained “organically,” acquired when people and sites share your high-quality content. You should consider however, link building between partner entities. When you have a partner with a website, it is easier to request they link from their website to yours. Even better if that partner can include commentary about your site or services and provide a backlink that includes anchor text about the page on your site to which they are linking. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS Backlinks are the web of the internet and the way that search engines find other pages. Generally speaking, the more links to your site you have from other high-quality sites, the more trust the search engines will have in your site. That may give you a boost in search results. ~~~ ACQUIRING BACKLINKS • Avoid paid link building programs, link farms and link networks. Search engines see this type of link activity as “spammy” and can penalize your site for this practice • Developing quality content that other sites will share is the best way to acquire links • Prioritize partners and organize outreach to request backlinks to your site. • Request specific anchor text to maximize SEO value. Note: Beeby Clark + Meyler will be assisting VISIT FLORIDA with a partner link-building outreach plan to be distributed in Q2, 2019 29

Domain and Page Authority BACKGROUND Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). A Domain Authority score ranges from 1 to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank. “Domain Authority is calculated by evaluating multiple factors, including linking root domains and number of total links, into a single DA score. This score can then be used when comparing websites or tracking the \"ranking strength\" of a website over time.” ~ MOZ.com Page Authority is similar, but where Domain Authority focuses on links to all of the pages in your domain, Page Authority is specific to individual pages. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS Backlinks are an important signal to search engines to understand the quality of a website or webpage. Consider a link from another website akin to online word-of-mouth, one of the most powerful influencers. Links from highly reputable websites are more valuable than links from websites with low value. For example, a link from the Miami Herald is likely more valuable than a link from The Villages Daily Sun. These factors are considered in Domain and Page Authority ~~~ DOMAIN AUTHORITY • Domain Authority and Page Authority are scores by which you can measure your efforts to gain links and the effectiveness of those links to your site. • Acquiring links to your site will always have some value but link building is only one factor in search ranking. • MOZ.com is the defining resource for Domain Authority and although they have a paid service to track your site over time, you can perform single checks with a free account. 30

Internal Links and Anchor Text BACKGROUND Links from page to page within your site provide a very small amount of value in terms of SEO strength. But they do provide other value as well, in search engine crawling and user experience. This applies not only to links within site global navigation, but links within site content. (Example below) Anchor Text is the text used in the link that the user reads and clicks. This text also helps both search engines and the user better understand what the linked-to page is about. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS Although the ranking value is small, internal links help search engines understand the content of a linked page. Assuming the referring page is related, the link helps inform what the linked- to page is about. Internal links also help users find pages related to the content they’re viewing and contribute to a richer, positive user experience. ~~~ INTERNAL LINKS • Use internal links where it makes most sense to link between site content. • User Anchor text that describes the linked to page. • Importance of Link Architecture by Google https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2008/10/ importance-of-link-architecture.html 31

Social Sharing BACKGROUND Social Media is all about sharing valuable, useful or entertaining online content. Creating this type of content will increase your chances of getting it shared by your visitors. Including social media sharing icons on your site will make it that much easier for them to share. ~~~ WHY THIS MATTERS The sharing of content and pages increases awareness of your brand or message and creates links back to your site. Not all social media platforms provide links that can be found by search engines, but each link that is found by search engines provides a little bit of SEO strength. ~~~ SOCIAL SHARING • Utilize social sharing links so that your valuable content will gain additional exposure and SEO strength will be boosted with additional backlinks. 32

APPENDIX ▪ Free Tools and Resources ▪ SEO Anatomy of a Web Page 33

Free Tools and Resources SEO/Webmaster Glossary: MOZ (https://moz.com/blog/smwc-and-other-essential-seo- jargon) Keyword Research: Tools to help you find the right keywords on which to focus your content development efforts. Some tools will provide limited functionality or require signup but will have non-paid options to utilize most services • Google AdWords Keyword Planner (https://ads.google.com/intl/en_us/home/) – Keyword suggestions and relative search volume • Google Search Console (https://search.google.com/search-console/about) – See which keywords you are already ranking for • Google Trends (https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=US) – Compare directional search trend volume for any keyword • Moz Keyword Explorer (https://moz.com/explorer/) – More keyword discovery and research Keyword Rank: A quick way to see if you or competitors rank for specific keywords • SerpRobot (https://www.serprobot.com/serp-check.php) – Will provide your ranking for up to 5 keywords for your site or those of competitors Technical Issues Review • Google Search Console (https://search.google.com/search-console/about) – Find your broken links, crawl issues and more • Page Speed Insights (https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/) – Google will tell you what is making your pages load slowly with some links to resources on how to fix the issues Partial SEO Audit: Most features come at a premium, but some information is available • Hoth (https://www.thehoth.com/seo-audit-tool/) – You’ll get a limited audit in exchange for your email address 34

• SEOMATOR (https://seomator.com/free-seo-audit-tool) – Will crawl your site and produce a PDF of issues found for several pages Learning Resources • Moz (https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo) – Beginners Guide to SEO is probably the defacto standard in learning SEO basics and best practices • Google Webmaster Blog (https://webmasters.googleblog.com/) – Stay abreast of the latest Google updates regarding websites. • Search Engine Land (https://searchengineland.com/) – All the latest news in the world of search 35

SEO Anatomy of a Web Page 12 8 4 1. Page title 2. URL 5 3. Meta Description (Meta)* 4. Navigation 7 10 5. Images & Video 9 6. Image ALT Tags (Meta)* 7. Body Copy 6 8. Heading <H1> 9. Heading <H2>, <H3>, etc. 10. Keywords 11. Content Links & Anchor Text *Meta tags are generally within page code and not 11 seen by page viewers, though will be seen and 9 used by search engines. 1 3 36