This overview
is written for those new to search engine optimization. It provides a broad
look at search engine optimization and contains links to more detailed
information for those interested.
Topics
- Does my website need SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?
- How search engines work
- Paid Placement vs. Natural Placement
- Keyword Research
- The Long Tail of Search
- A Search Engine Friendly Website
- Search Engine Ranking Factors
- Conclusion
Does my website need SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?
Millions of
people use the web every day to search for products, services, or information.
Over 95% percent of those searches are done on one of the four major search
engines; Google, Yahoo!, MSN, & Ask (formerly AskJeeves) (AOL search is
powered by Google). Although market share changes on a daily basis, Google now
handles more than 60% of all searches, Yahoo 24%, MSN 9% and Ask 5%.
If your
website is not properly optimized then your potential customers will have a
difficult time finding your website. Recent studies show that over
90% of web
surfers click on websites that are found on the first page of their search
results. Ultimately, search engines would like to find all sites and rank
them perfectly, but there are many roadblocks that can make this difficult or
even impossible (more on this later). And, even though your website may be
search engine friendly, it may not rank well for the right terms. An important
part of SEO is to discover which words or phrases your clients are typing into
search engines when they attempt to find your information or product.
How Search Engines Work
There are two
essential functions that a search engine performs in order to ultimately
display search results.
Indexing (crawling) the Web
Search engines run automated programs called “bots”
that browse through the World Wide Web and place all the information into a
database. This process is called “spidering” the web. Experts estimate that
approximately 10 billion web pages have been spidered out of more than 20
billion web pages existing.
Processing a Search
When someone types in a search, the search engine
will retrieve web pages from their database based on their ranking algorithm.
An algorithm is mathematical formula that is used to sort information. In the
early years, a search engine’s algorithm was simple and focused on factors like
meta tags
Nowadays, a search engine’s algorithm takes hundreds or thousands of factors
into account in an effort to rank the most relevant and useful sites first.
Certain elements of a
website can hinder the indexing process of a search engine. The following
factors are well known throughout the SEO industry, but you should know that
these factors couldn’t be proven since all search engines keep their algorithms
secret.
Roadblocks that hinder a Search Engine from
spidering your site
-
Dynamic URLs, i.e. http://www.website.com/page.asp?id=x&element=5&user=jim.
Search engines may be hesitant to fully index these pages for several reasons.
The engine may see the
dynamic
URL as being depending upon a user id, which means that the page will be
different depending on the user or you must be logged in to view the page
correctly. These pages are often created automatically by databases, which
search engines may see as being a less important than a page that was manually
created. It is widely believed that dynamic URLs with more than 2 parameters
are indexed much less often.
-
Pages with more than 100 unique links to other pages.
This is a clear sign to a search engine that the page is “
spammy”. This means
that the page is used to artificially attempt to get the site to rank better in
search engines.
-
Pages not found within 3 clicks from the home page. Since
the homepage typically ranks best, any page that is buried deep in a site is
considered much less important to a search engine.
-
Page that require a “Session ID” or a Cookie. A search
engines may not spider pages that require
cookies or session
IDs.
-
Frames. A web site or web page that uses
frames (a type of
html code) may not be spidered or indexed fully by a search engine. Also, even
if the page gets indexed, the rank of the page may not be as great due to the
use of frames.
Roadblocks that prevent a Search Engine from
spidering your site
-
Pages found only through a form or submit button. For
example, a search engine would not index a “thank you” page that is displayed
after you submit a contact form because search engine
bots do not fill in
forms.
-
Flash. Search engines cannot read anything inside of a
flash element. If
your site is entirely made up of flash, then the search engine would not be
able to find any inner pages nor would the engine be able to read the text
within the flash
-
Pages are only found through a drop down menu. Search
engines have trouble reading almost all drop down menus, although a couple
select companies have created proprietary drop down menus that can be read by
search engines.
-
Pages that require login. Search engines cannot login to
a website and therefore do not spider pages that require login information.
-
Javascript. Most
JavaScript is not
read by search engines.
An
optimized website should have direct html links to all pages within a website.
The links should preferably be text links, but image links can suffice. An
html site map is also highly suggested and the sitemap should be reachable from
all pages of a website. Usually, you see a link to a site map in the footer
(bottom portion) of a website. It is also suggested to have a logical link
structure to your website. The structure of your site should mimic an outline
or table of contents. This mean that the most important pages (topics) should
be reachable from the home page and the sub pages (sub topics) should be
reachable from those important (main topic) pages.
Paid Placement vs. Natural Placement
This
section simply explains the difference between Paid Placement and Natural
Placement within search engine listings. Many web surfers do not know that
some of the listings that search engines return are really just
advertisements. These listings are commonly referred to as
pay-per-click listings
because the advertisers pay a certain amount for every click that is received.
There
are advantages and disadvantages of both.
Paid Placement
The main advantage is
that your website will rank high on search engines right away (immediate
gratification). If done with care, you can receive an excellent
return-on-investment (ROI). Paid placements will not help your site rank
better in natural results.
Natural Placement
The main advantage is
that once you rank high, you don’t have to per-per-click. It takes time to get
your website ranked highly on search engines, but the long term costs are much
less even if you work with a search engine optimization company.
In
almost all cases, it is suggested to combine your efforts and budget between
Paid Placement and Natural Placement campaigns. Even when your site ranks #1
for a particular keyword, it still may be smart to run a pay-per-click campaign
for that keyword because many surfers prefer clicking on the Paid Placements.
Keyword Research
Choosing
the correct keywords to focus your optimization campaign on is critical.
Ideally, you would like to focus on a keyword or term that is searched often,
brings targeted traffic, and has little competition. The internet has
developed a very competitive landscape over the years and finding keywords or
terms that fit these criteria has become more difficult. SEO experts use
several tools to help them discover the best keywords. Some of these tools
they develop for internal use only and others are open for public use (many are
even free). Nevertheless, you can not afford to overlook the importance of
choosing realistic keywords or terms that your site can actually rank for. The
most logical optimization campaign will focus on easy, realistic terms at
first. As the site becomes more popular, you can start to focus on the more
competitive search terms. Popular free tools are
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/,
http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/,
http://nichebot.com/, and
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.
Many SEO experts also manually search for terms and then manually review the
top ranking sites.
The Long Tail of Search
This
may be the most underestimated subject in the search engine optimization
field. The long tail of search refers to all of the more specific searches
that are made on the Internet. For example, most mortgage companies would
optimize their site in the hopes of ranking highly for the search term
“mortgage.” The long tail of search refers to all the more specific searches
that are made, like “new jersey mortgage broker.” First, it is important to
know that web surfers are becoming more savvy searchers every day and specific
searches are becoming more commonplace nowadays. Second, it is easier to get
high rankings for specific searches. Lastly, specific searches can often bring
you the most targeted traffic, which will result in higher conversion ratios.
More SEO companies are targeted the long tail of search because of these
reasons. The idea is to rank high for 20 specific searches that will bring you
targeted traffic, instead of trying to rank high for one broad, very
competitive search term.
This
is especially important when it comes to ecommerce websites. New technology in
ecommerce applications can now allow every page of your site to rank well and
be search engine friendly. The most common feature of a search engine friendly
ecommerce website is called url-rewriting. This refers to a behind the scenes
operation that will translate all of the database driven product pages into
static search engine friendly web pages. Unsophisticated ecommerce
applications will leave your product pages with long dynamic URLs. What does
this mean? When a web surfer types in a specific search, like “Apple 60 meg
video iPod”, the search engine friendly ecommerce page (with url-rewriting) for
that specific product will rank higher than the competition, which still uses
dynamic pages. And, the web surfer will find your product page which will
result in higher conversions, as opposed to finding a home page for an
electronics website.
Search Engine Friendly Website
A
search engine friendly website is a site that is easily read and indexed by
search engines. The site has an easy to follow navigation structure and uses
html tables, div tags, Meta tags, and
header tags
properly. As stated previously, your site should have a logically hierarchy
similar to that of a table of contents. Similarly, each page should have a
logical hierarchy. The page should start with a heading, which uses an h1 html
tag. As you move down the page, the topic should get more detailed and use h2,
h3, h4 tags in a logical way. The html should also be structured in a way that
keeps the text together so that search engine bots can read it and index it
properly. Some web designers will separate pieces of the same article into
different tables, which will separate the text in an illogical way in the
search engines eyes.
Other
important factors that you should pay attention to include: monitoring broken
links, validating html & css, testing forms and applications within site,
file size of each web page, and server speed & downtime.
Search Engine Ranking Factors
Popularity of Web Site
As
of now, this seems to be the most important factor that search engines consider
when ranking your site. Basically the more links you have coming in from other
sites, the better. Don’t overlook the importance of quality & relevance.
Search engines seem to be taking quality of incoming links and relevance of
incoming links more seriously and there is no reason this trend won’t continue.
Popularity of Web Site within Industry
Search
engines now take into account the popularity of your website within your
industry. You may have a site within incredibly powerful incoming links from
cnn.com, nytimes.com, etc. But, if you don’t have links from relevant sites,
then your site may not rank very high.
Anchor Text of Links
The
actual text that links to your website (
anchor text) is a
key ranking factor. If the text “new jersey mortgage company” links to your
site, then search engines logically assume that the page that text links to is
relevant to “new jersey mortgage company.” Therefore, the website and web page
that receives that text link will rank higher for the search term “new jersey mortgage company.” The same logical applies to internal links within your
website.
Text Surrounding Links
Search
engines also believe that the text surrounding a link is an important ranking
factor. So, the text link “new jersey mortgage company” would be more powerful
if it was surrounded by text about mortgage companies. If, on the other hand,
this were a link surrounded by text about casinos, then the link would be much
less powerful. Ideally, you would like the entire webpage to be relevant to
your website.
Age of Web Site and Links
The
age of your site is a major factor as well as the age of the links that point
to your web site. It is even believed by many that Google will not rank a site
until it has existed for at least 5 months. This is called the Google Sandbox.
Conclusion
Search
engine optimization is a complex task that requires a steady effort. To be
most effective, your optimization campaign should be consistent. Don’t buy 100
links in one day and then sit back and wait. You should buy 1 link a day for
100 days (this is just an illustration to portray a “consistent” link building
campaign). This type of consistency should be used throughout your
optimization campaign.
An
optimization campaign also takes time. Search engines may not see or react to
changes you’ve made on your site or links you’ve received for months. For very
small companies, it may be smart to run your own optimization campaign. But
for most businesses, it is smart to use a
professional search engine optimization
company. An SEO company should have years of expertise, as well as key
partners that will help to get your site ranked well. The other option would
be to hire an SEO consultant. An SEO consultant would review your site and
business model and then teach you the best way to optimize the site in an
efficient manner that is consistent with your business.
Save This Page to del.icio.us