Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Robert ClarksonSouthern Institute of Technology

What is SEO?

Back in the olden days of the internet (1994 ish) websites were built purely with the human viewer in mind.Since the rise of search engines as a means of finding websites we now need to build a website tailored, not only for the human viewer but the search robot (spider / indexer) as well. SEO concerns improving how a website looks to a search engine. It also concerns how well a website ranks for particular keywords or search strings.

SEO - the holy grail

The websites that have the highest ranking have interesting original and compelling content, that people are going to want to search for, read, and to share.

How is a website ranked?

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page and used by the Google Internet search engine, that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set.  The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references.(eg hyperlinks)

PR is commonly referred to by internet marketers as "Google Love".

Google describes Page Rank"PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results. PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance."

More info: http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/tech.html

How can we measure ranking?Search for a keyword(s) using a search engine. 

SEO - the problem

The problem is that not all websites can be top of the list. You might have the best website possible, but still appear below your competitors. SEO is the method with which we can ensure that our website is represented as best as possible to the search engines. Therefore placing us as high up in the rankings as possible. Ideally we're aiming for the number 1 spot, but to be ranked on the first page for high competition keywords is also good.

SEO the good and the dark side

There are two paths the web developer can take with SEO. It can be done well, or it can be done badly. Good SEO ensures that • The keywords are used appropriately• Images are alt tagged appropriately• Interesting and fresh content is available• The website is built well, and loads fast• Appropriate videos are embeded.• Good quality links point to the website

  

BAD SEO

Bad SEO is using: • Keyword stuffing• Hidden or invisible text - use the same color font and

background to hide our dastardly keyowrd stuffing plans. • Meta-tag stuffing• Doorway pages• Scraper sites - Stealing and copying content from other sites• Article spinning - Altering stolen content so it appears orig.• Link emails spamming, • and other dirty tricks....

Monster Trucks monster monster

Monster trucks, is monster in monster on wednesdays trucks monster of great times. trucking great happy hire monster trucks trucks ...

Great big Monster TrucksMonster trucks monster amazing stupendus, dastardly monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks....

THIS IS BAD SEO

False or spoofed PageRank (PR)

While the PageRank shown in the Toolbar is considered to be derived from an accurate PageRank value (at some time prior to the time of publication by Google) for most sites, this value was at one time easily manipulated. A previous flaw was that any low PageRank page that was redirected, via a HTTP 302 response or a "Refresh" meta tag, to a high PageRank page caused the lower PageRank page to acquire the PageRank of the destination page. In theory a new, PR 0 page with no incoming links could have been redirected to the Google home page—which is a PR 10—and then the PR of the new page would be upgraded to a PR10. This spoofing technique, also known as 302 Google Jacking, was a known failing or bug in the system.

How can we monitor our site stats?

You can see a websites PageRank using google toolbar or similar, however it doesnt really help us to know this as then we only know whether our site is good or bad. To do SEO we need to monitor our website's statistics, to understand how people are landing on our site and what they are clicking on. 2 tools available by Google allow us to do this:• Google Webmaster Tools• Google Analytics

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is a no-charge web service by Google for webmasters. It allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites.• Submit and check a sitemap• Check and set the crawl rate, and view statistics about how

Googlebot accesses a particular site• List internal and external pages that link to the site• See what keyword searches on Google led to the site being

listed in the SERPs, and the click through rates of such listings

• View statistics about how Google indexes the site, and if it found any errors while doing it

Google Analytics

Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website.  The product is aimed at marketers as opposed to webmasters and technologists from which the industry of web analytics originally grew.

Improving relevance for keywords

Most important page of the website to google (and to the human viewer) is the index page. The words on this page should give meaning to the rest of the site. Therefore essential we use the keyword properly on this page. H1 tags, there should generally only be one H1 tag on a page, and this ideally should contain the keyword. The keyword should also be in the text following the H1 and we should talk about the keyword.Other keywords that are important should also be present on the homepage.

Title tags for each page

   Inside the <head> tag each page also has a <title> tag. This is important for SEO, as this information is what shows up as the main headings on each site.<title>PB Tech - Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, LCD Monitors, Tablets and more!</title> 

 

Meta tags

  Also inside the <head> tag are the <meta> tags:<meta name='description' content='pbtech.co.nz offers the best prices on computer products, laptop computers,

LCD monitors, tablets, electronics, smartphones, office supplies, and more with fast shipping and top-rated customer service.' />

Meta Keywords

<meta name='keywords' content='Computer Components, PC Parts, Tablets, LCD Monitors, Video Cards, Processors and CPUs, Computer Memory, RAM, Printers, Notebook Computers, Laptops, Motherboards, Flash Memory, Speakers,

LED TV, SmartPhones' />

Robots tag

Also inside the head tag is the "robots" tag.<meta name='robots' content='index,follow' />This is a directive to search engine crawlers to say whether they are allowed to "index" or store the data on the page, and whether they should follow the links on this page to index other pages.

This can also be set to: NOINDEX and or NOFOLLOW However this is just used to set a preference to the crawlers, as they can really do what they like.

Images

Image alt tags should be utilised for keywords as well.<img src="/imglib/MS_PARTNER.jpg" alt="Registered Microsoft partner" />These keywords must be relevant to the image though. ie. NOT a picture of an apple and then alt text is: "monster truck hire!!"  

rel="nofollow"

In early 2005, Google implemented a new value, "nofollow", for the rel attribute of HTML link and anchor elements, so that website developers and bloggers can make links that Google will not consider for the purposes of PageRank—they are links that no longer constitute a "vote" in the PageRank system. The nofollow relationship was added in an attempt to help combat spamdexing. <img src="/imglib/MS_PARTNER.jpg" alt="Registered Microsoft partner" rel="nofollow" /> 

Adding keywords in internal links

<a href="monster_truck_hire.html">Hire monster trucks</a> Good use of naming with files, and the link text is important, as it sums up the page it is referencing. 

Offpage/offsite optimisation

Even better is off site links with the same format coming from well ranked websites. If high ranked website www.bbc.co.uk links to your website:<a href="www.monstertrucks.co.nz">Hire monster trucks</a>

This is great for you, as Google already knows that www.bbc.co.uk provides interesting fresh compelling reliable information, and by linking to you, bbc has essentially given your site some "kudos", and Google recognises this.

However the same works in reverse if www.dodgyspammers.com links to your site, then Google more than likely busts your ranking because of it.

Google Local and other Directories

Another good SEO strategy for businesses is to be listed in the main directories.• Yellow pages• Finda• Google Local• ...

The idea here being the more incoming links from decent sites the better

Case Study: The PC Mechanic

So my business is the PC Mechanic. I want to appear high in the list for "computer repair queenstown" To improve my ranking I was adding fresh interesting content involving "common computer problems and mistakes to my blog" However when I checked my webmaster tools, i found that the most prevelent keyword on my website was "mechanic" with over 81 occurrances!!!  

Case Study: The PC Mechanic

So when i typed in "mechanic queenstown" i was top of the list! This is not good, as i don't want to be top of the list for 'mechanic" as that is not the customer I am looking for. I wondered why "mechanic" was so prevalent on my site? When i checked my blog i could see my username was "The PC Mechanic" and everytime i had created a blog post, this was copied numerous times into various sections.

Case Study: The solution

For this particular problem the solution was simple, change my username to something other than "The PC Mechanic" like "admin" or "pcm". This then changed all the occurances, and put my new most prevailent keyword to "computer" closely followed by "repair" then "queenstown" 

SEO in practice

For a site like "The PC Mechanic", I am only interested in clicks from people in and around queenstown. I'm not interested in being top of the list for "computer repair" in New Zealand as i will not be able to be called out to Auckland or Christchurch. This is not to say that this is the case for all businesses, and it is something we have to take into consideration when doing SEO.

Car Rentals

High competition keywords "car rental". Many companies in NZ doing SEO for these keywords.  These websites will be pushing their SEO as much as they can, testing out different options, and attempting to get high ranking inbound links.

About car rental....

SEO in practice

Google are constantly changing (improving) the pagerank algorthm. Recent additions include: Speed at which the website loads, and addition of videos, downloadable PDFs, all improve ranking.

Google do not release finer details about how they measure websites, otherwise it would be easier for people to cheat the system.

This means that if you are doing SEO for a client against other companies (probably also doing SEO). If both companies want to be top of the list for highly sought after keywords, then I like to think of the analagy as competing sports teams.

Don't forget to submit your domain!

If your domain name is new, then for gooooooooogle to know about your site, you must submit your domain.

This tells the google crawler to index your website. 

www.google.com/addurl/