Search Engine Optimization SEO

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Search Engine Optimization - SEO
Getting Google (and the others) to love your web
site
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A commercial organizations web site is there for
a purpose - To get the organization
noticed. - To bring in lots of revenue for the
organization. the web site therefore needs
to make an impact being in the first page of
search results.
Making an impact requires getting the web site
noticed. - Having it matter by being good,
relevant, timely, etc. You have control over
these factors!
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A 2006 survey by AOL and Henley Centre, a UK
research firm, found that 73 percent of
respondents listed search engines as important
sources of information when considering a product
or service - a higher percentage than personal
recommendations, TV, or print media. Research
conducted by search engine marketing firm
iProspect in 2006 showed that search engine
users increasingly are clicking on results in the
first page of search results. The same study
showed that fewer people are willing to click
on listings past the third page of search results.
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Most Important Search Engines Market Share

• Google 74
• Yahoo! 16
• Bing (formerly Live Search, formerly MSN) 5
• Ask 3
• Why are you not surprised?

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Search Engines

• So how do you get your web site listed in the
  first or second page of search results?
• One major factor is your web sites PageRank.
• PageRank is like water it is essential, and
  flows in and out of pages.

PageRank is a value calculated by search engines
for web pages. - The higher the value, the
higher the ranking of your web page in the search
results listing. It is a composite of a large
number of variables ...
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We use more than 200 signals, including our
patented PageRank algorithm, to examine the
entire link structure of the web and determine
which pages are most important. PageRank
reflects our view of the importance of web pages
... Pages that we believe are important pages
receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to
appear at the top of the search
results. Google Corporate Information
http//www.google.com/corporate/tech.html
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Search Engine Optimization Search engines are
the most important and frequently used tools for
finding information on the World-Wide Web.
Search Engine Optimization refers to a variety
of techniques and strategies for improving the
ranking and visibility of websites within search
engine listings. - Optimizing or tuning
your web pages to rank high in the search results
for user-selected search keywords.
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The purpose of SEO is to increase volume and
quality of web traffic coming to your web site
via the search engine results. This is
important because most users click on the links
that are shown at the top of the search results
list. The sites at the top of the search
results list have a higher rank than other
sites that appear lower in the list.
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Example Google ranking obviously works well!
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Example
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This means Google has found more than 300,000 web
pages that contain these search words. Yet,
somehow, it has managed to rank (or order) the
pages. It has decided that one particular web
page should appear first in its list, and then
another, and then another, and so on, all the way
down to page 322,000. How does it do this? What
is the algorithm that it uses? - Well, the
answer is secret!
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The algorithm of how a listing is ranked by
search engines is unknown to the general public
and constantly changing. The algorithm uses
multiple variables to determine a ranking.
Some of the factors are - Keyword
repetition. - Age of the site. - Incoming
links. - Page titles. - Other lesser factors.
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Why The Secrecy?

• Google, Yahoo and others keep the algorithm a
  secret to prevent manipulation of page rankings.
• If everyone knew how to rank 1, then all web
  sites would be ranked 1!
• - This would defeat the purpose of search
  engine listings.
• In fact, parts of the algorithm that become known
  are typically changed or dropped to prevent
  manipulation by one or more (unscrupulous) web
  sites.

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Have a look at ... Rundown On Search Ranking
Factors http//blog.searchenginewatch.com/050929
-072711 Search Engine Ranking
Factors http//www.seomoz.org/article/search-rank
ing-factors
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What is Best for the User

• The objective of search engines is to maximize
  value to the end user.
• Your objective is to identify your users and
  target them in terms of your rank order in search
  engine listings.
• If your site sells coffee beans (say), then you
  would want to rank high when searches are done on
  coffee, coffee beans, Colombian coffee
  beans and related terms.

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How Search Engines Work the basics   Search
engines run sophisticated programs, called
robots" (aka bots) or "spiders" or crawlers
that use the (hyper)link structure of the web to
trawl the pages and documents that make up the
World Wide Web. Once a page has been trawled,
its contents can be indexed - stored in a
database of documents that makes up a search
engine's "index". When a request for
information comes into the search engine, the
engine retrieves all the documents from its index
that match the query.
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Once the search engine has determined which
results are a match for the query, the engine's
page ranking algorithm runs calculations on each
of the results to determine which is most
relevant for the given query. In order to
increase the page ranking of a web site, and make
its content more visible in search results
listings, you need to improve the indexing of
your web site by search engines.
There are number of things you may do to make it
easier for search engines to both crawl and index
your content. Search spiders are the worlds
most influential blind readers!
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Going a bit deeper ... Actually, the process
involves a search engine spider downloading a
page and storing it on the search engine's own
server, where a second program, known as an
indexer, extracts various information about the
page, such as the words it contains and where
these are located, as well as any weight for
specific words, and all links the page contains,
which are then placed into a scheduler for
crawling at a later date. See http//www.seomoz
.org/article/bg2
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Some terminology Organic (or natural) search
results - Search results compiled from the search
engine index. Ranked by the search
engine. Paid-placement results - Sponsored
search results paid for by commercial enterprises
and placed near the top of the organic results.
These are not indexed.
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Paid
Natural
Paid
Search engine optimization affects only the
ranking of organic search results, not the paid
or "sponsored" results, such as Google AdWords
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Search Engine Optimization Strategies To get the
best overall, long-term search engine visibility,
the following components at least must be
present on a web page - Text component -
Link component - Popularity component All the
major search engines use these components as part
of their search engine algorithm. But these are
not the only factors taken into consideration.
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Text Component - An Overview An important part
of the text component of a search engine
algorithm is keyword selection. - For your
target audience to find your site via the search
engines, your pages must contain keyword phrases
that match the likely phrases your target
audience is to type into search queries. - Use
intuition, commonsense and keyword software
tools. After you have determined the best
keyword phrases to use on your web pages, you
will need to place them in appropriate HTML tags,
as well as the page content.
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Keywords need to be placed in the following
places - Title tags - Visible body text,
i.e. content - Meta tags - Graphic image tags
(i.e. the alternative text) The title tag and
the visible body text are the two most important
places to insert keywords because all the search
engines index and place some "weight" on this
text.
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It is All About the Text

• Web searches are totally text-based.
• This is why it is important to have meaningful
  text on your site.
• Keyword selection becomes critical.
• Keywords are repeated throughout site.
• Site is checked regularly for relevance of
  keywords.
• Keywords updated as products or services change.
• Check competitors site for keyword opportunities.

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Link Component - An Overview The strategy of
placing keyword-rich text in your web pages is
useless if the search engine crawlers have no way
of finding that text! Therefore, the way your
pages are linked to each other, and the way your
web site is linked to other web sites, does
impact the visibility of your web site to the
crawlers. Some HTML markup or scripting (e.g.
JavaScript) can prevent a spider from crawling
your pages.
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Examples of site navigation schemes that can be
problematic include the following - Poor HTML
markup on all navigation schemes Browsers
can usually display web pages with sloppy HTML
coding, but search engine spiders are not as
forgiving as browsers. - Use of image maps
Many search engines do not follow the links
inside image maps. - Use of HTML frames Some
search engines do not follow links on a framed
site. (XHTML does not support frames use CSS
instead.)
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- JavaScript Search engine crawlers do not
follow links or page navigation written using
JavaScript. - Dynamic or database-driven web
pages Pages that are generated through scripts
or databases, or that have a ?, , , , , or
character in the URL, pose problems for search
engine spiders. - Flash Currently, only a
small number of search engines can follow the
links embedded in Flash documents.
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Moral When designing web pages, include a
navigation scheme so that the spiders have the
means to record the words on your web pages.
This may mean means having two forms of
navigation on the web site - one that pleases
your target audience visually and one that the
search engines spiders can follow.
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Canonical URLs A search engine will consider
http//aubg.bg and http//www.aubg.bg to
be different websites. If both URLs serve up
the same pages, search engines will consider them
to be duplicate content, and dramatically deduct
the relevance score of both! Be consistent in
how you write urls in your web pages.
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Summary Construct your pages as search engines
expect. Ensure that your pages can be
indexed. Supplement images, etc. with
text. Having a linking structure to guide search
spiders. Dynamic pages are an issue for
spiders. Spiders ignore complicated URLs. Use
descriptive text in the link.
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HTML page title The HTML page title is an
important factor for the visibility of a web
page. If your document appears in a search
results page, the contents of the title tag will
usually appear in the first line of the
results. Words in the title are displayed in
bold in the serach results if they appear in the
user's search query. - This can help users
recognize if the page is likely to be relevant to
their search.
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A unique page title should be composed for each
landing page (one that is reached via a link)
within a site, not just the home page. The
page title should correspond closely to the
target content of the page. - Meaningful
Titles Keyword-rich, without being spammy.
Lead with the most important keywords.
Looks good to humans and bots.
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Title Element lttitlegt ... lt/titlegt Between
lttitlegt and lt/titlegt you may place the title of
the HTML document. The title appears in the
title bar of the browser window that is
displaying the web page. Choose your title
wisely, as search engines will also display it!
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Example
Title
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Many web sites do not bother with a title!
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Avoid duplicate titles on your pages!
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Metadata Metadata refers to information about a
web site that is contained in the web site, but
not displayed by browsers. There are HTML meta
tags which help search engines classify page
content.   The meta tags are placed within the
header section of the HTML document.
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Meta tags The meta tags provide metadata about
HTML documents to search engine crawlers, i.e.
data about the data (content) in your web
page. Metadata is not displayed by the browser,
but it can be read by search engine crawlers.
The meta tags always go inside the head HTML
element. Search engines reward web pages where
the tags match up with the page's content!
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Description meta tag The HTML description meta
tag gives Google and other search engines a
summary of what the page is about. Whereas a
page's title may be a few words or a phrase, a
page's description meta tag might include a
sentence or two or a short paragraph. The
contents of the description meta tag are often
displayed as the snippet part of a search
engine's results page.
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The contents of a description tag should
correspond closely to the target content of the
page. A unique meta description should be
composed for each landing page (one that is
reached via a link) within a site, not just the
home page.
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Example
Description
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Keywords meta tag The keywords meta tag allows
for additional placement of keywords into the
HTML header. The right keywords are ... -
Relevant to your business web site. - Popular
with searchers. Some SEO gurus say that meta
tags are losing their importance for ranking -
but they are good for search result listings.
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Note there are various types of meta tags

• Meta tag
• Contains two items, i.e. attributes that should
  always be used
• gtgt name attribute identifies the type of meta
  tag, and
• gtgt content attribute which provides information
  that a search engine will use to catalog your web
  page.
• There are other meta tags.

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• Content of a meta tag with name keywords
• Provides search engines with a list of words
  that describe key aspects of your web page.
• Content of a meta tag with name description
• About 3 to 4 lines of text
• Used by search engines to catalog and display
  your web page.
• Meta HTML elements
• Not visible to users of the site
• Should be placed inside the head section only.

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E.g. ltmeta name "keywords" content"life,
universe, mankind, plants, relationships, the
meaning of life, science"gt ltmeta
name"description" content"This page is about
the meaning of life, the universe, mankind and
plants."gt
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W3C Example
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Google search for W3C
Title
Description
Links from main to other pages with titles
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A relevant, deeper page (its title is unique to
the content of the page) appears as a result.
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Titles for deeper pages on your site should
accurately describe the focus of that particular
page and also might include your site or business
name.
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Example
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No meta tags for keywords or description!
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Example
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No meta tags for keywords or description!
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Counter example for meta tags
This site lists as 1 in a Google search for
digital camera or digital cameras. And is in
first page for all phrase variations within title.
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Inbound Links and URL Popularity The popularity
of a site on the web is an important factor for
establishing ranking within search engine results
pages. Every link to your site from another
site is considered a "vote." - The more links
to your site, the more votes you receive, and the
higher your site is ranked by the search engine.
 
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Search engine algorithms consider the quality of
every inbound link, as well as the quantity. A
few links from highly-ranked sites will count
more than many links from low ranked or dubious
sites. 
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Remote anchor text refers to the words used to
describe where the link is pointing (in the HTML
a(nchor) element). - Search engines understand
the relationship between the source and
destination of the link, and the text contained
in the link. - Links containing text which do
not match the content found at the destination
are ignored or discounted.
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An example of effective remote anchor text might
be Follow this link for quality running shoes
A poorly-worded remote anchor link would
be For quality running shoes click here   The
age and reliability of a website domain name can
also play a role in how well a site is ranked by
the search engines. - Minimally optimized
pages within older, more popular sites may rank
higher than well optimized pages within new
sites.
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Make your site ready for search engines - use
well-formed (and hopefully valid!) HTML/XHTML.
- use HTML markup for headings and lists (and
not images). - write titles that stand on
their own. - make use of the meta keywords and
description tags. - remove barriers to the
indexing activities of search engines.
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Search Engine Accessibility In order to add a
web site URL to its index, a search engine must
be able to access the site. (Duh!) Accessibility
roadblocks are technologies or page elements
past which a search engine spider cannot crawl.
Robot exclusion and redirects are also
important ways to manage how search engines
access and index websites.
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Redirect instructions tell web browsers and
crawlers to move on to a new or revised
URL. The Robots Exclusion Protocol is a method
that allows site administrators to indicate to
visiting robots which parts of their site should
not be visited. - Robots can be specifically
admitted or excluded on a site-wide, directory by
directory, or page by page basis, using the
robots.txt file or robots meta tag.
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"Black Hat" Search Engine Optimization
Unscrupulous optimization techniques designed to
gain an unfair advantage, or for purposes other
than legitimate information retrieval, are called
"Black Hat" techniques, and are usually penalized
by the search engines. Invisible text
Using white text on white backgrounds or other
methods to hide keywords in order to increase
rank or mislead crawlers. Keyword stuffing
Adding extra keywords to metadata or alt tags.
Duplicate pages Serving the same content from
multiple hostnames.
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Domain cloaking Serving up different content to
search engines than is served up to ordinary
users. Link farms Publishing web pages
containing hundreds of links to your site in
order to inflate inbound link popularity.
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Many search engines set a spam detection
threshold for keyword repetition. The following
table shows the number of allowable repeated
keywords for different HTML elements
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The following slides are good-practice
recommendations for web sites produced by
Google. - The Search Engine Optimization
Starter Guide www.google.com/.../search-engine-o
ptimization-starter-guide.pdf www.gattdesign.co.
uk/blog/seo-for-google-good-and-bad-practices-11/
Remember, Google penalizes sites as well as
rewards them when it calculates page ranking.
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Good practices for page title tags Accurately
describe the page's content - Choose a title
that effectively communicates the topic of the
page's content. Avoid Choosing a title that
bears no relation to the content on the page.
Using default or vague titles like "Untitled" or
"New Page 1.
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Create unique title tags for each page -
Each of your pages should ideally have a
unique title tag, which helps Google know how the
page is distinct from the others on your
site. Avoid Using a single title tag across
all of your site's pages or a large group of pages
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Use brief, but descriptive titles - Titles
can be both short and informative. - If the
title is too long, Google will show only a
portion of it in the search result. Avoid
Using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful
to users. Stuffing unneeded keywords in your
title tags.
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Good practices for description meta tags
Accurately summarize the page's content -
Write a description that would both inform
and interest users if they saw your description
meta tag as a snippet in a search result.
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Avoid Writing a description meta tag that has
no relation to the content on the page. Using
generic (boring?) descriptions like "This is a
webpage" or "Page about students. Filling the
description with only keywords. Copy and
pasting the entire content of the document into
the description meta tag.
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Use unique descriptions for each page -
Having a different description meta tag for each
page helps both browser users and Google,
especially in searches where users may bring up
multiple pages on your domain (e.g. searches
using the site operator). Avoid Using a
single description meta tag across all of your
site's pages or a large group of pages
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Improve the structure of your URLs Creating
descriptive categories and filenames for the
documents on your website can not only help you
keep your site better organized, but it could
also lead to better crawling of your documents by
search engines. Also, it can create easier,
"friendlier" URLs for those that want to link to
your content. Visitors may be intimidated by
extremely long and cryptic URLs that contain few
recognizable words. Example bad
news www.mywebsite.com/folder1/123456/x1/00000001
4.htm
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Some users might link to your page using the URL
of that page as the anchor text. If your URL
contains relevant words, this provides users and
search engines with more information about
the page than an ID or oddly named parameter
would. Example www.sportsshoes.com/news/bluetoo
th_enabled_trainers.htm The highlighted words
above could inform a user or search engine what
the target page is about before following the
link.
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Good practices for site navigation Create a
naturally flowing hierarchy - Make it as easy
as possible for users to go from general content
to the more specific content they want on your
site. - Add navigation pages when it makes
sense and effectively work these into your
internal link structure.
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Avoid Creating complex webs of navigation
links, e.g. linking every page on your site to
every other page. Going overboard with
slicing and dicing your content (e.g. it takes
twenty mouse clicks to get to deep content!)
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Use mostly text for navigation - Controlling
most of the navigation from page to page on your
site through text links makes it easier for
search engines to crawl and understand your site.
Avoid Having a navigation based entirely on
drop-down menus, images, or animations. (Many,
but not all, search engines can discover such
links on a site, but if a user can reach all
pages on a site via normal text links, this will
improve the accessibility of your site.)
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Use "breadcrumb" navigation - A breadcrumb
is a row of internal links at the top or bottom
of the page that allows visitors to quickly
navigate back to a previous section or the home
page. - Many breadcrumbs have the home page as
the first, left-most link and list the more
specific sections out to the right.
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Put an HTML sitemap page on your site - A
simple sitemap page with links to all of the
pages or the most important pages (if you
have hundreds or thousands) on your site can be
useful.
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Other good practices Use relevant language -
Think about the words that a user might search
for to find a piece of your content. Users who
know a lot about the topic might use different
keywords in their search queries than someone who
is new to the topic. Anticipating these
differences in search behaviour and accounting
for them while writing your content (using a good
mix of keyword phrases) could produce positive
results.
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Google AdWords provides a handy Keyword Tool that
helps you discover new keyword variations and see
the approximate search volume for each keyword.
Also, Google Webmaster Tools provides the top
search queries your site appears for and the ones
that led the most users to your site. Plus
lots of other good practices.
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Make use of (free) SEO tools Google's Webmaster
Tools - help to better control how Google
interacts with web sites.
Keyword Research

• Tools for brainstorming a seed list
• Quintura
• Google Suggest (now integrated into Google
  search)
• Yahoo Assist
• Tools to check popularity of keyword searches
• Wordtracker
• Trellians Keyword Discovery
• Googles Keyword Suggestion Tool
• Google Trends
• Google Insights for Search

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Checkout Googles free web site testing and
optimisation tool, Website Optimiser. Also,
see Google's SEO starter guide (PDF) www.google.
com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-sta
rter-guide.pdf And, finally ...
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PageRank 101
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Google

• Logarithmic scale from 0 to 10.
• Assigned to web pages, not sites.
• Based on inbound links to pages.
• Heavily weighted on link quality.
• Passed through internal and external links.
• Higher PageRank may lead Googlebot to
• Crawl more frequently
• Crawl faster
• Crawl deeper

Amazon
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E F F O R T
8
ebay
7
Disney
Gap
6
5
4
Relative number of pages with PR rating
3
2
1
0
Sample of Home page PageRank Ratings
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Questions?