Search Engine Optimization

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Search Engine Optimization

• An introduction to optimizing your web site for
  best possible search engine results.

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Search Engine Optimization

• Presented by
• Chris Pfeiffer,
• University of Utah
• Office of Information Technology

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Presentation Overview

• Search Engine Basics
• Why Optimize?
• Key Concepts
• Optimization
• Content Management Systems
• Summary
• Resources

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Search Engine Basics

• Crawling the web Search engines run automated
  programs, called robots" or "spiders", that use
  the hyperlink structure of the web to "crawl" the
  pages and documents that make up the World Wide
  Web.

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Search Engine Basics

• Indexing documents Once a page has been crawled,
  its contents can be "indexed" - stored in a giant
  database of documents that makes up a search
  engine's "index".

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Search Engine Basics

• Processing queries When a request for
  information comes into the search engine, the
  engine retrieves from its index all the document
  that match the query.

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Search Engine Basics

• Ranking results Once the search engine has
  determined which results are a match for the
  query, the engine's algorithm (a mathematical
  equation commonly used for sorting) runs
  calculations on each of the results to determine
  which is most relevant to the given query.

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Search Engine Basics

• Directories Human edited search indexes
• Yahoo Directory!
• DMOZ The Open Directory Projectwww.dmoz.org

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Search Engine Basics

• Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)
• Organic Results based on content and keyword
  relevancy (as per algorithm)
• Paid Placement (PPC)
• Google AdWords
• Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM)

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Search Engine Results Pages
Paid Placement Results
Organic Results
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Why Optimize?

• Web Search as a navigational tool
• On average, 45 of visitor trafficthrough
  Utah.edu use the search engine to navigate.
• 72 of searchers stop with the top ten search
  results, and 90 stop with the top 30.

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How much is too much?

• Competition for keywords
• Evaluating page rank
• Baseline
• Ongoing

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Evaluating page rank

• Page rank calculation tools
• Google Toolbar
• www.faganfinder.com/urlinfo/
• www.alexa.com
• Frequent queries
• Web traffic analysis
• U Web Resources

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Key Concepts

• Target audience
• Keyword choices
• Directory submission

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Key Concepts

• Conversion
• Web site user doing what you intended them to do
• Sales
• Course registration
• Forms downloads
• Page views
• Conversion paths and funnels

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Key Concepts

• Search-friendly Usability
• Home Page vs. Landing pages
• Top-down vs. Shallow-wide design

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Top-down design
HOME
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Shallow-wide design
HOME
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Key Concepts

• Persistent Navigation
• Orients visitor to site
• Provides spiders pathway through site

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Key Concepts

• Accessibility
• Flash
• Javascript
• SSL authentication
• Firewalls and closed ports
• Databases query string URLs
• Forms

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Key Concepts

• Site Maps
• Non-HTML Documents
• MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF

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Key Concepts

• Canonical URLs
• http//utah.edu
• http//www.utah.edu
• Redirects
• 301 server redirect
• Meta-refresh page redirect

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Key Concepts

• Robots.txt file
• Decides which robots to allow in and which to
  exclude
• Site wide
• Directory-by-directory
• Page-by-page
• Robots meta-tag

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Optimization

• Get indexed
• Register URL with University Webmaster
• Submit URL to directories

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Optimization

• Meta-data
• The University of Utah
• February 28, 1850, The University of Utah offers
  75 undergraduate degree programs, more than 50
  teaching majors and minors, and 96 graduate
  majors."
• Utah, UU, Utes, Utah, Salt Lake City, university,
  universities, colleges, higher education,
  academic, research, admissions"

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Optimization

• Meta-data
• HTML Page Title
• Number one optimization factor
• Included in results display
• Unique title for each landing page

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Optimization
HTML Title Utility in Dreamweaver

• Meta-data

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Optimization

• Meta-data
• Meta-description tag
• 50 weight of HTML Title in Ultraseek
• Included in Ultraseek results display
• Less weight given by Google
• Rarely used in Google results display

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Optimization

• Meta-data
• Meta-keywords tag
• Equal to meta-description tag in Ultraseek
• Ignored by Google
• Common misspellings

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Optimization

• Meta-data
• Image alt-tags
• H1 tags
• Body text

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Optimization

Relative weight given HTML tags by U of U
Ultraseek Search Engine
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Optimization

• Popularity
• Inbound links
• Remote anchor links text
• Anchor link http//www.url.com
• Anchor text words used in link

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How/What to Optimize

• Popularity
• Inbound links
• Example

Anchor link text
Anchor link
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Optimization

• Popularity
• Inbound links
• Remote anchor links text
• GooglebombingWhen a web page places high in
  search engine results due to frequent anchor
  links using rude or insulting keywords.

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How/What to Optimize

• Popularity
• Inbound links
• googlebombing

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How/What to Optimize

• Popularity
• Inbound links
• googlebombing

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Optimization

• Reliability
• .edu and .gov domains
• Domain age

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Black Hat SEO

• Black Hat SEOUnscrupulous or deceptive
  optimization practices intended to spam users or
  compete unfairly
• Invisible text
• Keyword stuffing
• Duplicate pages
• Domain cloaking serving different content to
  search engine robots than to human visitors
• Link farms

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Optimization

Spam Detection ThresholdThe number of repeating
keywords required for U of UUltraseek search
engine to penalize for spamming
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Content Management Systems

• Dynamic URLs
• Querystring enabled
• Consistent, crawl-able URLs
• Cookies and session IDs

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Summary

• Accessible pages
• Think landing pages
• Unique HTML page title for every landing page
• Content relevant keywords
• Avoid Black Hat SEO

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Resources

• University Webmaster
• www.utah.edu/uwebresources
• webmaster_at_utah.edu
• 581-6113
• www.seamoz.org
• www.searchenginewatch.com
• The ABC of SEO David George

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Search Engine Optimization

• THANK YOU!