Archive for December, 2007
published by Dan in SEO Basics
Step 3: Processing of Requests – When an internet user types in a word or phrase the search engines receive a request to find matching results for that given keyword or phrase. To be able to process the request the search engine checks its index and comes up with the documents or pages that contain the given search term. The tricky part though in coming up with the list of results is determining if the term is used on the web page in the way the user wants it. In other words, is the term relevant or not? If the term is too generic and has lots of different meanings or context the search engine will return more results. If the search term is more specific then there will be less results returned. This is why it is important that both generic and more specific keywords and phrases be found on your web pages. Without the keywords the search engines will automatically exclude your web page from the final list of results. Once the full list of possibly relevant results are determined the search engine then has one last step to perform…
Step 4: Ranking the Results – Search engines can return anything from zero pages to millions of pages, depending on the popularity of topic. Of course, no one really has the time to scan millions of results to find which one contains the information he/she needs, which is why search engines do the scanning and picking for us. Using an algorithm based on multiple factors search engines determine which of the results are most relevant and rank them accordingly. The results that search engines deem to be most relevant are displayed among the top results and the least relegated to the last pages, which no one almost ever looks at. This is where SEO is most important. Various SEO strategies are implemented to ensure a good placement in SERPs.
Popularity: 11% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Basics
Last time I discussed the two factors search engines use to rank websites and thus produce search results. Before the relevance and popularity of a website is taken into account though there are other steps that must be taken by search engines in order to get the required data and process them. It is important to understand how search engines work in order to realise how and why search engine optimisation is important. It is also important if you want to understand the methods used for search engine optimisation.
There are four basic steps to explain how search engines work.
Step 1: Crawling – Search engines get information about websites through crawling. Crawling is done by search engine spiders/bots, which are simply programs designed to wander through cyberspace in order to perform the next step – Indexing. Crawling is done repeatedly in order to update the search engines’ index. In a previous post of mine (Are All Your Webpages Search Engine Spider Friendly? I & II), I mentioned instances wherein a web page might be missed by a search engine spider. To ensure that your webpages can be crawled please reread that post.
Step 2: Indexing – Once search engine spiders crawl a web page the contents of that page is indexed or stored in the search engine’s database. Some pages though crawled, however, are not indexed. The reasons for this varies, from a website being banned to poor web design practices resulting in the spider being unable to view/determine the contents of a web page. To ensure that all the contents in your website that needs to be indexed are, it is best to hire the services of a professional SEO consultant.
to be continued…
Popularity: 11% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Basics
This blog and thousands out there are dedicated to search engine optimisation. In time for holidays I decided to take a little breather and instead of talking about the latest in SEO will look back and simply discuss the basics.
Search engines rely on the science of information retrieval, which in turn depend on two very critical factors for getting search results – relevance and popularity.
Relevance – The relevance of search results is very important since it determines whether the returned results will be of any use to the user. It also determines the degree of usefulness. The more relevant the search results are, the better. To determine relevance search engines rely on the frequency of the appearance of search terms in a web page. This is the reason why keywords are an important aspect of SEO. Keyword optimisation exists for a reason – to help search engines determine if the web page is relevant to a certain search term. By using certain keywords in more prominent places like page titles, subheaders, etc. the keywords are given more emphasis indicating that the content of that page is indeed very relevant to that topic.
Popularity – Popularity is important because it gives a measure of how many users find the contents of a web page useful. It lends credibility to a website. To determine a sites popularity search engines look for other web pages/sites that reference a certain site. In SEO terms the search engines counts the number of inbound links. This is the reason why, like keyword optimisation, link building is a very important SEO strategy.
Popularity: 14% [?]
published by Dan in SEO
Whether you are part of an SEO firm and want to get big companies as your client or part of the in-house web design team of a big company, you probably know how important it is to convince the big boss(es) in order to get funding for website improvements. Although SEO is proven to be effective the problem with selling SEO to the big bosses of old companies is that most are so used to traditional means of advertising and might not easily subscribe to the benefits of SEO. To be able to convince your boss of the need for SEO there are several things you should include as part of your presentation/proposal.
- Website analysis - Gather data from the website and show the actual performance of the site. Point out how and where the website can benefit from SEO.
- Analytics Software - Recommend an analytics software that will be used during SEO implementation so that reports can be given to them. The big bosses want concrete results and an analytics software spouting numbers regarding conversion rates will convince them.
- Beta-testing proposal - You should have a ready easy to understand proposal on how the effectiveness of the SEO campaign will be tested. This could entail the use of multiple landing pages to see which campagin track works best.
- Budget proposal - Money is and always will be an issue. Be upfront about how much should will be spent and show where the money will go. To show that SEO is a sound investment give estimates regarding ROI. How much will the company benefit from SEO. Be realistic about this side though and do not pull numbers out of thin air.
Be as concise as possible and avoid using technical/SEO-specific terms. Use easy to understand charts and graphs and present numbers. Since the bosses are businessmen what will convince them most is a good ROI. Show them how SEO is a good investment and they will be convinced.
Popularity: 11% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Strategy
I was reading up on Mark Jackson’s take on Subdomains and Subdirectory Strategies for SEO and would like to share what I learned with you. The domain name game is confusing for some especially with many SEO consultants expressing preference of using subdomains over subdirectories. While subdomains are indeed useful and effective, especially if your root domain is already aged and ranks pretty well, using subdirectories is sometimes the way to go.
According to Jackson subdirectories should be used if a lot of your content isn’t top quality and you have a whole bunch of that kind of content. As an example he cited business pages that target multiple markets ending up with different pages for each target market but with the same content. Websites that use subdomains to name each page will be flagged by Google as having multiple duplicate content while pages named using subdirectories can escape notice if you use a “unique first paragraph of content, header tag, and title tag/description/keywords tags.” This means that since each page is for a targeted market this practice is sound not only for SEO purposes but also for actually customising the content a little bit for each user group. Makes lots of sense doesn’t it?
Popularity: 10% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Basics
Aside from following using the usual SEO methods and validating the code of your mobile SEO site there are several very simple but useful practices that are especially important in optimising your mobile website including…
- Keeping everything short and simple - This is more of a design issue than an SEO issue. But if you think about it mobile web design is very tricky due to the much smaller screens y which web pages are viewed. By keeping your content, including the page titles, short and simple (don’t forget keyword rich!) your mobile site will be more usable.
- Linking out and getting inbound links - Links are just as important with mobile websites. One of the major probiles of mobile websites is that they do not bother to link out. Even, if you don’t get back links practice proper linking habits and link out to relevant websites. Of course, if you can get inbound links then it helps your website’s discoverability.
- Avoiding deep linking - Just like in the content it is best to keep your mobile site’s structure simple. Avoid deep linking. Deep links will lessen the discoverability of some of your mobile web pages and will also decrease the usability of your site since it is harder to navigate using mobile devices. Keep your site up to two or three layers only.
Popularity: 11% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Basics
To help you make sure that your mobile site is optimised for mobile search engines here are a few tips I gathered from all over the internet:
- Follow traditional SEO practices - As I have mentioned in my post on Mobile Website Design and SEO, mobile SEOis basically the same as traditional SEO. What this means is simply that what you know about SEO right now will work for mobile SEO. That includes all the basics like selecting and using keywords for the title tag, headings, text, and links as well as all the other sound SEO practices used for ordinary websites.
- Follow mobile standards - Many web designers and webmasters decide not to adhere strictly to W3C standards when designing ordinary websites for various reasons. Some SEO consultants even believe that adherence to W3C standards is not the best practice when it comes to getting results in terms of SEO. However, when it comes to mobile sites, everyone agrees that adherence to W3C standards is very important. This is because both mobile devices and mobile search engines are more picky and so might have trouble reading invalid code. Following mobile standards will ensure your mobile site is readable by both people and machines alike. So always validate your code.
- Design your site for low end phones - Although phones are getting more high tech and cooler by the minute there are still plenty of users accessing the web using older models. Make sure you design the site to be accessible even by older model phones because you don’t want your SEO efforts to be wasted when users are unable to view your site properly.
Popularity: 13% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Basics
In my last post I ended by giving two of the most popular mobile search engines you should make sure that your mobile site is indexed. Aside from Yahoo! Mobile and Google Mobile Web though there are other mobile search engines that are worth noting. Below is a short list of the most popular mobile search engines nowadays.
Note that this is far from the complete list of mobile search engines, however, if your site is listed on all of these search engines then you’ve pretty much covered your bases. To check if your website is listed just type in your website’s title or other relevant keywords and see if it comes up in the results. Make sure that you select mobile web when appropriate (like in Google Mobile) to get correct results. If you can’t find your website when you type a major keyword though it doesn’t automatically mean that your website isn’t indexed, you just might need to work on your mobile site’s SEO. So make sure you enter more specific terms that will pinpoint your site more easily. However, if you want to check the result of your mobile SEO campaign then of course you should use the more generic keywords you are competing for.
On my next post I will discuss basic SEO guidelines for mobile websites.
Popularity: 15% [?]
published by Dan in SEO
With the increasing popularity of mobile devices, mobile websites are of course also getting more popular as well. The problem though is that it is still a comparatively new field so that web designers are have more mobile web design and standard issues to deal with and we can be sure that present design standards will keep on evolving rapidly. What this means is that mobile web designers need to be on their toes in the look out for new trends and new tools to use to make mobile websites better in terms of both the look and usability.
Now even though mobile web design is still on its way to finding a firm footing website owners of course still have two main concerns - to get lots of traffic and to be able to satisfy their visitors and get them to take the necessary actions. What this means is that aside from design issues websites owners have to think about mobile SEO. What this means is that mobile website designers really need to have knowledge of SEO in order for SEO methods to be incorporated in the design.
The good thing about mobile SEO though is that it basically is just the same as traditional SEO. What you need to make sure though is that the mobile website is indexed by mobile search engines. You can make sure it is indexed by submitting your mobile website to Yahoo! Submit Your Mobile Site page and adding your Mobile Sitemap to your Google account.
Popularity: 12% [?]
published by Dan in SEO
There is no question about it graphics design isn’t the only important aspect when it comes to web design. A web designer that does not take into account usability or SEO will not really give you an excellent website in the end. Your website might end up looking really swell but it won’t bring you any closer to your end goals - lots of traffic and lots of sales/subscriptions.
In Navneet Kaushal’s post on Usability and SEO he summarised points made by Shari Thurow (Omni Marketing Interactive), Matt Bailey (SiteLogic), and Bob Tripathi (Discover Financial Services) during the SES Conference held in Chicago last December 5 (Note: The SES Conference and Expo started December 3 and the last day is today). All three speakers emphasised the importance of both usability and SEO. After all, as Thurow pointed out, a pretty web page is useless if it couldn’t be found by users in the first place, and we know that SEO is what you need in order to promote your site. And even if the site is found by many users if it is too difficult to navigate and actions that need to be taken are not taken due to poor usability then the site is useless. What this means is that there usability and SEO should go hand-in-hand to ensure that the website fulfils its goals. So don’t get sucked into a usability versus SEO debate and make sure that your website design takes both important factors into consideration.
Popularity: 11% [?]
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