The Art Institute of Atlanta IMD 470 Special Topics: Findability. Alex Reeve Sams SEO and Marketing Kit. Aarron Walter

Transcription

1 The Art Institute of Atlanta IMD 470 Special Topics: Findability Section A Winter, 2006 Alex Reeve Sams SEO and Marketing Kit Aarron Walter 1

2 Index SEO AND MARKETING KIT 1 SEARCH ENGINE POPULARITY 4 SOURCES OF SEARCH RESULTS 4 HOW SEARCH ENGINES RANK SITES 5 CRAWLER-BASED SEARCH ENGINES 5 HUMAN-POWERED DIRECTORIES 5 "HYBRID SEARCH ENGINES" OR MIXED RESULTS 5 WHITE HAT SEO TECHNIQUES 5 KEYWORD SELECTION 6 KEYWORD DENSITY 7 KEYWORD FORMATTING METHODS 8 SELECTING A URL 8 ACCESSIBILITY TECHNIQUES 8 SEARCH ENGINE AND DIRECTORY 9 COST PER CLICK (CPC) 9 COST PER CLICK RESOURCE 10 GOOGLE SERVICES 11 GOOGLE SITEMAPS 11 FROOGLE 11 GOOGLE LOCAL 11 GOOGLE BASE 11 GOOGLE BLOGS 11 GOOGLE RESOURCE 12 RICH MARKETING 12 RICH MARKETING RESOURCE 13 2

3 ANALOG MARKETING 13 ANALOG MARKETING RESOURCE 13 BIO. 14 3

4 Search engine popularity There are many search engines on the net today. Just about everyone knows some of the better known ones such as Google and MSN. The chart below shows the percentage of online searches done by US home and work web surfers in November 2005 that were performed at a particular search engine. (Internal site searches, such as those to find material within a particular web site, are not counted in these totals.) The activity at more than 60 search sites makes up the total search volume upon which percentages are based billion searches in this month. (searchenginewatch.com) As you can see Google is the largest one for now, but it is a good idea to make sure what ranking you are getting from the other larger search engines out there. Sources of search results To get your web site found in all the other search engines out there your keywords have to be what people are looking for. This can be a hit or miss when choosing the right keywords for your website. There is hope through tools like word tracker. Tools like this keep an eye one what the world searching for then for a small price the will help you pick the best keywords for your site. What you are looking for is keywords that have not been used too much on the web already. Word Tracker and other programs like them are the best way to find the best keywords for your site. 4

5 How search engines rank sites Search engines rank sites in three ways. Although they may get the data off of web sites in different ways they are out there going through content all day, everyday. When you put up a new site the content has to read by web crawlers or others like them to get the content and to be ranked in search engines. Some of these take longer then others. That s why if you open a website today a crawler might not get to it until as long as a year from now. Crawler-Based Search Engines Crawler-based search engines, like Google, create their listings automatically. They "crawl" or "spider" the web, then people like you and me search through what they have found. When you change your content on your web pages, crawler-based search engines eventually find these changes, and that sometimes will affect how you are listed. Page titles, body, copy, and other elements all play a role. Human-Powered Directories A human-powered directory, such as the Open Directory, depends on people to input its listings. You submit a short description to the directory for your site, or an editor will write one for a site they review. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted. Making changes to your web pages has no effect on your listing. Things that are useful for improving a listing with a search engine have nothing to do with improving a listing in a directory. The only exception is that a good site, with good content, might be more likely to get reviewed for free than a poor site. "Hybrid Search Engines" Or Mixed Results In the early days of the web, it used to be that a search engine only presented crawlerbased results or human-powered listings. Today, it s extremely common for both types of results to be published on the same site. Usually, a hybrid search engine will favor one type of listings over another. For example, MSN Search is more likely to present humanpowered listings from LookSmart. However, it does also present crawler-based results especially for more obscure queries. White hat SEO techniques In the field of web technology the white hat is a name that describes a person who is ethically opposed to the abuse of computer and web systems. A white hat generally focuses on securing web systems whereas a black hat (the opposite) would like to break 5

6 into them, but this is a simplification. White hat might need to break into a Blackhat's machine in the course of an investigation. What exactly differentiates a White hat and a Black hat is open to interpretation but white hat SEO tend seems to be the only way. White hat SEO is contrary to black hat SEO. It means that the things that are lying under the heading of the Black Hat SEO will not come under the heading of the white hat SEO or white hat SEO are opposite the practice of the black hat SEO. In the white hat techniques the content and links are built for both humans and search engines to see. So the white hat techniques should be at least coherent. The mistake that many white hat programmers make is to produce visible and yet ugly pages that don't read very well, and therefore don't convert well. White hat methods can be seen by users. Therefore, the quality of the work can be and will be seen right away, both by the client and by peers of the programmer. The white hat approach is either to ignore search engines altogether, or to treat search engines in a friendly way. Most white hat techniques make sense in the absence of search engines, whereas black hat techniques have no use whatsoever beyond search engines. There is a misunderstanding that white hat programmers strictly follow search engine guidelines. There is also a misunderstanding that search engine guidelines constitute a terms of service and by not following them one is breaking the TOS. Some white hat techniques can increase risk. However, other white hat techniques can actually reduce the risk. A white hat programmer will normally work with the client's primary domain. They may offer a guarantee that the domain will not be removed from a search engine's index as a result of using their techniques. White hat SEO techniques can take some time to implement but their results tend to last for a long time. Some basic facts about the white hat techniques are that white hat techniques are ethical SEO and there is a slight chance that white hat techniques are illegal too but black hat are confirm illegal. Keyword selection Pick the right keywords and you are on your way to bringing visitors to your site. Pick the wrong keywords and you've just messed up your entire optimization campaign. Keyword selection is the first step in search engine optimization. It's also where most people go wrong. If you pick a keyword that is not used by the people hunting for your product, you will not get traffic. You must pick popular keywords to be found. How do you tell a popular keyword from one that you "think" might be popular? To get objective popularity information you need feedback from the search engines as how often does your keywords are used as queries. Using real world data instead of someone's guess is a major component of keyword selection. A keyword popularity tool provides the quantitative feedback you need so you know accurately know how often your keywords are being used as a search query. 6

7 There is a thin line between keywords that are popular and keywords that are just too popular and too general to be useful. For example, if I enter the keyword, "dog" into a search engine and hit enter; I am told that snake received 137,516 hits in a recent month at major search engines. Much of it depends on the competitive nature of the keyword and the usefulness of the results. If someone entered "dog" into a search engine, they would probably find the results too general. They would then enter a new search term that narrowed their search. Statistics show that most searchers end up using multiple words in their search. So narrowing the keywords to "dog tricks" or "great daine" filters out the general information about doas and homes in on what the searcher is seeking. You should target candidate phrases so that they reflect the nature of your site. If you optimize for a keyword phrase consisting of 2-3 words, you increase your chances that your site will be found. The keywords popularity will be less than for a single word, but the phrase will be more focused and your traffic will be more relevant for your site. Here's an example. There was one client who was convinced he had to have the words "swimming pool" as one of his main keywords because his company installed pools. Now even though the phrase "swimming pool" is 2 words, it is still too general and someone using that term in a search engine is going to get very general non-relevant results - everything from swimming pool supplies to hot tub spas. The searcher hunting for specific information for swimming pools may first search on the general term and then refine their search when they see the non-relevant results. Put yourself into the mind of a user. Another rule to keep in mind when selecting keywords is to make sure they are relevant for your site. Don't just pick something off a top fifty list to try to drive traffic to your site. Optimizing for "Britney Spears" only makes sense if your site is about Britney Spears. Once you identify your keywords for your site, it's time to put them to work. Search engines read the HTML code on your Web page and score the page based on there criteria. If the search engine finds keywords in specific locations throughout the site, it will assume that your pages are very relevant to that keyword. Keyword density Keyword density is the ratio of the number of occurrences of a particular keyword or phrase to the total number of words in a web page. Some search engines use keyword density property for positioning sites on there listings. Analysers are available which allow comparisons between web pages. Pages can then be produced with the similar keyword densities to those found in high ranking pages. 7

8 There are lots of tools on the web to help you find the keyword density of your web page. There are tools like keyworddensity.com that has tools like a keyword density analyzer and a word depth calculator. Keyword formatting methods This is a list of some of the formatting methods for putting keywords onto a web site. Here are many ways in put keywords into your web site but there are more out there. Meta tags : keep keywords under 128 characters. Put keywords in the <Title tag> Use keywords in the first sentence of the first paragraph In heading <h3> or larger Use keywords in bold text Use keywords in italics text Keywords in the url Use keywords in image filenames In alt text Title attribute of images on the page Use keywords in the filename of your css Selecting a URL Selecting a URL is a big part of SEO today. If your URL has nothing to do with what your web it is about then you has less chance of a high ranking on most search engines. When you are selecting your URL try to get one that has one or more of your keywords in it. This will help your keyword density and it makes the user feel better about the content that you have on your site. Accessibility techniques Accessibility techniques ensure that content delivered over the web are machine friendly as well as people friendly. Search engine spiders are essentially machines, tasked with the job of collecting links from the Web and listing them. As accessibility requires that content is written in plain language, with the main information delivered first, it stands to reason that accessible websites will do better than their non-accessible counterparts with search engine positioning. Accessible sites are encouraged to put important information first on a page, so users can immediately access the essence of the content. The earlier a phrase appears on a page, the higher the ranking it will be given by search engines. Accessible sites expand 8

9 abbreviations the first time they are used in the content. Expanding abbreviations not only allows those less familiar with the terms to understand the content, but also helps with keyword density and ensuring content is indexed appropriately. Accessible sites separate style from content using CSS. The cleaner a document is, the easier it is for a search engine spider to gain access to the content on a page. User agents are better able to interact with semantically correct documents. Some user agents allow visitors to find their way around your site by listing headings, links, and other elements. Spiders are also better able to make sense of the content if the content is placed in the correct elements tags (H1, H2, exe) as they can gain extra meaning, such as with heading elements. Search engine and directory If you want a fast web site submission across the web, you can do it one of two ways. The first will perform a monthly submission of your web site to hundreds of search engines for a whole year for a small price. The second way is to find directories like google local or other directories. You might have a great web site, but if no one knows it even exists? You need a serves like Add Me.com that lets you do a web site submission to the top 14 search engines and directory for free. Addme.com free serves BlastEngine.com which is a leader but is a pay serves GoArticles.com ExactSeek.com SearchEngines.com Cost Per Click (CPC) The terms pay-per-click (PPC) and cost-per-click (CPC) are sometimes used interchangeably, sometimes as distinct terms. When used as distinct terms, PPC indicates payment based on click-throughs, while CPC indicates measurement of cost on a perclick basis for contracts not based on click-throughs. For example, consider a campaign where payment is based on impressions, not clicks. Impressions are sold for $10 CPM with a click-through rate (CTR) of 2% impressions x 2% CTR = 20 click-throughs $10 CPM / 20 click-throughs = $.50 per click Google defines Cost Per Click as a system where an advertiser pays an agreed amount for each click someone makes on a link leading to their web site. Also known as CPC. 9

10 Cost Per Click Resource Google cost per click ads (google.com/onlinebusiness) o AdWords o AdWords seems to be one of the better ones to us out there on the web. It has a great network and give you everything any of the others give you in tracking and keeping up to date with your ads. Cost : $ US$100 Appear on : Google Network Reaching : 80% of 30-day US Internet users Yahoo cost per click ads (SearchMarketing.yahoo.com) o Sponsored Search o Yahoo sponsored search ads seems to be the next best thing to google s adwords. I think google is better but if you could use both would be the best. Cost : $5 deposit to open (the cost you pay for each click-through) Appear on : Yahoo! Publisher Network Reaching : 38 million people will use a search engine on an average day GoClick (goclick.com) o GoClick is ok it s not on of the best but it does post ads to many sites across the web. The tools that it has is nice as well in tracking ads but not as nice as google s. o Cost : works on a "debit system" $10 to open Bid Vertiser (bidvertiser.com) o BidVertiser is a good one not quite as large as some of the others but it has some nice thing going for it. They give you tracking for keep track of your ads and you get to choose what sites you want your ad to appear on. o Cost : $ US$100 o Appear on : You choose the sites MIVA pay-per-click & MIVA pay-per-call (miva.com) o Pay-per-click o Miva pay per click is nice with the tracking and the big network. It s not as big as other networks but it holds it s own. Cost : $ US$100 Appear on : MIVA Nerwork Reaching : over 2 billion queries every month o Pay-per-call o Miva s pay per call is a new idea and seems to be a good one. You do not pay until a person calls your company on the phone. 10

11 Google services Google has made great effort in making content on the web more efficient to search throw. They have done this with a number of free services that allow web programmers content reach the people searching for it. Google Sitemaps Google sitemaps lets a web programmer to submit an XML file for the google bot to read and index important content. With google sitemaps you will see how google is directing people to your content on your site. There are free tools that will create an XML site map for you out there on the web. They also offer a sitemaps service that will work for mobile phones that can access web. Froogle Froogle is a shopping service that lets you list your products throw google and will be listed on different sites. When someone searches froogle they will get a list of products with titles, prices, descriptions, and location of the product they are searching for. Google Local Google local is a service that lets you list your local store throw google. This will let people find your store with what products you are selling in the city and state the user is searching for. Google local also ties in with froogle to list your products online and to let people to find what you are selling at your store. Google Base Google base is a new service that lets you post your feeds to other of googles service at the same time. You can now upload your RSS feeds to Froogle, google local, and other service you might need to update with a RSS feed. Google Blogs Google like blogs for there content and index s them often. Blogs are a great way to drive traffic to your site and google loves them. Google s search utility lets you find 11

12 the content on the blog you are looking for. If you are posting to a blog it s a good idea to link your blog to your web site if the content is on the same topic. Google Resource Google.com/webmasters/sitemaps Google.com/froogle Google.com/local Google.com/base Blogger.com Rich marketing Rich marketing is a growing way for people to hear about your content or products on the web. It has been proven to capture the attention of people that might want what you are selling. This is a great way to stay in touch with your users and to give consumers updates to your products. There are some simple thing to keep in mind with building a rich marketing . Keep it simple stupid Use a simple layout that people are used to seeing in there s Do not use tags like <meta> that mean nothing in form Stick with table layout Do not use javascript Try not to use CSS Do not use external CSS Use absolute URL links Make sure you have an opt out in the Do not over use mailing list Use fixed layouts Do not use spacer gifs Use target= _blank Avoid large images Use multipart-messaging text as well as HTML Offer online verson There are lots of services out there to help you with your rich marketing. Some will keep track of you mailing list and give you stats on how many people opened the and how many people linked from it. Most of these services offer tracking like activity reports, opens over times, link activity report, and much much more. Some of the best services I have found: 12

13 Rich marketing Resource Mailchimp.com Campaignmonitor.com Imninc.com Analog marketing Analog marketing has been around for hundreds of years and is more price then digital alternatives. Although it has been around for a long time it still is very useful for letting people know that your site is out there on the web. Some of the best analog marketing and most popular options include: Magazines ads Stickers Post cards Brochures Billboards Radio Business cards There are many options for analog marketing the best is to find a niche market. Analog marketing Resource Psprint.com Platinumcards.com Stickerman.com Overnightprints.com Vistaprint.com 13

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