1. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU What to Know about SEO Rebecca Kennison, Director Center for Digital Research and Scholarship May 29, 2009

2. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Principles of Text SEO Title tags Keyword strategy URL structure Sitemaps Unique content Inbound links from quality sources Internal links that emphasize content flow and semantic relationships Image and video optimization Code element optimization

3. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU SEO Checklist: Domain When possible, use a domain that has search engine presence and contains relevant keywords

4. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU SEO Checklist: Title Unique, accurate page title Separate and unique title for each page Title tag optimization – Avoid repeating title across pages – Limit yourself to no more than 120 characters for each title – Make sure title is descriptive of content of page

5. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Example: Libraries http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/ Columbia University Libraries http://clio.cul.columbia.edu/cgi- bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=First CLIO

6. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Example: OCPA Home | columbianews

7. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU SEO Checklist: Keywords Google does not use keywords, but some other search engines do Keyword best practices – Don’t use more than a dozen keywords – Keywords should emphasize page content – Avoid repetition of keywords – Do not repeat keywords across the site

8. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Example: CU Homepage Columbia University in the City of New York N.B. The same keywords are used throughout site, no matter what the content of the page is.

9. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU SEO Checklist: Description Might appear as part of search result Description optimization – Accurately summarize page as precisely and concisely as possible – Use a different description for each page – Be brief (some recommend no more than 225 characters) – Do not use repetitious keywords Check effectiveness via Google Webmaster Tools’ content analysis tool

10. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Example: EVPR Welcome to the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research | Office of the Executive Vice President for Research

11. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU SEO Checklist: URLs Search-friendly URLs – URLs should not look like a file structure – use words and unique descriptions of the page – Avoid dynamic URLs – Use hyphens instead of underscores (e.g., example.com/music/artist-name.php) – Avoid deep nesting of subdirectories 301 redirects – Select one main URL per document and use 301 redirect from other pages – Use 301 redirects for old/unused domains

12. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU SEO Checklist: Navigation HTML sitemap (lower case) – Aimed at human users – Link to from footer – Add links for primary and secondary content pages XML Sitemap (upper case) – Designed for search engine use – Submit directly to search engines – Can be generated via Google’s Sitemap Generator script

13. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Navigation Best Practices Create naturally flowing hierarchy Use mostly text, rather than relying on dropdowns, etc. – this helps with accessibility issues Use breadcrumbs Consider what happens when a user truncates the URL – do they get a 404 error? Develop a custom 404 page

14. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU SEO Checklist: Content Use at least 300 words and strive for uniqueness on each page Write easy-to-read text that is relevant for the audience – create content for users, not for search engines Use separate pages for separate topics Update or provide new information regularly

15. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU SEO Checklist: Linking At heart of SEO success Develop linking strategy that focuses on cross-linking within Web site, within network of Web sites, and from external relevant Web sites Link using keywords related to page content within anchor text For inbound links, quality matters more than quantity

16. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU SEO Checklist: Anchor Text Choose descriptive text to describe what link is about and use anchor text for all links, whether to internal pages or external ones Keep text short Make links obvious to user

17. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU SEO Checklist: Heading Tags Think of headings as an outline – is most relevant point on the page, is sub-point, etc. – Be consistent in heading structure Text should define structure of page Only use sparingly, as needed to assist reader in understanding page structure

18. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU SEO Checklist: Images Image file name should describe what image is (e.g., cape-cod- beach.jpg) and be unique Use image ALT text with relevant keywords that provide important information about image (also important for screen readers) Keep all images in single directory

19. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Example: CU Homepage

20. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Example: Image Text

21. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU SEO Checklist: Robots Robots.txt – Robots.txt file should be used to tell search engine crawlers what content you do not want crawled – File needs to be included in subdomains – Google provides robots.txt generator Considerations when using the robots tag – Robots can ignore your tag, so if content is not to be crawled, use other more secure methods to block – NOFOLLOW directive only applies to links on that particular page; robot might find same links on some other page without NOFOLLOW and so still arrive at your undesired page

22. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU SEO Checklist: Code Avoid heavy use of JavaScript, I- Frames, AJAX, and other non-SEO- friendly code Have text version available for mobile phones and screen readers

23. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Same Song, Second Verse: Video Titles and meta-tag content should follow text rules Header tags should also follow same rules URL rules remain unchanged Navigation rules are also similar, but additionally navigation should include playlists File-naming nomenclature and ALT text guidelines are as for images

24. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Video SEO: Highlights Insert keywords into your video filenames Host your videos on YouTube (and other sites), and embed YouTube videos into your own site – Embedded YouTube video counts in your YouTube visitor numbers and increases your video SEO Optimize your videos by writing keywords into titles, descriptions, tags Embed videos into relevant text pages on your site Host video library on site, create mRSS feeds and Google Video Sitemaps, and write keyword-rich annotations for each video in the library

25. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Video SEO: Hosting Sites YouTube iTunes U Vimeo Metacafe Facebook MySpace Flickr blip.tv Dailymotion DeviantArt (art only) Tons more

26. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Advantages to Spreading the Love More eyeballs More inbound links Brand control maintained through HTML wrapper Large video hosted and served by someone else

27. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Video SEO: Content Use relevant and keyword-rich text surrounding the video content Content should be descriptive of video Write for visitor, not for search engine Video should be part of overall information strategy for site

28. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Example: Earth Institute

29. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Example: Embed Code Mary-Elena Carr - Columbia Climate Center Launch (Part 1 of 6) from Earth Institute on Vimeo.

30. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Video SEO: Linking Most effective way for getting inbound links: allow visitors to embed videos Use descriptive anchor text in HTML wrapper for embedded link Implement internal cross-branded linking strategy Internally use video playlists, related links, and breadcrumbs

31. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Video SEO: Social Media Allow visitors to share, bookmark, rate, and comment and virally spread content (Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Del.icio.us, Facebook, MySpace) Cultivate the blogosphere Become part of the social media world – develop blog, have Facebook page, use Twitter

32. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Example: SIPA Video

33. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Video SEO: RSS and mRSS RSS subscription drives traffic (but doesn’t directly help with SEO) Use Media RSS (mRSS) to submit video content to search engines – Include video ratings, play counts, and tags – Helpful with Yahoo (which created spec) and some other search engines, but not with Google

34. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Video SEO: Sitemaps Submit to Google (which won’t accept mRSS) Use video-specific tags following Google Video Sitemap spec

35. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Finding the Good Stuff: Video Search Google, Yahoo, AOL video search Searchme Blinkx CastTV Dabble Everyzing Truveo More all the time

36. CDRS.COLUMBIA.EDU Questions?