Staff training presentation for the purposes of considering search engine interpretation when designing content for our several websites.

1. SEARCH ENGINE
MARKETING
Staff Training
Linda Detterman
May 28, 2009

2. Why should we care?
• How do you find resources and information?
• How do you think our data users are finding
our resources?
– Is the strategy to find them and bring them
in? --OR--
– Is the strategy to enable them to find us?
• 80% of Internet user sessions begin at search
engines (Source: Internetstats.com)

3. ICPSR Search Traffic
• So far in 2009:
– 41% of our traffic coming through search
engines
– 37% coming through Google
• Stats from Google Analytics (January 1 – May
15)

4. Some Definitions & the Goal
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)– techniques to
develop a web page or site that search engine
spiders can easily interpret; includes SEO and
paid search techniques
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – a part of
SEM; techniques to “influence” ranking in
“natural/organic” search results - Google
• Google’s POV: manipulating your site such
that their spiders can correctly interpret your
content and bring the right users to you is
okay

5. Search Engine Share & Ranking
• Google – 60%
• Yahoo! – 23%
• Live Search (formerly MSN Search) – 12%
• Ask – 4%
(Source: Hitwise 2007 – oldie stat but a goodie!)
So Google has a ranking algorithm – rumor has
it, with 200+ elements . . .

6. Agenda Today
• Organic Search – The Content Factor
• Organic Search – The Links Factor
• Google Analytics & Other Sources – Playing a
role in your content
• Feeding Spiders
• Tips & Free Evaluation Tools

7. Optimizing Organic
Search – The
Content Factor

8. How do Search Engines Work?
• Web pages containing text are “spidered” by
search engines
• Search engines process spidered pages to
decide importance of sites/pages and to create
searchable indices
• Users submit a keyword(s) search to the
engine which then returns relevant pages
associated with that keyword(s)
• Users click the links of interest from the
results (note – this also feeds into relevance
since the search engine “learns”)

9. Content – Text versus Not Text
• What is Text?
– Webpages with HTML text
– Common files: PDF, Word, Excel
– META tags
• What is Not text?
– Images
– Flash
– Audio
– Video
– Java/AJAX/Javascript

10. Not all Content is Equal!
• Title & Tagline
• Section Heading
• Navigation tags
• Text in paragraphs
• Image tags
• Meta tags
• URLs also Crawled!
– Note: Spiders interpret hyphens (-) as a
space but underscores (_) as a character –
the latter thus lowers the match!

11. Good Example

12. Another Good Example

13. Not So Good Example
• Scarecrow Winery
– All Flash and no Content!
• Spiders can’t read or interpret, so can’t rank or
return to users
• Winery is successful – but it’s relying on other
content & viral methods (and good wine!) to get
people there (more on that during social media
training next month!)

14. Content Tips
• If possible, incorporate key search terms in
titles, section names, text, & metafiles (and
also in your print media/promotions)
• Don’t use the brand name in these unless you
are really well known – okay for Coca Cola and
Nike!
• Lot’s of “personalizing” the website going on
(sessionizing) – be careful however since if
you make the landing page unique to each
user, spiders don’t consolidate across users
(spiders can crawl, but they can’t add!)

15. Analyze your Preferred Site for
Content
• Do titles and subtitles on your page
explain the content?
– “The OLC supports quantitative
literacy” vs. “What We Do”
• Does paragraph text have terms users
might use?
• Are images tagged?
• Are navigation tags aiding the spiders?

16. Optimizing Organic
Search – The Link
Factor

17. The Link Factor!
• Emphasizing the “Web” in Website!
• Three kinds of links:
– Internal links to other pages within the
site: Never, Never “CLICK HERE”!!
• Subpages should link to homepage –
increases homepage importance ranking
– Outbound Links to other sites: Never,
Never “CLICK HERE”!!
– Inbound Links from other sites: Do I
need to say it again?

18. The Link Factor!
• Inbound Links Rule!
– Feed Google’s fascination with citations
• But it’s not just quantity, it’s quality:
– Links to site/page from .gov, .mil, .edu, and
.org are more highly weighted
– Links from blogs, social media sites, and
.com also important (think popularity
contest!)
• Links should describe your content
– “Click here for info on the ICPSR Summer Program”
-versus- “For info on the ICPSR Summer Program,
Click Here”

19. Google Analytics – ICPSR Referral Sites

20. Feeding the Spider a Good Link Diet
• Referring to ICPSR:
– ICPSR is the world’s largest archive of digital social science data
• Referring to an ICPSR resource:
– ICPSR’s Online Learning Center is a collection of
social science teaching resources
• Referring to an archive/project:
– The National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA) is a
collection of research data on the aging
• Referring to an ICPSR dataset:
– Those interested in research regarding
racial disparities in mental health should consult the
Detroit Area Studies Series
– The
Detroit Area Study, 1995: Social Influence on Health: Stress, Racism, and
. This survey explored the
ways in which social influences, such as stress and racism, affected health
, and the impact these influences had on the respondents' outlook
on life.

21. Feeding the Spider - Social Media
Discussion Social Networks
Forums
Photo/Slide Sharing
Blogs
Social
Bookmarking
Mobile Social
Event
Sharing News
Podcast Sharing
Videos

22. Analyze your Preferred Site for Links
• What do you know about your internal
links?
• Take a look at your outbound links –
are they properly described?
• What do you know about inbound links
– Who are your best referrals?
– Have you looked at how other sites
are describing your site?
– Have you asked appropriate sites to
link to you?

23. Tips
• Design your site with users AND spiders in
mind
• Don’t become labeled as a spammer!
– No hidden text/key words on pages
– No hidden links on pages
– Stay away from link factories
• Design strategically – use some of the free
tools out there to assist. There are many!

24. Free Evaluation Tools
• Really Cool Tool: Seochat.com -
http://www.seochat.com/
• Google Trends - shows how often a particular search
term is entered relative the total search volume across various
regions of the world - http://www.google.com/trends
• Google Webmaster Tools – Inbound link & other
information about what the spider is seeing -
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dashboard?pli=1
• Yahoo Site Explorer:
https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
• Google Adwords:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• Delicious - http://delicious.com/
• Some to investigate:
– http://www.robotreplay.com/
– http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html

25. Now Get Out There
& Be Found!