the fundamentals

by Eric Wu: e@eywu.com

Incoming Links

Internal Links

Content

HTTP Header

HTML / Markup

URLs

Domain (TLD)

Links

Content

Site

Architecture

KE

YW

OR

DS

S⋅E⋅O [n. es-ee-oh]: the process of improving the volume and quality of

traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or

"algorithmic") search results.

Organic Traffic Acquisition+ Branding

High Conversions Direct Traffic

66%

17%

11%

4%

3%

Google

Yahoo

Microsoft

Ask

Other

Search Result Pages (SeRPs)

Listings 1-10

Listings 1-4

..... bold ...... bold bold.......

bold .... .......... ............. bold bold .........

...... bold ....... ........... bold ............

www ..... bold bold .........

0

25

50

75

100

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

6862

48

3428

9 11 10 8 6

42

128 6 5 4 3 3 3 3

% Viewed

% of Clicks

max: 65 - 70 Characters

<title>Auto Repair Shops in Pittsfield, Massachusetts | example.com</title>

Keywords

Location

Relevant

< 65 Characters

max displayed: 160-170 Characters

<meta name=”description” content=”Find a trustworthy auto repair mechanic in the Pittsfield Massachusetts area. Get

phone numbers, reviews, maps, and directions for automotive repair shops to solve your car problems from

transmission problems to the check engine light in Pittsfield, MA” />

Keywords

Location

Relevant

Call to Action

the shorter the better

example.com/auto-repair-pittsfield-ma/

Keywords

Location

Short

Top Level

Directory

Diversity Low subsequent searches Unique Content

Relevancy Low return (bounce) rate

Determine User Intent Head vs Long Tail Commercial Navigational Transactional Informational

Crawling OnSite SEO

Indexing Ranking 200+ search signals OnPage Factors OffPage Factors Unique Content

Ux Principles The Algorithm

Diversity Low subsequent searches Unique Content

Relevancy Low return (bounce) rate

Determine User Intent Head vs Long Tail Commercial Navigational Transactional Informational

Crawling OnSite SEO

Indexing Ranking 200+ search signals OnPage Factors OffPage Factors Unique Content

Ux Principles The Algorithm

Bots: Dont’s

Don’t execute JavaScript*

Don’t execute Flash

Don’t accept cookies

Don’t read images

Don’t fill out forms*

• Do like text

• Do like links (clean urls)

• Do like patterns (regEx)

• Do like semantic tags

• Do like clean code

Bots: Do’s

per / page

• Links: < 100*

• Bandwidth: 600 kb

Diversity Low subsequent searches Unique Content

Relevancy Low return (bounce) rate

Determine User Intent Head vs Long Tail Commercial Navigational Transactional Informational

Crawling OnSite SEO

Indexing Ranking 200+ search signals OnPage Factors OffPage Factors Unique Content

Ux Principles The Algorithm

=

1. Title Tag2. Header Tags (h1...h6)3. Body / <p>4. Anchor (<a>)5. Alt attribute in <img>6. Bold / <strong>7. Lists (<ul>, <ol>, <dl>)8. Page Weight9. RDF, MicroFormats*10. Meta Tags (description, keyword, robots)

Use h1...h6 tags to show hierarchy

Use <p> for content Use semantic tags when it makes

sense to:

<address>

<cite>

<quote>

<caption>

<code>

<fieldset>

<label>

<legend>

RDF / OWL / MicroFormats

keyword rich anchor text

<a href=“”>Anchor Text</a>

rel=”nofollow” for links in:

reviews

untrusted sources

PageRank sculpting* absolute URLs

http://example.com/my-link/

avoid href=”javascript:”

onclick attribute preferred

Use alt attributes to describe the text within an image

Use caption tag to add relevancy to image

code proximity matters Use <no script> to

describe Flash, AJAX, or Java Applet content

avoid inline JavaScript avoid inline CSS

use separate .js and .css files host separate .js, .css, and nav

imgs on separate CNAME robots.txt: disallow: / for

entire CNAME JS Frameworks (e.g. jQuery, Y!UI, prototype)

CSS Frameworks (e.g. blueprint, 960 Grids, etc.)

Frames suck

That goes for iframes too

Who’s still using frames in 2009?

Avoid Hiding content

Flash

Excessive AJAX-iness

JavaScript doc.write

Java Applets (really?)

Hidden Text color: #fffff

font-size: 1pt

display: none

position: so far left / right no one can see it

z-index: 0 // hide under another layer

height: 1px

visibility: hidden

source ordering

place content first in code

place navigation at the bottom

keep content together

tables vs divs

HTML SiteMap via <dl>

1. URL structure2. http headers

301 vs 302 redirects

custom 404 / 503

Last modified / ETag

content-encoding: gzip3. robots.txt4. performance for SEO5. feeds (sitemap.xml, rss, mRSS)

301 = permanent redirect

302 = temporary redirect

avoid other: javascript redirects meta refresh

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