Search Engine Optimization

Communicator’s Brownbag

January 16, 2014

Neil Erdwien, Web Services DirectorDivision of Communications and Marketing

Search Engine Optimization

• SEO, SERP

• Goal: make your site’s search engine results

“better”

Higher Goals

• Get more traffic from organic search

• More students

• Higher reputation

• 2025

Why is SEO Important?

• Searching is the default for many people

– Searchers vs. clickers

• Internet niches: Facebook, Pinterest, K-State

Search Engine Background

• How search engines work

• Competition drives everything

Search Engine Spiders

• Start with a database of URLs

• Retrieve each URL

• Add content to the index

• Add all linked pages to the database

Consequences

• No human evaluates pages

• Changes may take some time to have

effect

• Unlinking a page does not remove it

from the index

Competition

• Between you and your competitors

• Between search engines

Consequences

• Some advice is bad and may actually

backfire

• Exact rules are unknown – Voodoo

rules

Periodic Table

• Courtesy of Search Engine Land

Cq

• Content is king

• Aligns your interest with the search

engine’s interest

Cr

• Analyze keywords

• Add/delete content to serve keyword

needs

• Detour: Google Analytics

Ht

• Most metadata is ignored, but title is

still used

• Not SEO, but the title shown in mobile

devices is very short

Metadata

• “Data about data”

• Title, URL

• HTML’s META element: keywords,

description, author

• Detour: CMS

Au

• Voodoo: the most highly-weighted

keywords

• Words are broken at periods, slashes,

and hyphens – not underlines

Words in URLs

• High matches for “cat” and “dog”:

– www.k-state.edu/dept/cat/dog.html

– www.k-state.edu/dept/cat-dog.html

• No match for “cat” and “dog”:

– www.k-state.edu/dept/cat_dog.html

Lq, Lt, Ln

• Number of incoming links is a major

factor in Google’s “pagerank”.

• Not all links are weighted the same:

.edu links are more valuable.

Link Text

• To read the report, click here.

• Read the Report on Student Retention.

Sr, Ss

• Social network likes, shares, and pins

are the new links.

• Google is pushing Google+.

Pc, Pl, Ph

• Search results are customized to each

searcher

• Concept of “we’re #3 on Google” is

obsolete.

Questions