The document provides an overview of search engine optimization (SEO). It defines SEO and discusses how search engines work by gathering content, building an index, and running searches against the index. The document outlines key SEO building blocks like keywords, making sites crawler-friendly, and developing links. It also discusses SEO tools, black hat SEO methods to avoid, and defines success as being search-friendly, user-friendly, and persuasive.

1. Search Engine
Optimization (SEO)
Prepared by: Larry Stewart

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Topic Outline
 Introduction
 How Search Engines Work
 SEO Building Blocks
• Keywords
• Crawler
• Links
 SEO Tools
 Black Hat Methods
 Summary and Conclusion

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Introduction

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Definition of Search Engine
Optimization (SEO)1
"Natural," or "organic," search engine
optimization (SEO) is designing, writing, and
HTML-coding a Web site to maximize the
chance its pages will appear at the top of
spider-based search engine results for
selected keywords and phrases
Organic Listings: Listings that search engines
do not sell (unlike paid listings)

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SEO
 Iterative process
 Dynamic environment
 Art
 Science

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Why is it important?
 Internet advertising 1H 2006 : $7.9
Billion2
 Search ranking more site visitors
 Internet users tend not to click through
 Depends on webs role in your
economic model

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Variation in Approaches
White Hat
 Abide by terms and conditions set forth by
search engines
Black Hat
 Breaches search engine terms and conditions
 May provide short-term gains
 You run the risk of being penalized by search
engines

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Defining Success (Context)
Search-Friendly (SEO)
• High ranking
• Terms and conditions set by search engines
(Google, Yahoo, MSN Search)
User-Friendly
• Site must satisfy the needs of visitors
Persuasive
• Profitable for site owner

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How Search Engines Works

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Search Engine Operations
1. Gather Content
• Crawler or spider moves recursively
downloading content
2. Builds sophisticate index
3. Individual web searches run against
index
• Results are retrieved and ordered
• PageRank & Relevance

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Google Search Placement4
Placement: importance and relevance
 PageRank (importance)
• Counts links
• Weights links
 Query matching (relevance)
• sophisticated text-matching techniques
• examines all aspects of the page's content
(and the content of the pages linking to it)

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SEO Optimization

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SEO Optimization Categories
 Keywords
• Keyword selection and keyword-rich text
 Crawler
• A crawler-friendly site navigation scheme
 Links
• Link popularity

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Keyword Recommendations1
 Page title: visible HTML text ,“Above the fold”
 Page Size: "100 KB" limit is still is still widely
held. The optimum page size is 500-3000
words (or 2000 to 20,000 characters)
 Be specific
 Example: “Apple iPod” verses “iPod”
• exact phrase should appear generously throughout
your site copy on every page

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More Keyword
Recommendations5
Meta tags: use but don’t stuff
 <meta name="description" content="Free Web tutorials on HTML, CSS, XML,
and XHTML">
Alt tags: use for graphics

<IMG src="star.gif" alt=“star logo">
Content is king
 Write good content with relevant and important keywords in
mind.
Geo Targeting
 Add geocentric terms to target local areas
Domain Names
 Use keywords as part of domain name

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Crawler-friendly
 Engine spiders are primitive beings
• choose simplicity over complexity
 Goal
• All your web pages seen by crawlers
• Google: enter in searchbox
“allinurl:utexas.edu”

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Suggestions to be Crawler
Friendly5
 Traditional <a href> tag
 Keywords in subfolder names
 Minimize quantity of subfolders
 Cross link relevant terms and phrases
within the site
 Multiple paths to pages to eliminate
orphans

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Avoid or Minimize: May
Negatively Impact Crawler5
 Flash (slow to load and difficult to
navigate)
 Frames
 Java navigation
 Session ID to track visitors
 exact same Title tags on every page
 set to require a cookie when a visitor
gets to the page

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Link Development
Inbound Links Impact PageRank
PageRank (Popularity, importance)
 Number and quality of links pointing to a
website
 Measure of usefulness of site

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Link Development Tradeoffs
 Advantage
• it is dynamic, cumulative, and difficult to
imitate
 Disadvantage
• takes time (vs. advertising)

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Link Development Approaches
(White Hat)7
 Quality content to start with
 Cultivate quality link (not quantity)
 Begin with web directories
 Harness online publicity
 Use Blogs and forums wisely
 Investigate competitors
• Understand their strategy
• Online publicity, blogs and forums
• See inbound links ("link:domain.com" in Google,
"linkdomain:domain.com" in Yahoo)

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SEO Tools

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Search Engine Term and
Conditions
 Google
 Yahoo
 MSN Search

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Vendor Tools Example:
Seo Administrator 8
 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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31. Black Hat Methods

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Head of the webspam group at
Google
 Matt Cutts
 Worked on his Ph.D Computer Science
at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. Undergrad Comp Sci and
Math (Graduated with M.S.).
 Moved into information retrieval after
classes from the university's Information
and Library Science department

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http://www.searchenginegenie.com/seo-blog/images/matt.gif
http://www.searchenginegenie.com

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Link Exchange Advertisement

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Keyword Consulting Advertisement

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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
 Code swapping: swap it on the server with the "real" page once a position has
been achieved. also sometimes done to keep others from learning exactly how the
page ranked well.
 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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Online Resources

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Search Engine Standards
Google
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40349&ctx=related
Yahoo
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/basics-18.html
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/basics-17.html
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/index.html
MSN
http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx?t=SEARCH_WEBMASTER_REF_GuidelinesforOptimizingSit
Web Robots
http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/robots.html
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp/index.html
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8843

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Keyword Tools
Overture tool
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion
Wordtracker tool [recommended]
http://our.affiliatetracking.net/wordtracker/a/12246
Google Sandbox Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox
Espotting Tool
http://www.espotting.com/popups/keywordgenbox.asp
Related Pages
http://www.related-pages.com/adwordskeywords.aspx

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Conclusion and Summary
Website Success
 Search-friendly
 User-friendly
 Persuasive
Search-friendly Optimization components
 Keywords
 Crawler
 Links

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Bibliography
1
Thulow, Shari. “What Search Engine Marketing Does Your Site Need?”
Clickz. 15 Nov. 2006 <
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3105241 >.
2
“2006 Second Quarter Results (October 4, 2006) .” Interactive Advertising
Bureau. 15 Nov. 2006 <
http://www.iab.net/resources/ad_revenue.asp >.
3
“Event Homepage.” Search Engine Strategies 2006 Conference and
Exposition. 15 Nov. 2006
<http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/sew/winter06/index.html >.
4
“Our Search: Google Technology.” Google Website. 15 Nov. 2006
< http://www.google.com/technology/index.html >.

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Bibliography
5
Laratro, Joe. “Dos and Don’ts of Search Engine Optimization.”
MoreVisibility. 15 Nov. 2006
<http://www.morevisibility.com/whitepaper/2006/SEO_Do_and_
Donts_WP.pdf>
6
Thulow, Shari. “Link Development: The Key to Successful SEO ”
Clickz. 15 Nov. 2006 <http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?
page=3431741 >.
7
link farming. webopedia. 15 Nov. 2006
<http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/l/link_farming.html>.
8
SSEO Tools. SEO Administrator.
<http://www.seoadministrator.com/seo-tools.html>
<http://seo-tutorial.seoadministrator.com/>

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Backup

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Vendor Tools Example:
Seo Administrator 8
Ranking monitor: monitor web site positioning in the major search
engines for keywords
Link popularity checker: checks inbound links across a number of
search engines
Site indexation tool: check site indexation in Google, Yahoo, MSN
and other search engines
Server Log-analyzer: Administrator log analyzer automates
(Number of unique IP addresses, Number of visitors… )
PageRank analyzer: analyze competitor sites
Keywords suggestion tool: Keyword suggestion services, Keyword
Associations, search query suggestions, Competitor analysis
HTML analyzer: dissect html text in the same way that a search
engine would (syntax, keyword density)

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Black Hat Terms
 Link Farming: exchanging reciprocal links with Web sites in order to
increase search engine optimization
 Keyword Stuffing: Hidden text, Stuffing text in every nook and cranny
 Cloaking: stealth, deliver one page to a search engine for indexing
while serving a different page to everyone else.
 Doorway Pages: A Web page that is 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
 Code swapping: swap it on the server with the "real" page once a
position has been achieved. also sometimes done to keep others from
learning exactly how the page ranked well.
 Bait and Switch: Another technique combines word stuffing with "bait-
and-switch," which loads the page with a popular search word such as
sex, travel or antivirus, even though the word has nothing to do with
the site content.