Search Engine Secrets: Build a Search-Engine Friendly Web Site Samsunshine Levy

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Search Engine Secrets Build a Search-Engine
Friendly Web SiteSamsunshine Levy
www.thenetcave.com
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Search Engines Who Needs em?

• Ever heard of these

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If you do this
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You can get this
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Great!

• Where do I sign?
• How much do I pay?
• Who do I trust?
• How is it done?

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The Secret Questions

1. Who Wants You?
2. What To Cultivate?
3. When To Change?
4. Where Does It All Go?
5. Why No No-Nos?
6. How is Your House Built?

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Who Wants You?

• You want people
• But Who Wants You?
• You want people who
• need you but
• dont yet know that you exist
• (Yes, that would be new customer acquisition)
• (Dont use jargon in a presentation)

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Keyword Research

• Wordtracker www.wordtracker.com
• Free Trial (unlimited uses)
• Uses MSN daily data
• Google Adwords adwords.google.com
• Pretend to want to sign up as a new advertiser,
  and research keywords for your campaigns
• Non-Targeted Marketing

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ROI, KEI, SEO KWP

• (Dont use acronyms in PowerPoint presentations)
• To target a niche market, and achieve best SEO
  potential
• Maximize Searches
• Minimize Competition
• Content of site will address normal, more
  competive keywords and keyword phrases
• Narrow down to 15-20 w/ best potential

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What To Cultivate?

• Factors to raising your search engine rankings
  and relevancy are
• Useful TITLE META tags on each page
• Keyword-rich, sole-source, expanding, plain HTML
  textual content
• Footer, Site Map Linked Text
• Longevity of site domain name
• Plus

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Search Engine Friendly URLs

• Happy

• Unhappy

www.greatskin.com/loccitane/shaving-cream.html www
.nmipa.org/members/join Query Strings / database
generated pages www.skin.com/store/pr.asp?cID42B
pID6x5Q14z Unfriendly Spaces www.skin.com/onl
ine40store/my_great_product.html Abbreviated or
too-long pages/directories www.skin.com/s/c/d/g/a
reallygreatpagetolookatnowforyou.htm Domain
Parks www.skin.com / www.myskin.com / skin.com /
myskin.com
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If you have unhappy URLs

• Subdirectories are nice
• Hyphens for spaces, 25 chars
• 301 redirects on domains
• Map old pages to new pages with
• Symbolic links
• URL rewriting (mod_rewrite)
• XML / RSS feeds
• GoogleBase / Product data feeds
• One more thing to cultivate

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Inbound Links

• Keyword-rich
• Textual
• To authorized domain
• Deep-Linking OK
• Accompanying description
• Reciprocate
• Only from respected sites
• Check originating domain

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When To Change?

• Change What?
• Change The King!
• Do You Know The King?

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When To - Be The King

• The C Word
• (and linking is Queen)
• Nothing rankshigher at Search Enginesthan a
  lot of contentabout a term thatsomeone
  issearching for

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With Content, Just Like With

• Health
• Wealth
• Happiness
• Hedonism
• Time
• Brains
• Brawn

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More (and more often) Is Always Better
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When Writing, who are you writing for?

• Primarily Humans, not search engines
• Who are the search engines working for?
• Use keywords (more to come)
• Keep pages a minimum length
• Use tools to make it readable
• Lists, columns, headers
• Write about what you do
• Related terms will come up naturally, and in
  context

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Unhappy Content
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Happy Content
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OK, So back to the Question

• Q When To Change (content)?
• A As often as you can
• Frequent new content additions
• Create visitor stickiness
• Make search engines happy
• Creates valuable depth of content

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Deep Content
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Frequent Content
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And Now

• For the slide youve all been waiting for

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But First

• A word from our sponsor?
• A dance break?
• Cowgirl ribs?
• More caffeine?

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Make It Easy with CMS

• A Content Management System (CMS)
• Lets you add, edit and delete pages without
  special knowledge
• Can automatically create META tags
• Can automatically update site maps
• Is built to be fool-proof
• Can auto-create SEO friendly URLs
• Auto-adjusts site-wide navigation

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CMS User Admin Backend
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CMS Front End Page
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And Now, Really

• For the slide youve all been waiting for

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Where Does It All Go? 3 Rules of 3

• Choose about 6-8 main, friendly-URL pages
• Choose 3 unique keywords/phrases to use on each
  page
• Use each phrase 3 times in the page
• Have at least 250 (normal HTML text) words on
  each page
• Use the 3 terms in TITLE and META tags
• Link from footer and site map

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Example Optimized Content

• Keyword Research revealed that we wanted to
  optimize home page of holstengalleries.com for
  were
• glass sculpture
• art glass sculpture
• contemporary art glass

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Example Content 270 words

• Holsten Galleries is an internationally
  recognized gallery representing leading
  contemporary glass artists. Our gallery works
  with private collectors, museums and corporations
  in building collections of art glass sculpture
  and installations. Among our world renowned glass
  artists are Dale Chihuly, Lino Tagliapietra,
  William Morris, Christopher Ries, Dante Marioni,
  Kreg Kallenberger, Steven Weinberg and Marvin
  Lipofsky.
• Holsten Galleries was established in Stockbridge,
  Massachusetts, in 1978 and was one of the first
  studio glass galleries in the U.S. to show
  contemporary art glass. The gallery is open seven
  days a week, year round. Each of our artists has
  glass sculpture in the gallery on an ongoing
  basis. Our glass artists are listed on the
  "Artists" page and most of them have images on
  this site. Images of other available pieces can
  be e-mailed upon request. Many of our glass
  artists, including Dale Chihuly and Lino
  Tagliapietra, can be commissioned to create glass
  sculpture for private, corporate or public art
  collections.
• As an online glass gallery, we invite you to
  explore our site and view the glass art of some
  of the world's most creative and talented
  artists. Please contact us if you would like more
  information on any of the art glass sculpture you
  see here. We also look forward to meeting many of
  you in person in the gallery. Visit our
  "Resources" page for information on cultural and
  tourist attractions in the Berkshires (such as
  Tanglewood and the Norman Rockwell Museum) or to
  learn more about contemporary art glass.
• Holsten Galleries specializes in the glass
  sculpture of Dale Chihuly. Glass objects and
  glass chandeliers by Chihuly can be seen by
  clicking here.

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Example - Tags

•  http//www.holstengalleries.com/
• Title Art Glass Sculpture-Contemporary Art
  Glass-Fine Art Glass
• META Description Our online glass gallery
  features fine art glass sculpture by contemporary
  artists such as Dale Chihuly and Lino
  Tagliapietra. Contemporary art glass sculpture by
  world renouned artists.
• META Keywords glass, sculpture, art,
  contemporary, dale, chihuly, lino tagliapietra,
  holsten, fine

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Results
20 Month-to- Month Increase In traffic
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The Page
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Keep In Mind

• Use reasonably-natural language
• You will enjoy our unique, authentic Adobe homes
  and the finest in vacation rentals, especially
  southwestern homes, in New Mexico.
• Real Estate New Mexico vacation rentals Santa Fe
  shown on website with villas for rent. Santa Fe
  New Mexico rental properties and New Mexico Real
  Estate.

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Also Keep In Mind

• Human usability and readability are still the
  most important
• Bulleted lists
• Fixed width text columns
• Section headers
• Easily readable paragraphs

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Why No No-Nos?

• What Not To Do
• or
• How to quickly and easily get blacklisted by
  search engines

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Black Hat SEO

• Keyword Stuffing
• Invisible Text
• Doorway Pages
• Non-linked Pages
• Cloaking (Browser detectionand/or redirection)
• Scraping
• Off-domain Redirects

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How Is Your House Built?

• No-No Tools Technology(if you want to be found
  in search engines. or linked to - from anywhere)
• Flash Animation (Intros or Whole Site)
• Alternative Use Flash as an accent
• Frames or iFrames
• Alternative Use CSS (see next slide)
• Non-text Text (Flash or images)
• Javascript or DHTML drop-down menus
• Alternative Use CSS nested list drop-downs
• META REFRESH

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CSS Frame Function
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CSS Nested List Drop Down
Simpler, Spiderable Codeltdiv id"topnav"gtltul
idnavgtltligtlta href"http//www.kidsfirst.org/kidsf
irst/fabout.htm"gtAbout Uslt/agt ltulgtltligtlta
href"http//www.kidsfirst.org/kidsfirst/fwhatcq.h
tm"gtMissionlt/agtlt/ligt ltligtlta
href"http//www.kidsfirst.org/our-programs/"gtOur
Programslt/agtlt/ligt ltligtlta href"http//www.kid
sfirst.org/kidsfirst/fwhatkf.htm"gtKIDS
FIRST!lt/agtlt/ligt ltligtlta href"http//www.kidsf
irst.org/kidsfirst/fwhoju.htm"gtStaff amp
Boardlt/agtlt/ligt lt/ulgt lt/ligt ltligtlta
href"http//www.kidsfirst.org/cgibin/sites/search
_engine.cgi"gtSearch Websitelt/agtlt/ligt ltligtlta
href"http//www.kidsfirst.org/"gtHomelt/agtlt/ligt
lt/ulgtlt/divgt
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Good Tools For House Building

• Use URL Rewriting for important or content-rich
  pages of database generated sites
• Also use XML / RSS Feeds
• For ecommerce sites, send product datafeeds to
  GoogleBase
• And consider Amazon merchant or your own
  affiliate program but thats another show

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Example XML / RSS feed
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GoogleBase Example
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In addition to 3 keywords

• Title Tag Guidelines
• Use a short page title (in addition to keywords)
• Limit to 65 characters
• META Description Tag Guidelines (Honest 90s)
• some search engines display in results
• Limit to 25-30 words
• META Keyword Tag Guidelines (why not)
• Do not repeat words
• Limit to 10-12 words

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Remember This?

•  http//www.holstengalleries.com/
• Title Art Glass Sculpture-Contemporary Art
  Glass-Fine Art Glass
• META Description Our online glass gallery
  features fine art glass sculpture by contemporary
  artists such as Dale Chihuly and Lino
  Tagliapietra. Contemporary art glass sculpture by
  world renouned artists.
• META Keywords glass, sculpture, art,
  contemporary, dale, chihuly, lino tagliapietra,
  holsten, fine

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Footer and Site Map

• Replicate page titles as linked pages in
  site-wide footer (Server Side Includes)
• Link to a Site Map page in Footer
• Do not use Googles Site Map creator
• The Site Map page should replicate the titles,
  linked to pages, with the META descriptions next
  to the titles
• Use qualified URLs for linking(always start
  with http//www.domain.com/)

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Footer Example
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Site Map Example
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Bonus Points

• Beyond plain content, title and META tags, you
  should also use these techniques within site
  content
• Use HTML header (h1, h2, h3) tags
• In-page cross-linked text (link to other site
  pages, especially where descriptive text appears)
• Bold (b, strong) may be given some extra weight
  when used judiciously

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Bonus Points Example
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In Review

• PREPARE
• Research Keyword Rankings Relevancy. Choose
  15-20 of the best
• Assign 3 keywords to each of 6 pages, then write
  250 words each page
• Use the copy for title and meta tags for a
  persistent footer and site map

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In Review

• BUILD
• Cultivate inbound textual links, preferably using
  your chosen keywords
• Content is King. More, better, often, CMS
• TITLE and META tags, linked text throughout,
  maybe bold/strong

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In Review

• CHECK
• No Flash. No non-HTML text. No Frames. No
  Javascript or DHTML menus
• Friendly URLs, URL rewriting and no lost and
  found visitors
• XML / RSS / GoogleBase / Data Feeds (and
  podcasts, video and Web 2.0 but thats also
  another show)
• Analyze, Refine, Test, Adjust, Repeat

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Search Engine Secrets Build a Search-Engine
Friendly Web SiteSamsunshine Levy
www.thenetcave.com