Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Part 1

 

Search engines like Yahoo use sophisticated computer programs – called “spiders” – to browse the Web, analyze Web pages and programmatically index the content into large searchable databases.

Search engines provide a database of website pages that are ranked by popularity and relevance for particular keywords or phrases and are displayed as a list ordered by popularity and relevance. This ranking structure is based on mathematical equations that use many factors to determine Web page popularity and relevance. By understanding these factors you can maximize the traffic and success of your website.

 

Directories are human powered hierarchical structures of links to websites. The most popular directories are: Yahoo! [http://dir.yahoo.com/], ODP [http://dmoz.org/]

 

PPC engines are special purpose search engines that offer an auction-style advertising program. Advertisers bid on keywords (or key phrases) for which their Web pages will be found during a search. The term Pay-Per-Click (PPC) refers to the cost of delivering one visitor to your website, known as a “click-through”. Typically, the highest bidder gets the top result, the next highest the second listing and so on.

In this article we will be focusing on the natural-crawl Search engines and how to optimize your website, to gain visibility in these search engines and attract more relevant, interested visitors.

 

Four steps toward search marketing success

This tutorial will guide you through four step process for effective search engine optimization:

1. Optimize your website

2. Ensure your pages are indexed

3. Build popularity

4. Monitor and analyze results

 

Formulate a long term strategy

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a journey and requires a longer term view versus a quick fix to your search marketing needs.

 

There are many campaign strategies that can be utilized to increase the number of targeted visitors your website. Some popular tactics include:

 

• optimize your website for ranking in the natural listings of search engines by increasing your websites’ relevance through the development of unique, high-quality content;

• optimize your website by increasing your websites’ popularity by establishing quality in-links (links to your website);

• pay for inclusion in natural listings using paid inclusion programs;

• leverage search listings that can be purchased through auctions within search engines supporting PPC programs; and

• subscribe to free and paid directories with powerful advertising copy.

 

This tutorial will focus specifically on search engine optimization (SEO). However, you are encouraged to investigate other viable methods of getting qualified targeted visitors from search engines.

 

In developing your strategy, you should focus on the methods which are most likely to generate the best results given the budget you have set in terms of money, time and resources. Each method will vary on the quality of visitors. There is not a way to predict the exact solution that is best for your business. It is strongly recommended that you test each method carefully before using your entire budget (on potentially the wrong choice). Take it step by step and see what works on a limited budget before increasing your spend to its maximum.

 

When optimizing your site for the search engines, it is important to remember that the search engine itself will never buy anything you are selling. Creating a site that is focused on usability and accessibility will greatly increase the chances of your visitors converting to customers. Creating a navigational structure that allows a user to find exactly what they are looking for from any page of the site will ensure a positive user experience. Help visitors make choices by prompting them to perform the action you are hoping for with calls-to-action and benefit statements. Calls-to-action is text or hypertext (links) that guides a visitor to “click here” or “buy x” or “learn about x” and help them understand what choice they should make.

 

By stating the benefit of the choice the likelihood that they will click through to the appropriate page is even higher. An example of a benefit is “free shipping” or “30 day guarantee.” This whole process is called the path to “conversion” and should be measured and valued to the highest regard. A path to conversion is the path a visitor follows from the moment they enter the website until they perform the action desired by the website owner, known as “converts.”

 

A general suggestion is to focus primarily on building a usable and professional site while always heeding the optimization suggestions in this tutorial. You will find that many of the features that characterize a usable website (i.e. well thought out navigation) are also key to optimizing your site for the engines.

 

Be realistic about how much work you are able to do in-house and how much of it you need to outsource. Also, be sure to select methods that match your goals and are within your budget.

 

Introduction to search engine optimization

Every search engine has a proprietary method of determining the ranking of documents in search results. The ranking is the resulting ordered list that appears when a user enters a word or phrase and submits. These words and phrases are referred to as “keywords” and “key phrases.” An algorithm is (in this case) a complex set of computer-based rules meant to understand which Web pages on the internet are most relevant to a particular user, based on a given query. For obvious reasons, search engines do not publicly reveal the detailed logic behind their algorithms.

 

There are a lot of similarities in the way the search engine algorithms function, even between competitors. This article will give you an introduction to the most fundamental parts, which should be enough to get you started on the right track.

 

We will take you through the three most important elements of search engine optimization:

 

• Iinks and navigation;

• text and HTML elements (including Meta Data); and

• popularity measurement.

 

Introduction to search engine spiders

Search engine web spiders (also known as web crawlers or web robots) are special purpose computer applications used to gather up-to-date information from the web. Think of a search engine spider as a simple browser (e.g. Firefox), powered by a computer program. It traverses the Internet like a human would do with a browser – just many times faster and fully automated. The web spiders follow navigational links and gather all of the readable information it encounters to be referenced in the Search engine Index. It is critical to understand that the web spiders have some limitations in what they can process. They readily process textual data and can only process some graphical data (images, gif, jpeg, mpeg, etc.) on a limited basis.

 

Common text elements that are used by the spiders include, page titles, meta data, alt tags, as well as the on-page content.

 

TIP:  It is possible to monitor the activity of the search engine spiders on your website. Most HTTP server access logs include the IP and User-Agent for all requests. You can use this information to determine whether a particular spider has accessed your site and understand what pages the spider accessed and in what order.

 

Keep your website online

It is imperative that your site is accessible 24 hours day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

 

To ensure that their Indexes are up-to-date, search engines visit billions of Web pages each month to capture new information. The search spiders usually only have time to request each Web page once. If your web server is not accessible at the time the search engine spider visits your website, your page(s) will not be included in the database and/or updates to your website will not be captured and subsequently will not be indexed.

 

Most search engine web spiders crawl the web on a regular basis. If some of your Web pages have been dropped because your server was down, they will probably get back into the index the next time the search engine visits your website.

 

TIP: There are several online services and software packages available that can monitor your website and report any downtime. If your site experiences drop-outs in search engines it might be a good idea to use one of these services to make sure your web server does not have too many prolonged drop-outs.

 

Validate HTML

HTML code is the most fundamental part of every Web page on the Internet. When displaying your Web page with a browser, you typically do not see the actual HTML code but only the final result – how the Web page appears. Most of the popular web browsers have a feature that will display the actual HTML source that is “behind” the visible Web page.

 

Most browsers are good at interpreting HTML code, even code that may contain syntax errors. Even with fatal syntax errors some browsers will still show a nice looking page. However, you never know how a search engine spider will interpret the same errors. It may or may not index a Web page with syntax errors. It may just skip the part that uses a wrong syntax or it may skip the entire page. There is no way to predict what the web spider will do when it encounters HTML that it doesn’t understand.

 

Although, you may want a site that is visually attractive, please keep in mind that search engines spiders are unable to see. Spiders will not appreciate fancy graphics or the use of some techniques, like Frames. Spiders do not translate the HTML code into a visual presentation like browsers do – they simple process and store textual content from the raw HTML code.

 

If search engines cannot decode your website, follow its links and process the text, you will not get rankings. It’s not enough to verify your Web pages by looking at them in your browser – the HTML syntax needs to be correct. Therefore, it is very important to validate your HTML with an HTML validator.

 

TIP: There are many commercial products available to do HTML editing and validation. Use them religiously! If you do not have access to any of these validators we strongly recommend you to use the public domain HTML validator at http://validator.w3.org/

Stay away from “alternative-HTML”

Some search engine optimization “experts” will advise you to use non-standard HTML to try and squeeze in extra keywords in hidden places in your HTML-code.

Do not do that! Search engines will penalize websites that use hidden keywords either by de-ranking the websites or removing it completely from their index. Always stick to valid HTML.

 

Introduction to links and navigation

In this section we will look at the most important aspects of search engine friendly navigation and how to build links that will be followed by search engines spiders.

 

By having a good navigation structure you will make it easier for the search engines to browse your website as well as making it easier for human visitors too.

 

If it is easy for users to navigate your site they are more likely to become customers. If it is easy for search engines to follow your links it is more likely that they will index many of your website pages.

 

The more of your website pages that are indexed by the search engines, the more likely it is that one of your Web pages will be found in a search that can lead to a targeted visit to your website.

 

Use hypertext that can be followed by search engines

Search engine spiders will not follow every kind of link that web developers use. In fact, the only kind of hypertext link that you can be certain all search engine spiders can follow is standard hypertext links.

 

In HTML code, a standard hypertext link is written like this:

<a href=”http://www.domain.com”>Link Text</a>

 

The link will look like this on a Web page: Link Text

 

All other forms of links can be problematic for some search engines.

 

TIP: If you are using a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editor, or content management system, it will usually output the correct HTML code for you when you insert a text link. You can verify that it is a valid text link by highlighting the link text in your browser. If you can highlight it letter by letter like most other text on a Web page then the HTML code should be safe.

 

Image maps or navigation buttons

Sometimes designers want to use graphics for navigational links. There are basically two ways of creating such graphical links:

• Navigation buttons

• Image maps

 

Navigation buttons are single images that each link to a specific Web page. Most search engines spiders will readily follow this type of link. However, if you want to be absolutely sure that all search engines can properly interpret the images meaning, then utilize the “alt tag” as an added measure.

 

Image maps can have different areas of one image linking to different Web pages. That is a very common way to build top- or side-navigation bars or country maps to click on. The Image maps which are hypertext based are also good for visitors who do not use a graphic capable browser, or are surfing with graphics turned off to save bandwidth, or they simply do not understand that you want them to click on the image. Individuals who are disabled or blind can use hypertext based links to understand the website by using a reader to “speak” the text on the page as well as to navigate the web. Image maps add complexity that may confuse the search engine spiders.

 

Flash, Macromedia and Java Applets

Flash and Java Applets both require the user to have a special program installed on their computer to be able to open and play the files. Most new browsers come with the necessary programs installed to play the most common file types. However, search engines usually do not open such files.

 

It is recommended that you build your navigation links without Flash or Java. If you choose to build your Web pages using these techniques, you should only serve the high-tech version of your website to users that have the right plug-ins installed and have a low-tech version ready for all others. The low-tech version should include regular text-based links. This will work well with the search engines as well as the users that do not have these plug-ins installed. Javascript can be used to help browsers detect if a plugin is needed to display these parts of the site.

 

Javascript and DHTML

Javascript is widely used to perform simple client side operations (such as adding an item to a shopping cart). The script is loaded into the users’ browser along with the HTML and can then be executed without having to contact the server again. This works well, especially, if you utilize shopping carts and dynamic navigation schemes. However, be aware, search engine spiders do not read Javascript!

 

It is very important that your main navigation is NOT purely Javascript, alone. If you choose to use Javascript for your main navigation be sure that the same links are also available as standard text links, in a sitemap or urllist.txt file.

 

Non-HTML formats (PDF, MS Word etc)

Even though some search engines have begun to read and index non-HTML file formats such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files, none of the search engines will follow links within these formats. If you want search engines to follow links on your website they should always be placed in your regular Web pages – the HTML documents.

 

It highly recommended that you NOT place important content in these types of formats alone. It will not be found by the search engines. The content should be accessible in HTML format too – as a regular Web page. Some search engines will index non-HTML formats; however, many will encounter more errors indexing them, and in most cases it is easier to have ordinary HTML-pages rank well.

 

TIP: Sitemaps and other protocols can be created to help search engines easily navigate your website. A sitemap is a file consisting of hypertext-based links for each of your websites’ pages. A URLlist.txt file is similar in nature but comprised solely of URL’s list, one per line.

Introduction to Text Content and the Meta data

If you want good rankings in search engines, then you need quality content. Content is King! The more quality content you have the higher your chance of being found.

 

One important element of HTML, the TITLE container, is given special ranking privilege. The text written in the TITLE container of a page appears in its search results (as the link), as bookmarks, taskbar buttons and ultimately in the browser window pane above the FILE menu when viewing the page.

 

Text in other HTML containers is not as easily seen. Usually, Meta data can only be found by viewing page source code. Meta data is not typically very helpful for ranking in major search engines, but are useful nonetheless and should be added. The two important containers to have for each page are the Meta Keywords and Meta Description.

 

ALT attributes of your images are hidden from view until you move your mouse to hover the cursor over images. The text will appear in a box if you hover for just a second or two. Be careful to use text in ALT attributes of images that depict the associated image. Using text that is misleading is particularly troublesome because the visually impaired have few other options to know what's going on.

 

Introduction to keyword research

Before you start optimizing your website you need to know what keywords your target audience is using to find your products and/or services. Keywords are the words and phrases that people might use to find your products, brands, services or information, via search engines.

 

For example, if your business is in the travel industry, text such as: “travel”, “vacation”, and “holiday” would be considered important keywords. This is just a small sample; deep research into the topic of “travel” would probably show more than 100,000 different keywords people use when they search for travel information. Your success in this area will depend on your ability to get into the minds of your target audience, to best predict their search behaviors.

 

You may find out that the majority of searches for “travel” come from people using combinations of “travel” and a certain city, country or region. Or you may verify that people use “travel” more than “vacation.”

 

All research and insight should be used to help tailor your Web pages and the way you write your text, titles and META data. If most people in your target audience use the term “travel” to describe your product, then so should you.

 

TIP: Your most important keywords will often include some of the following:

• Your company name if it is important for branding purposes

• All product and brand names that are featured on your website

• Countries, regions or cities you have an association with – often in combination with the one of the words above

• Relevant generic terms for your business, brands or services (e.g. car, house or boat)

• Combinations of 2 and 3 keywords – most people search for multi-word phrases rather than single words

 

Adding keywords to your website

Once you have collected the keywords that will help bring targeted traffic to your website, it is time to incorporate these keywords into your Web pages. The question you should be asking yourself is whether or not, adding all these keywords will dramatically change the tone and feel of my site's text? If so, you may want to compromise some to fit the best keywords from the list. You are very fortunate if most of the keywords fit perfectly, or can otherwise easily fit your website.

 

Some people confuse adding keywords to a Web page with simply adding Meta Keywords. Meta Keywords is Meta data as described above in Text Content and Meta data. Meta Keywords are mainly useful for you and only have a modest impact on rankings in major search engines. They are still good to publish, and you will want a unique list for each page. Use mainly words found on corresponding pages.

 

Adding keywords to your Web page really means changing the page text. Each element of HTML carries its own level of importance for rankings, and each search engine weighs these factors a little differently. In the next section, we will examine each element of HTML as well as its relative importance for ranking in all major search engines.

 

When adding keywords to your website, consider your target audience. This is especially important if you are fully rewriting pages to incorporate new keywords. Write text that has a natural style, not overtly dense with a keyword or two packed into every possible spot on the page. Also consider readability and write text that is easily comprehended by those you are trying to reach.

 

Focus on a few keywords for each Web page

In most cases a Web page will only rank well for a few keywords – the ones that the search engines determine to be the most relevant for that page. You cannot expect to rank well for the thousands of keywords if you only optimize your front page. Instead, you have to optimize each of the Web pages on your website that have content people are looking for – the keywords you have developed through your research.

 

Important places to use your keywords

Search engines weigh keywords according to their placement on a Web page. There are some placements that are more important than others – places where you should always remember to use the most important keywords for each Web page. Included are:

 

• Page titles The title of your Web page is the single most important place to have your keywords. Keep titles concise (65 characters or less), well-written and use natural language.

• Headlines Headlines can be important elements on your Web pages. The text found in headlines usually identify a particular theme or section of content. The headlines can be formatted using the HTML elements <H1> to <H6> to be readily recognized by search engines.

• Body copy Many people lose sight that the Body copy is the most obvious place a search engine looks for relevant content. You have to use the keywords in the main viewable text on your Web page. This is what the users will actually see, whether processed by humans or machines. Generally speaking, if keywords are incorporated in the Body copy then they should appear on the viewable page.

• Links The words on your Web page that are links to other Web pages are weighed heavily. Keep this in mind when building hypertext links from one page to another.

• META data META keywords should contain words that appear on the Web page. As a general rule, if it is on the page then the words can be included in the META data. However, the page will not rank well on their use alone. You can read more about META data in the next section. Generally, the search engines will give weight to keywords that are used consistently across all of the areas described (e.g. titles, headlines, body copy, etc.).

• ALT text The ALT attribute is also called “alternate text” and is used to describe images. You can see the text when you hover your mouse over an image on a Web page (that is, if they have added the ALT attribute). Some search engines recognize the text in ALT attributes but the weight (importance) given varies from engine to engine.

 

Key point: Remember to only use keywords that are relevant to each of your Web pages.

 

Introduction to page titles

The page title is the single most important piece of information on your page, when it comes to achieving good rankings in search engines. The words you use in your page title carry much more weight than anything else on your page. Use this limited space wisely.

 

Page titles are written this way in HTML code:

<title>Page title goes here</title>

The page title is placed inside the Head tag at the top of the HTML page:

<head>

<title>Page title goes here</title>

</head>

 

TIP: You should limit your page titles to 50-65 characters as most search engines do not consider more than this amount of characters.

 

First of all you should make sure that all your Web pages have unique titles that are highly relevant to the Web page. Go through each of your Web pages and write a title that makes use of the most important keywords.

 

Keep in mind that the page title is what the users will see as the first line of search results and will become the text link to your Web page. The title text should compel searchers to click on the link and visit your site!

 

The goal is to make titles that both make people click and that make use of your primary keywords for each page. If you want a page to rank well on “dental services Boston” make sure to use those exact words in the title. For example, a title such as “Dental Services in Boston – open 24 hours a day”, would be appropriate and work well for you (that is, if you do in fact supply 24 hour services).

 

TIP: Find the right balance between the use of your keywords and writing catchy titles. If you can’t afford a consumer panel, it is suggested that you write a few candidate titles for each page. Do not think too much about each of them – just write them down on a piece of paper. When you have a few good candidates, you can compare them side by side. Usually the best choice becomes obvious. Consider combining some elements from multiple candidate titles, to form a hybrid. Again, always keep in mind that our audience is both the search engine and a potential visitor.

 

Introduction to META data

META data containers are used to help classify or describe data on your page. META data, which means “data about data” – simply means “data about your page.”

 

META data can help search engines better understand and present links to your website. It is highly recommended that you populate the META data on all your Web pages.

 

META data containers that are important to use.

 

You only need to focus on the META description and the META keywords.

 

They are written this way in HTML code:

<META NAME=”DESCRIPTION” CONTENT=”Put your description here ….”>

<META NAME=”KEYWORDS” CONTENT=”Put your keywords here ….”>

The META data are placed inside the header tag at the top of the HTML code just below the page title:

<head>

<title>Page title here</title>

<META NAME=”DESCRIPTION” CONTENT=”Put your description here ….”>

<META NAME=”KEYWORDS” CONTENT=”Put your keywords here ….”>

</head>

 

Adding META data to your Web pages

Adding META data to your Web pages will depend on how you maintain your website. You should refer to the manual of the editor or content management system you are using for detailed instructions.

 

In most cases there will be a simple box somewhere with two fields to fill out: The META description and the META keywords, or just “description” and “keywords.” Your program will usually insert the necessary HTML code in the right place for you.

 

If you are coding your Web pages by hand or in a simple HTML editor, make sure you do not make any syntax errors. If the META data containers have not been coded correctly search engines will not be able to process them.

 

Writing good META descriptions

The META description is used by some search engines to present a summary of the Web page along with the title and link to the page.

 

Many search engines use the META description, but not on a consistent basis. Some search engines use text from your Web pages and some use a combination. It is best to make sure you have valid META descriptions on all your Web pages so the search engines that do use them have something useful.

TIP: You should limit your META descriptions to 150-200 characters as most search engines do not use more than this amount of characters.

This has caused the search engines to not rely heavily on the META keywords as a determination of what a Web page is about. However, some Web search engines and site search engines do use the META keywords, so we recommend that you craft relevant keywords for all your Web pages.

 

Just as with META descriptions and titles you have to write a unique set of keywords for each Web page. You should not copy the same set of keywords for all your Web pages.

 

Do not add keywords that are not 100% directly related to each Web page. In fact, we recommend that you only use keywords that are found in the visual text of your Web pages to have the greatest effect.

 

It is often discussed whether or not to use commas to demarcate keywords. Some search engines remove the commas before reading the keywords and some search engines may use the comma. To find the exact keyword and keyword phrase matches we recommend using commas, but you should be aware that you should not have too many instances of a single word. Avoid going beyond 3 instances unless absolutely necessary. You will never get penalized for either using or not using commas. Some people use commas because it makes it easier to read in the raw code. This can be helpful if you want to edit the keywords at a later date.

 

TIP: The limit for the META keywords container is 1000 characters; however, you should never add that many keywords. Include the 3 to 5 most important keywords for each Web page – no more! The more keywords that you use (beyond the 3 to 5) the more diminished their value.

 

Will META keywords give me top rankings?

You will not achieve top rankings on keywords if you only use them in your META data. META keywords are not magic bullets.

 

In those search engines that use them, it gives you a better chance of ranking with relevant visitors when you have unique, optimized and relevant META keywords for all your pages. Remember, for the best results use only those words that appear in the main body of the page in the META keywords.

 

Introduction to Popularity

When a search engine tries to determine which pages on the Web are the most relevant to a given search query they must consider more variables than just the content on each Web page. The search engines try to incorporate a measure of “popularity”. To this end, most search engines today analyze both link structures and click-streams on the Web to determine the most appropririate Web pages to include in the SERPS.

 

Getting high quality, relevant websites to link to your website is not something you do overnight. It takes time and effort. By implementing a sound strategy to improve your Link popularity, you can gain a long-term advantage but it is not a quick solution to better rankings. It is like building a good reputation, a trusted brand – it takes time. But once you have accomplished this goal, the ranking benefits are significant.

 

Getting the right and relevant websites to link to you will not only build your Link popularity, as measured by search engines, it will lead to qualified visitors directly from the referring websites.

 

Tip: The following list is a quick guide for where to look for relevant links:

• All the major and local directories, such as Yahoo or ODP

• All trade, business or industry related directories

• Suppliers, happy customers, relevant sister companies, and partners

• Related but not competing sites

 

Link popularity

Link popularity considers the number of links between Web pages on the Internet. There are two kinds of links to focus on: inbound links (also known as in links) and outbound links - links to your website and links from your website.

 

Links can be thought of as a form of endorsement. When you link to a website you are endorsing that site and recommending it to your visitors. Likewise, when an external website links to your website they are recommending your site to their visitor. This form of website endorsement adds to the Link popularity score of the website. The higher the number of quality links from other popular websites, the more relevant the destination site is considered. Some search engines consider this the single most important factor in determining relevance.

 

TIP: Not all links count the same! For example, links from recognized authorities in your industry count more than links from a small private website on a free host.

Do not use free submission software or services to submit to hundreds of thousands of free directories and search engines just to gain more inbound links. Links from most of these places won’t do you any good and there is even a risk that some of the links you get this way will harm your rankings.

Do not participate in organized exchanging of unrelated links between websites, to boost your Link popularity factor. Most search engines consider that to be harmful to relevance. Instead, focus on getting inbound links from major directories and important related websites within your industry as they are the only ones that really count.

 

Internal link popularity

Links to and from external websites are important, but not the only consideration when developing your Link popularity strategy. The link structure within your own website has an important role in determining the value of each of your Web pages.

 

Your Web pages that are most often linked to will gain the most popularity. If one of your Web pages has 500 internal pages pointing to it and another only has only 10, then the first Web page is more likely to be more valuable to users as there are more pages “voting” for that page.

 

TIP: Typically, a website has a navigation bar of some kind that points to the 5-8 most important sections of the website. This navigation bar will be on all Web pages on the website and therefore boost internal Link popularity on those sections. Make sure to include links to the Web pages you most want to rank well in your cross-site navigation and make sure that the pages the navigation links to have good content. The pages you link to in the navigation bar will be easier to rank well in search engines. For large sites, a dynamic navigation can be a great solution. One that changes based on the page you are currently viewing and offers related areas to further navigate.