1. Search Engine Optimization of a Forest Fragmentation Content Management System: Example of the Fragfornet Website Aurélie Gandour, Amanda Regolini Cemagref Grenoble Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011

2. 2 Summary FragForNet: A Forest Fragmentation Network Search Engine Optimization:  What Search Engine to take into account?  Definition of a keywords’ pool  How to do an In Page Optimization? Unwinding of FragForNet’s SEO Results of FragForNet’s SEO  Google positionning  Keywords used by visitors  Website’s traffic Conclusion

3. 3Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011 Fragmentation Forest Network Researchers Information Professional Portal + Mailing List Decision-makers Socio-economical actors FragForNet : A Forest Fragmentation Network

4. 4Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011 FragForNet : A Forest Fragmentation Network http://fragfornet.grenoble.cemagref.fr

5. 5Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011 FragForNet : A Forest Fragmentation Network Goal: touching a larger audience What to do?  Gaining a better position for selected keywords on search engines pages of results How to do it?  Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

6. 6Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011 SEO: What search engine to take into account? ( http://gs.statcounter.com/ )http://gs.statcounter.com/

7. 7Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011 SEO: definition of a keywords’ pool Establish a wide list of potential keywords and expressions Analyze those keywords potential by grading them: Keep the keywords with the highest marks and build the website’s indexing strategy on this pool InterestFeasibility Average number of monthly requestsMarkNumber of found resultsMark 0 - 1 00000 - 1 000 00020 1 000 - 10 00051 000 000 - 10 000 00015 10 000 - 50 0001010 000 000 - 50 000 00010 50 000 - 100 0001550 000 000 - 100 000 0005 100 000 and above20100 000 000 and above0

8. 8Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011 SEO: In Page Optimization Goal: optimizing pages of the site on keywords of the pool by placing them on strategical spots Where to place keywords for a maximum impact:  tags As high as possible within the HTML code Structure : [Content] – [Rubric] – [Site’s name] Containing 5 to 10 descriptive words The page’s title shall match the editorial title

9. 9Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011 SEO: In Page Optimization  Visible text « Content is King » Each page must contain at least 100 words Important keywords at the beginning Underlining keywords for more weight (in title tags, tags, or links ) A keyword density between 2 and 5%

10. 10Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011 SEO: In Page Optimization  URL Possess your own domain name The older, the better Important keywords in the URL No accentuated character Lower cases only

11. 11Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011 SEO: In Page Optimization  Meta tags Meta description tag: can be used by Google as an abstract of the page but no optimization utility Meta keywords tag: not taken into account anymore by search engines « Lang » option: useful only if metatags are filled in  Attributes of the IMG tag ALT: taken into account by Google only

12. 12Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011 Unwinding of Fragfornet’s SEO (year 2010) January – February: preliminary study and creation of the keywords’ pool May – June: in page optimization of the website June: first results; intense following of the SEO’s immediate consequences Follow up: - at the beginning of each month, data recollection and production of a short report - to maintain a good positioning, the updates of the website have increased from 1 each month to 2 or 3 each week.

13. 13Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011 Results of FFN’s SEO: Google positioning Observation: FragForNet’s position within Google’s results pages for simple searches based on the keywords’ pool Results:  Fragfornet stayed invisibled for many keywords (not in the first 100 results)  Fragfornet’s position varies greatly under the impulse of news updates  It is essential to update the site very regularly to maintain its Google ranking

14. 14Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011

15. 15Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011 Results of FFN’s SEO: Keywords used by visitors Observation: lists of the keywords used in search engines by FFN visitors to access our website Results:  Top keywords = generic words for which FFN stayed invisble on Google (« biodiversity », « fragmentation », « ecology », etc.)  Those keywords are used in more complex request (like « Brazil biodiversity loss » or « koala landscape fragmentation »)  The pool’s keywords use in such requests has doubled after the site’s optimization and is now stable around 6% of the keywords used to reach our website

16. 16Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011 Results of FFN’s SEO: Keywords used by visitors

17. 17Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011 Results of FFN’s SEO: Site’s traffic Observation: Number of different visitors by month Results:  The website’s traffic has always varied a lot, according to the period of the year or the events to which FFN’s members participate

18. 18Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011 Results of FFN’s SEO: Google positioning  Nevertheless, if we compare the traffic for a same month over the years, we observe that the optimization of the website benefited the network with an increase in its traffic

19. 19Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011 Conclusion SEO shall be incorporated at the very beginning of website’s project planning SEO is meant to be an uninterrupted, long-term work, lasting the whole life of the website Optimization follow-up, what to do?  Continue to gather data like presented above to better evaluate and anticipate FFN’s needs in optimization  Update very regularly the site to maintain its attractiveness  Consider an optimization on « off-page » criterions (quantity and quality of the external links leading to our site)

20. 20Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011 Thank you for your attention…