Tools and techniques for Search Engine Optimization

1. Ashima Wadhwa
Assistant Professor (IT)
Amity University, Noida

2. Topic Outline
Definition(SEO)
How Search Engines Work
SEO Building Blocks
Keywords
Crawler
Links
SEO Tools
SEO Techniques
Summary and Conclusion
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Definition of Search Engine
Optimization (SEO)
SEO is Search Engine is the process of making a site and its
content highly relevant for both search engines and
searchers.
OR
SEO is the act of modifying a website to increase its ranking
in organic (vs paid), crawler-based listings of search engines

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How Search Engines Works

5. How do organic search listings work?
A spider or crawler which is a component of a SE gathers
listings by automatically "crawling" the web
The spider follows links to web pages, makes copies of
the pages and stores them in the SE’s index
Based on this data, the SE then indexes the pages and
ranks the websites
Major SEs that index pages using spiders: Google,
Altavista, Msn, Aol, lycos
“Spiders read only text, nothing else”

6. Search Engine Operations
1. Gather Content
 Crawler or spider moves recursively downloading
content
1. Builds sophisticate index
2. Individual web searches run against index
 Results are retrieved and ordered
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SEO Techniques

8. SEO strategies/techniques
1. Domain name strategies
- domain names are traffic magnets
> 63 million domain names registered
> 4.7 million domain names registered 1st quarter
2004
- choose a domain name that will increase your
search engine ranking. How?
- use keywords, location, advertising terms, product
names
- choose a keyword that is important for your
business

9. SEO strategies/techniques
2. Linking strategies
- the text in the links should include keywords
- the more inbound links the higher the SE ranking
- links for the sake of links can damage your search rankings

10. Search engine optimization/cont’d
3. Keywords
- keywords are words that appear the most in a
page.
- the spider chooses the appropriate keywords for
each page, then sends them back to its SE .
- your web site will then be indexed based on your
keywords .
- do not use common words eg ‘the’ ‘and’ ‘of’:
spiders ignore them.
- write keyword-rich text
- balance keyword-rich and readability

11. Keywords / Phrases Suggestion
Choose your Keywords:
- Theme Related
- Popular
- Low Competition / Find
Your Niche Market

12. SEO strategies/techniques
4. Title tags
- important in optimizing rankings
- the first thing that a search engine displays on a
search return
- should have the exact keyword you use for the page
- every single web page must have its own title tag
- you can use up to 65 characters - example
http://www.ebay.com/ (title is littered with keywords)

13. SEO strategies/techniques
5. Meta description tags
- displayed below the title in search results
- use dynamic, promotional language
- use keywords
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SEO Tools

15. Search Engine Term and Conditions
Google
Yahoo
MSN Search
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20. Vendor Tools Example:
Seo Administrator
Ranking monitor: site positioning in for keywords
Link popularity checker: checks inbound links
Site indexation tool: check site indexation
Server Log-analyzer: Administrator log analyzer
PageRank analyzer: analyze competitor sites
Keywords tool: suggestions, associations, competitor analysis
HTML analyzer: dissect html text in the same way that a search
engine would (syntax, keyword density)
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22. Black Hat Terms
 Link Farming: exchanging reciprocal links
 Keyword Stuffing: Hidden text, Stuffing text in every nook and cranny
 Cloaking: stealth, deliver different page to a search engine for indexing
 Doorway Pages: bridge, jump page, designed to appeal to search engine spiders
 Fast meta refresh: used to quickly switch doorway pages to the page the user is
supposed to see
 Bait and Switch: loads the page with a popular search words such as sex, travel or
antivirus when is irrelevant to site
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23. SEO - what is NOT recommended
Flash and shockwave – s piders do not pick up these files.
Image only sites - spiders do not pick up images.
Image maps - spiders cannot read image maps.
Do not use them on your home page or critical pages.
Frames - - Some spiders may not even read a frames web site.
Password protected pages – spiders cannot enter password protected
pages

24. SEO - what is NOT recommended
PDF files - can be problematic for spiders. Although some search
engines can index them, the pages must be interpreted into HTML
and can lose much of their content.
- place PDFs lower down in your site
Dynamic pages - spiders cannot index some content on pages using
ASP, CGI or other dynamic languages.
- Make sure important pages are HTML, no dynamically generated
content.
Drop down menus – spiders cannot read them

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