The demand for specialists trained in SEO techniques is growing rapidly, all
over the world as a direct result of lack of knowledge about search engine marketing
and the subsequent poor performance of company sites in search engines.
We’ve set up online Search Engine Optimization courses to educate people in
SEO techniques to help meet that demand.
What You Will Learn:
.. Overview of search engine optimization (SEO).
.. How to create effective Alt Image attributes.
.. How to create effective and optimized text navigation menus.
.. How to use link titles and anchor text effectively.
.. How to set up your site architecture to be search engine friendly.
.. How web page file extensions impact search engine compatibility.
.. How to optimize a frames-based site.
.. How to create a search engine friendly site map.
.. How to use the Robots META tag.
.. How to optimize dynamic and database-driven web sites.
.. How to optimize a site designed in Flash.
.. How to optimize a graphic-heavy web site.
.. How to increase your site's link popularity.
.. Overview of Google PageRank.
.. Introduction to pay for performance search engine options.
.. How to measure the Return on Investment of your SEO campaign.
Enjoy your course!
Goals of this lesson:
.. Review the most important search engines and directories
.. Review who owns who and who powers whom
.. Define the key audiences for your web site
.. Define the term Search Engine Compatibility
.. Define the term Search Engine Optimization
.. Review web site elements that impact search engine compatibility
.. Review key web site relevancy factors
When searching the Internet, people generally use two types of search sites:
.. Search engines
.. Directories
A search engine uses special software called a robot or spider (look up these
definitions in your Course Glossary) to trawl the web, automatically following
links and indexing web pages to add to the search engine’s database. Google
is an example of a search engine.
On the other hand, a directory is a human-compiled database of web pages, manually
collected or reviewed by real people. Open Directory
is an example of a directory.
Some search sites use a combination of a search engine and a directory. Yahoo3
is a good example. They have their own search directory but combine these results
with database results collected by their own search crawler. Although Yahoo
uses a combination of crawler and hand-edited pages, it is still commonly referred
to as a directory. MSN Search4 is another example of a combined search database.
Important Search Engines and Directories
Below is a list of the major and most important search engines and directories:
Millions of people worldwide use these engines and directories every day, even
when a regional version is available (e.g. Google
Australia). So it is vital that no matter what country you live in or what
regional markets you are targeting, you should submit your web site to all of
these.
That said, if you are targeting regional markets, it is very important that
your site also be found in the appropriate local search engines and directories.
A couple of good resources for locating country-specific and regional search
engines are here
and here.
Who Owns Who?
The search industry is growing at an incredible rate. So fast, in fact, that
many of the industry heavyweights are constantly jostling for position to be
the most popular search destination, have the largest search database, have
the most relevant results and grab the most market share. Search is big business
and the big players recognized this a long time ago.
The search industry is growing at an incredible rate. So fast, in fact, that
many of the industry heavyweights are constantly jostling for position to be
the most popular search destination, have the largest search database, have
the most relevant results and grab the most market share. Search is big business
and the big players recognized this a long time ago.
As is typical for such a heated industry, it is in a constant state of flux. Search companies are forever making deals, breaking partnerships, suing each other or simply buying each other outright!
The past 18 months has seen a huge consolidation in the industry, with the following
major events taking place:
.. 2002-2003 - Google became king of the search engines and the most popular
search destination with worldwide Internet users, wrenching market share away
from Yahoo.
.. Feb 2003 – Yahoo purchased the Inktomi search index.
.. Apr 2003 - Pay-Per-Click provider Overture bought search engine Alta-Vista.
.. Apr 2003 - Overture purchased search engine AllTheWeb from FAST Search.
.. Jun 2003 – FAST Search purchased AltaVista Enterprise Search from Overture.
.. June 2003 – Microsoft announced their intention to build their own search
engine.
.. Jul 2003 – Yahoo purchased Overture (including AltaVista and AllTheWeb).
.. Oct 2003 – LookSmart lost their MSN distribution partnership.
.. Jan 2004 – Pay-Per-Click providers FindWhat and eSpotting merged.
.. Feb 2004 – Yahoo dropped Google results & created their own crawler database.
.. Mar 2004 – AskJeeves purchased Excite.
.. Apr 2004 – Google announced an IPO.
So currently, the search engine space is dominated by the big players Google
and Yahoo, with Microsoft
set to compete when they unveil their new search engine (code-named
Longhorn) within the next few months.
To keep up with developments in the search industry, refer to some of the sites
and newsblogs listed in your Course Resources.
Because some search engines provide search results to other search engines and
directories, it is important to understand these relationships and how the partnerships
work. There are a number of handy reference sites on the web that keep up with
the ever-changing partnerships between search sites:
.. Search
Engine Watch Search Provider’s Chart
.. Search Engine Partnership
Chart
and my personal favourite:
.. Search Engine
Decoder
Click on any search engine or directory in the decoder to see the relationships
it has with others.
Your web site has Primary and Secondary audiences to reach. Your primary audience
consists of:
.. Searchers
.. End users
.. Potential customers
Your secondary audience consists of:
.. Directory editors
.. Search engine spiders
It pays to keep these audiences in mind when designing and optimizing your site. To satisfy all these audiences, you need to strike the right balance between site usability, quality content and search engine compatibility.
Search engine compatibility can be loosely defined as employing design elements
that do not hinder or in any way discourage search engines from indexing a web
site.
Search engine optimization, (referred to in the industry as SEO) is simply “the
use of search engines to draw traffic to a web site. It is the technique of
attaining a higher ranking in search engines and directories via changes to
a site to make it more search engine compatible”11. It is sometimes referred
to more generally as search engine marketing, but in fact search engine optimization
is just one facet of search engine marketing.
Search engine optimization specialists or “search engine optimizers” have sprung
up to fill the need for these services over the past 5+ years. Most search engine
optimizers will work either directly with the site administrator or with their
web site designer to alter the site’s code and content to ensure it gets the
exposure it deserves in the most popular search engines and directories. The
key to a successful SEO campaign is to find a specialist with a good
track record, in an industry plagued with inexperienced and unethical providers.
Companies are spending tens of thousands of dollars on online and offline advertising,
including banner ad, Pay Per Click (PPC) and viral marketing campaigns,
so one could be forgiven for assuming that these companies do not need free
traffic from the “organic” search engine listings.
However, by ignoring the most common method used by people browsing the Internet,
these companies are sacrificing an enormous opportunity to attract more traffic
to their sites. After all, brick and mortar companies don’t refuse to put a
sign up in front of their businesses just because they have put large amounts
of money into promoting themselves via television advertising. Online companies,
likewise, should not disregard optimizing their sites for search engines – a
relatively inexpensive exercise – simply because they have put large amounts
of money into other marketing strategies.
Web sites are often a very large expense for these companies, ranging from a
few thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars. To invest such a massive amount
of time, money and effort into an online presence and not ensure it can be found
is like constructing a storefront without any doors!
It is obvious that companies need to invest in search engine optimization services
to ensure their sites are made more search engine compatible and therefore visible
to their target markets.
Common web design elements that can impact a site’s search engine compatibility
include:
• The TITLE Element
• The META Description Tag
• The META Keywords Tag
• The Alt IMG Attribute
• Text links
• Keyword-rich body text
• Page file extensions
• The Robots META Tag
• Frames
• Dynamic content – Query Strings
• Graphic navigation menus
• Flash
There are other design elements that can impact compatibility, but these are
the most common ones.
As most of you will already be aware, search engines send out spiders to crawl
the web, automatically following links and indexing web pages to add to their
database. As they follow each page, they store away copies of the code and the
keywords found in that code, for comparing against search queries by searchers
at a later date. Depending on the search engine, this crawling of the web and
re-crawling of pages already in their database occurs between every 4 and 12
weeks.
Obviously a web page within a search engine database that contains keywords
similar to a search query will be deemed a somewhat relevant “match” for that
query and have a greater opportunity to be shown to the searcher. Those pages
deemed the most relevant to the query will be shown at the very top of the search
engine results pages (colloquially known as SERPS), perhaps even in the coveted
“Top 10” results.
But how do the search engines determine which pages are the MOST relevant? Ah,
we’ve struck the Holy Grail for many search engine optimizers – the algorithm.
Search engines have each developed their own specific formula for determining
the relevance of one web site over another when matching search queries. This
mathematical formula is called an algorithm and is often based on over 100 different
factors that can change on a daily basis, making it extremely complex and almost
impossible to reverse engineer or “crack” as those in hacking circles might
put it. Still, it doesn’t stop thousands of search engine optimizers attempting
to do this each and every day.
When matching sites with search queries, search engine algorithms assign a certain
amount of relevancy “weight” to each web page based on how closely the page
content matches their formula for relevance.
It is widely assumed that one or more of the following factors can positively
influence a site’s relevancy “weight” applied by a search engine algorithm:
.. Matching keywords within the Title Element / Tag
.. Matching keywords within the META Description Tag
.. Matching keywords within the META Keywords Tag
.. Matching keywords within the page filename
.. Matching keywords within the URL
The number of times matching keywords appear within the body text of the page
.. Matching keywords within page headings and sub-headings (H1, H2 etc)
.. Matching keywords within text links on the page
.. Matching keywords within text links pointing to the page
.. Matching keywords used in Alt IMG attributes
.. Matching keywords within image filenames
.. Matching keywords within link titles
.. Popularity of site with other searchers
.. Keyword density on page
.. Number of other sites linking to site (backward links)
.. Popularity and reputation of other sites linking to site
.. Relevance to search query of other sites linking to site
.. Other factors unknown
The key to the above factors is balance. Over-optimizing in the above areas
can be just as damaging or even more damaging than under-compensating.
Just as certain factors can positively influence a site’s relevancy “weight”,
others can have a negative impact. These are assumed to include:
.. Use of techniques considered “spam” by search engine (checked via purpose-built
spam filters)
.. Over-optimizing a site
.. Application of ranking penalties by search engine
.. Very long URLs
.. Use of query strings within URL
.. Use of stop symbols within URL (e.g. #, $, %)
.. Use of JavaScript
.. Use of Flash
.. Content buried more than 3 directories deep (e.g. site.com/dir1/dir2/dir3/page.htm)
.. Use of frames and framesets
.. Use of graphical navigation menus
.. Other factors unknown
Most of these negative factors are simply design elements that make it more
difficult for a search engine spider to index a site. The fewer elements of
a site that inhibit a search engine’s ability to index it, the more compatible
it is and the more chances it has of satisfying the engine’s algorithm for related
search queries.
If you want to exhaust yourself chasing your tail and trying to outwit the latest
search engine algorithms on a daily basis, feel free! But I think it’s a total
waste of time. Sure, some algorithmic changes need to be noted and addressed,
but these are secondary to making your site search engine and visitor friendly.
No matter how often the individual search engine algorithms change, you can
still ensure your sites have the best possible chance of ranking well for matching
search queries if you follow a few basic guidelines.
In these SEO courses, I prefer to take a holistic approach to web site optimization,
focusing on the importance of web site design, functionality and usability as
well as search engine compatibility.
Our next Lesson will take a look at web site architecture and how it relates
to these issues.
[Congratulations! You’ve reached the end of Lesson 1 – Please take your Review
Quiz when ready]
---> Next Lesson: Site
Architecture