Search Optimization Techniques

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Search OptimizationTechniques

• Dan Belhassen
• greatBIGnews.com
• Modern Earth Inc.

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About your presenter

• Dan Belhassen
• Founder President Modern Earth Inc., an
  Internet technology company
• Website creators, online software developers,
  search engine consultants, new media marketing
  specialists
• Find me in my booth if you want to follow up
• Presentation at Modernearth.net/lern2008

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How large is the Internet?

• Estimates vary
• How many websites?

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How large is the Internet?

• Estimates vary
• How many websites?
• Apr 1997 1 Million
• Feb 2000 10 Million
• Jul 2001 30 Million
• Mar 2005 60 Million
• Aug 2006 90 Million
• Nov 2006 101 Million
• Nov 2008 ???

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A brief history of search engines

• Created to index search results
• Originally built by humans sorting submitted
  pages into categories
• Now automated search engines try to catalogue the
  entire net
• Google was the first wide spread catalogor

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Finding Information Online

• Two main types of resources
• Search engines
• Website directories
• We will focus on search engines

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Top Search Engines
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Top Search Engines
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Getting Listed

• Two methods
• Organic results
• Paid placement
• Covered fully in Online Advertising with Google
  Adwords

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Organic Results

• The regular unpaid results
• Focus on Google
• Majority of searches
• Other major engines (such as Yahoo MSN) use
  similar algorithms

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The Purpose of Google

• Provide relevant search results
• Make it seem magical
• Googol means 1 followed by 100 zeros
• The largest number that the founders could
  imagine
• Google's mission is to organize the world's
  information and make it universally accessible
  and useful. http//www.google.ca/corporate/inde
  x.html

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How Google Works

• Automated software crawls the Internet reading
  pages
• Determines what the page is about
• Caches and ranks the page

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How Google ranks sites

• Based on a simple algorithm
• What your site is about
• Plus
• The Importance of your site

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How Google ranks sites

• What your site is about
• GoogleBot reads all pages
• Calculates frequency of terms
• Examines
• Titles, Alt tags, File names, Domain name, Text
  headers, filenames more
• Smart!
• Knows that important words appear 6-7
• Tries to not be fooled by keyword spamming
• Cant read flash pages or graphical text!
• Whoa! In August 2008 started reading flash pages!

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How Google ranks sites

• The Importance of your site
• Based on PageRank
• PageRank determined by
• Who is linking to your site and HOW important
  THEY are

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Determining your PageRank

• Get the Google Toolbar
• Free browser plug-in
• Google.com
• Use it to check your PageRank
• For example

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Whos out there?

• Find out who is linking to your site
• Use Google! linkwww.mywebsite.com
• For example

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What about meta-tags?

• What are they, anyway?
• Not used by major search engines
• Keywords/key phrases used instead
• Keep to a short list initially

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Test Search

• Continuing Education
• Whos up first?
• Why??
• Google's complex, automated methods make human
  tampering with our results extremely
  difficult...
• http//www.google.com/technology/

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Increasing Your Ranking

• Determine your best keywords
• (wordtracker.com)
• Use the keywords throughout site
• Domain, file names, page titles, alt text, text
  headers, text
• Develop Landing Pages
• A home for your keyword
• Create landing pages for each keyword
• Develop appropriate links to your landing pages

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Increasing Your Ranking

• Verify your keyword usage
• sitewww.mywebsite.com
• Ensure GoogleBot is visiting your site
• Train GoogleBot to re-visit your website
• Learns how often to visit your site
• Shorten indexing wait after major updates
• Verify with Google webmaster tools

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Increasing Your Ranking

• Monitor traffic on site for keywords vs total
  traffic
• Determine what your pages are about
• Googlerankings.com keyword density
• Track your rank over time
• Ensure your course database is index-able

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Paid Placement
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Paid Placement

• Paying search engines to display your results
• Different systems based on different payment
  schemes
• Focus on Google Adwords
• also displayed in Earthlink, America Online and
  Ask Jeeves results
• accessed through google.com/adwords

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How Do AdWords Work?

• Bidding system
• bid x for a certain keyword
• top bidders (and popular ads) are displayed
  topmost

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Whats Next?

• This is a major field this was a high-level
  view!
• Start by checking your stats to know where your
  visitors are coming from
• There are some excellent books available
• Can also hire a consultant

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Choosing a Consultant

• Select someone who
• Has a broad understanding of Internet
  technologies and trends
• Works with you to understand your goals
• Can explain their strategy and why a course of
  action is preferable
• Has a long-term follow-up plan

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Thank you!

• greatBIGnews.com
• modernearth.net

Presentation available at http//modernearth.net/l
ern2008