The Transcript for the presentation:
Search Engine Optimization
by Michel Habib
Agenda
• SEO, What? Why? And Who?
• Search Engines Magic, How do they do it?
• Google Page Rank Secret Formula.
• Optimization Techniques to Rank #1 in Search Engines.
• Picking Powerful Keywords.
• Getting your pages into the Search Engines.
• Create Pages That Search Engines Love.
• Avoid Things that Search Engines Hate.
• Using Link Popularity to boost Page Position.
• Tools You can never SEO without.
• References
• Questions
What is SEO?
• Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural“ search results.
• Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine.
• If the site appears in the first search results page, it has a greater chance to be visited, since few people make it to the second page, and rarely make it to the third page
• Note: Google can show only up to 1000 results in any search
query.
Why is SEO Important?
• 2008 – Internet users in the United States carry out almost 10 billion searches a month at the major search engines.
• About 50% of all web site visitors reach the site through a search engine.
• August 2007 – 750 million people carried out 61 billion
searches on the world’s top search sites.
• Search Engines are the single most important source of new visitors to web sites.
• Search Engines represent an inexpensive way to reach people.
Who needs to know about SEO?
• Marketing Team
• Development Team
• Graphic Designers
• Webmasters
• Actually Everyone need to know about SEO
Search Engines Magic
• Search Directory, Search Engine and Search Site,.
• The Big 5 – Google [60%], Yahoo, MSN Live [Bing],
Ask.com, Open Directory Project [www.dmoz.org]
• Search Engines use applications called spiders [or bots] that crawl the web and index every single useful page
• In 2008, Google Claimed to index 1 Trillion pages.
• In 2006, analysts expected that Google has 450K Machines, scattered in 72 data centers.
Google Page Rank Secret Formula
PR (A) = (1 – d) + d (PR (t1) / C (t1) + ... + PR (tn) / C (tn))
• PR = PageRank, A = Web page A, d = A damping factor, usually set to 0.85, t1...tn = Pages linking to Web page A, C = The number of outbound links from page tn
• Page Rank is a page ranking system.
• Page Rank is created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google. The algorithm was presented in a paper while at Standford University.
• When doing a Search Query, Page Rank is only one part of the equation, Page Relevance is also an important factor.
• How to increase Page Rank?
– Get many links from High Rank Pages.
– Have many pages in your site.
Case Study
• Atef Owns a Travel Agency for Egypt Destinations.
• Someone told him he can get many customers from the Internet
• Atef Created a web site www.AtefAgency.com and put
all his Agency’s Programs online.
• He waited for 3 months, but didn’t get a single contact
from the web site.
• What went wrong?
Optimization Techniques to Rank
#1 on Search Engines
Getting your pages into the Search Engines.
• Find out how many of your pages are indexed:
– site:www.AtefAgency.com
• Submit your site to major search engines.
• Put links to your site from external sites.
• Submit an XML Sitemap.
• Submit to Search Directories – Yahoo and Open Directory.
Picking powerful Keywords
• Think like your prey.
• Identify the obvious keywords.
• Look at your site’s access logs.
• Examine competitor’s keywords.
• Spelling mistakes, calender or calendar or calandar or calander?
• Synonyms.
• Use Keyword tools, such as Google Keyword Analysis Tool,
Wordtracker [no arabic support]
• Tip: Picking very generic keywords will increase competition over them, narrow down your keywords, find your niche.
Create Pages that Search Engines Love
• Pick a domain name that has some of your keywords in it.
• Pick one or two keyword phrases per page.
• Use the <Title> tag to optimize your page’s Keywords.
• Watch for Keyword density, don’t overdo it.
• Have a clean URL structure, avoid meaningless parameters.
– http://www.AtefAgency.com/page.aspx?id=1315&sessionid=trUIERiuwerIUI
123123123 – Really Bad !!!
– http://www.AtefAgency.com/Egypt/Luxor/Karnak-Temple - Good!
• Create a good Description and Keyword Meta Tags
• Use H1,H2,H3 Tags in your main titles.
• Use ALT Tags to define your images.
• Use descriptive Keywords in Anchors –
– Click Here - BAD
– Luxor Travel Packages - GOOD.
• Create a good navigation structure and sitemap.
Avoid Things that Search Engines Hate.
• Frames are Trouble, avoid them.
• Stay away from Flash and Java Menus
• Do not embed text in Images
• Do not Use inline Javascript
• Do not Use inline Styles
• Too many parameters in your URL
– http://yourdomain.com/march/index.html?&DID=18&CATID=13&ObjectGroup_ID=79
• Keyword Stuffing
• Hiding Keywords and links
• Duplicating sites to appear multiple times in search results.
Using Link Popularity to boost Page Position.
• Find out how many ranked pages link to your site:
– link:www.AtefAgency.com
• The more Sites that link to your pages, the more Search Engines will trust your pages and rank them higher.
• Make sure that Link Text contains relevant keywords to your pages.
• How Powerful is that?
– Type in yahoo: miserable failure
• how does it link to George Bush Biography page on the White House Site?
– Type in Google: click here
• Why is that linking Adobe Acrobat Reader download page?
• What is a Google Bomb?
Tools You can never SEO without.
• Webmaster Tools for the major search engines:
– Yahoo
– Bing
• Google Keyword External Tool
– https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• Alexa Toolbar – Site Analysis and Ranking
• Google Toolbar – Page Rank
• WordTracker – but not for Arabic Keywords.
• Firebug – Analyze Page’s Structure and keywords.
• Google Analytics
• Sawmill
References
• SEO for Dummies by Peter Kent – third edition
• Adsense Secrets 4 – Joel Comm
• Internet Articles about SEO
• Google Webmaster Help