 SEO Terms A few additional terms Search site: This Web site lets you search through some kind of index or directory of Web sites, or perhaps both an index and directory. Search system: This organization possesses a combination of software, hardware, and people that indexes or categorizes Web sites — they build the index or directory you search through at a search site

More terms  Search term: This is the word, or words, that someone types into a search engine when looking for information.  Search results: Results are the information returned to you (the results of your search term) when you go to a search site and search for something.  Natural search results: A Web page can appear on a search-results page two ways: The search engine may place it on the page because the siteowner paid to be there (pay-per-click ads), or it may pull the page out of its index because it thinks the page matches the search term well.

More terms  Search engine optimization (SEO): Search engine optimization (also known as SEO) refers to “optimizing” Web sites and Web pages to rank well in the search engines.

Why Bother with SEO  The proportion of visits originating at search engines is significant. Not so long ago, one survey put the number at almost 50 percent. Sure, it’s not 80 percent, but it’s still a lot of traffic.  According to a report by eMarketer published early in 2005, 21 percent of American Internet users use a search engine four or more times each day; PEW Internet estimated that 38 million Americans use search engines every day.

Why bother?  A study by iCrossing in the summer of 2005 found that 40 percent of people do online research prior to purchasing products.  Most new visits come through the search engines — that is, search engines are the single most important source of new visitors to Web sites.  The search engines represent a cheap way to reach people. In general, you get more bang for your buck going after free search-engine traffic than almost any other form of advertising or marketing

List of Top Search Sites  Google.com The big kid on the block. Lots of people search the Google index on its own search site, and it feeds many sites. Obviously, Google has to stay on the list.  Bing.com New kid on the block. Will probably never pass Google.  Yahoo.com and MSN.com Yahoo is loosing ground and MSN creates its own index

Search engine Magic  Half of the class go to bing and half go to google. Type in personal injury lawyer. Google results 29,000,000. Bing results 109,000,000. W  What happened?  Considering SEO from this point of view makes it easier to understand how the search engines try to evaluate and compare pages. If the keywords are in the links pointing to the page, the page must be relevant to those keywords; if the keywords are in headings on the page, that must be significant; if the keywords appear frequently throughout the page, rather than just once, that must mean something.

Geek or no Geek  Business people who don’t plan to do the search- engine work themselves (or, in some cases, realize that it’s a lot of work and need to find someone with more time or technical skills to do the work). However, you can have the skills to understand far more about search engines and be in a better position to find and direct someone. “There’s a lot of snake oil in this business,” so classes like this can help you understand the basics and ask the right questions of search-engine optimization firms.

Web Site Makeover  Is your site indexed?  The search engines haven’t found your site yet. The solution is relatively easy, though you won’t get it done in an hour.  The search engines have found your site, but can’t index it. This is a serious problem, though in some cases you can fix it quickly.

Invisible Site  The site is using some kind of navigation structure that the search engines can’t read, so they can’t find their way through the site.  The site is creating dynamic pages that the search engines choose not to read.  Why can’t the searchbots find their way through? The navigation system may have been created using JavaScript, and because search engines ignore JavaScript, they don’t find the links in the script. Look at this example: 

Two things to try  Create more text links throughout the site. Many Web sites have a main navigation structure and then duplicate the structure by using simple text links at the bottom of the page  Add a sitemap page to your site. This page contains links to most or all of the pages on your Web site. Of course, you also want to link to the sitemap page from those little links at the bottom of the home page

Session IDs  Search engines may choose not to index pages with session IDs. If the search engine sees links to a page that appears to have a session ID, it doesn’t know whether the URL will change between sessions or whether many different URLs point to the same page. Search engines don’t want to overload the site’s server and don’t want garbage in their indexes

Picking good keywords  Point your browser to   Test some of your own keyword ideas and share with the class