1 Search Engine Optimization An introduction to optimizing your web site for best possible search engine results

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Search Engine Optimization

An introduction to optimizing your web site for best possible search engine results.

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Presented by:Chris Pfeiffer,University of UtahOffice of Information Technology

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Presentation Overview Search Engine Basics Why Optimize? Key Concepts Optimization Content Management Systems Summary Resources

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Search Engine Basics

Crawling the web: Search engines run automated programs, called “robots" or "spiders", that use the hyperlink structure of the web to "crawl" the pages and documents that make up the World Wide Web.

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Indexing documents: Once a page has been crawled, its contents can be "indexed" - stored in a giant database of documents that makes up a search engine's "index".

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Processing queries: When a request for information comes into the search engine, the engine retrieves from its index all the document that match the query.

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Ranking results: Once the search engine has determined which results are a match for the query, the engine's algorithm (a mathematical equation commonly used for sorting) runs calculations on each of the results to determine which is most relevant to the given query.

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Directories: Human edited search indexes o Yahoo Directory!o DMOZ = The Open Directory Project

www.dmoz.org

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Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) o Organic: Results based on content and

keyword relevancy (as per algorithm)o Paid Placement (PPC):

Google AdWords Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM)

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Search Engine Results Pages

Paid PlacementResults

OrganicResults

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Why Optimize? Web Search as a navigational tool

o On average, 45% of visitor trafficthrough Utah.edu use the search engine to navigate.

o 72% of searchers stop with the top ten search results, and 90% stop with the top 30.

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How much is too much? Competition for keywords Evaluating page rank

o Baselineo Ongoing

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Evaluating page rank Page rank calculation tools

o Google Toolbaro www.faganfinder.com/urlinfo/o www.alexa.com

Frequent querieso Web traffic analysiso U Web Resources

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Key Concepts Target audience

o Keyword choiceso Directory submission

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Key Concepts Conversion

Web site user doing what you intended them to do• Sales• Course registration• Forms & downloads• Page views

Conversion paths and funnels

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Key Concepts Search-friendly Usability

o Home Page vs. Landing pageso Top-down vs. Shallow-wide design

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Top-down design

HOME

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Shallow-wide design

HOME

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Key Concepts Persistent Navigation

o Orients visitor to siteo Provides spiders pathway through site

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Key Concepts Accessibility

o Flasho Javascripto SSL – authenticationo Firewalls and closed portso Databases & query string URLso Forms

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Key Concepts Site Maps Non-HTML Documents

o MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF

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Key Concepts Canonical URLs

o http://utah.eduo http://www.utah.edu

Redirectso 301 server redirecto Meta-refresh page redirect

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Key Concepts Robots.txt file

Decides which robots to allow in and which to exclude• Site wide• Directory-by-directory• Page-by-page

Robots meta-tag

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Optimization Get indexed

o Register URL with University Webmaster

o Submit URL to directories

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Optimization Meta-data<html> <head> <title>The University of Utah</title> <meta name="description" content="Founded on

February 28, 1850, The University of Utah offers 75 undergraduate degree programs, more than 50 teaching majors and minors, and 96 graduate majors.">

<meta name="keywords" content="University of Utah, UU, Utes, Utah, Salt Lake City, university, universities, colleges, higher education, academic, research, admissions">

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Optimization Meta-data

o HTML Page Title Number one optimization factor Included in results display Unique title for each landing page

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HTML Title Utility in Dreamweaver

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o Meta-description tago50% weight of HTML Title in Ultraseeko Included in Ultraseek results displayoLess weight given by GoogleoRarely used in Google results display

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o Meta-keywords tag Equal to meta-description tag in Ultraseek Ignored by Google Common misspellings

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o Image alt-tagso H1 tagso Body text

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Optimization

Relative weight given HTML tags by U of U Ultraseek Search Engine

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Optimization Popularity

o Inbound linkso Remote anchor links & text

oAnchor link – http://www.url.comoAnchor text – words used in link

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How/What to Optimize Popularity

Inbound links Example

Anchor link

Anchor link text

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Optimization Popularity

o Inbound linkso Remote anchor links & texto Googlebombing

When a web page places high in search engine results due to frequent anchor links using rude or insulting keywords.

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Inbound links googlebombing

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Inbound links googlebombing

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Optimization Reliability

o .edu and .gov domainso Domain age

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Black Hat SEO Black Hat SEO:

Unscrupulous or deceptive optimization practices intended to spam users or compete unfairlyo Invisible texto Keyword stuffingo Duplicate pageso Domain cloaking: serving different content to

search engine robots than to human visitorso Link farms

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Optimization

Spam Detection Threshold:The number of repeating keywords required for U of UUltraseek search engine to penalize for spamming

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Content Management Systems

Dynamic URLso Querystring enabledo Consistent, crawl-able URLs

Cookies and session IDs

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Summary Accessible pages Think landing pages Unique HTML page title for every

landing page Content relevant keywords Avoid Black Hat SEO

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Resources University Webmaster

o www.utah.edu/uwebresourceso [email protected] 581-6113

www.seamoz.org www.searchenginewatch.com “The ABC of SEO” David George

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THANK YOU!