Search Engine Optimization

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Search Engine Optimization
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Google this

• In real estate, the key is location, location,
  location
• In the web-space, the key is content, content,
  content

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What is a Search Engine?
Software that lets users search the Internet
using keywords.
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What is Search?

• Query Box
• Where you type your keywords
• 4-6 keywords now the norm instead of 1-2
• Search Results are listed on the left-hand side
  of the page
• Paid Ad Results are listed on the right-hand side
  of the page

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Major Search Engines

• Google feeds AOL, Netscape, Earthlink others
• Yahoo owns Overture, AltaVista, AlltheWeb, FAST
  others
• Google, Yahoo MSN results account for 80-90 of
  all search traffic (rough estimate)

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Search Engine Relationship Chart
http//www.bruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipc
hart.htm
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Anatomy of a Search Result
Search box
Sponsored Listingsaka PPC
Organic Resultsaka SERPs
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Google Search Results
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Yahoo Search Results
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MSN Search Results
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Who are the players

• Market Share according to www.Businessweek.com
• Google reached 52 in June of US
• Yahoo reached 25
• MSN reached 10
• Everyone else 13
• Ask Jeeves
• Dogpile
• AOL et al

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Share of Searches July 2005
http//searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2
156451
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A Search Engines Goals Objectives

• Accumulate large index (database) of web
  documents to search
• Provide highly-relevant results to users (better
  than competitors)
• Generate revenue via paid advertising and related
  business ventures that typically leverage large
  amount of traffic

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How Do Search Engines Work?

• Spider crawls the web to find new documents
  (web pages, other documents) typically by
  following hyperlinks from websites already in the
  database
• Search engine indexes the content (text, code) in
  these documents by adding it to their huge
  databases and periodically updates this content
• Search engine searches its own database when user
  enters in a search to find related documents (not
  searching web pages in real-time)
• Search engine ranks resulting documents using an
  algorithm (mathematical formula) that assigns
  various weights to various ranking factors

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What is a Algorithm?

• A set of rules that a search engine uses to rank
  the listings contained within its index, in
  response to a search.
• Uses an algorithm to identify preferred links
• Algorithms may involve
• Usage of keywords
• Popularity (number of links pointing inward)
• Other criteriaoften proprietary

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So What is the Algorithm?

• Top Secret! Only select employees of the actual
  search engines know for certain
• Reverse engineering, research and experiments
  gives SEOs (search engine optimization
  professionals) a pretty good idea of major
  factors and approximate weight assignments

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So What is the Algorithm?

• Constantly changing, tweaking, updating is done
  to the algorithm.
• Websites and documents being searched are also
  constantly changing
• Varies by Search Engine some give more weight
  to on-page factors, some to link popularity

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What a Search Engine Sees

• View gt Source (HTML code)
• http//www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html (HTML
  text, no images and little formatting)
• http//cgi.w3.org/cgi-bin/html2txt

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What is Search Engine Optimization?

• The act of designing (or re-designing) your site
  to be more search engine friendly.

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Why Search Engine Optimization?

• 85 of all traffic on the internet is referred
  from a search engine
• 90 of all users dont look past the first 30
  results (most only view top 10)
• Many websites arent even indexed, most are
  poorly optimized and get very little traffic from
  the search engines

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Basic Search Engine Optimization

• Create usable, readable pages for people because
  search engine algorithms calculate relevance from
  a human perspective.
• Ensure navigation allows crawlers to reach all
  parts of your site.
• Include title, description, and keywords meta
  tags in the HTML header.
• Use keywords in meaningful headings.
• Use keywords at the beginning of the page in
  text.
• Use keywords in the URL or filename, and dont
  change either unnecessarily.

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Basic Search Engine Optimization

• Create alt tags for graphics containing keywords.
• Dont try to spam a search engine by overuse or
  hidden use of keywords.
• Validate all HTML to ensure it can be seen by
  the search engine.
• Use robots.txt and robots meta tags to keep
  search engines from indexing what they shouldnt.
• Avoid using frames.
• Avoid putting content and links within script
  code.

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Ranking Factors

• On-Page Factors (Code Content)
• Title tags lttitlegt
• Header tags lth1gt
• ALT image tags
• Content, Content, Content (Body text) ltbodygt
• Hyperlink text
• Keyword frequency density
• Off-Page Factors
• Link Popularity (votes for your site) adds
  credibility
• Anchor text

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Meta Tags

• Self-describing text at the beginning of a web
  page that is not visible to the user but can be
  read by the search engine
• Title
• Key-words
• Description
• Appear not to be significant for most search
  engines today

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Search Engine Optimization Text

• Credible repetition of key words
• Frequently greater credit for
• Bolded words
• Words early in the document
• Identification of desirable key words
• Analysis of competing sites
• Customer interviews
• Misspellings

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Anti-Spam Detection Algorithms

• Excessive repetition of key words in meta tags
• Use of redirection
• Use of hidden text
• Excessive use of keywords or bolding may be
  detected

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Search Engine Optimization Reciprocal Linking

• Linking from highly rated web sites greatly
  increases the ranking of a site
• Linking from low rated sites does not appear to
  help much
• The weight of a link may be determined by the
  number of links at that pageone link among many
  is worth less
• Linking to spamming sites may be penalized

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Visibility (link popularity)

• Some search engines rank your site higher if many
  other sites link to yours
• Your goal is to get as many sites as possible to
  link to you
• Make a list of every Web site thats in your
  space but not a direct competitor
• Find their email address and write a brief,
  friendly letter suggesting a link exchange
• Get your partners, vendors, friends and relatives
  to link to your site
• Submit those pages that link to you to Google

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Search Engine Optimization Other

• Domain names
• If the domain name features the keyword, more
  weight is given
• Google considers the underscore a spacee.g.,
  Marketing_Tips.com .
• Listing in the Open Directory Project
  (http//www.DMOZ.org) .

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Use Robots.txt Files Wisely

• Create and maintain a robots.txt
• Robots.txt Tutorial, http//www.searchengineworld.
  com/robots/robots_tutorial.htm

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Let Spiders In

• Have HTML links on your home page for each major
  page within your site
• Most SEs, like Google, cannot follow image map
  links
• Search engines can follow lta hrefgt JavaScript
  mouseover links, but not all
• Have a site map that contains links to all of
  your pages link with lta hrefgt link from home
  page
• Search engines follow links to more resources -
  so make sure you do not have broken links

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Using your keywordshtml title

• The html title of the page is what you see at the
  top of your browser when you are on that page.
• Its what displays as the link for your listing
  on a search engine.
• Keep it under 75 characters.
• Make each title relevant to the page its on.
• Spend the most time writing the title for your
  home page.
• Write a title for the starting page of each major
  section of your site.
• For all other pages, either use the same title as
  the major section, or use breadcrumbs.

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Using your keywordsmeta description

• The meta description tag describes in a little
  more detail whats on your page
• Its what displays below the title in your search
  engine listing
• Keep it under 150 characters to be sure it
  doesnt get cut off
• Make each description relevant to the page its
  on
• Try to entice potential visitors with clever
  copy, so theyll click

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Using your keywordsmeta description

• Its not really about ranking, its about
  describing your page to potential visitors
• Not all search engines use it, but if they do,
  its what shows up on the search results page
  below the title of the page

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Using your keywordsmeta keywords

• The meta keywords tag can be the same for all the
  pages on your site
• Not all search engines use this tag when ranking
  sites but it cant hurt to include it
• Use a list of words and phrases with no commas in
  between (search engine spiders are programmed to
  read only a certain number of characters in the
  keyword tag if they read it at all commas just
  take up space)

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Using your keywordsALT tags

• every image on your Web site should have a
  carefully written ALT tag
• the ALT text is what visitors see if they move
  their mouse over an image

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Using your keywordsfile names

• dont use abbrv.

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Using your keywordson your home page!

• Work your keywords into the copy of your home
  page (and on other pages, if you can) as many
  times as you can without making it sound
  ridiculous.
• This may seem obvious but it aint necessarily
  so.
• Focusing on your keywords when writing the copy
  for your pages also helps reduce jargon.
• an example

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Create Quality Page Content

• Relevant, authoritative content
• Current content - will be visited more often by
  crawlers
• Create keyword rich titles, descriptions, ltH1gt
• Best to have at least 200 words of visible text
• Mark content through use of metatags, RDF, and
  XML to allow search tools to understand the
  context, meaning, and relationship of words
• Create content people want (and that other sites
  like yours will link to)

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What NOT to do

• Dont load your meta tags with irrelevant
  keywords just because they get searched for a lot
  (like sex).
• Dont repeat your keywords several times in a
  row.
• Dont hide text on your pages by making it the
  same colour as the background.
• Dont use a string of keywords for the title of
  your page.
• Dont submit exact copies of pages with different
  file names.
• Dont use re-directs or other technology that
  will confuse the search engines spider

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Get Listed in the Directories

• Get Listed in DMOZ, the Open DirectoryHow to add
  a site to the Open Directory http//dmoz.org/add.h
  tml
• Get Listed in the Yahoo Directoryhttp//add.yahoo
  .com/fast/add?17051064 How To Suggest Your Site
  on Yahoo http//docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/

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Submitting your site to Google(this is the easy
part)

• Go to http//www.google.com/addurl.html
• Open a second browser window and go to your home
  page
• Highlight the URL of your home page, press
  CTRL/C, then go to Googles submission page and
  paste in your URL.
• If your site is small enough, submit all your
  pages this way. If your site is large, submit the
  first pages of the main sections of your site
  the pages with titles and descriptions.

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Wait(this is also the hard part)

• it can take from two weeks to four months for
  your site to be included in the database
• it can take weeks after that before you see your
  site appear in the search results
• every time the database is re-indexed, your
  ranking will change
• re-submit every month and monitor your results

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Design Issues

• Search engines prefer big, dumb ugly pages
• Design issues that can impact ranking (or just
  indexing) especially include
• Splash pages, frames dynamic delivery
• Consider these issues when building a site,
  though dont change everything just for search
  engines.

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Theres No Magic Formula

• Do not agonise over SEO issues
• Design it right users and search engines
• Engines always one step ahead of the tricks

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Summary

• Dont design for search engines
• Design for your audience
• Know your message / know your keywords
• Change your content often
• Quality is most important

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Questions?