SEO 101 lecture at New York University

3. How search engines work Early search engines WebCrawler Excite Lycos Etc. Found pages based on on-page content Easily manipulated results

4. How Search Engines Work- Google In 1998 Google was publically launched Innovative pagerank algorithm

5. How Search Engines Work Crawling and indexing the web Crawlers follow links to find interconnected documents Store relevant information for future retreival Data is stored on over 1 million servers spread over at least 36 datacenters around the world

7. How Search Engines Work Rankings When a user types in a query the search engine returns results based on relevance and importance Relevance=topic Early search engines focused primarily on this step Importance=links (pagerank) And hundreds of other signals

8. Why is SEO important Nearly 400 million searches performed each day (over 15 billion per month) – comscore, april 2010 Google captures 65% of share (10 billion) Yahoo 18% Microsoft 12%

10. Why is SEO important Takeaways: Search is extremely popular (15 billion searches per month) Position in serps is critical (90% of clicks are 1st page)

11. How do you improve your rankings? 3 core components of SEO Site architecture (on-site) Content (on-site) Links (off-site)

12. Site Architecture Indexable content Page title meta data Headers Text URLs alt tags Images*

13. Site Architecture Problematic content Text vs images Use alt tag for images flash Java Video Audio

14. Site architecture How search engines view sites Seo-browser.com Lynx (text-based browser) http://lynx.isc.org Turn off images, javascript, css in browser (web developer extension in firefox)

16. Site architecture Crawlable link structure Anatomy of a link Anchor text Absolute vs relative links

17. Site architecture Site hierarchy 3 click rule

18. Site architecture What prevents links from being crawled? Form based navigation Javascript (google is can parse javascript, but it’s still questionable) Flash Java Iframes & frames Blocked by robots.txt, rel=nofollow, meta nofollow Too many variables in URLs

19. Site architecture URLs Best practices Descriptive Short No variables Consistent hierarchy Separate with hyphens lowercase

20. content Anatomy of a search result Targeting keywords Use in title, on-page copy, url, meta description

21. content Title tags Most important on-page factor for targeting keywords best practices 70 characters or fewer Important keywords first Use target keyword once with one variation Plurals, alternate usage

22. content Meta tags Meta description Used for click thru rate (ctr) Google sometimes chooses to use a more appropriate on-page snippet, depending on the search query No influence on rankings

23. content Best practices for targeting chosen keywords/phrases Use keyword in title once, and one variation Use keyword (or variation) in header Use in body copy Multiple times and variations Keep it natural Use in meta description Use in URL If possible & natural—don’t force it

24. content Latent semantic indexing Analyzes relationships between words & phrases Places additional weight on words in content Correlates surprisingly well with how a human might interpret a document Apple vs apple

25. content Duplicate content Same content appears in multiple locations on site—which one should search engine serve to users? Standardize, choose one URL for each piece, and stick to it Widgets.html and widgets.html?key=test are seen as two different pages Site.com/index.html, www.site.com, www.site.com/index.html can all be seen as separate pages

26. content Duplicate content Pages targeting the same keywords compete with each other Remedies 301 redirects Canonical tag <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.site.com/page.html" /> Meta noindex

27. Keyword research Crucial component of SEO Knowing which keywords to target

28. Keyword research Keyword research tools Adwords keyword tools https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal - google.com and all affiliated search properties (youtube, gmail, chrome, news, etc.) www.google.com/sktool/ - solely on searches on google.com Wordtracker – paid Trellian keyword discovery – paid Google suggest Google related searches Competitors

33. Keyword research Testing Use googleadwords (or yahoo search marketing or microsoftadcenter)

34. Keyword research Short tail vs long tail chart

35. Keyword research Types of queries Informational Obtaining information is goal of user E.g. regions in italy Navigational User has pre-determined destination in mind E.g. facebook Transactional Complete a task E.g. pay nyc parking ticket

36. links Serve as “votes” Democracy of the web representing what’s important Most important element of how pages are ranked SEs rank pages based on the quantity and quality of links pointing to them Most difficult element of SEO

37. links Types of link acquisition Editorial-best Non-solicited Linkbait-bordering on manual Usually cannot control anchor text Manual Link solicitations, directory submissions, content distribution, blog comments, guest blog posts/articles, profile links

38. links How links are valued by search engines Link popularity of linking page/site Pagerank Topicality of linking page Anchor text Location of link

39. links Strategies Linkbait “Interesting enough to catch people’s attention” – matt cutts Encourages natural, editorial links Create sensational content Infographics Interesting research Top * lists Anything users would find interesting

43. links Linkbait best practices Email relevant blogs and other sites Make it easily sharable Submit to social sites Digg, reddit, stumbleupon, etc. Having friends helps-powerful accounts help content spread easier You can sometimes pay power users or specialty companies to submit content for you

44. links Directory submissions Most general directories created over the past few years are built for SEO purposes, not users Their ability to pass pagerank has been reduced/eliminated by the search engines Some directories require reciprocal links skip

45. links Directory submissions Some general directories are still valuable (editorial policies in place) Yahoo directory - paid LII—librarians’ internet index Business.com - paid DMOZ Used to be a big factor in rankings, but corruption and neglect have diminished its value

46. links Directories Niche directories Can be very effective Search for “directory” + keyword, “add link” + keyword, “add url” + keyword, and variations

47. links Solicitations Stroke webmasters’ egos You’ve won! Awards, top resource lists, etc. General suggestions Hello, FYI—we just published this interesting piece of content. You may find it interesting. Feel free to share with your users.

49. links Guest blog posts/articles Link in attribution Content distribution/licensing Very powerful sites can outrank you for your own content Make sure you get a link in the attribution

50. links Leverage relationships Include links as part of other business deals Create custom content if need be Ask customers for links

51. links Profile links Blog comments Forum signatures Low quality, but can help with content discovery and provide signals to Ses May help with rankings in very low competition verticals

52. links Buying links Beware of link brokers Text link ads Text link brokers Linkworth Conductor All are potentially dangerous and not worth the money or risk

53. links Buying links Advanced link brokers Iacquire Expensive Leased links Can be very useful in hypercompetitive verticals where natural links are difficult to acquire E.g. gambling, pharmaceuticals, lending

54. links Buying links Negotiating purchases yourself***** Be very careful Make link placements look natural Ideally negotiate a one-time payment Have seller sign NDA Use an alternate email account and don’t initially mention your site’s URL Posing as a female often produces better results

55. links Types of links to avoid Link exchanges Including 3 way link exchanges Free for all pages Blatantly paid links Links from bad neighborhoods Your friends can reflect poorly on you

56. links Competitive link analysis See who links to your competitors Yahoo site explorer Linkdomain:site.com or link:site.com/page.html Most likely going away in q3 or q4 Linkdiagnosis Based off the yahoo site explorer api Sorts link data in easy to analyze manner Tracks link history

59. links Competitive link analysis Seomoz tools Use their own index Linkscape Opensiteexplorer.org Majesticseo Uses own index Most users argue that it has a better index than seomoz

62. Measure and refine Use analytics to track relevant metrics Search engine traffic Referrals Direct traffic Top pages Top keywords Conversion % Pages receiving traffic vs # of pages on site If page is not receiving traffic, give it more exposure

63. Measure and refine Analytics software Google analytics Free and good Most popular Coremetrics Not recommended Omniture Recognized as best Others—urchin, mint, yahoo web analytics, dozens more

65. Measure and refine Other useful analytic software Google website optimizer a/b testing, multivariate testing Hitwise Competitive intelligence Expensive Relative data Compete Competitive intelligence Crazyegg Heatmaps cheap

67. Measure and refine Rank checking—track movement of top keywords Advanced web ranking Paid Don’t freak out over small movement—it’s normal

69. Other useful SEO software Seachstatus for firefox My “can’t live without” tool Check pagerank, compete, alexa, mozrank Whois info, link data, on-page elements

70. Other useful SEO software SEOmoz tools Many provide a quick and easy way to get relative score on SEO metrics Trifecta Score of the importance of a page or site Keyword difficulty tool Analyze competitive landscape of a keyword Term target How targeted a particular page is for a keyword Many others

71. Other useful SEO software Aaron wall’s tools Seo for firefox Shows pagerank, links, site age, and other seo metrics directly in the search results Hubfinder Find links your competitors have that you don’t

73. Other useful SEO tools Google webmaster central Must approve site before having access Check your top keywords in google Crawl errors Load times Submit xml sitemap 404 errors Your site’s links

74. Other useful SEO tools Web developer toolbar for firefox Useful tool for front-end developers Some features are useful for seo, such as seeing how a site looks without images, css, javascript, etc. Xenu link sleuth Find broken links

75. SEO myths Pagerank reflects how highly your site can rank