Search Engine Optimization for Your Web Site

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Search Engine Optimization for Your Web Site

• Dr. Soe, Dr. Westfall CIS Dept.
• California Polytechnic University, Pomona, March
  2013
• http//www.csupomona.edu/rdwestfall/120common/sea
  rchplace120.ppt

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Agenda

• Introduction
• Steps to take to make your pages show up higher
  in search engines
• How do search engines work?
• How do you get your web site listed?
• Search engine exercise

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Introduction Search Engines

• Search engines return lists of links based on
  search words entered by user
• Most users only look at 10-20 items in search
  output before changing words
• Placement--how high a web page is in the
  listings--is critically important in generating
  traffic from search engines

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High Search Engine Placement

• "We can guarantee you a top 10 ranking"
• What's it worth?
• How can they do it?
• zapmeta.com search on Mrs. Westfall shows high
  rankings in Yahoo, MSN, Altavista and Teoma
• Does not include Google, but see next page

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High Search Engine Placement

• Google searches on specified words
• Mrs. Westfall
• Westfall telecommuting
• forget evolution
• textbook ripoff

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What Are "Key Words?"

• Words that are what your web page is really about
• Just as the words in the title of a text book are
  what it's about
• Usually are found in your page a lot
• Words that people would use to search for a web
  page like yours

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Putting Key Words in Pages

• In the text of your pages, using an authoring
  tool like Dreamweaver
• Make sure that keywords are in the visible text
  of your page fairly often, especially in
  prominent places such as near top, in links,
  headers, etc.
• In the code of your pages
• Using an editor like Notepad
• Or using authoring tool's code window

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Putting Keywords in Code

• Put keywords into lttitlegt tag
• Put keywords in ltH1gt tag at page top
• Put keywords into ltimg alt" "gt tags
• Put keywords in the text of links and in the
  letters of the URL also if possible
• e.g., www.latimes.com/sports/basketball/

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Code Examples

• Include some keywords in phrases in important
  HTML tags, but do it in a natural phrase that
  describes things
• Replace lttitlegtUntitled-1lt/titlegt with a
  lttitlegtkeywordslt/titlegt in ltheadgt area
• If no lttitlegt tags in ltheadgt section, put
  lttitlegtkeywordslt/titlegt there
• Example lttitlegtCindi's Catlt/titlegt

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Code Examples - 2

• Image tags
• Replace ltimg src"file1.jpg"gt with ltimg
  src"keywords.jpg" alt"keywords"gt
• Example ltimg src"cindiscat.jpg" alt"Cindi's
  cat"gt
• Header tags (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 or h6)
• Replace ltpgtsome words at top of page with
  lth1gtkeywords among wordslt/h1gt

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What Not to Do

• Dont use keywords that are not related to the
  content of the page
• Dont repeat keywords in any ways that dont make
  sense
• Not in very small text
• Not in text color similar to background color
• Not repeated many times in a row

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Register your Web Site with Search Engines

• Register individually with top sites
• Yahoo! , MSN, Open Directory Project (goes into
  Google, etc.)
• Try site submission web sites?
• Manta submits business web sites for free to
  Google, Yahoo and Bing
• But will probably send you a lot of spam
• Change content, resubmit every so often?

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Search Engines Deliver Indexes

• User requests information via search page
• Query engine searches database
• Delivers list of web resources
• Creates results web page based on search
• Listed in order of a calculated index
• Index values based on search words, and also on
  "popularity" of site
• But usually preceded by "paid placements"

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Web DirectoriesBuilt by Human Indexing

• Analyze sites purpose
• Classify sites by broad subject area
• Hierarchical classification schemes
• Yahoo! - has many people reviewing web site
  submissions
• Doesn't have to accept submissions
• 6 week delay unless pay for priority service?

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Meta Search Engines

• Don't have their own databases or indexing
• Instead, combine results from other search
  engines
• Examples
• Dogpile, Vivisimo
• Ixquick (top 10 listings in other search engines)

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Search Engines Ranked by of People that Use Them

• Google 56.3
• Yahoo 21.5
• MSN 8.4
• AOL 5.3
• Source Nielsen/Net Ratings quoted in Wikipedia
  Search engine article as of July 2007

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Get Site Into Directories

• Directories (e.g., Yahoo!) require careful
  selection of search categories keywords
• Search for your keywords on Yahoo! to find
  appropriate categories
• Yahoo! asks for a 25-word description of content
• Make it really good to impress human indexers

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Targeting Spiders

• Pick "keywords" that people would use to find a
  page like yours
• Make these keywords prominent in your web pages,
  especially in the entry page

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Meta Tags

• Keywords meta tag used to be important
• ltmeta name"keywords" content "telecommuting,
  research, telecommuting research, telecommute,
  telecommutes, telecommuter, telecommuters"gt
• Search engines generally ignore them now because
  of widespread attempts to use them to manipulate
  rankings

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Meta Tags - Description

• Even though not used much in rankings anymore,
  contents of following tag are shown in Google
  outputs
• ltmeta name"description" content"Westfall
  research and papers on telecommuting,
  telecommuting productivity, telecommuting
  economic analyses, telecommuting strategies"gt

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Keywords for Spiders

• All keywords are not created equal - spiders give
  heavier weights to
• Keywords in the lttitlegt (more than once?)
• Keywords in lth1gt and other headers
• Keywords in other text near top of page
• Keywords in ltimg alt"keywords"gt tags
• Keywords in links (seen by user or in URLs)
• How Search Engines Rank Web Pages

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More Keywords for Spiders

• Use keywords frequently, but don't repeat same
  word more than once in a row
• OK pizza pizza
• Not good pizza pizza pizza pizza pizza pizza
• Use variations of keywords (plurals)
• Use keywords in alternate text for images
• ltimg src "file.jpg" alt"keywords"gt
• Google Search Engine Optimization 101 My list

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Links for Spiders

• Number of pages linking to a site has become
  extremely important
• Google pioneered this
• If high ranking pages link to a site on the same
  topic, it must be good
• Quality of links is also important
• Need to be relevant both to page they are on and
  to linked page

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Trying to Fool Spiders

• Search Engine "Spamming"
• Spiders are being programmed to detect it
• Examples
• Repeat hidden keywords
• in background color, or ltfont size1gt
• Keywords not related to site content
• Irrelevant links "link farms" or "link stuffing"
  (ethical issues)

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"I can guarantee a top 10 "

• Junk mail and web sites
• True, but
• Not for your 1st choices of key words
• Use relatively unique combination of several
  words, and put them into key parts of page
  (lttitlegt, ltH1gt, etc.)
• Probably not many people will search for this
  combination of words
• e.g., telecommuting productivity

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Guaranteed Top 10 Listing

• Use misspelled words
• Including 2 words ran together (no space between
  e.g., muhammedgonzales)
• Search for these made-up words
• Keep trying until you find a "word" not found on
  any other page
• Put in page, get links to page in another
  page(s), submit to search engine(s)

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Googlewhacks

• Identify two words, NOT in quotation marks, that
  get only one result in Google
• Examples
• Exercise find another Googlewhack

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"Google Bombing"

• Drives traffic to other pages by links and
  keywords
• Early (2001) Google bombing campaign
• Wikipedia Google bomb article
• Wikipedia Political Google bombs article

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Search Engine Exercise

• Search for your keywords on any automated search
  engine
• For top 2-4 sites, look for keywords in
• ltmeta...gt, lttitlegt, lth1gt, lta href"gt, ltimg
  alt"gt, etc. (use View, Source)
• Words in page, esp. near top
• Also use Google advanced search (Page-Specific)
  to find pages linking to these sites
• Report any patterns you see