SEO - Comprehensive Search Engine Optimization Tutorial - Confiz Solutions

SEO 101
First steps towards better search rankings
Aatir Abdul Rauf,
Product Manager, Confiz Solutions
(w/ special thanks to: Mohammed Ghufran)

What is SEO?
DR. SEARCH ENGINE
by relevant customers
Art of being found
Copyrights © 2010 Confiz Solutions. All rights reserved.

Getting listed is not the goal
Rest of search results
You
Its about ranking High….and beating the competition.

What is SEO?
Set of good practices that:
help search engines understand your content better
…that helps you get higher search rankings
…that helps relevant traffic land on your site
…ultimately, leading to more revenue

Levels of SEO
Great SEO: Lots of Relevant traffic; High user activation
Good SEO: Ranking high; lots of search traffic
Some SEO: Your site pops up on specific keywords.
No SEO: Primarily living on direct traffic.

Why SEO?
Leverage search – Its growing…exponentially !

Do I need to rank high?

Why not spend some money?
~88% of clicks
~12% of clicks
..because you’ll lose out !

SEO Best Practices
An overview of what we’ll cover today:
Page titles
Descriptions
URL structures
Custom 404 pages
Effective Content
Optimizing Images
Sitemaps
Using Robots.txt
PageRank and Beyond

Page Titles

Titles – Do’s and Don’ts
DO: Accurately describe the page’s content
DON’T: Use “New Page 1” or “Untitled Document”
DO:Use unique titles for EACH page
DON’T: use the same title for all pages.
DO: Use brief titles, 70 chars max
DON’T: stuff keywords or use loooooong titles

Descriptions
Avoid descriptions like:
- Just the section name: e.g. Member Rides.
- Keyword lists e.g. rides, show , off , motorcycle, car etc.
- Vague descriptions like slogans e.g. Love it , Live it , Ride it.

Descriptions – Do’s and Don’t’s
DO: Inform the users about the content of the PAGE
DON’T:Use generic phrases like “Good game website”
DO: Use unique descriptions for EVERY page
Check this on your site by searching “site:Domain URL” on Google.
DON’T: Use the same description everywhere.
For huge content sites, think about dynamic generation.

Tidy up your URLs
http://www.pakwheels.com/make=124&model=46&adID=4440&Ct=Karachi
UGLY ! Search engines can’t guess what this is about.
http://www.pakwheels.com/used-cars/2005-Honda-city-for-sale-in-Lahore-92374
Aah…Much better!
If your URL has relevant keywords:
Search engines are better informed about the page content

URL Keywords shine in search
Keywords bolded !
User associates this with relevance.

URLS- Do’s and Don’ts
DO: Use juicy keywords in URLs
DON’T: lengthy URLs with session IDs, “page1.html”
Avoid keyword-stuffing like “iphone-3g-iphone-3g”
DO: Use a clean, intuitive directory structure
Draw a logical hierarchy!
e.g. http://www.pakboard.com/general-items/mobile-phones/nokia-e51-for-sale-in-islamabad-6103
But DON’T: Use deeeeeep nested structures
E.g. /ad/2/0/1/0/0/8/1/4/mobile/new

Custom 404
Sites break at some point in time or customers play with your URLS
SCARY

Custom 404s deal with user retention
User got a 404 ? Lead him/her back to the safe zone !
Include:
- An apology for the error
A prominent search box
- Links to the other main areas of your site e.g. home

Content is KING
Hear it from the King of Search:
“Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors” -- Google
Study from SEOmoz:
“The web pages actually at the top of Google have only one thing clearly in common: good writing.”

It’s all about Content
OMG!

It’s all about Content
1000awesomethings.com: AWESOME!

CONTENT IS KING
What do you mean by content ?
Frequency of updates
Spelling and grammar
Paragraphs, Use of lists
Sentence Length
Anchor text
RELEVANCE (read as: keyword-rich text)

Content: Best Practices
DO: Use easy-to-read text, create unique content
DON’T: Include spelling/grammatical mistakes, Use images in place of text (search engines can’t read them)
DO: Use Relevant language (keyword-rich)
How ? Next slide.
DO: Update frequently
DON’T: rehash or copy existing content (little value)
DO: Create content for users, not search engines

Keyword Research
What keywords should I include in content, page titles, descriptions etc ?
3 step process
Brainstorm keywords, evaluate and employ
How ? Use tools !
Google Adwords External Keyword Tool
Wordtracker, Wordstream
Yahoo Assist , Google Trends, Google Insights
Competitive Analysis

Google Keyword Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Use keywords in Headers
tringtring.com
DO: Use Brief, keyword-rich accurate headers
DO: Use H1 before H2 and H2 before H3 and…
DON’T: Overuse them!

Never ignore Images
Over 1 Billion Pageviews on images.google everyday!

Optimize your images
DO: Use descriptive file names
DO: Include Alt text to describe the image
<imgsrc="images/red apple.jpg" alt="Photo of red apple" width="309" height="337" />

Images – Best Practices
DON’T: Use Javascript to load images
No search engine runs JS requests
DO: Use brief, descriptive filenames and alt text
DO: Use Alt text when image is link
Search engine understand more about what you’re linking to
DO: Simplify image paths by storing them in one directory
DO: Use common file types e.g. GIF, JPEG, BMP etc.
DO: Submit an image sitemap to Google!

Search bots aren’t picky while crawling
GoogleBot’s job is to crawl
Link to Product Pages (yea!)
Link to Terms of Service (hmm...)
Link to Sign out page (bah…)
Links on your home page
(search bot will use these to crawl)

Enter Sitemaps
Tell them about pages that matter

Help the Bots with Sitemaps
Sitemaps are XML files that contain a bunch of URLS on your site
Webmasters add clues in these sitemaps:
How important is each link in relation to another
How often does content change on each link
When was it last updated
Submit sitemaps to search engines to tell them what to crawl
Allows search engines to crawl more intelligently!

More about Sitemaps
How do I make a sitemap?
Auto-generate: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
Use smart Plugins
Custom implementation: you know your site best!
How do I submit a sitemap?
Submit on Google Webmaster Central OR
Ping the submission API (useful for custom code)
E.g. Google:http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=[your sitemap location]

Sitemap – Best Practices
DO: If your content updates daily, submit sitemaps daily too!
DO: Place it in your root directory
e.g. www.xyz.com/sitemap.xml
DO: Keep sitemap updated; check for broken links
DO: Include links to canonical URLs (preferred page)
DO: Use sitemap extensions to tell Google about images and videos

Sitemaps vs. Robots.txt
SITEMAPS
URL –inclusion protocol
ROBOTS.TXT
URL–exclusion protocol

Put Robots.txt to good use
Robots.txt tells Search engines where they can crawl on your site.
Handy to block irrelevant content for search e.g.
/upload_image_post
/login
/signout
Any areas that are currently in development
Note: Use more stricter measures for sensitive content (like HTTP auth)
Remember: Robots.txt is just information that can be ignored by rogue robots !

Use Robots.txt to block site areas
DON’T: Allow auto-generated pages with similar content to be crawled.
DON’T: Allow URLs created as a result of proxy services to be crawled.

The Mysterious PageRank
Numeric value representing site importance
Scale 1- 10
1 = HORRIBLE, 10 = AWESOME
High page rank = high search rankings
Well, most of the time…
How do I find out my PR ?
Use websitegrader.com
http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php
SEOQuake (Mozillaplugin)

PageRank Factors
Source: SEOmoz

Stop Leaking SEO
PageRank is passed on to external links:
Source: SEOMoz

But I’m being generous!
One of the top negative SEO factors:
“Links from the Page to Web Spam Sites/Pages”
If you have a blog, chances are the post comments have links
Sometimes, links to BAD sites
Solution ?
Make sure you add “rel=nofollow” tag to such links
<a href=“xyz.com” rel=“nofollow”> Bad site </a>

Domain Trust / Backlinks
Domain Trust:
Info on Nasa.gov vs. pakpattanhockeyplayers.comWhat would Google prefer ?
Backlinks
Links to your site found on other websites
Backlinks are HUGE PR influencers

All backlinks were not created equal
Few backlinks from HEAVY PR sites >> Many backlinks from low PR sites

Backlinks are like Votes
Source: SEOMoz
Every page passes on some function of its own pagerank
Heavier the PR of the linker, the better off you are !
Link building is important
But Beware: link exchange is not a good move

Evaluate your Site
Use opensiteexplorer.com to assess backlinks and domain authority

Anchor text
pakdonor.com
Text of links leading to another page

Anchor Text
<a href=“www.pakdonor.com/blood-facts”> View More</a>
VS.
<a href=“www.pakwheels.com/blood-facts”> View Blood Facts</a>
Keywords !
Search engines are better informed about what this page is about.

Keywords In content
Wikipedia.com – keywords with natural usage

What Else ?
Use CSS + clean table structures
Canonical URLs
Link Building
Internal Links
Keyword Research
RSS Feeds
Advanced SEO techniques and more…

Some great resources
Starter Guide from Google: http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
Soup to Nuts: http://www.web2expo.com/webexsf2010/public/schedule/detail/14573
SEO Course: http://hubpages.com/hub/SEO-Course-Outline
Seochat.com, seomoz.org, seobook.com and selfseo.com

Bottom line
Stand out…the cheap way!

About Me
I’m a graduate student of the University of Pennsylvania
I’m working as a Product Manager at Confiz Solutions leading a project called ‘Pak eVentures’
‘Pak eVentures’ is a suite of portals dealing with classifieds in Pakistan. The portals include:
PakWheels.com – auto classifieds ; 12M pageviews/month
TringTring.com – mobile phone classifieds
PakDonor.com (social service website)
PakBoard.com – classifieds for everything!

Contact Us
Got questions about SEO or web development? Send us an email at info@confiz.com
For more information about Confiz Solutions and our cool projects, visit us at: www.confiz.com

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SEO - Comprehensive Search Engine Optimization Tutorial - Confiz Solutions

by Confiz Solutions on Aug 26, 2010

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