Todd Friesen April, 2007 SEO Workshop Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco

SEO – The “Free” Traffic

The Golden Triangle Pay Per Click ($$$) Natural (Free)

Golden Triangle Statistics 85% click on “natural” (unpaid) results 72% of searchers click on the first link of interest 25.5% read all listings first, then decide Position 7-10 in natural listings = top 4 PPC slots on the right hand side of the page

On Page SEO Techniques Title Tags – HTML element that displays the title of a web page in your web browser and in the search results. Meta Description – HTML element that summarizes the content of your web page and enforces your marketing message.

On Page SEO Techniques Body Content – must be readable and contain your key phrases. ALT Tags – HTML element describes images in the page. Alt tags boost relevancy as well as provide a new avenue of traffic from image searches.

On Page SEO Techniques Heading Tags – an HTML element that provides structure and tells search engines which parts of your page are most important. Internal Linking – proper linking leads to better indexing. Using your keywords in your internal links helps boost relevancy.

Things To Avoid Dropdown boxes for navigation Java or JavaScript navigation Flash-based or overly graphical website Splash pages Too many parameters in the URL Nonstandard characters in the URL Session IDs or user IDs in the URL Site spread across multiple domains Title tags same on all pages Error page returning a 200 status code Incorrect redirects

#1 Thing To Avoid AJAX

Google PageRank and TrustRank Early PageRank PageRank was the primary factor used to determine organic rankings. Each web page (not site) has its own PageRank score PageRank scores were recalculated every 30 days. New PageRank scores were immediately available in Google’s toolbar. PageRank Today PageRank is no longer the primary factor used to determine rankings PageRank is no longer recalculated on a 30 day cycle Toolbar PageRank data is now 3 to 4 months old PageRank is used to determine crawl frequency, crawl depth, and database selection. (Main Index or Supplemental Index)

Google PageRank and TrustRank Trust Rank TrustRank uses a human selected set of trusted domains. TrustRank is passed down from the initial set of human reviewed sites. The closer your site is (in terms of linkage) to sites in the human reviewed set, the more TrustRank you will have. TrustRank is domain specific, not page specific. Sites with high TrustRank combined with high PageRank is money in the bank.

Link Based Algorithms All major search engines use linking data in their ranking algorithms Factors analyzed include popularity of the linking page, context of the linking page, and the context of the anchor text used in the links.

Linking Strategies Competitive Intelligence – Analyze the backlinks of your competitors. Try to get links from the same sites Submit to Quality General Directories Submit to Verticals/Topical Guides Search Ad Networks – AdBrite, Adwords, Blog Ads, etc. Use Blogs and RSS – Google loves blogs Create Podcasts/Screencasts – Bloggers love posting them Buy Text Links – But be careful. Google doesn’t like it

Linking Strategies To Avoid Participating in “link farms” or FFA (“Free For All”) sites Splogging, comment spamming, guestbook spamming Linking to “bad neighborhoods” Hiding links Hoarding all your PageRank Unnatural link structures

Search Engine Link Commands To a page: Google’s and MSN Search’s link: query operator To your site Yahoo’s linkdomain: query operator Subtract your site from the results (MSN & Yahoo only) E.g. link: -site:yoursite.com NOTE: Google displays only a sampling of backlinks

Free Link Research Tools Yahoo’s Site Explorer - siteexplorer.search.yahoo.comsiteexplorer.search.yahoo.com Netconcepts’ Link Checker - WeBuildPages’ Neat-o Tool - SEO For Firefox - tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.htmltools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html TouchGraph GoogleBrowser - Tattler -

Linking Strategies To Use Carefully Types of links that are likely to get discounted: Reciprocal links Affiliated sites (on the same IP range or hostname) Footer links (at the bottom of the page) Site-wide links Links contained on a page called links.htm / links.asp Remember: the more links on the linking page, the less PageRank you’ll get

Linking Summary Best links are: Topically relevant One way (not reciprocated) Not in footer and not site-wide Earned by merit, rather than bought, bartered or stolen Not crowded with many other links on the page On a high PageRank/TrustRank, high Alexa-ranked,.edu/.gov/.mil authority site