essential guide to understanding seo and webometrics - and quick tips and actions to improve website...

The world of

Search Engine Optimization

“Once upon a workshop”

Gagandeep Singh Walia | [email protected]

Singapore, February 2014

Agenda

Introduction

1

How Search Engines Work

2

Webometrics Ranking

4

Understanding & Implementing SEO

3

A Few Quick Tips

5

5/2/2014 Gagandeep Singh Walia | [email protected] 2

Introduction to


“The best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of Google Search results”

Introduction to


Search engine optimization (SEO)

is the process of affecting the

visibility of a website in a search

engine’s organic (or un-paid) search

results.

- Wikipedia

The higher the site is ranked on the search result page, the more visitors it will receive.


Search Engine Optimization:

Definition Break-down

Website

Process of affecting the visibility of a

website in a search engine’s organic

(or un-paid) search results.

Search Engine

Organic Search Results


Has a web address that leads

users to the first webpage in the

set, often called as the

Homepage.

Search Engine Optimization: Definition Break-down

Website Set of related webpages served

from a single web domain.

Each webpage is a document

and may contain text, images,

videos, links and a lot more.

Web address

Content of the webpage


Each search engine has a search

box where the user can type in

their search query (also known

as keywords).


Search Engine A system that is designed to

search for information on the

world wide web (internet)

Most popular search engines

include Google, Bing, Yahoo,

Baidu (in China).

Search Bar

Content of the webpage Search Bar

Search Bar


Based on the search query, the

search engine result page

(SERP) may consist of a variety

of formats: results in text

format, News results, real-time

results, local results, image

results, video results etc.


Search Results A listing of results returned by

a Search Engine in response to

a keyword query.

Search Bar

Content of the webpage Search Bar

Search Bar


Paid search, or also called as

non-organic search is a result of

pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.


Organic Results Organic, also called as

“Natural” results, are listings on

SERPs that appear because of

their relevance to the search

terms, as opposed to their being

advertised.

Organic Results

Paid Search 10% clicks

90% clicks

Gagandeep Singh Walia | [email protected] 5/2/2014 9

How

Search Engines Work

“A world where everyone creates content gets confusing pretty quickly without

a good search engine.”


Search Marketing Landscape

Over 100 billion

searches made every

MONTH!

Trivia: Can you name the second-most popular search engine used after google.com?



Search Marketing Landscape

Europe and

Asia Pacific

makes 63% of

the global

searches made



The Process Search engines have two major functions:

1. Crawling & building an index of

billions of documents, pages, files,

news, videos and media on the

world wide web, and

2. Providing answers by calculating

relevancy & serving results.



Spiders - Crawlers Search engines use programs called

spiders, or bots, to search the internet

and document their findings.

Spiders start with a seed URL and work

their way outward, analysing the

webpages, scanning the code and

categorising most important words

(keywords).

It then moves on to any pages that linked from the current page.

It also visits pages that may not be linked by other pages, but were submitted by search

engines.



The Algorithm Search engines usually tweak their

algorithms from time to time in order to

improve results, and to ensure that only

content wins!

There is, however, some general rule-of-

thumb that search algorithms adhere to

in order to display search results.



Domain Authority One of the factors considered by

Search engines are content relevancy.

Websites which have relevant

content, combined with being

referenced by a number of websites,

are considered legitimate and will

show up higher on the search results

page.



Backlinks The more number of “backlinks”

(references / recommendations) your

website has from credible websites, the

more relevant it’s considered.

Google has recognized that many SEOs are

creating “dummy” websites and using them

to create links to their main website, and

penalises such websites heavily

Bottom Line: Only “quality” links work!



Single Domain / Multiple Domains Since backlinks are an important signal to

the search engines, one way of ensuring

that your website receives a link (whenever

a user wants to link to you) is by having a

single domain for your website.

Having multiple domains to the same

website will divide the backlinks received,

hence, reducing the credibility overall.

If having multiple domains is a must,

ensure that they are redirected (301) to one

single domain.

versus



Components of Google’s Ranking Algorithm



Query Deserves Freshness Query deserves freshness, or

QDF, is a term used by Google to

show newer (fresher) results over

others.

This implies that content on a

website should always be

renewed, modified, updated and

kept afresh!

QDF

Normal Results



Query Deserves Diversity Query deserves diversity, or

QDD, is the notion that a search

engine may intentionally diversify

results to create variety in the

search results even though

normal ranking signals would

suggest something different.

This implies that content on a

website should also include a

factor of why the user would

come to the website, and what

would his intention be. 5/2/2014 Gagandeep Singh Walia | [email protected] 21

Understanding & Implementing


“People will tell you exactly what they want. In comments, links, social media

landscape in general. Listen. Extrapolate. Do something with that information.

Understanding & Implementing Search Engine Optimization

The SEO Pyramid


For optimal results, always start with a

strong base, and build your way up.


Accessibility

“It’s not just about disabled users being able to access your website — it’s about

everyone being able to access your website.”

Understanding & Implementing SEO: Accessibility

Crawlability / Link Architecture



Duplicate Content



Using Canonical / Alternate tags Use “Canonical” tags to highlight

which site has original content.

Use “Alternate” tags to demonstrate

same content with regional

differences, for example, a site in

multiple languages, so that an

Indonesian customer sees the

Indonesia specific website above the

Singapore specific website of the

same company, for example.



Redirection Always redirect using 301

redirection. This tells the search

engine that the page has been

“permanently” redirected to this new

location.

302 redirects are temporary, and

hence, the pageRank is divided, thus

affecting the ranking on the search

result page.



URL Structure

• Shorter is better. Online research shows that Google prefers short URLs and crawls

them first. May be it ranks them better too.

• Hyphens are fashionable: No spaces, underscores in URLs. Use a hyphen "-" to

separate words.

• No dynamic parameters. If it's a must, restrict the number to two or fewer. More

number of parameters will work only if the page is considered significantly

important (ex. the page has many links pointing to it)

• Semantics : URLs to be as descriptive as possible - letting the user, and there by the

search engine spider, know what the page contains is important.



URL Structure • Don't be Case Sensitive - Since URLs can accept both uppercase and lowercase

characters, don't ever, ever allow any uppercase letters in the URL structure. If

currently a lot exist, 301 them to all-lowercase versions to help avoid confusion.

• Some URLs considered good:

– http://www.discoverohio.com/visitors/map.asp

Brilliant - it's short, descriptive, static and obvious.

– http://web.mit.edu/is/usability/usability-guidelines.html

Despite the subdomain, everything else is near perfect.

– http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/jk35.html

They could have used "john-kennedy" as the page title, but they've wisely also

provided his number (the US' 35th President).


http://www.discoverohio.com/visitors/map.asp

http://web.mit.edu/is/usability/usability-guidelines.html



http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/jk35.html


Robots.txt One of the first files that a search

engine spider reads is the Robots.txt

file.

It contains information for the spider as

to what pages of the site it is allowed to

crawl and what it must not crawl.

As a best practice, ensure that this file

exists, even if it's empty. Also ensure

that it does not accidentally exclude

important files, directories or the entire

site.



Sitemap.xml An XML Sitemap named “sitemap.xml”

is a file that contains a list of nearly all

the pages in the website.

This XML File is submitted to the

search engines. This ensures that

Google crawler can crawl into the deep

links and can index them.

Submit the Sitemap to Google using

Google Webmaster Tools.


http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/


On-Page Elements

“Create a website that expresses something about who you are that won't fit

into the template available to you on a social networking site.”

Understanding & Implementing SEO: On-Page Elements

Title Tags & Meta Descriptions Title Tag: Displays the

name of the page. Also the

first thing that is returned

by the search engine.

<title> UT – Universitas Terbuka </title>

Meta Description: Displays

a short summary of what

the page contains. Also

forms the part of the

search result.

<meta name=“description”

content=“Universitas Terbuka (UT) is

Indonesia’s state university…</meta>

Title Tag

Title Tag

Meta Description



Title Tags & Meta Descriptions Best Practices:

Title Tag:

• Accurately describe the page’s content

• Create unique title tags for each page

• Use briefs but descriptive titles

Meta Description:

• Accurately summarize the page’s content

• Use unique descriptions for each page



Anchor Texts Text that is hyperlinked to a

webpage is called Anchor text.

If a page is being linked from

several sources with same/similar

anchor text, then it would show up

that page in the search results

whenever that anchor text is used as

a search query.

In short, anchor texts act as

potential keywords for the page, and

should be used appropriately. 5/2/2014 Gagandeep Singh Walia | [email protected] 36


Image Tags Search Engine spiders cannot read images.

They read only plain text.

Therefore, it is important to explain what

the image is about using the “alt” tag.

Current state of the University site shows

that all of the major key banners have NO

alt tags associated with them.



Keyword Research & Targeting

“It's not always about getting visitors to your site, but about getting the right

kind of visitors”

Understanding & Implementing SEO: Keyword Research & Targeting

Value of a Keyword To understand the value of a keyword, we need to understand our own websites, make

some hypotheses, test, and repeat - the classic web marketing formula.

Create

Relevant

seed list

Search

Gather

preliminary

Data

Search for the

term/phrase in major

search engines

Select keywords that are

relevant to your website, and

what the users will find when

they come to your site

Determine

value of

keyword

Guestimate conversion rate

numbers, or using Google

Adwords/Bing Adcenter, track

impressions and conversion

rate over the course of at least

2-300 clicks.

For ex, if your search ad

generated 5,000 impressions,

of which 100 visitors have

come to your site and 3 have

converted for total profit (not

revenue!) of $300, then a

single visitor for that keyword

is worth $3 to your business.



Useful Tools Google Keyword Planner (previously known as Keyword

tool) not only suggests keywords and provides estimated

search volume, but also predicts the cost of running paid

campaigns for these terms.

To determine volume for a particular keyword, be sure to set

the Match Type to [Exact] and look under Local Monthly

Searches. Remember that these represent total searches.

Links to some popular tools:

Google Adwords’ Keyword Planner

Google Trends Keyword Demand Prediction

Bing Ads Intelligence

Wordtracker’s Free Basic Keyword Demand


http://adwords.google.com/keywordplanner




http://www.google.com/trends/

http://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/bing-ads-intelligence

https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/


Implementation Once keywords are narrowed down for the

webpage, implement. Modify / Update

content to include these keywords.

Include keywords in the page title, meta

description, and in the body context. Ensure

all images have their title tags and the alt

texts.

Do not overuse the keyword on the page.

Always remember, the content needs to

drive the keywords, not the other way

around!



Verification Once implementation is done, ensure that Google sees your keywords:

Submit webpage to google webmaster tools, and go to "Fetch as Google". Then, hit Ctrl + F and

look for the keywords that this page is optimized for. If the words are missing, Google will not

see them.

Check the number of pages that have been indexed by Google and that exist on Google

search for "site:WebsiteName" on Google => this will give the number of pages that Google

sees of this website

Check who all are linking to your website: search for "link:WebsiteName" on Google.

To test the browser layout of the website and see if the search engine can read your website, go

to the browser and disable javascript and cookies. Whatever you can read now, the spider can

read too. 5/2/2014 Gagandeep Singh Walia | [email protected] 42


Promotion & Analysis

“Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become

your habit of mind.”


Promotion & Analysis Link Building: Effectively promoting your new

content will lead to faster discovery by those

who are interested in the same subject.

Announcements via Blogs: A blog post on your

own site letting your visitor base know that you

added something new is a great way to get the

word out about new content or services.

Google Maps: For local businesses, adding

information to Google Places helps reach

customers on Google Maps and web search.

Taking these recommendations to an extreme could actually harm the reputation of your site. 5/2/2014 Gagandeep Singh Walia | [email protected] 44


Promotion & Analysis Know about Social Media sites: Sites built

around user interaction and sharing have made

it easier to match interested groups of people up

with relevant content.

Related Community: Opening up

communication with sites that cover similar

topic areas as you is usually beneficial. Hot

topics in your niche or community could spark

additional ideas for content or building a good

community resource.

Taking these recommendations to an extreme could actually harm the reputation of your site. 5/2/2014 Gagandeep Singh Walia | [email protected] 45


Promotion & Analysis Analytics: Understand who is visiting your site,

where from, what do they visit etc.

Google Analytics is a free tool that can be

quickly setup on your website to get in-depth

reports.

Alexa.com can provide preliminary data of your

website, as well of your competitor websites.

Doing a quick check for “ut.ac.id” on Alexa.com

resulted in some interesting results.


Understanding & Implementing SEO: Promotion & Analysis

Google Webmaster Tools Google's Webmaster Tools help webmasters better control how Google interacts with

their websites and get useful information from Google about their site

Using Webmaster Tools won't help your site get preferential treatment; however, it can

help you identify issues that, if addressed, can help your site perform better in search

results.



Best Practices: SEO Checklist

“Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.”




Head Section order

Meta title tags

Meta description tags

Meta keywords tags

Heading tags

Page word count

Optimization at Page-Level

Ensure that the head section

order is followed (that is, Meta

Tags are in the right order)

Title > Description > Keywords

All Meta title tags are approx.

nine words long (plus or minus

three)

Cut-off for Google is 70

Characters

All Meta Description tags are

approximately 12 - 24 words

(cut-off for Google is 160

characters)

List keywords from longest in

length to shortest, separated by

commas, between 24 - 48 words

Order begins with <h1> and

subsequent ones are <h2>, <h3>

etc, <h2> being the subhead of

<h1>

Each page word count is at least

450 words or more (compulsorily

more than 250 words)


Image Alt Tags

Make JavaScript/CSS External

Banners (other on-page content)

Broken Links URL Structure

Optimization at Page-Level

All images have proper alt tags and

descriptions mentioned

Externalize the JavaScript/CSS

code so that search engine crawls

the most important code (the

body text) first

All banners are linked properly and

have campaign codes (wherever

necessary)

There are no broken links on the

page

The URL structure of each

page is as per the guidelines

provided earlier




HTML Sitemap

XML Sitemap

Text Navigation

Robots.txt

Server Configuration

Redirections

Privacy Statements

Optimization at Site-Level



The sitemap for the site is

present, and every page links to

the sitemap

Ensure that the XML sitemap is

submitted to the search engines. This

ensures that Google crawler can crawl

into the deep links and can index

them. Submit the Sitemap to Google

using Google Webmaster Tools.

Verify there is text navigation (and not

JavaScript or Flash navigation that

spider’s can’t see) at least at the bottom

of the page

This file exists, even if it's empty.

Ensure that Robots.txt does not

accidentally exclude important files,

directories or the entire site

Ensure that No 404 errors exist

Ensure all redirects are 301

and there is no 302 redirects

A privacy statement exists

(letting site visitors know of

what we will do with the data

we are collecting)

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Understanding

Webometrics Ranking

“Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.”

Understanding

Webometrics Ranking

A ranking system for the world's

universities based on a composite

indicator that takes into account both the

volume of the Web contents (number of

web pages and files) and the visibility

and impact of these web publications

according to the number of external

inlinks (site citations) they received.


Understanding Webometrics Ranking

Some Facts July, 2013

Is this a ranking of University Website?

No! Web presence and visibility are used

as indicators of global performance of a

university.

Web design is totally irrelevant as all the

measurements are related to the contents

published.



Methodology

Webometrics Ranking

Visibility (50%) Activity (50%)

No. of external links

linked to our website

Presence (1/3) Openness(1/3) Excellence (1/3)

The total number of webpages

hosted in the main web-domain

(including all the subdomains

and directories) of the university

as indexed by Google.

The number of rich files (pdf,

doc, docx, ppt) published in

dedicated websites according to

the academic search engine

Google Scholar.

The academic papers published in high

impact international journals, where the

university scientific output is a part of the

10% most cited papers in their respective

scientific fields



Calculating Webometric Score

“If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?”


Calculating Webometrics Score: Benefits

There are several reasons why it’s important

to know how this score is calculated:

1. Understand where you stand in the

current scenario among other

universities in your region.

2. Identify the factors that your website is

stronger at when compared to others,

and in what factors it is weaker.

3. Website content can then be optimized

to improve weak factors.


To demonstrate calculation and to arrive at a Webometric score, the

website of Universitas Terbuka is used as an example

http://www.ut.ac.id/


Calculating Webometrics Score: Visibility

This indicator is the product of square

root of the number of backlinks and the

number of domains originating those

backlinks.

To calculating the number of links

received for a website, visit

http://ahrefs.com and type in the URL

you want to calculate the visibility of.

Visibility = sqrt (30,000) * 815

= 141,162.1

Visibility (50%)

No. of external links

linked to our website



Calculating Webometrics Score: Presence

It counts every webpage, including all the

formats recognized individually by Google, both

static and dynamic pages and other rich files.

Having additional domains or alternative

central ones for foreign languages or marketing

purposes penalizes in this indicator and it is

also very confusing for external users.

To calculate Presence, type in

site:ut.ac.id/ on google.com

Presence = 153,000

Presence (16.67%)

The total number of webpages hosted

in the main web-domain (including all

the subdomains and directories) of the

university as indexed by Google.



Calculating Webometrics Score: Openness This needs to be calculated for each individual

file type (pdf, doc, docx, ppt) and then summed

up together.

To find the number of PDFs submitted, go to

http://scholar.google.com and type in

site:ut.ac.id filetype:pdf

Do similarly for all mentioned file types and

arrive at a total. That number becomes the

Openness value.

In this case, Openness = 376(pdf) + 1(doc) +

0(docx) + 0(ppt) = 377

Openness(16.67%)

The number of rich files (pdf, doc,

docx, ppt) published in dedicated

websites according to the academic

search engine Google Scholar.



Calculating Webometrics Score: Excellence

This is a measure of high quality output of research

institutions, and the data is provided by the

Scimago group.

According to the SIR Report* published in 2013,

Universtas Terbuka does not feature in the 2744

entries published.

Only 3 Indonesian Universities featured:

- Bandung Institute of Technology

- University of Indonesia

- Gadjah Mada University

Hence, Excellence Value = 0

Excellence (16.66%)

The academic papers published in high

impact international journals, where the

university scientific output is a part of the

10% most cited papers in their respective

scientific fields

*http://www.scimagoir.com/pdf/SIR%20Global%202013%20O.pdf


http://www.scimagoir.com/




Calculating Webometrics Score

Visibility (50%) 50% of 141,162.1 = 70,581.05

Presence (16.67%)

Openness(16.67%)

Excellence (16.66%)

16.67% of 153,000 = 25,505.1

16.67% of 377 = 62.85

16.66% of 0 = 0

Webometrics Score 70,581.05 + 25,505.1 + 62.85 + 0 = 96,149



Calculating Webometrics Score

Scores for all university sites are calculated

similarly, and then arranged in descending

order. And then ranked. That’s where the

Webometrics ranking comes from.

The higher the score, the better you are ranked.

As nothing is perfect, Webometrics tweaks the

criteria of measurement with every ranking list

produced so as to make a better ranking system.

The updated criteria can be found here.


http://www.webometrics.info/en/Methodology

Universitas Terbuka

A Few Quick Tips

“The key to mixing colors, patterns, and textures is BALANCE.”

Universitas Terbuka

A Few Quick Tips

A large web presence is made possible only with

the effort of a large group of authors. The best way

to do that is allowing a large proportion of staff,

researchers or graduate students to be potential

authors.

Hosting external resources can increase the

visibility: Conference websites, software

repositories, scientific societies and their

publications, especially electronic journals.

Converting important resources that are available

in non-electronic format into web pages is quick

and easy.


Universitas Terbuka

A Few Quick Tips

Submit to Google Scholar!

The number of journals / educational

papers found on Google Scholar form an

important part of the total ranking.

It also boosts up the “visibility” factor as

those papers are also shown as search

results on Google.

And, not to forget the additional backlinks

that will be received from these additional

papers.


Universitas Terbuka

A Few Quick Tips

Here’s an example of the current

problem:

Number of PDF files available on

the University’s website as shown

by “google.com” is 5,010.

However, number of PDF files

available on the University’s

website submitted to Google

Scholar is 376.

That’s one-thirteenth!

On google.com

On scholar.google.com


Universitas Terbuka

A Few Quick Tips

Here’s what you need to know about submitting journals to Google Scholar:

For University Repositories:

“If you're a university repository, we recommend that you use the latest version of Eprints

(eprints.org), Digital Commons (digitalcommons.bepress.com), or DSpace (dspace.org) software to

host your papers.”

For Individual Authors:

“Upload your paper (in pdf format) to your website, and add a link to it on your publications page.”

Ensure the title of the paper is at the top of the first page and the authors listed right below. Always

include a bibliography section titled “References” or “Bibliography” at the end.

Read the complete Inclusion guidelines here Submit your website to Google Scholar here


http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/inclusion.html

https://support.google.com/scholar/troubleshooter/2898950

Universitas Terbuka

A Few Quick Tips

Site Language

The Web audience is truly global, and so the website

must cater to the global audience as well.

Language versions, especially in English, are

mandatory not only for the main pages, but for

selected sections and specially from scientific

documents.

Currently, the English version differs significantly

with the Indonesian version (which is much richer)

Sub-domains do not have an English Version. Here’s

an example: http://www.fmipa.ut.ac.id/

In Bahasa

In English


http://www.fmipa.ut.ac.id/

Universitas Terbuka

A Few Quick Tips Rich & Media Files: Have multiple versions of the file –

HTML for easy viewing on the website, and PDF, for easy

downloading.

Quick Share: Adding the share functionality to all journals /

papers enables users to share it with friends/colleagues

easily.

Archiving and Persistence: Absolutely ensure that a copy of

the outdated / old material is retained. An archive is an

absolute essential.

Site Enrichment: The use of meaningful titles and

descriptive metatags can increase the visibility of the pages.

Standards like “Dublin Core” can be used to add authoring

info, keywords and other data about the web sites.


Final Thoughts

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Thank You

For your Attention

“Once upon a workshop”

Gagandeep Singh Walia | [email protected]

Singapore, February 2014