Post on 10-May-2015
description
transcript
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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Search Engine Basics Why Optimize? Key Concepts Optimization Content Management Systems Summary Resources
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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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Paid PlacementResults
OrganicResults
Web Search as a navigational toolo On average, 45% of visitor traffic
through 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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Competition for keywordsEvaluating page rank
o Baselineo Ongoing
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Page rank calculation toolso Google Toolbaro www.faganfinder.com/urlinfo/o www.alexa.com
Frequent querieso Web traffic analysiso U Web Resources
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Target audienceo Keyword choiceso Directory submission
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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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Search-friendly Usabilityo Home Page vs. Landing pageso Top-down vs. Shallow-wide design
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HOME
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HOME
Persistent Navigationo Orients visitor to siteo Provides spiders pathway through site
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Accessibilityo Flasho Javascripto SSL – authenticationo Firewalls and closed portso Databases & query string URLso Forms
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Site MapsNon-HTML Documents
o MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF
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Canonical URLso http://utah.eduo http://www.utah.edu
Redirectso 301 server redirecto Meta-refresh page redirect
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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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Get indexedo Register URL with University Webmastero Submit URL to directories
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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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Meta-datao HTML Page Title
Number one optimization factor Included in results display Unique title for each landing page
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Meta-data
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HTML Title Utility in Dreamweaver
Meta-datao Meta-description tag
o50% weight of HTML Title in Ultraseeko Included in Ultraseek results displayoLess weight given by GoogleoRarely used in Google results display
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Meta-datao Meta-keywords tag
Equal to meta-description tag in Ultraseek Ignored by Google Common misspellings
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Meta-datao Image alt-tagso H1 tagso Body text
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Relative weight given HTML tags by U of U Ultraseek Search Engine
Popularityo Inbound linkso Remote anchor links & text
oAnchor link – http://www.url.comoAnchor text – words used in link
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Popularity Inbound links Example
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Anchor link text
Popularityo 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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Popularity Inbound links googlebombing
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Popularity Inbound links googlebombing
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Reliabilityo .edu and .gov domainso Domain age
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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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Spam Detection Threshold:The number of repeating keywords required for U of UUltraseek search engine to penalize for spamming
Dynamic URLso Querystring enabledo Consistent, crawl-able URLs
Cookies and session IDs
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Accessible pagesThink landing pagesUnique HTML page title for every
landing pageContent relevant keywordsAvoid Black Hat SEO
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University Webmastero www.utah.edu/uwebresourceso webmaster@utah.eduo 581-6113
www.searchenginewatch.com“The ABC of SEO” David George
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THANK YOU!
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