Search Engine Optimization

2 Google this…  In real estate, the key is location, location, location…  In the web-space, the key is content, content, content…

3 What is a Search Engine? Software that lets users search the Internet using keywords.

4 What is Search?  Query Box  Where you type your keywords  4-6 keywords now the norm instead of 1-2  Search Results are listed on the left-hand side of the page  Paid Ad Results are listed on the right-hand side of the page

5 Major Search Engines  Google feeds AOL, Netscape, Earthlink & others  Yahoo owns Overture, AltaVista, AlltheWeb, FAST & others  Google, Yahoo & MSN results account for % of all search traffic (rough estimate) Ephricon Web Marketing

6 Search Engine Relationship Chart

7 Anatomy of a Search Result Search box Sponsored Listings aka PPC “Organic” Results aka SERPs Ephricon Web Marketing

8 Google Search Results

9 Yahoo Search Results

10 MSN Search Results

11 Who are the players  Market Share according to  Google reached 52% in June of US  Yahoo reached 25%  MSN reached 10%  Everyone else 13% Ask Jeeves Dogpile AOL et al

12 Share of Searches: July

13 A Search Engine’s Goals & Objectives  Accumulate large index (database) of web documents to search  Provide highly-relevant results to users (better than competitors)  Generate revenue via paid advertising and related business ventures that typically leverage large amount of traffic

14 How Do Search Engines Work?  Spider “crawls” the web to find new documents (web pages, other documents) typically by following hyperlinks from websites already in the database  Search engine indexes the content (text, code) in these documents by adding it to their huge databases and periodically updates this content  Search engine searches its own database when user enters in a search to find related documents (not searching web pages in real- time)  Search engine ranks resulting documents using an algorithm (mathematical formula) that assigns various weights to various ranking factors

15 What is a Algorithm?  A set of rules that a search engine uses to rank the listings contained within its index, in response to a search.  Uses an algorithm to identify preferred links  Algorithms may involve  Usage of keywords  “Popularity” (number of links pointing inward)  Other criteria—often proprietary

16 So What is the Algorithm?  Top Secret! Only select employees of the actual search engines know for certain  Reverse engineering, research and experiments gives SEOs (search engine optimization professionals) a “pretty good” idea of major factors and approximate weight assignments Ephricon Web Marketing

17 So What is the Algorithm?  Constantly changing, tweaking, updating is done to the algorithm.  Websites and documents being searched are also constantly changing  Varies by Search Engine – some give more weight to on- page factors, some to link popularity Ephricon Web Marketing

18 What a Search Engine Sees  View > Source (HTML code)  (HTML text, no images and little formatting)  Ephricon Web Marketing

19 What is Search Engine Optimization?  The act of designing (or re-designing) your site to be more search engine friendly.

20 Why Search Engine Optimization?  85% of all traffic on the internet is referred from a search engine  90% of all users don’t look past the first 30 results (most only view top 10)  Many websites aren’t even indexed, most are poorly optimized and get very little traffic from the search engines

21  Create usable, readable pages for people because search engine algorithms calculate relevance from a human perspective.  Ensure navigation allows crawlers to reach all parts of your site.  Include title, description, and keywords meta tags in the HTML header.  Use keywords in meaningful headings.  Use keywords at the beginning of the page in text.  Use keywords in the URL or filename, and don’t change either unnecessarily. Basic Search Engine Optimization

22  Create alt tags for graphics containing keywords.  Don’t try to spam a search engine by overuse or hidden use of keywords.  Validate all HTML to ensure it can be ‘seen’ by the search engine.  Use robots.txt and robots meta tags to keep search engines from indexing what they shouldn’t.  Avoid using frames.  Avoid putting content and links within script code. Basic Search Engine Optimization

23 Ranking Factors  On-Page Factors (Code & Content) Title tags Header tags ALT image tags Content, Content, Content (Body text) Hyperlink text Keyword frequency & density  Off-Page Factors Link Popularity (“votes” for your site) – adds credibility Anchor text Ephricon Web Marketing

24 Meta Tags  Self-describing text at the beginning of a web page that is not visible to the user but can be read by the search engine  Title  Key-words  Description  Appear not to be significant for most search engines today

25 Search Engine Optimization: Text  Credible repetition of key words  Frequently greater credit for Bolded words Words early in the document  Identification of desirable key words  Analysis of competing sites  Customer interviews  Misspellings

26 Anti-Spam Detection Algorithms  Excessive repetition of key words in meta tags  Use of “redirection”  Use of “hidden text”  Excessive use of keywords or bolding may be detected

27 Search Engine Optimization: Reciprocal Linking  Linking from highly rated web sites greatly increases the ranking of a site  Linking from low rated sites does not appear to help much  The weight of a link may be determined by the number of links at that page—one link among many is worth less  Linking to “spamming” sites may be penalized

28 Visibility (link popularity)  Some search engines rank your site higher if many other sites link to yours  Your goal is to get as many sites as possible to link to you  Make a list of every Web site that’s in your space but not a direct competitor  Find their address and write a brief, friendly letter suggesting a link exchange  Get your partners, vendors, friends and relatives to link to your site  Submit those pages that link to you to Google

29 Search Engine Optimization: Other  Domain names  If the domain name features the keyword, more weight is given  Google considers the underscore a space—e.g., Marketing_Tips.com.  Listing in the Open Directory Project (

30 Use Robots.txt Files Wisely  Create and maintain a robots.txt  Robots.txt Tutorial,

31 Let Spiders In  Have HTML links on your home page for each major page within your site  Most SE’s, like Google, cannot follow image map links  Search engines can follow JavaScript mouseover links, but not all  Have a site map that contains links to all of your pages; link with link from home page  Search engines follow links to more resources - so make sure you do not have broken links

32 Using your keywords: html title  The html title of the page is what you see at the top of your browser when you are on that page.  It’s what displays as the link for your listing on a search engine.  Keep it under 75 characters.  Make each title relevant to the page it’s on.  Spend the most time writing the title for your home page.  Write a title for the starting page of each major section of your site.  For all other pages, either use the same title as the major section, or use breadcrumbs.

33 Using your keywords: meta description  The meta description tag describes in a little more detail what’s on your page  It’s what displays below the title in your search engine listing  Keep it under 150 characters to be sure it doesn’t get cut off  Make each description relevant to the page it’s on  Try to entice potential visitors with clever copy, so they’ll click

34 Using your keywords: meta description  It’s not really about ranking, it’s about describing your page to potential visitors  Not all search engines use it, but if they do, it’s what shows up on the search results page below the title of the page

35  The meta keywords tag can be the same for all the pages on your site  Not all search engines use this tag when ranking sites – but it can’t hurt to include it  Use a list of words and phrases with no commas in between (search engine spiders are programmed to read only a certain number of characters in the keyword tag if they read it at all – commas just take up space) Using your keywords: meta keywords

36 Using your keywords: ALT tags  every image on your Web site should have a carefully written ALT tag  the ALT text is what visitors see if they move their mouse over an image

37 Using your keywords: file names don’t use abbrv.

38 Using your keywords: on your home page!  Work your keywords into the copy of your home page (and on other pages, if you can) as many times as you can without making it sound ridiculous.  This may seem obvious but it ain’t necessarily so.  Focusing on your keywords when writing the copy for your pages also helps reduce jargon. an example…

39 Create Quality Page Content  Relevant, authoritative content  Current content - will be visited more often by crawlers  Create keyword rich titles, descriptions,  Best to have at least 200 words of visible text  Mark content through use of metatags, RDF, and XML to allow search tools to understand the context, meaning, and relationship of words  Create content people want (and that other sites like yours will link to)

40 What NOT to do  Don ’ t load your meta tags with irrelevant keywords just because they get searched for a lot (like “ sex ” ).  Don ’ t repeat your keywords several times in a row.  Don ’ t hide text on your pages by making it the same colour as the background.  Don ’ t use a string of keywords for the title of your page.  Don ’ t submit exact copies of pages with different file names.  Don ’ t use re-directs or other technology that will confuse the search engine ’ s spider

41 Get Listed in the Directories  Get Listed in DMOZ, the Open Directory How to add a site to the Open Directory  Get Listed in the Yahoo Directory ; How To Suggest Your Site on Yahoo

42 Submitting your site to Google (this is the easy part)  Go to  Open a second browser window and go to your home page  Highlight the URL of your home page, press CTRL/C, then go to Google’s submission page and paste in your URL.  If your site is small enough, submit all your pages this way. If your site is large, submit the first pages of the main sections of your site — the pages with titles and descriptions.

43 Wait… (this is also the hard part)  it can take from two weeks to four months for your site to be included in the database  it can take weeks after that before you see your site appear in the search results  every time the database is re-indexed, your ranking will change  re-submit every month and monitor your results

44 Design Issues  Search engines prefer big, dumb ugly pages  Design issues that can impact ranking (or just indexing) especially include  Splash pages, frames & dynamic delivery…  Consider these issues when building a site, though don’t change everything just for search engines.

45 There’s No Magic Formula  Do not agonise over SEO issues  Design it right – users and search engines  Engines always one step ahead of the “tricks”

46 Summary  Don’t design for search engines  Design for your audience  Know your message / know your keywords  Change your content often  Quality is most important

47 Questions?