seo 101 | new york university

How search engines work

• Early search engines– WebCrawler– Excite– Lycos– Etc.

• Found pages based on on-page content– Easily manipulated results

How Search Engines Work- Google

• In 1998 Google was publically launched– Innovative pagerank algorithm

How Search Engines Work

• Crawling and indexing the web– Crawlers follow links to find interconnected

documents– Store relevant information for future retreival• Data is stored on over 1 million servers spread over at

least 36 datacenters around the world

How Search Engines Work

• Rankings• When a user types in a query the search

engine returns results based on relevance and importance

• Relevance=topic– Early search engines focused primarily on this step

• Importance=links (pagerank)– And hundreds of other signals

Why is SEO important

• Nearly 400 million searches performed each day (over 15 billion per month) – comscore, april 2010– Google captures 65% of share (10 billion)– Yahoo 18%– Microsoft 12%

Why is SEO important

• 36% of users agreed that "seeing a company listed among the top results on a search engine makes me think that the company is a top one within its field." iProspect & Juniper Research

• 90% of users click on a first page result– 34% click on the 1st result– 17% click 2nd result• #1 ranking earns 2x the clicks as #2• #1 ranking earns 13x the clicks as #10

Why is SEO important

• Takeaways:– Search is extremely popular (15 billion searches

per month)– Position in serps is critical (90% of clicks are 1st

page)

How do you improve your rankings?

• 3 core components of SEO– Site architecture (on-site)– Content (on-site)– Links (off-site)

Site Architecture

• Indexable content– Page title– meta data– Headers– Text– URLs– alt tags– Images*

Site Architecture

• Problematic content– Text vs images• Use alt tag for images

– flash– Java– Video– Audio

Site architecture

• How search engines view sites– Seo-browser.com– Lynx (text-based browser) http://lynx.isc.org– Turn off images, javascript, css in browser (web

developer extension in firefox)

Site architecture

• Crawlable link structure– Anatomy of a link• Anchor text• Absolute vs relative links

Site architecture

• Site hierarchy– 3 click rule

Site architecture

• What prevents links from being crawled?– Form based navigation– Javascript (google is can parse javascript, but it’s

still questionable)– Flash– Java– Iframes & frames– Blocked by robots.txt, rel=nofollow, meta nofollow– Too many variables in URLs

Site architecture

• URLs– Best practices• Descriptive• Short• No variables• Consistent hierarchy• Separate with hyphens• lowercase

content

• Anatomy of a search result• Targeting keywords– Use in title, on-page copy, url, meta description

content

• Title tags– Most important on-page factor for targeting

keywords– best practices• 70 characters or fewer• Important keywords first• Use target keyword once with one variation

– Plurals, alternate usage

content

• Meta tags– Meta description• Used for click thru rate (ctr)• Google sometimes chooses to use a more appropriate

on-page snippet, depending on the search query• No influence on rankings

content

• Best practices for targeting chosen keywords/phrases– Use keyword in title once, and one variation– Use keyword (or variation) in header– Use in body copy

• Multiple times and variations• Keep it natural

– Use in meta description– Use in URL

• If possible & natural—don’t force it

content

• Latent semantic indexing– Analyzes relationships between words & phrases• Places additional weight on words in content

– Correlates surprisingly well with how a human might interpret a document• Apple vs apple

content

• Duplicate content– Same content appears in multiple locations on site

—which one should search engine serve to users?• Standardize, choose one URL for each piece, and stick

to it• Widgets.html and widgets.html?key=test are seen as

two different pages• Site.com/index.html, www.site.com,

www.site.com/index.html can all be seen as separate pages

content

• Duplicate content• Pages targeting the same keywords compete

with each other– Remedies• 301 redirects• Canonical tag

– <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.site.com/page.html" />

• Meta noindex

Keyword research

• Crucial component of SEO– Knowing which keywords to target

Keyword research

• Keyword research tools• Adwords keyword tools

• https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal - google.com and all affiliated search properties (youtube, gmail, chrome, news, etc.)

• www.google.com/sktool/ - solely on searches on google.com

• Wordtracker – paid• Trellian keyword discovery – paid• Google suggest• Google related searches• Competitors

Keyword research

• Testing• Use google adwords (or yahoo search

marketing or microsoft adcenter)

Keyword research

• Short tail vs long tail

• chart

Keyword research

• Types of queries• Informational– Obtaining information is goal of user

• E.g. regions in italy

• Navigational– User has pre-determined destination in mind

• E.g. facebook

• Transactional– Complete a task

• E.g. pay nyc parking ticket

links

• Serve as “votes”• Democracy of the web representing what’s

important• Most important element of how pages are

ranked– SEs rank pages based on the quantity and quality

of links pointing to them– Most difficult element of SEO

links

• Types of link acquisition– Editorial-best• Non-solicited• Linkbait-bordering on manual

– Usually cannot control anchor text

– Manual• Link solicitations, directory submissions, content

distribution, blog comments, guest blog posts/articles, profile links

links

• How links are valued by search engines– Link popularity of linking page/site• Pagerank

– Topicality of linking page– Anchor text– Location of link

links

• Strategies– Linkbait• “Interesting enough to catch people’s attention” – matt

cutts• Encourages natural, editorial links• Create sensational content

– Infographics– Interesting research– Top * lists– Anything users would find interesting

links

• Linkbait best practices– Email relevant blogs and other sites– Make it easily sharable– Submit to social sites• Digg, reddit, stumbleupon, etc.

– Having friends helps-powerful accounts help content spread easier

– You can sometimes pay power users or specialty companies to submit content for you

links

• Directory submissions• Most general directories created over the past

few years are built for SEO purposes, not users– Their ability to pass pagerank has been

reduced/eliminated by the search engines– Some directories require reciprocal links• skip

links

• Directory submissions• Some general directories are still valuable

(editorial policies in place)– Yahoo directory - paid– LII—librarians’ internet index– Business.com - paid– DMOZ• Used to be a big factor in rankings, but corruption and

neglect have diminished its value

links

• Directories• Niche directories– Can be very effective– Search for “directory” + keyword, “add link” +

keyword, “add url” + keyword, and variations

links

• Solicitations– Stroke webmasters’ egos• You’ve won!• Awards, top resource lists, etc.

– General suggestions• Hello, FYI—we just published this interesting piece of

content. You may find it interesting. Feel free to share with your users.

links

• Guest blog posts/articles– Link in attribution

• Content distribution/licensing– Very powerful sites can outrank you for your own

content• Make sure you get a link in the attribution

links

• Leverage relationships– Include links as part of other business deals• Create custom content if need be

– Ask customers for links

links

• Profile links• Blog comments• Forum signatures– Low quality, but can help with content discovery

and provide signals to Ses– May help with rankings in very low competition

verticals

links

• Buying links– Beware of link brokers• Text link ads• Text link brokers• Linkworth• Conductor

– All are potentially dangerous and not worth the money or risk

links

• Buying links• Advanced link brokers– Iacquire• Expensive• Leased links• Can be very useful in hypercompetitive verticals where

natural links are difficult to acquire– E.g. gambling, pharmaceuticals, lending

links

• Buying links• Negotiating purchases yourself*****– Be very careful– Make link placements look natural– Ideally negotiate a one-time payment– Have seller sign NDA– Use an alternate email account and don’t initially

mention your site’s URL• Posing as a female often produces better results

links

• Types of links to avoid• Link exchanges– Including 3 way link exchanges

• Free for all pages• Blatantly paid links• Links from bad neighborhoods– Your friends can reflect poorly on you

links

• Competitive link analysis• See who links to your competitors• Yahoo site explorer– Linkdomain:site.com or link:site.com/page.html– Most likely going away in q3 or q4

• Linkdiagnosis– Based off the yahoo site explorer api– Sorts link data in easy to analyze manner– Tracks link history

links

• Competitive link analysis• Seomoz tools– Use their own index– Linkscape– Opensiteexplorer.org

• Majesticseo– Uses own index– Most users argue that it has a better index than

seomoz

Measure and refine

• Use analytics to track relevant metrics– Search engine traffic– Referrals– Direct traffic– Top pages– Top keywords– Conversion %– Pages receiving traffic vs # of pages on site• If page is not receiving traffic, give it more exposure

Measure and refine

• Analytics software• Google analytics– Free and good– Most popular

• Coremetrics– Not recommended

• Omniture– Recognized as best

• Others—urchin, mint, yahoo web analytics, dozens more

Measure and refine

• Other useful analytic software• Google website optimizer

– a/b testing, multivariate testing• Hitwise

– Competitive intelligence• Expensive• Relative data

• Compete– Competitive intelligence

• Crazyegg– Heatmaps

• cheap

Measure and refine

• Rank checking—track movement of top keywords

• Advanced web ranking– Paid– Don’t freak out over small movement—it’s normal

Other useful SEO software

• Seachstatus for firefox– My “can’t live without” tool– Check pagerank, compete, alexa, mozrank– Whois info, link data, on-page elements

Other useful SEO software

• SEOmoz tools– Many provide a quick and easy way to get relative

score on SEO metrics• Trifecta

– Score of the importance of a page or site

• Keyword difficulty tool– Analyze competitive landscape of a keyword

• Term target– How targeted a particular page is for a keyword

• Many others

Other useful SEO software

• Aaron wall’s tools– Seo for firefox• Shows pagerank, links, site age, and other seo metrics

directly in the search results

– Hubfinder• Find links your competitors have that you don’t

Other useful SEO tools

• Google webmaster central– Must approve site before having access– Check your top keywords in google– Crawl errors– Load times– Submit xml sitemap– 404 errors– Your site’s links

Other useful SEO tools

• Web developer toolbar for firefox– Useful tool for front-end developers– Some features are useful for seo, such as seeing

how a site looks without images, css, javascript, etc.

• Xenu link sleuth– Find broken links

SEO myths

– Pagerank reflects how highly your site can rank

SEO myths

• Meta keywords

SEO myths

• Xml sitemaps help with rankings

SEO myths

• Updating content frequently helps rankings

SEO myths

• Link exchanges

SEO myths

• H1, h2, etc tags are important for rankings

SEO myths

• Hidden/small text

SEO myths

• Submitting your site to search engines

SEO myths

• Great content=great rankings

SEO myths

• Seo is a one-time activity