Search Engine Optimization
Rob Ruchte & Jon Williams April 22, 2009 Why should we trust your information about SEO? -Jonathan Champ
We’re not SEO salesmen - we’re developers What makes you an expert? We’ve been building sites since BG (Before Google), have witnessed the evolution of SE technology We work for ad agencies who promise their clients big SE results - we have to deliver. For which keywords do you rank well? How does Google’s PageRank work? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank Strategic Outline
(Text) Content Tactics (Graphic) Design Tactics Technology Tactics Social Tactics Content: King is, was, and will always be.
Secret sauce = snake oil Spend 80% of your efforts developing great content. Keyword refinement & SEM comes last. (20%) Content: Be Remark-able!
Be Remarkable. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ seth_godin_on_sliced_bread.html Content: Be Remark-able! Content
Safe = Boring = Death As fresh as possible, as often as possible. Content: Semantics
Sprinkle keywords (lightly!) across hierarchy of semantic tags.
<H1>, <H2>, <H3>, etc <strong>, <emphasis> <meta> (deprecated?) Yahoo still considers keywords Content: Keywords</p><p>Work your target keywords and keyword phrases into header, link, and paragraph content. Use synonyms: http://thesaurus.com Content: K.I.S.S.</p><p>Quality over Quantity Web users favor scanning over reading. Keep it short and specific. Google favors pages with high (relevant) keyword density. Break longer pages into parts. Content: Generic vs Specific</p><p>Both! Create a content hierarchy From more generic to more specific. Allow users to read (and link to) the appropriate level of detail. For example: http://www.instructables.com/ Content: ISO Perfection</p><p>In Search Of Perfection http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html Content: ISO Perfection Content</p><p>There is no perfect page. There are only perfect pages. Content: Outgoing Links</p><p>Your outgoing links help search engines place you in the right “neighborhood.” Pick a neighborhood with high PageRank. Misconceptions PageRank dilution Design</p><p>Before you’ve read a single word, you’ve already formed an opinion about a site’s quality based purely on an emotional response to the design. So do visitors to your site. Don’t give them an excuse not to link to you. Design: Typography</p><p>Typography for Dummies: http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/ five_simple_steps_to_better_typography/ Design: Typography</p><p>No more than 2 - 3 alphabets per line in length. (~80 characters) Leading wider than word spacing White text on black? Increase the leading & tracking Decrease your font-weight. Design: Typography</p><p> size relationships between body copy, headers, subheaders, etc. For example:</p><p><H1> 24px, <H2> 18px, <H3> 16px, <H4> 13px, <body> 11px weight relationships - For example: primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary, QUINTARY Design: Whitespace</p><p> http://www.alistapart.com/articles/whitespace Striking a balance between the page’s whitespace and areas of high detail allow you to guide the eye from element to element in a predictable way. Notice how bullet-to-bullet linespacing is greater than the linespacing within rows of a single bullet? Design: Minimalism </p><p>Minimalist designs: are more easily achieved because there are fewer page elements to create and make work together. can be scientifically compared for effectiveness. can be aggregated into more complex designs. Technology: Semantics</p><p><TITLE>, <H1><H2><H3>, <strong><emphasis>, , <a href=”http://domain.com/human-readable.html” /> Technology: HTML</p><p>Google uses the first 70 characters of page titles Titles should be More Specific -> Less Specific For example: Product Feature | Product Name | Company instead of: Company | Product Name | Product Feature Technology: CSS Use advanced CSS to implement the designer’s vision </p><p>Style lists with sprites for attractive yet usable multi- state navigation Style headings with background images for non- standard fonts Download demo of these techniques: http://karoshiethos.com/seo/ http://karoshiethos.com/seo.zip Technology: Syndication</p><p>Indicates that you want people to share and promote your content RSS embed-able content For-example: YouTube video free PDFs Technology: Multimedia</p><p>Search Engines see HTML replaced via Progressive Enhancement (requires JavaScript) Flash Video - http://karoshiethos.com/seo/video/ sIFR - http://wiki.novemberborn.net/sifr3/ Technology: Bookmarked Video</p><p> http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/link-to-youtube- minute-second/ Technology: Accessible Flash</p><p>SwfAddress: http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/ Gaia Flash Framework: http://www.gaiaflashframework.com/ Example: http://therepublik.net Technology: Apache mod_rewrite</p><p>If your site is accessible via multiple domains, choose and enforce a canonical domain for your site:</p><p>RewriteCond %{http_host} ^(www.)?site.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.site.org/$1 [R=301,L]</p><p>Choose and enforce a canonical subdomain too:</p><p>RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC] RewriteRule .* http://www.site.edu%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] Technology: Apache mod_rewrite</p><p>Implement human/<a href="/tags/Search_engine/" rel="tag">search engine</a> friendly URLs for systems that use query parameters Turn /page.php?id=231 into /page-title.html RewriteRule ^page-title.html page.php?id=231 [nc] Turn /search.php?q=term into /search/term RewriteRule ^search/(.*) search.php?q=$1 [nc] mod_rewrite docs: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/ misc/rewriteguide.html Technology: On-site Search</p><p>Lucene - http://lucene.apache.org/java/docs/ Zend Framework Implementation Done correctly, represents a dynamic index of content matching search criteria. Linkable, bookmarkable, sharable. Use semantic URLs to link to Lucene searches to auto-categorize content using chosen keywords/ phrases eg. http://example.com/search/engineering Technology: Google Tools</p><p>Analytics Measure what's working, what isn't. Optimizer https://www.google.com/analytics/siteopt/splash? hl=en Google Sitemap File https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/ protocol.html Social The Cluetrain Manifesto http://www.cluetrain.com The first markets were markets. Not bulls, bears, or invisible hands. Not battlefields, targets, or arenas. Not demographics, eyeballs, or seats. Most of all, not consumers. These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked. Social: Bookmarking</p><p>Digg (and delicious, and StumbleUpon, and...) Make it easy for visitors to share your content (sharethis.com) Social: Viral </p><p>Flickr More than just photos, you can upload documents & video YouTube (Vimeo, Revver, etc...) Avoids encoding/format issues Sharing is built into the player Save bandwidth, server space Social: Networking Facebook Network with other subject matter experts Post links to your content Twitter More than just, “I forgot how much I like pickles!” Follow subject experts, stay in tune with your subject Tweet about your subject Link to relevant content on your site and others. Join the conversation. Pitfalls</p><p>100% Duplicate Content http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html Redirects Use 301 redirects to retain the “juice” from incoming links. Avoid using 302 redirects in all but a few specific cases (eg. same-domain page redirects) http://www.bigoakinc.com/blog/when-to-use-a-301-vs-302-redirect/ If you use a URL shortener for posting links to your site (tinyurl.com, bit.ly, etc...), make sure they use 301 redirects. Pitfalls</p><p>Paid Links use <a href="/tags/Nofollow/" rel="tag">nofollow</a> in <a> <a href=”http://advertiser.com” rel=”nofollow”> Incestuous Linking Sites that only link amongst themselves Keyword/Link Stuffing Overloading pages with terms and links that do not provide benefits to visitors Pitfalls</p><p>Spamdexing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamdexing Shared Servers Double-check server blacklists Bot DOS “Attack” Crawl-Delay: 10 in robots.txt Q&A Useful Links http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/ http://www.seomoz.org/article/beginners-guide-to- search-engine-optimization http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-web-developers-seo- cheat-sheet http://www.addedbytes.com/apache/url-rewriting-for- beginners/ http://www.addedbytes.com/apache/mod_rewrite- cheat-sheet/</p>
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