Essential guide to understanding SEO and Webometrics - and quick tips and actions to improve website quality - Gagandeep Singh Walia

The world of
Search Engine Optimization
“Once upon a workshop”
Gagandeep Singh Walia | gdswalia@hotmail.com Singapore, February 2014

Agenda
Introduction
1
How Search Engines Work
2
Webometrics Ranking
4
Understanding & Implementing SEO
3
A Few Quick Tips
5
5/2/2014
Gagandeep Singh Walia | gdswalia@hotmail.com
2

Introduction to
“The best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of Google Search results”

Introduction to Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website in a search engine’s organic (or un-paid) search results.
- Wikipedia
The higher the site is ranked on the search result page, the more visitors it will receive.
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Search Engine Optimization: Definition Break-down
Website
Process of affecting the visibility of a website in a search engine’s organic (or un-paid) search results.
Search Engine
Organic
Search Results
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Has a web address that leads users to the first webpage in the set, often called as the Homepage.
Search Engine Optimization: Definition Break-down Website
Set of related webpages served from a single web domain.
Each webpage is a document and may contain text, images, videos, links and a lot more.
Web address
Content of the webpage
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Each search engine has a search box where the user can type in their search query (also known as keywords).
Search Engine Optimization: Definition Break-down Search Engine
A system that is designed to search for information on the world wide web (internet)
Most popular search engines include Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu (in China).
Search Bar
Search Bar
Search Bar
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Based on the search query, the search engine result page (SERP) may consist of a variety of formats: results in text format, News results, real-time results, local results, image results, video results etc.
Search Engine Optimization: Definition Break-down Search Results
A listing of results returned by a Search Engine in response to a keyword query.
Search Bar
Search Bar
Search Bar
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Paid search, or also called as non-organic search is a result of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
Search Engine Optimization: Definition Break-down Organic Results
Organic, also called as “Natural” results, are listings on SERPs that appear because of their relevance to the search terms, as opposed to their being advertised.
Organic Results
Paid Search
10% clicks
90% clicks
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How
Search Engines Work
“A world where everyone creates content gets confusing pretty quickly without a good search engine.”

How Search Engines Work Search Marketing Landscape
Over 100 billion searches made every MONTH!
Trivia: Can you name the second-most popular search engine used after google.com?
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How Search Engines Work Search Marketing Landscape
Europe and Asia Pacific makes 63% of the global searches made
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How Search Engines Work The Process
Search engines have two major functions:
1.Crawling & building an index of billions of documents, pages, files, news, videos and media on the world wide web, and
2.Providing answers by calculating relevancy & serving results.
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How Search Engines Work Spiders - Crawlers
Search engines use programs called spiders, or bots, to search the internet and document their findings.
Spiders start with a seed URL and work their way outward, analysing the webpages, scanning the code and categorising most important words (keywords).
It then moves on to any pages that linked from the current page.
It also visits pages that may not be linked by other pages, but were submitted by search engines.
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How Search Engines Work The Algorithm
Search engines usually tweak their algorithms from time to time in order to improve results, and to ensure that only content wins!
There is, however, some general rule-of- thumb that search algorithms adhere to in order to display search results.
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How Search Engines Work Domain Authority
One of the factors considered by Search engines are content relevancy.
Websites which have relevant content, combined with being referenced by a number of websites, are considered legitimate and will show up higher on the search results page.
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How Search Engines Work Backlinks
The more number of “backlinks” (references / recommendations) your website has from credible websites, the more relevant it’s considered.
Google has recognized that many SEOs are creating “dummy” websites and using them to create links to their main website, and penalises such websites heavily
Bottom Line: Only “quality” links work!
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How Search Engines Work Single Domain / Multiple Domains
Since backlinks are an important signal to the search engines, one way of ensuring that your website receives a link (whenever a user wants to link to you) is by having a single domain for your website.
Having multiple domains to the same website will divide the backlinks received, hence, reducing the credibility overall.
If having multiple domains is a must, ensure that they are redirected (301) to one single domain.
versus
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How Search Engines Work Components of Google’s Ranking Algorithm
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How Search Engines Work Query Deserves Freshness
Query deserves freshness, or QDF, is a term used by Google to show newer (fresher) results over others.
This implies that content on a website should always be renewed, modified, updated and kept afresh!
QDF
Normal Results
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How Search Engines Work Query Deserves Diversity
Query deserves diversity, or QDD, is the notion that a search engine may intentionally diversify results to create variety in the search results even though normal ranking signals would suggest something different.
This implies that content on a website should also include a factor of why the user would come to the website, and what would his intention be.
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Understanding & Implementing
“People will tell you exactly what they want. In comments, links, social media landscape in general. Listen. Extrapolate. Do something with that information.

Understanding & Implementing Search Engine Optimization The SEO Pyramid
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For optimal results, always start with a strong base, and build your way up.

Understanding & Implementing Search Engine Optimization
Accessibility
“It’s not just about disabled users being able to access your website — it’s about everyone being able to access your website.”

Understanding & Implementing SEO: Accessibility Crawlability / Link Architecture
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Understanding & Implementing SEO: Accessibility Duplicate Content
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Understanding & Implementing SEO: Accessibility Using Canonical / Alternate tags
Use “Canonical” tags to highlight which site has original content.
Use “Alternate” tags to demonstrate same content with regional differences, for example, a site in multiple languages, so that an Indonesian customer sees the Indonesia specific website above the Singapore specific website of the same company, for example.
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Understanding & Implementing SEO: Accessibility Redirection
Always redirect using 301 redirection. This tells the search engine that the page has been “permanently” redirected to this new location.
302 redirects are temporary, and hence, the pageRank is divided, thus affecting the ranking on the search result page.
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Understanding & Implementing SEO: Accessibility URL Structure
•Shorter is better. Online research shows that Google prefers short URLs and crawls them first. May be it ranks them better too.
•Hyphens are fashionable: No spaces, underscores in URLs. Use a hyphen "-" to separate words.
•No dynamic parameters. If it's a must, restrict the number to two or fewer. More number of parameters will work only if the page is considered significantly important (ex. the page has many links pointing to it)
•Semantics : URLs to be as descriptive as possible - letting the user, and there by the search engine spider, know what the page contains is important.
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Understanding & Implementing SEO: Accessibility URL Structure
•Don't be Case Sensitive - Since URLs can accept both uppercase and lowercase characters, don't ever, ever allow any uppercase letters in the URL structure. If currently a lot exist, 301 them to all-lowercase versions to help avoid confusion.
•Some URLs considered good:
–http://www.discoverohio.com/visitors/map.asp Brilliant - it's short, descriptive, static and obvious.
–http://web.mit.edu/is/usability/usability-guidelines.html Despite the subdomain, everything else is near perfect.
–http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/jk35.html They could have used "john-kennedy" as the page title, but they've wisely also provided his number (the US' 35th President).
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Understanding & Implementing SEO: Accessibility Robots.txt
One of the first files that a search engine spider reads is the Robots.txt file.
It contains information for the spider as to what pages of the site it is allowed to crawl and what it must not crawl.
As a best practice, ensure that this file exists, even if it's empty. Also ensure that it does not accidentally exclude important files, directories or the entire site.
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Understanding & Implementing SEO: Accessibility Sitemap.xml
An XML Sitemap named “sitemap.xml” is a file that contains a list of nearly all the pages in the website.
This XML File is submitted to the search engines. This ensures that Google crawler can crawl into the deep links and can index them.
Submit the Sitemap to Google using Google Webmaster Tools.
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On-Page Elements
“Create a website that expresses something about who you are that won't fit into the template available to you on a social networking site.”

Understanding & Implementing SEO: On-Page Elements Title Tags & Meta Descriptions
Title Tag: Displays the name of the page. Also the first thing that is returned by the search engine.
<title> UT – Universitas Terbuka </title>
Meta Description: Displays a short summary of what the page contains. Also forms the part of the search result.
<meta name=“description” content=“Universitas Terbuka (UT) is Indonesia’s state university…</meta>
Title Tag
Title Tag
Meta Description
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Understanding & Implementing SEO: On-Page Elements Title Tags & Meta Descriptions
Best Practices:
Title Tag:
•Accurately describe the page’s content
•Create unique title tags for each page
•Use briefs but descriptive titles
Meta Description:
•Accurately summarize the page’s content
•Use unique descriptions for each page
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Understanding & Implementing SEO: On-Page Elements Anchor Texts
Text that is hyperlinked to a webpage is called Anchor text.
If a page is being linked from several sources with same/similar anchor text, then it would show up that page in the search results whenever that anchor text is used as a search query.
In short, anchor texts act as potential keywords for the page, and should be used appropriately.
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Understanding & Implementing SEO: On-Page Elements Image Tags
Search Engine spiders cannot read images. They read only plain text.
Therefore, it is important to explain what the image is about using the “alt” tag.
Current state of the University site shows that all of the major key banners have NO alt tags associated with them.
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Keyword Research & Targeting
“It's not always about getting visitors to your site, but about getting the right kind of visitors”

Understanding & Implementing SEO: Keyword Research & Targeting Value of a Keyword
To understand the value of a keyword, we need to understand our own websites, make some hypotheses, test, and repeat - the classic web marketing formula.
Create Relevant seed list
Search
Gather preliminary Data
Search for the term/phrase in major search engines
Select keywords that are relevant to your website, and what the users will find when they come to your site
Determine value of keyword
Guestimate conversion rate numbers, or using Google Adwords/Bing Adcenter, track impressions and conversion rate over the course of at least 2-300 clicks.
For ex, if your search ad generated 5,000 impressions, of which 100 visitors have come to your site and 3 have converted for total profit (not revenue!) of $300, then a single visitor for that keyword is worth $3 to your business.
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Understanding & Implementing SEO: Keyword Research & Targeting Useful Tools
Google Keyword Planner (previously known as Keyword tool) not only suggests keywords and provides estimated search volume, but also predicts the cost of running paid campaigns for these terms.
To determine volume for a particular keyword, be sure to set the Match Type to [Exact] and look under Local Monthly Searches. Remember that these represent total searches.
Links to some popular tools:
Google Adwords’ Keyword Planner
Google Trends Keyword Demand Prediction
Bing Ads Intelligence
Wordtracker’s Free Basic Keyword Demand
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Understanding & Implementing SEO: Keyword Research & Targeting Implementation
Once keywords are narrowed down for the webpage, implement. Modify / Update content to include these keywords.
Include keywords in the page title, meta description, and in the body context. Ensure all images have their title tags and the alt texts.
Do not overuse the keyword on the page. Always remember, the content needs to drive the keywords, not the other way around!
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Understanding & Implementing SEO: Keyword Research & Targeting Verification
Once implementation is done, ensure that Google sees your keywords:
Submit webpage to google webmaster tools, and go to "Fetch as Google". Then, hit Ctrl + F and look for the keywords that this page is optimized for. If the words are missing, Google will not see them.
Check the number of pages that have been indexed by Google and that exist on Google
search for "site:WebsiteName" on Google => this will give the number of pages that Google sees of this website
Check who all are linking to your website: search for "link:WebsiteName" on Google.
To test the browser layout of the website and see if the search engine can read your website, go to the browser and disable javascript and cookies. Whatever you can read now, the spider can read too.
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Promotion & Analysis
“Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind.”

Understanding & Implementing SEO Promotion & Analysis
Link Building: Effectively promoting your new content will lead to faster discovery by those who are interested in the same subject.
Announcements via Blogs: A blog post on your own site letting your visitor base know that you added something new is a great way to get the word out about new content or services.
Google Maps: For local businesses, adding information to Google Places helps reach customers on Google Maps and web search.
Taking these recommendations to an extreme could actually harm the reputation of your site.
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Know about Social Media sites: Sites built around user interaction and sharing have made it easier to match interested groups of people up with relevant content.
Related Community: Opening up communication with sites that cover similar topic areas as you is usually beneficial. Hot topics in your niche or community could spark additional ideas for content or building a good community resource.
Taking these recommendations to an extreme could actually harm the reputation of your site.
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Analytics: Understand who is visiting your site, where from, what do they visit etc.
Google Analytics is a free tool that can be quickly setup on your website to get in-depth reports.
Alexa.com can provide preliminary data of your website, as well of your competitor websites.
Doing a quick check for “ut.ac.id” on Alexa.com resulted in some interesting results.
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Understanding & Implementing SEO: Promotion & Analysis Google Webmaster Tools
Google's Webmaster Tools help webmasters better control how Google interacts with their websites and get useful information from Google about their site
Using Webmaster Tools won't help your site get preferential treatment; however, it can help you identify issues that, if addressed, can help your site perform better in search results.
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Best Practices: SEO Checklist
“Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.”

Understanding & Implementing SEO Best Practices: SEO Checklist
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Head Section order
Meta title tags
Meta description tags
Meta keywords tags
Heading tags
Page word count
Optimization at Page-Level
Ensure that the head section order is followed (that is, Meta Tags are in the right order)
Title > Description > Keywords
All Meta title tags are approx. nine words long (plus or minus three)
Cut-off for Google is 70 Characters
All Meta Description tags are approximately 12 - 24 words
(cut-off for Google is 160 characters)
List keywords from longest in length to shortest, separated by commas, between 24 - 48 words
Order begins with <h1> and subsequent ones are <h2>, <h3> etc, <h2> being the subhead of <h1>
Each page word count is at least 450 words or more (compulsorily more than 250 words)

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Image Alt Tags
Make JavaScript/CSS External
Banners (other on-page content)
Broken Links
URL Structure
Optimization at Page-Level
All images have proper alt tags and descriptions mentioned
Externalize the JavaScript/CSS code so that search engine crawls the most important code (the body text) first
All banners are linked properly and have campaign codes (wherever necessary)
There are no broken links on the page
The URL structure of each page is as per the guidelines provided earlier

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HTML Sitemap
XML Sitemap
Text Navigation
Robots.txt
Server Configuration
Redirections
Privacy Statements
Optimization at Site-Level
The sitemap for the site is present, and every page links to the sitemap
Ensure that the XML sitemap is submitted to the search engines. This ensures that Google crawler can crawl into the deep links and can index them. Submit the Sitemap to Google using Google Webmaster Tools.
Verify there is text navigation (and not JavaScript or Flash navigation that spider’s can’t see) at least at the bottom of the page
This file exists, even if it's empty. Ensure that Robots.txt does not accidentally exclude important files, directories or the entire site
Ensure that No 404 errors exist
Ensure all redirects are 301 and there is no 302 redirects
A privacy statement exists (letting site visitors know of what we will do with the data we are collecting)

Understanding
Webometrics Ranking
“Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.”

Understanding Webometrics Ranking
A ranking system for the world's universities based on a composite indicator that takes into account both the volume of the Web contents (number of web pages and files) and the visibility and impact of these web publications according to the number of external inlinks (site citations) they received.
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Understanding Webometrics Ranking Some Facts
July, 2013
Is this a ranking of University Website?
No! Web presence and visibility are used as indicators of global performance of a university.
Web design is totally irrelevant as all the measurements are related to the contents published.
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Understanding Webometrics Ranking Methodology
Webometrics Ranking
Visibility (50%)
Activity (50%)
No. of external links linked to our website
Presence (1/3)
Openness(1/3)
Excellence (1/3)
The total number of webpages hosted in the main web-domain (including all the subdomains and directories) of the university as indexed by Google.
The number of rich files (pdf, doc, docx, ppt) published in dedicated websites according to the academic search engine Google Scholar.
The academic papers published in high impact international journals, where the university scientific output is a part of the 10% most cited papers in their respective scientific fields
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Understanding Webometrics Ranking
Calculating Webometric Score
“If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?”

Understanding Webometrics Ranking Calculating Webometrics Score: Benefits
There are several reasons why it’s important to know how this score is calculated:
1.Understand where you stand in the current scenario among other universities in your region.
2.Identify the factors that your website is stronger at when compared to others, and in what factors it is weaker.
3.Website content can then be optimized to improve weak factors.
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To demonstrate calculation and to arrive at a Webometric score, the website of Universitas Terbuka is used as an example
http://www.ut.ac.id/

Understanding Webometrics Ranking Calculating Webometrics Score: Visibility
This indicator is the product of square root of the number of backlinks and the number of domains originating those backlinks.
To calculating the number of links received for a website, visit http://ahrefs.com and type in the URL you want to calculate the visibility of.
Visibility = sqrt (30,000) * 815
= 141,162.1
Visibility (50%)
No. of external links linked to our website
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Understanding Webometrics Ranking Calculating Webometrics Score: Presence
It counts every webpage, including all the formats recognized individually by Google, both static and dynamic pages and other rich files.
Having additional domains or alternative central ones for foreign languages or marketing purposes penalizes in this indicator and it is also very confusing for external users.
To calculate Presence, type in
site:ut.ac.id/ on google.com
Presence = 153,000
Presence (16.67%)
The total number of webpages hosted in the main web-domain (including all the subdomains and directories) of the university as indexed by Google.
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Understanding Webometrics Ranking Calculating Webometrics Score: Openness
This needs to be calculated for each individual file type (pdf, doc, docx, ppt) and then summed up together.
To find the number of PDFs submitted, go to http://scholar.google.com and type in
site:ut.ac.id filetype:pdf
Do similarly for all mentioned file types and arrive at a total. That number becomes the Openness value.
In this case, Openness = 376(pdf) + 1(doc) + 0(docx) + 0(ppt) = 377
Openness(16.67%)
The number of rich files (pdf, doc, docx, ppt) published in dedicated websites according to the academic search engine Google Scholar.
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Understanding Webometrics Ranking Calculating Webometrics Score: Excellence
This is a measure of high quality output of research institutions, and the data is provided by the Scimago group.
According to the SIR Report* published in 2013, Universtas Terbuka does not feature in the 2744 entries published.
Only 3 Indonesian Universities featured:
- Bandung Institute of Technology - University of Indonesia - Gadjah Mada University
Hence, Excellence Value = 0
Excellence (16.66%)
The academic papers published in high impact international journals, where the university scientific output is a part of the 10% most cited papers in their respective scientific fields
*http://www.scimagoir.com/pdf/SIR%20Global%202013%20O.pdf
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Understanding Webometrics Ranking Calculating Webometrics Score
Visibility (50%)
50% of 141,162.1 = 70,581.05
Presence (16.67%)
Openness(16.67%)
Excellence (16.66%)
16.67% of 153,000 = 25,505.1
16.67% of 377 = 62.85
16.66% of 0 = 0
Webometrics Score
70,581.05 + 25,505.1 + 62.85 + 0 = 96,149
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Understanding Webometrics Ranking Calculating Webometrics Score
Scores for all university sites are calculated similarly, and then arranged in descending order. And then ranked. That’s where the Webometrics ranking comes from.
The higher the score, the better you are ranked.
As nothing is perfect, Webometrics tweaks the criteria of measurement with every ranking list produced so as to make a better ranking system.
The updated criteria can be found here.
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Universitas Terbuka
A Few Quick Tips
“The key to mixing colors, patterns, and textures is BALANCE.”

Universitas Terbuka A Few Quick Tips
A large web presence is made possible only with the effort of a large group of authors. The best way to do that is allowing a large proportion of staff, researchers or graduate students to be potential authors.
Hosting external resources can increase the visibility: Conference websites, software repositories, scientific societies and their publications, especially electronic journals.
Converting important resources that are available in non-electronic format into web pages is quick and easy.
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Submit to Google Scholar!
The number of journals / educational papers found on Google Scholar form an important part of the total ranking.
It also boosts up the “visibility” factor as those papers are also shown as search results on Google.
And, not to forget the additional backlinks that will be received from these additional papers.
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Here’s an example of the current problem:
Number of PDF files available on the University’s website as shown by “google.com” is 5,010.
However, number of PDF files available on the University’s website submitted to Google Scholar is 376.
That’s one-thirteenth!
On google.com
On scholar.google.com
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Here’s what you need to know about submitting journals to Google Scholar:
For University Repositories:
“If you're a university repository, we recommend that you use the latest version of Eprints (eprints.org), Digital Commons (digitalcommons.bepress.com), or DSpace (dspace.org) software to host your papers.”
For Individual Authors:
“Upload your paper (in pdf format) to your website, and add a link to it on your publications page.”
Ensure the title of the paper is at the top of the first page and the authors listed right below. Always include a bibliography section titled “References” or “Bibliography” at the end.
Read the complete Inclusion guidelines here Submit your website to Google Scholar here
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Site Language
The Web audience is truly global, and so the website must cater to the global audience as well.
Language versions, especially in English, are mandatory not only for the main pages, but for selected sections and specially from scientific documents.
Currently, the English version differs significantly with the Indonesian version (which is much richer)
Sub-domains do not have an English Version. Here’s an example: http://www.fmipa.ut.ac.id/
In Bahasa
In English
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Rich & Media Files: Have multiple versions of the file – HTML for easy viewing on the website, and PDF, for easy downloading.
Quick Share: Adding the share functionality to all journals / papers enables users to share it with friends/colleagues easily.
Archiving and Persistence: Absolutely ensure that a copy of the outdated / old material is retained. An archive is an absolute essential.
Site Enrichment: The use of meaningful titles and descriptive metatags can increase the visibility of the pages. Standards like “Dublin Core” can be used to add authoring info, keywords and other data about the web sites.
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Final Thoughts
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

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Thank You
For your Attention
“Once upon a workshop”
Gagandeep Singh Walia | gdswalia@hotmail.com Singapore, February 2014

Essential guide to understanding SEO and Webometrics - and quick tips and actions to improve website quality - Gagandeep Singh Walia

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