1. 1 Search Engine Optimization An introduction to optimizing your web site for best possible search engine results.

2. 2 Search Engine Optimization Presented by: Chris Pfeiffer, University of Utah Office of Information Technology

3. 3 Presentation Overview Search Engine Basics Why Optimize? Key Concepts Optimization Content Management Systems Summary Resources

4. 4 Search Engine Basics Crawling the web: Search engines run automated programs, called “robots" or "spiders", that use the hyperlink structure of the web to "crawl" the pages and documents that make up the World Wide Web.

5. 5 Search Engine Basics Indexing documents: Once a page has been crawled, its contents can be "indexed" - stored in a giant database of documents that makes up a search engine's "index".

6. 6 Search Engine Basics Processing queries: When a request for information comes into the search engine, the engine retrieves from its index all the document that match the query.

7. 7 Search Engine Basics Ranking results: Once the search engine has determined which results are a match for the query, the engine's algorithm (a mathematical equation commonly used for sorting) runs calculations on each of the results to determine which is most relevant to the given query.

8. 8 Search Engine Basics Directories: Human edited search indexes o Yahoo Directory! o DMOZ = The Open Directory Project www.dmoz.org

9. 9 Search Engine Basics Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) o Organic: Results based on content and keyword relevancy (as per algorithm) o Paid Placement (PPC):  Google AdWords  Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM)

10. 10 Search Engine Results Pages Paid Placement Results Organic Results

11. 11 Why Optimize? Web Search as a navigational tool o On average, 45% of visitor traffic through Utah.edu use the search engine to navigate. o 72% of searchers stop with the top ten search results, and 90% stop with the top 30.

12. 12 How much is too much? Competition for keywords Evaluating page rank o Baseline o Ongoing

13. 13 Evaluating page rank Page rank calculation tools o Google Toolbar o www.faganfinder.com/urlinfo/ o www.alexa.com Frequent queries o Web traffic analysis o U Web Resources

14. 14 Key Concepts Target audience o Keyword choices o Directory submission

15. 15 Key Concepts Conversion Web site user doing what you intended them to do Sales Course registration Forms & downloads Page views Conversion paths and funnels

16. 16 Key Concepts Search-friendly Usability o Home Page vs. Landing pages o Top-down vs. Shallow-wide design

17. 17 Top-down design HOME

18. 18 Shallow-wide design HOME

19. 19 Key Concepts Persistent Navigation o Orients visitor to site o Provides spiders pathway through site

20. 20 Key Concepts Accessibility o Flash o Javascript o SSL – authentication o Firewalls and closed ports o Databases & query string URLs o Forms

21. 21 Key Concepts Site Maps Non-HTML Documents o MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF

22. 22 Key Concepts Canonical URLs o http://utah.edu o http://www.utah.edu Redirects o 301 server redirect o Meta-refresh page redirect

23. 23 Key Concepts Robots.txt file Decides which robots to allow in and which to exclude Site wide Directory-by-directory Page-by-page Robots meta-tag

24. 24 Optimization Get indexed o Register URL with University Webmaster o Submit URL to directories

25. 25 Optimization Meta-data The University of Utah

26. 26 Optimization Meta-data o HTML Page Title  Number one optimization factor  Included in results display  Unique title for each landing page

27. 27 Optimization Meta-data HTML Title Utility in Dreamweaver

28. 28 Optimization Meta-data o Meta-description tag o50% weight of HTML Title in Ultraseek oIncluded in Ultraseek results display oLess weight given by Google oRarely used in Google results display

29. 29 Optimization Meta-data o Meta-keywords tag  Equal to meta-description tag in Ultraseek  Ignored by Google  Common misspellings

30. 30 Optimization Meta-data o Image alt-tags o H1 tags o Body text

31. 31 Optimization Relative weight given HTML tags by U of U Ultraseek Search Engine

32. 32 Optimization Popularity o Inbound links o Remote anchor links & text oAnchor link – http://www.url.com oAnchor text – words used in link

33. 33 How/What to Optimize Popularity Inbound links Example Anchor link Anchor link text

34. 34 Optimization Popularity o Inbound links o Remote anchor links & text o Googlebombing When a web page places high in search engine results due to frequent anchor links using rude or insulting keywords.

35. 35 How/What to Optimize Popularity Inbound links googlebombing

36. 36 How/What to Optimize Popularity Inbound links googlebombing

37. 37 Optimization Reliability o.edu and.gov domains o Domain age

38. 38 Black Hat SEO Black Hat SEO: Unscrupulous or deceptive optimization practices intended to spam users or compete unfairly o Invisible text o Keyword stuffing o Duplicate pages o Domain cloaking: serving different content to search engine robots than to human visitors o Link farms

39. 39 Optimization Spam Detection Threshold: The number of repeating keywords required for U of U Ultraseek search engine to penalize for spamming

40. 40 Content Management Systems Dynamic URLs o Querystring enabled o Consistent, crawl-able URLs Cookies and session IDs

41. 41 Summary Accessible pages Think landing pages Unique HTML page title for every landing page Content relevant keywords Avoid Black Hat SEO

42. 42 Resources University Webmaster o www.utah.edu/uwebresources o webmaster@utah.edu o 581-6113 www.seamoz.org www.searchenginewatch.com “The ABC of SEO” David George

43. 43 Search Engine Optimization THANK YOU!