4. 4
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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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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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 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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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)