Project SEO Blog 16:

Project SEO

SEO Website Project url: https://k00121609.github.io//SEOEWT

Git-hub repository: SEOProject.

This Blog url name: creativemultimediaprogrammingsb.blogspot.com

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April

Objectives:

1. Understanding + effective Implementation of SEO

2. Technical-

-Created an online website uploaded on GitHub

-Maintain site and keep it live online until at least 21st of September

  3. Content-

-considerations = accessibility &keyword rich

-how I went about designing the content

-added my name to the title of the page

4. SEO-

               Target keywords = “Creative Multimedia Programming”

               Maintained diary both written in detail and uploaded online. This is of my progress.

5. set up of site etc-> Verification in search console for desktop and mobile

Part 1: Content Generation & Technical Considerations:

I started off the project with little knowledge about SEO, other than what the abbreviation stands for i.e. Search Engine Optimization. My first approach was to study the class lecture notes, then read the online resources from the EWT Moodle page. This gave me an idea of the requirements of my website in terms of content, layout and responsiveness. I considered my design from the beginning to be in a readable format for various devices such as desktop and mobile. (stats on mobile usage.)

I planned the content design so that it would be visually appealing, sufficient information with links for the user to go to further information. I considered the content from the point of view of the overall experience of the “Creative Multimedia Programming” course at LIT. I added information and links to: about the course, welcome from the president, philosophy of education at LIT, Sports clubs and societies etc. The relevance of this is to give the viewer an idea of the course itself technically and its social context at LIT.

I decided on a long scrolling page to frame my content. The idea here was to create an integrated site, where the user could view at a glance the entire content of what is present in the website. I carefully selected headings that would communicate best the content of the website and for this purpose of viewers scanning the site.

The hierarchical order of the technical site structure is designed with: h1, h2 etc. I have keyframes and on-mouse events to enhance the user UX/UI experience of the website and that it would be in keeping with and reflective of this Creative Multimedia Programming Course and LIT.

I analysed the colour scheme for LIT as primarily: red, white, grey with font as black. The banner is red, with plenty of restful white space on the page and with grey for emphasis at some points. In my website design I utilized these colors, with a soft light-grey font for the text in the header to counter-balance the strong red colour.

As it is a vertically scrolling page, I included in the navigation the titles of the pages within the main page in a sticky navigation bar, so that no matter where the user would scroll in the website, they would always have the navigation at the top of the screen to select page options. I also, included a “back to top” button at the base of screen for rapid return to top of screen. This may also give the opportunity to the user on return to the top of the screen to re-browse certain areas/topics. All these actions are to enhance the user experience, the effectiveness of the website and ultimately the SEO objective of this project.

I included a “Google Map” in the website which I have created using an API and where I set the location symbol at LIT. This is great for user interaction, as not only can they view where LIT is on the map in the context of Limerick (or further when zoomed out), they can view images of LIT. By clicking and dragging the yellow person icon at the base right of screen onto the red LIT location symbol, a view opens of an image of LIT. Then, the user can through using the mouse alone or using the faded arrows on the screen rotate the view to see other areas of LIT.

I added an image of a “rotating spiral.” I came across this image while working on another project. It is animated and continues its animation while the page is loaded. I sized and framed it and applied a light-grey background to it in keeping with the website colour scheme. I think while its dynamic its thin lines do not interfere with the content, rather enhances it being of similar line size to text fonts in the website. Also, the LIT logo consists of circular imagery, with slightly thicker and narrower lines, as is this image. For that reason, I included it in the “About” section of the website.

On the section of facilities, clubs and societies, I arranged them in cards for ease of reading a lot of similar information in a visually attractive and designed way, instead of as a block of information. I attached anchor links to all of them and an on-hover and text-decoration of underline effect so that the user could identify them as links. This brings the user to each specific area of LIT facilities

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I included a contact-us form. Here I stated basic information i.e. Email and comment box, as from my research I have read that many forms require too much information. Also, under the Data Protection Acts 1998 and 2003, information of a person must be obtained and kept for very specific reasons only. In this section I have included contact details of Creative Multimedia Programming and LIT (add screen of these here.) I also added a GIF animation I made from still owl images to create an animated effect on a static page section and that might have the effect of the user staying a bit longer on this section than they may otherwise and completing the form.

Here I have added an article on content to my Pinterest Board:

Part 2: Using keyword research tools:

The requirement is to target the primary keywords of “Creative Multimedia Programming” for this SEO project.

1. Google “Auto Suggest” for key words “Creative Multimedia Programming:”

this is where when I start typing in a phrase the search engine completes the sentence. This gives suggestions.

I set out first by carrying out a Google search using this above phrase and the course we are on at LIT, H. Dip in Computing in Creative Multimedia Programming ranks first in the page and for that entire page. The following screen-shot is a snippet for this:

I noticed that the results are action/verb rich with key phrases such as: rewarding, challenging possibilities, interested and more. Notably, there were no ‘image’ returns which is something to consider in searches. The “Searches related to” section at the bottom of the page the 8 suggestions are:

Here, I see the amongst the keywords highlighted in bold are ‘jobs’ ‘course’ and ‘lit,’ in that order. The fact that ‘jobs’ rank first here could be related to this being a Springboard course, with a possible primary audience of Springboard visitors.

Google “Auto Suggest” for “Creative Multimedia:”

I next did a search for the phrase “Creative Multimedia” to see if it revealed any more information. I found as described in the next text ways of improving the visibility of the LIT Moylish course from looking at that in LIT Clonmel, and hence, for my own website.

Here I have inputted the phrase “Creative Multimedia.”

a. URLs returned:

Here, I have included in the screen-shot, the top ranking 3 results for “Creative Multimedia” keyphrase search. I can see that they are all related to LIT, all have “Courses” as their first key word and the course title name next. The first return is keyword rich starting with keyword “Multimedia Technology.”

The second appeals to the user through emotive language in a naturally spoken sentence with plenty of action words/verbs such as: offers, rewards, challenging possibilities, learners, interested, in undertaking.

Notably, the first two returns refer to the Level 8 courses and the third to the Level 7 course. This may or may not count as Google ranking higher level courses above lower level.

The third return has a more generic description, listing the eligibility for access from the level 7 to level 8 course.

Interestingly, the LIT Clonmel courses are first and third on the rankings and the LIT Moylish is second. On comparing the two websites the Clonmel website is full of rich words, phrases, images, videos and has strong descriptive content. The LIT Moylish website is very sparse by comparison. I think many of the features of the Clonmel website could be emulated in the Moylish course.

b. Images returned

There is an images output from the search. This is the top-ranking image on the image returns result. It is clear and legible is keyphrase rich and visually appealing. This shows what a successful Creative Multimedia image contains.

c. Query/Question searches:

On opening of the first website of LIT Clonmel in the above rankings, I immediately notice a trend that I have seen in my research, that is, for queries or questions as headings. This reflects this growing trend in people using natural speech for searches. In the next diagram the questions: where? When? and Why? feature most prominent.

Not, only is this aimed at mobile and desktop users but also to ‘Voice related searches,’ that are becoming more popular now. The statistics on voice related searches are that last year’s Google IO Conference it was announced that 20% of search queries were coming from voice searches. The following is a graphic of the data:

There are tabs with categories of information related to the course, which is good for user interaction. In my research, I have found that ‘user interaction’ in a website can boost its rankings in Search Engines.

The keyword headings in the description tab of this website are:

What is the programme about?

Who is the programme suited to?

Top 3 reasons…
Class Contact Hours…

Other Information...

Did you know?

Want more?

Google “Searches Related to” for “Creative Multimedia:”

At the bottom of this page is the “Searches Related to” section.

Here, Google gives 8 additional suggestions that are closely related to my search:

Here the highlighted in bold phrases are key phrases.

3. Wikipedia search for “Creative Multimedia Programming:”

From my research, I have found that Googles opinion on Wikipedia as an information source and for this project as a source of keywords is that there are better sources for particular topics, but that this website is considered as the best and most comprehensive encyclopedia.

I have inputted the key words “Creative Multimedia Programming” into its search engine and got a page with description of the top results. 

Also, here in the table of contents I could get other relevant topics and sub-categories. These are in technical SEO terms referred to as “Shoulder niches” meaning that they are in some way related to our own niches.

There are in this search results four tabs categorizing my search: content pages, multimedia, everything and advanced.

I can see from here that the key phrase “Multimedia” is in importance here.

Interestingly, the top results have key words of “Multimedia” first, then “Creative Multimedia,” and then “Programming,” which is how it appears that Wikipedia ranks the relative importance of these terms.

4. Quora:
Noted as one of the best places for finding answers to my questions. Here, I inputted the phrase “Creative Multimedia Programming” with no results. Then I added “Course” onto the phrase and got the following results:

Quora key phrases identified:

This is a good way to use a discussion platform for learning about ‘trending topics,’ what people are interested in and subsequently, what is going to bring most traffic to my website.

5. BoardReader.com:

This search took 0.106 seconds to load. It is an alternative viewpoint on this inputted phrase. First in the list refers to “Virtual Reality” with key phrases of “Programming” first and then “Creative Multimedia” next. Interestingly, the key phrases for many of the results in this page in their title are “Solution” and “Manual.” Here, the search engine seems to favor the technical element of “Programming” which features in all the search results as a highlighted in bold key phrase.

5. Yahoo:

The yahoo search results rank “Creative Multimedia Programming” at LIT course as highest. However, the LIT Springboard Moylish course is ranked as 7^th. It is blogs about the course that rank highest. This may relate to the use of ‘rich content’ in these blogs as opposed to the actual LIT site which is mainly text based.

6. Moz Keyword Explorer:

Moz entire screen:

There is an excellent amount and quality of information from this Moz website analysis. There are “Key word Suggestions” 5 in total, with an option to view “all 1,000 suggestions.”

Top 5 keywords and in this order, are:

·        Diploma in creative multimedia

·        Multimedia definition

·        Springboard courses

·        Lit courses

·        Creative multimedia jobs

       Following the further analysis link these are a snippet of these organic results:

There is not anything in the title that lends one or other of these to be superior for ranking in the SERP analysis. It seems to be more related to “Page Authority” and “domain” statistics.  I notice from the SERP Analysis listings that there are three separate LIT sites for the H. Dip       course. Some appear to be older versions. Nevertheless, they are still ranking within the first three top results.

      Referring to the top keywords this is a snippet of the start of the ranked list, they are: creative multimedia programming, diploma in creative multimedia, multimedia definition, springboard courses, IT courses, creative multimedia jobs:

      

Moz stats for this “Creative Multimedia Programming” search are:

• Volume (shows the amount of traffic that comes from a keyword)
• Difficulty (shows how hard it is to rank for it)
• Opportunity (shows click through rate of first ten results)
• Potential (shows general potential of the word)

As is apparent here the “Opportunity” stats rate highest which is promising for this keyword search, however, the “Potential” is very low which leaves room for improvement.

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In keyword research, it is also important to refer to the larger audience e.g. potential clients, news websites, popular blogs and industry experts within this niche.

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In terms of structure, it is possible to differentiate:
Head (this is the main word/phrase that is the centerpiece of the search)

·        Modifier (word that can be substituted for other word-that can change the aspect of a key words meaning.)

·        Tail (all other words used to describe or explain my query)

Google adds rich results for podcasts to SERPs