4. 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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5. 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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6. 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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7. 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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8. Search Engine Basics
Directories:
Human edited search indexes
o Yahoo Directory!
o DMOZ = The Open Directory Project
www.dmoz.org
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9. 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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11. Why Optimize?
Web Search as a navigational tool
o On average, 45% of visitor traffic
through Utah.edu use the search
engine to navigate.
o 72% of searchers stop with the top ten
search results, and 90% stop with the
top 30.
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12. How much is too much?
Competition for keywords
Evaluating page rank
o Baseline
o Ongoing
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13. 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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14. Key Concepts
Target audience
o Keyword choices
o Directory submission
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15. 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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16. Key Concepts
Search-friendly Usability
o Home Page vs. Landing pages
o Top-down vs. Shallow-wide design
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19. Key Concepts
Persistent Navigation
o Orients visitor to site
o Provides spiders pathway through site
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20. 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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21. Key Concepts
Site Maps
Non-HTML Documents
o MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF
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22. Key Concepts
Canonical URLs
o http://ptu.edu
o http://www.ptu.edu
Redirects
o 301 server redirect
o Meta-refresh page redirect
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23. 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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24. Optimization
Get indexed
o Register URL with University
Webmaster
o Submit URL to directories
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25. Optimization
Meta-data
<html>
<head>
<title>The University of Utah</title>
<meta name="description" content="Founded on
February 28, 1850, The University of Utah offers 75
undergraduate degree programs, more than 50 teaching
majors and minors, and 96 graduate majors.">
<meta name="keywords" content="University of Utah,
UU, Utes, Utah, Salt Lake City, university, universities,
colleges, higher education, academic, research,
admissions">
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26. 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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27. 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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28. Optimization
Meta-data
o Meta-keywords tag
Equal to meta-description tag in Ultraseek
Ignored by Google
Common misspellings
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29. Optimization
Meta-data
o Image alt-tags
o H1 tags
o Body text
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31. 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 Googlebombing
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. Optimization
Reliability
o .edu and .gov domains
o Domain age
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36. Black Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO:
Unscrupulous or deceptive optimization
practices intended to spam users or
compete unfairly
o Invisible text
o Keyword stuffing
o Duplicate pages
o Domain cloaking: serving different content to
search engine robots than to human visitors
o Link farms
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37. 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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38. Content Management
Systems
Dynamic URLs
o Querystring enabled
o Consistent, crawl-able URLs
Cookies and session IDs
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39. 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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