Natural," or "organic," search engine optimization (SEO) is designing, writing, and HTML-coding a Web site to maximize the chance its pages will appear at the top of spider-based search engine results for selected keywords and phrases

1. Search Engine
Optimization (SEO)
Prepared by: Larry Stewart

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Topic Outline
 Introduction
 How Search Engines Work
 SEO Building Blocks
• Keywords
• Crawler
• Links
 SEO Tools
 Black Hat Methods
 Summary and Conclusion

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Introduction

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Definition of Search Engine
Optimization (SEO)1
"Natural," or "organic," search engine
optimization (SEO) is designing, writing, and
HTML-coding a Web site to maximize the
chance its pages will appear at the top of
spider-based search engine results for
selected keywords and phrases
Organic Listings: Listings that search engines
do not sell (unlike paid listings)

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SEO
 Iterative process
 Dynamic environment
 Art
 Science

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Why is it important?
 Internet advertising 1H 2006 : $7.9
Billion2
 Search ranking more site visitors
 Internet users tend not to click through
 Depends on webs role in your
economic model

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Variation in Approaches
White Hat
 Abide by terms and conditions set forth by
search engines
Black Hat
 Breaches search engine terms and conditions
 May provide short-term gains
 You run the risk of being penalized by search
engines

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Defining Success (Context)
Search-Friendly (SEO)
• High ranking
• Terms and conditions set by search engines
(Google, Yahoo, MSN Search)
User-Friendly
• Site must satisfy the needs of visitors
Persuasive
• Profitable for site owner

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How Search Engines Works

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Search Engine Operations
1. Gather Content
• Crawler or spider moves recursively
downloading content
1. Builds sophisticate index
2. Individual web searches run against
index
• Results are retrieved and ordered
• PageRank & Relevance

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Google Search Placement4
Placement: importance and relevance
 PageRank (importance)
• Counts links
• Weights links
 Query matching (relevance)
• sophisticated text-matching techniques
• examines all aspects of the page's content
(and the content of the pages linking to it)

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SEO Optimization

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SEO Optimization Categories
 Keywords
• Keyword selection and keyword-rich text
 Crawler
• A crawler-friendly site navigation scheme
 Links
• Link popularity

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Keyword Recommendations1
 Page title: visible HTML text ,“Above the fold”
 Page Size: "100 KB" limit is still is still widely
held. The optimum page size is 500-3000
words (or 2000 to 20,000 characters)
 Be specific
 Example: “Apple iPod” verses “iPod”
• exact phrase should appear generously throughout
your site copy on every page

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More Keyword
Recommendations5
Meta tags: use but don’t stuff
 <meta name="description" content="Free Web tutorials on HTML, CSS, XML,
and XHTML">
Alt tags: use for graphics

<IMG src="star.gif" alt=“star logo">
Content is king
 Write good content with relevant and important keywords in
mind.
Geo Targeting
 Add geocentric terms to target local areas
Domain Names
 Use keywords as part of domain name

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Crawler-friendly
 Engine spiders are primitive beings
• choose simplicity over complexity
 Goal
• All your web pages seen by crawlers
• Google: enter in searchbox
“allinurl:utexas.edu”

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Suggestions to be Crawler
Friendly5
 Traditional <a href> tag
 Keywords in subfolder names
 Minimize quantity of subfolders
 Cross link relevant terms and phrases
within the site
 Multiple paths to pages to eliminate
orphans

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Avoid or Minimize: May
Negatively Impact Crawler5
 Flash (slow to load and difficult to
navigate)
 Frames
 Java navigation
 Session ID to track visitors
 exact same Title tags on every page
 set to require a cookie when a visitor
gets to the page

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Link Development
Inbound Links Impact PageRank
PageRank (Popularity, importance)
 Number and quality of links pointing to a
website
 Measure of usefulness of site

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Link Development Tradeoffs
 Advantage
• it is dynamic, cumulative, and difficult to
imitate
 Disadvantage
• takes time (vs. advertising)

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Link Development Approaches
(White Hat)7
 Quality content to start with
 Cultivate quality link (not quantity)
 Begin with web directories
 Harness online publicity
 Use Blogs and forums wisely
 Investigate competitors
• Understand their strategy
• Online publicity, blogs and forums
• See inbound links ("link:domain.com" in Google,
"linkdomain:domain.com" in Yahoo)

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SEO Tools

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Search Engine Term and
Conditions
 Google
 Yahoo
 MSN Search

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Vendor Tools Example:
Seo Administrator 8
 Ranking monitor: site positioning in for keywords
 Link popularity checker: checks inbound links
 Site indexation tool: check site indexation
 Server Log-analyzer: Administrator log analyzer
 PageRank analyzer: analyze competitor sites
 Keywords tool: suggestions, associations, competitor analysis
 HTML analyzer: dissect html text in the same way that a search
engine would (syntax, keyword density)

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31. Black Hat Methods

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Head of the webspam group at
Google
 Matt Cutts
 Worked on his Ph.D Computer Science
at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. Undergrad Comp Sci and
Math (Graduated with M.S.).
 Moved into information retrieval after
classes from the university's Information
and Library Science department

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http://www.searchenginegenie.com/seo-blog/images/matt.gif
http://www.searchenginegenie.com

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Link Exchange Advertisement

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Keyword Consulting Advertisement

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Black Hat Terms
 Link Farming: exchanging reciprocal links
 Keyword Stuffing: Hidden text, Stuffing text in every nook and cranny
 Cloaking: stealth, deliver different page to a search engine for indexing
 Doorway Pages: bridge, jump page, designed to appeal to search engine spiders
 Fast meta refresh: used to quickly switch doorway pages to the page the user is
supposed to see
 Code swapping: swap it on the server with the "real" page once a position has
been achieved. also sometimes done to keep others from learning exactly how the
page ranked well.
 Bait and Switch: loads the page with a popular search words such as sex, travel or
antivirus when is irrelevant to site

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Online Resources

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Search Engine Standards
Google
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40349&ctx=related
Yahoo
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/basics-18.html
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/basics-17.html
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/index.html
MSN
http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx?t=SEARCH_WEBMASTER_REF_GuidelinesforOptimizingSit
Web Robots
http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/robots.html
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp/index.html
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8843

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Keyword Tools
Overture tool
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion
Wordtracker tool [recommended]
http://our.affiliatetracking.net/wordtracker/a/12246
Google Sandbox Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox
Espotting Tool
http://www.espotting.com/popups/keywordgenbox.asp
Related Pages
http://www.related-pages.com/adwordskeywords.aspx

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Conclusion and Summary
Website Success
 Search-friendly
 User-friendly
 Persuasive
Search-friendly Optimization components
 Keywords
 Crawler
 Links

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Bibliography
1
Thulow, Shari. “What Search Engine Marketing Does Your Site Need?”
Clickz. 15 Nov. 2006 <
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3105241 >.
2
“2006 Second Quarter Results (October 4, 2006) .” Interactive Advertising
Bureau. 15 Nov. 2006 <
http://www.iab.net/resources/ad_revenue.asp >.
3
“Event Homepage.” Search Engine Strategies 2006 Conference and
Exposition. 15 Nov. 2006
<http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/sew/winter06/index.html >.
4
“Our Search: Google Technology.” Google Website. 15 Nov. 2006
< http://www.google.com/technology/index.html >.

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Bibliography
5
Laratro, Joe. “Dos and Don’ts of Search Engine Optimization.”
MoreVisibility. 15 Nov. 2006
<http://www.morevisibility.com/whitepaper/2006/SEO_Do_and_
Donts_WP.pdf>
6
Thulow, Shari. “Link Development: The Key to Successful SEO ”
Clickz. 15 Nov. 2006 <http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?
page=3431741 >.
7
link farming. webopedia. 15 Nov. 2006
<http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/l/link_farming.html>.
8
SSEO Tools. SEO Administrator.
<http://www.seoadministrator.com/seo-tools.html>
<http://seo-tutorial.seoadministrator.com/>

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Backup

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Vendor Tools Example:
Seo Administrator 8
Ranking monitor: monitor web site positioning in the major search
engines for keywords
Link popularity checker: checks inbound links across a number of
search engines
Site indexation tool: check site indexation in Google, Yahoo, MSN
and other search engines
Server Log-analyzer: Administrator log analyzer automates
(Number of unique IP addresses, Number of visitors… )
PageRank analyzer: analyze competitor sites
Keywords suggestion tool: Keyword suggestion services, Keyword
Associations, search query suggestions, Competitor analysis
HTML analyzer: dissect html text in the same way that a search
engine would (syntax, keyword density)

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Black Hat Terms
 Link Farming: exchanging reciprocal links with Web sites in order to
increase search engine optimization
 Keyword Stuffing: Hidden text, Stuffing text in every nook and cranny
 Cloaking: stealth, deliver one page to a search engine for indexing
while serving a different page to everyone else.
 Doorway Pages: A Web page that is designed to appeal to search
engine spiders.
 Fast meta refresh: used to quickly switch doorway pages to the page
the user is supposed to see
 Code swapping: swap it on the server with the "real" page once a
position has been achieved. also sometimes done to keep others from
learning exactly how the page ranked well.
 Bait and Switch: Another technique combines word stuffing with "bait-
and-switch," which loads the page with a popular search word such as
sex, travel or antivirus, even though the word has nothing to do with
the site content.