3. Definition of Search Engine
Optimization (SEO)1
"Natural," or "organic," search engine optimization
(SEO) is designing, writing, and HTML-coding a Web
site to maximize the chance its pages will appear at
the top of spider-based search engine results for
selected keywords and phrases
Organic Listings: Listings that search engines do not sell
(unlike paid listings)
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5. Why is it important?
• Financial relevance
• Search ranking more site visitors
• Internet users tend not to click through
• Depends on webs role in your economic
model
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6. Variation in Approaches
White Hat
• Abide by terms and conditions set forth by search
engines
Black Hat
• Breaches search engine terms and conditions
• May provide short-term gains
• You run the risk of being penalized by search engines
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7. Defining Success (Context)
Search-Friendly (SEO)
– High ranking
– Terms and conditions set by search engines
(Google, Yahoo, MSN Search)
User-Friendly
– Site must satisfy the needs of visitors
Persuasive
– Profitable for site owner
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9. Search Engine Operations
1. Gather Content
– Crawler or spider moves recursively
downloading content
2. Builds sophisticate index
3. Individual web searches run against index
– Results are retrieved and ordered
• PageRank & Relevance
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10. Google Search Placement
Placement: importance and relevance
• PageRank (importance)
– Counts links
– Weights links
• Query matching (relevance)
– sophisticated text-matching techniques
– examines all aspects of the page's content (and
the content of the pages linking to it)
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12. Search Engine Optimization
• 6 times more effective than a banner ad
• Delivers qualified leads
• Most user sessions begin at the search
engines
• Most online purchases are made on sites
found through search engine listings
13. SEO is NOT Paid Advertising
• SEO – influence rankings in the “natural”
(a.k.a. “organic”, a.k.a. “algorithmic”) search
results
• PPC – paid search advertising on a pay-per-
click basis.The more you pay, the higher your
placement. Stop paying = stop receiving
traffic.
• SEM – encompasses both SEO and PPC
16. What Are Searchers Looking For?
• Keyword Research
– “Target the wrong keywords and all your efforts
will be in vain.”
• The “right” keywords are…
– relevant to your business
– popular with searchers
17. Keyword Research
• Tools to check popularity of keyword searches
– http://WordTracker.com
– http://KeywordDiscovery.com
– http://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner
– http://www.google.com/trends/
– http://ubersuggest.org/
18. SEO. A Moving Target.
• Lots is changing…
– Personalization & customization
– Vertical search services (Images,Video, News, Maps, etc.)
– “Universal Search”
• Fortunately, the tried-and-true tactics still work…
– Topically relevant links from important sites
– Anchor text
– Keyword-rich title tags
– Keyword-rich content
– Internal hierarchical linking structure
– The whole is greater than the sum of the parts
19. The Search Engines Are Your Friend
• Sitemaps.org
• Webmaster tools (e.g. GoogleWebmaster, BingWebmaster)
20. What is SEO ( Search Engine Optimization )?
• The process of improving web pages so they rank higher in search engines for your
targeted keywords.
Crawlability / Optimized Code
Internal Link Structure
Link Popularity / Relevance
Key Factors
Content Relevance
21. Industry Research: Organic SEO is the most popular form of SEM
Organic SEO is the most popular form of SEM, with almost three-quarters
of advertisers using this method, with paid placement a very close second at
71%
22. Technical SEO
1. Comprehensive Website Analysis
2. Keyword Research and Analysis.
3. Baseline Ranking report.
4. Competitive analysis in Search Engines.
5. Content Analysis & SEO Copywriting.
6. Analysis of URL structure & information architecture.
7. Analysis of internal linking.
8. Analysis of source code and page layout.
9. Code validation.
10.Search Engine Saturation.
11.Link Popularity Analysis.
12.Link Relevancy & Co-Citation Analysis (Topical Relevancy).
23. Page Title
Alt-Tags
Link Title Tags
Site-Side Optimization
Technical SEO - Example of Page Elements
Anchor Text
Navigation
25. Begin The 7 Steps
1) GetYour Site Fully Indexed
2) GetYour PagesVisible
3) Build Links & PageRank
4) LeverageYour PageRank
4) Encourage Clickthrough
6)Track the Right Metrics
7) AvoidWorst Practices
26. 1) Get Your Site Fully Indexed
• Search engines are wary of “dynamic” pages - they fear
“spider traps”
• Avoid stop characters (?, &, =) ‘cgi-bin’, session IDs and
unnecessary variables in your URLs; frames; redirects;
pop-ups; navigation in Flash/Java/Javascript/pulldown
boxes
– If not feasible due to platform constraints, can be easily
handled through proxy technology (e.g. GravityStream)
• The better your PageRank, the deeper and more often
your site will be spidered
27. 2) Get Your Pages Visible
• 100+ “signals” that influence ranking
• “Title tag” is the most important copy on the page
• Home page is the most important page of a site
• Every page of your site has a “song” (keyword theme)
• Incorporate keywords into title tags, hyperlink text, headings
(H1 & H2 tags), alt tags, and high up in the page (where
they’re given more “weight”)
• Eliminate extraneous HTML code
• “Meta tags” are not a magic bullet
• Have text for navigation, not graphics
28. 3) Build Links and PageRank
• “Link popularity” affects search engine rankings
• PageRank™ - Links from “important” sites have more
impact on yourGoogle rankings (weighted link popularity)
• Google offers a window into your PageRank
– PageRank meter in the GoogleToolbar (toolbar.google.com)
– Google Directory (directory.google.com) category pages
– 3rd party tools like SEOChat.com’s “PageRank Lookup” &
“PageRank Search”
• Scores range from 0-10 on a logarithmic scale
29. 4) Leverage Your PageRank
• Your home page’s PageRank gets distributed
to your deep pages by virtue of your
hierarchical internal linking structure (e.g.
breadcrumb nav)
• Pay attention to the text used within the
hyperlink (“Google bombing”)
• Don’t hoard your PageRank
• Don’t link to “bad neighborhoods”
30. 4) Leverage Your PageRank
• Avoid PageRank dilution
– Canonicalization (www.domain.com vs. domain.com)
– Duplicate pages: (session IDs, tracking codes, superfluous
parameters)
http://company.com/Products/widget.html
http://company.com/products/widget.html
http://company.com/Products/Widget.html
http://company.com/products/Widget.html
– In general, search engines are cautious of dynamic URLs (with
?, &, and = characters) because of “spider traps”
• Rewrite your URLs (using a server module/plug-in) or use a hosted
proxy service (e.g. GravityStream)
• See http://catalogagemag.com/mag/marketing_right_page_web/
33. 5) Encourage Clickthrough
• Zipf’s Law applies - you need to be at the top of page 1 of the
search results. It’s an implied endorsement.
• Synergistic effect of being at the top of the natural results &
paid results
• Entice the user with a compelling call-to-action and value
proposition in your descriptions
• Your title tag is critical
• Snippet gets built automatically, but you CAN influence
what’s displayed here
34. 6) Track the Right Metrics
• Indexation: # of pages indexed, % of site indexed,
% of product inventory indexed, # of “fresh pages”
• Link popularity: # of links, PageRank score (0 - 10)
• Rankings: by keyword, “filtered” (penalized)
rankings
• Keyword popularity: # of searches, competition,
KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Indicator) scores
• Cost/ROI: sales by keyword & by engine, cost per
lead
35. Avoid Worst Practices
• Target relevant keywords
• Don’t stuff keywords or replicate pages
• Create deep, useful content
• Don't conceal, manipulate, or over-optimize
content
• Links should be relevant (no scheming!)
• Observe copyright/trademark law & Google’s
guidelines
36. SEO Audit
• Is your site fully indexed?
• Are your pages fully optimized?
• Could you be acquiring more PageRank?
• Are you spending your PageRank wisely?
• Are you maximizing your clickthrough rates?
• Are you measuring the right things?
• Are you applying “best practices” in SEO and
avoiding all the “worst practices”?
37. SEO Optimization Categories
• Keywords
– Keyword selection and keyword-rich text
• Crawler
– A crawler-friendly site navigation scheme
• Links
– Link popularity
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38. Keyword Recommendations
• Page title: visible HTML text ,“Above the fold”
• Page Size: "100 KB" limit is still is still widely held. The
optimum page size is 500-3000 words (or 2000 to
20,000 characters)
• Be specific
• Example: “Apple iPod” verses “iPod”
– exact phrase should appear generously throughout your site
copy on every page
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39. More Keyword Recommendations
Meta tags: use but don’t stuff
• <meta name="description" content="Free Web tutorials on HTML, CSS, XML, and XHTML">
Alt tags: use for graphics
• <IMG src="star.gif" alt=“star logo">
Content is king
• Write good content with relevant and important keywords in mind.
Geo Targeting
• Add geocentric terms to target local areas
Domain Names
• Use keywords as part of domain name
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40. Crawler-friendly
• Engine spiders are primitive beings
– choose simplicity over complexity
• Goal
– All your web pages seen by crawlers
– Google: enter in searchbox “allinurl:utexas.edu”
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41. Suggestions to be Crawler Friendly
• Traditional <a href> tag
• Keywords in subfolder names
• Minimize quantity of subfolders
• Cross link relevant terms and phrases within
the site
• Multiple paths to pages to eliminate orphans
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42. Avoid or Minimize: May Negatively
Impact Crawler
• Flash (slow to load and difficult to navigate)
• Frames
• Java navigation
• Session ID to track visitors
• exact same Title tags on every page
• set to require a cookie when a visitor gets to
the page
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43. Link Development Inbound Links
Impact PageRank
PageRank (Popularity, importance)
• Number and quality of links pointing to a
website
• Measure of usefulness of site
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44. Link Development Tradeoffs
• Advantage
– it is dynamic, cumulative, and difficult to imitate
• Disadvantage
– takes time (vs. advertising)
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45. Link Development Approaches (White
Hat)
• Quality content to start with
• Cultivate quality link (not quantity)
• Begin with web directories
• Harness online publicity
• Use Blogs and forums wisely
• Investigate competitors
– Understand their strategy
– Online publicity, blogs and forums
– See inbound links ("link:domain.com" in Google,
"linkdomain:domain.com" in Yahoo)
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51. Vendor Tools Example:
Seo Administrator 8
• Ranking monitor: site positioning in for keywords
• Link popularity checker: checks inbound links
• Site indexation tool: check site indexation
• Server Log-analyzer: Administrator log analyzer
• PageRank analyzer: analyze competitor sites
• Keywords tool: suggestions, associations, competitor analysis
• HTML analyzer: dissect html text in the same way that a search engine
would (syntax, keyword density)
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