3. 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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4. 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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5. 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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6. 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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7. Search Engine Basics
• Directories:
Human edited
search indexes
o Yahoo Directory!
o DMOZ = The Open
Directory Project
www.dmoz.org
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8. Search Engine Basics
Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)
o Organic: Results based on content and keyword
relevancy (as per algorithm)
o Paid Placement (PPC):
Google AdWords
Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM)
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10. Why Optimize
• Web Search as a navigational tool
On average, 45% of visitor traffic
through 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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11. How much is too much?
• Competition for keywords
• Evaluating page rank
Baseline
Ongoing
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12. Evaluating page rank
• Page rank calculation tools
o Google Toolbar
o www.faganfinder.com/urlinfo/
o www.alexa.com
• Frequent queries
o Web traffic analysis
o U Web Resources
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13. Key Concepts
• Target audience
o Keyword choices
o Directory submission
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14. 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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15. Key Concepts
• Search-friendly Usability
o Home Page vs. Landing pages
o Top-down vs. Shallow-wide design
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18. Key Concepts
• Persistent Navigation
o Orients visitor to site
o Provides spiders pathway through site
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19. Key Concepts
• Accessibility
o Flash
o Javascript
o SSL – authentication
o Firewalls and closed ports
o Databases & query string URLs
o Forms
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20. Key Concepts
• Site Maps
• Non-HTML Documents
o MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF
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21. Key Concepts
• Canonical URLs
o http://utah.edu
o http://www.utah.edu
• Redirects
o 301 server redirect
o Meta-refresh page redirect
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22. 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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23. Optimization
• Get indexed
o Register URL with University Webmaster
o Submit URL to directories
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24. Optimization
• Meta-data
o HTML Page Title
Number one optimization factor
Included in results display
Unique title for each landing page
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26. Optimization
• Meta-data
o Meta-description tag
o 50% weight of HTML Title in Ultraseek
o Included in Ultraseek results display
o Less weight given by Google
o Rarely used in Google results display
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27. Optimization
• Meta-data
o Meta-keywords tag
Equal to meta-description tag in Ultraseek
Ignored by Google
Common misspellings
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28. Optimization
• Meta-data
o Image alt-tags
o H1 tags
o Body text
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29. Optimization
Relative weight given HTML tags
by U of U Ultraseek Search Engine
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30. Optimization
• Popularity
o Inbound links
o Remote anchor links & text
o Anchor link – http://www.url.com
o Anchor text – words used in link
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32. Optimization
• Popularity
o Inbound links
o Remote anchor links & text
o Google Boombing
When a web page places high in search
engine results due to frequent anchor links
using rude or insulting keywords.
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35. Black Hat SEO
• Black Hat SEO:
Unscrupulous 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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36. Optimization
Spam Detection Threshold:
The number of repeating
keywords required for U of U
Ultraseek search engine to
penalize for spamming
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37. Content Management Systems
• Dynamic URLs
Querystring enabled
Consistent, crawl-able URLs
• Cookies and session IDs
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38. 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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39. Resources
• University Webmaster
www.utah.edu/uwebresources
webmaster@utah.edu
581-6113
• www.seamoz.org
• www.searchenginewatch.com
• “The ABC of SEO” David George
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