1. 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/searchplace120.ppt

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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 zapmeta.comMrs. Westfall Does not include Google, but see next page

5. High Search Engine Placement Google searches on specified words Mrs. Westfall Westfall telecommuting forget evolution textbook ripoff

6. 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

7. 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

8. Putting Keywords in Code Put keywords into tag Put keywords in tag at page top Put keywords into 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/www.latimes.com

9. Code Examples Include some keywords in phrases in important HTML tags, but do it in a natural phrase that describes things Replace Untitled-1 with a [keywords] in area If no tags in section, put [keywords] there Example: Cindi's Cat

10. Code Examples - 2 Image tags Replace with Example: Header tags (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 or h6) Replace [some words at top of page] with [keywords among words]

11. What Not to Do Don’t use keywords that are not related to the content of the page Don’t repeat keywords in any ways that don’t make sense Not in very small text Not in text color similar to background color Not repeated many times in a row

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

13. 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"

14. Web Directories Built by Human Indexing Analyze site’s purpose Classify sites by broad subject area Hierarchical classification schemes Yahoo! - has many people reviewing web site submissions site submissions Doesn't have to accept submissions 6 week delay unless pay for priority service?

15. Meta Search Engines Don't have their own databases or indexing Instead, combine results from other search engines Examples Dogpile, Vivisimo DogpileVivisimo Ixquick (top 10 listings in other search engines) Ixquick

16. Search Engines Ranked by % of People that Use Them Google56.3% Yahoo21.5 MSN 8.4 AOL 5.3 Source: Nielsen/Net Ratings quoted in Wikipedia Search engine article as of July 2007 Wikipedia Search engine

17. Get Site Into Directories Directories (e.g., Yahoo!) require careful selection of search categories & keywordsYahoo! 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

18. 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

19. Meta Tags Keywords meta tag used to be important Search engines generally ignore them now because of widespread attempts to use them to manipulate rankingsgenerally ignore them now

20. Meta Tags - Description Even though not used much in rankings anymore, contents of following tag are shown in Google outputsGoogle outputs

21. Keywords for Spiders All keywords are not created equal - spiders give heavier weights to: Keywords in the (more than once?) Keywords in and other headers Keywords in other text near top of page Keywords in tags Keywords in links (seen by user or in URLs) How Search Engines Rank Web Pages

22. 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 Google Search Engine Optimization 101 My list

23. Links for Spiders Number of pages linking to a site has become extremely importantlinking to a site 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 Quality of links Need to be relevant both to page they are on and to linked page

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

25. "I can guarantee a top 10 …" Junk mail and web sites Junk mailweb sites True, but… Not for your 1 st choices of key words Use relatively unique combination of several words, and put them into key parts of page (,, etc.) Probably not many people will search for this combination of words e.g., telecommuting productivity

26. Guaranteed Top 10 Listing Use misspelled words Including 2 words ran together (no space between e.g., muhammedgonzales)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)

27. Googlewhacks Identify two words, NOT in quotation marks, that get only one result in Google Examples Exercise: find another Googlewhack

28. "Google Bombing" Drives traffic to other pages by links and keywords Early (2001) Google bombing campaignGoogle bombing campaign Wikipedia Google bomb articleGoogle bomb Wikipedia Political Google bombs articlePolitical Google bombs

29. Search Engine Exercise Search for your keywords on any automated search engine For top 2-4 sites, look for keywords in:,,,,, etc. (use View, Source) Words in page, esp. near top Also use Google advanced search (Page- Specific) to find pages linking to these sitesGoogle advanced search Report any patterns you see