Search Engine Visibility

1
Search Engine Visibility

• By David Dupont

2
Search Engines

• Major search engines include
• Google
• Yahoo
• Ask
• Each search engine has a different algorithm
• Algorithms are kept highly confidential

3
Search Engine Result Page Information Sources

• Crawler based or spider based search engines
• Search engine advertisements
• Human based search engines (Web Directories)
• Specialty or topical search engines

4
(No Transcript)
5
(No Transcript)
6
Crawler Based Search Engines

• Perform three tasks
• Find and fetch web pages
• Document an index of words and phrases found on
  web pages
• Allow end user's to search for key words and
  phrases in their indices

7
Search Engine Advertising

• Includes sponsorship and pay for placement
  listings
• Guarantees top positions in search listings
• Website owners have to bid for listing position.
  The higher the bid the higher the position

8
Web Directories

• Use human editors to review websites
• Each website is categorized. Typically
  hierarchical, branching into subcategories
• Most web directories are small and are often
  supplemented with other search engine results.
  Know as fall through results

9
Specialty or Topical Search Engine

• Search engine result pages evolved to include
  information from specialty search engines
• Includes information such as
• News search engines
• Local search engines
• Shopping search engines

10
Achieving Long Term Search Engine Visibility

• Websites must have three components
• Text component
• Link component
• Popularity component
• All major search engines use these components as
  part of their algorithm

11
Ideal Web Page

• The ideal web page would have 100 text, link and
  popularity components
• To increase search engine visibility a website
  should have all three components and have optimal
  levels of all the components

12
Text Component

• Most important part of the text component is
  keywords
• Keywords should be placed in
• HTML title tags
• Visible body text
• Anchor text
• Meta tags
• Graphic images (alternative text)
• Domain and file names

13
Link Component

• This includes
• Navigation schemes
• Relevant cross linking
• You are here cues
• Calls to action and information scent

14
(No Transcript)
15
Problematic Navigation Schemes

• Poor HTML coding on navigation schemes
• Image maps
• JavaScript
• Dynamic or database driven web pages
• Flash

16
Popularity Component

• All search engines measure popularity as part of
  their search engine algorithms
• Popularity component consists of two sub
  components
• Link Popularity
• Click through or click popularity

17
Link Popularity

• The number and quality of links that point to a
  web page
• The quality of the links holds more weight than
  the quantity of the links

18
Click Through Popularity

• Search engines measure the actions of the users,
  this includes
• The number of times end users click links on your
  site
• How long end users visit your site
• How often end users return to your site

19
Spam

• Spam doesnt always guarantee a boost in page
  rating
• Using spam to boost a web pages rating, if it
  works, is usually short lived
• Can cause your site to be penalized or
  permanently banned from search engines

20
Conclusion

• Search engine visibility is an ongoing process
• Website owners must continually modify their
  sites to maximize search engine visibility

21
URLs To Consider

• www.wikipedia.org
• www.amazon.com
• www.drudgereport.com
• www.keystonelightbeer.com
• www.elisastudios.com