Search Engine Optimization

Communicator’s Brownbag January 16, 2014

Neil Erdwien, Web Services Director Division of Communications and Marketing Optimization

• SEO, SERP • Goal: make your site’s search engine results “better” Higher Goals

• Get more traffic from organic search • More students • Higher reputation • 2025 Why is SEO Important?

• Searching is the default for many people – Searchers vs. clickers

• Internet niches: Facebook, Pinterest, K-State Search Engine Background

• How search engines work • Competition drives everything Search Engine Spiders

• Start with a database of • Retrieve each URL • Add content to the index • Add all linked pages to the database Consequences

• No human evaluates pages • Changes may take some time to have effect • Unlinking a page does not remove it from the index Competition • Between you and your competitors • Between search engines Consequences • Some advice is bad and may actually backfire • Exact rules are unknown – Voodoo rules Periodic Table • Courtesy of Search Engine Land Cq • Content is king • Aligns your interest with the search engine’s interest Cr • Analyze keywords • Add/delete content to serve keyword needs • Detour: Analytics Ht • Most is ignored, but title is still used • Not SEO, but the title shown in mobile devices is very short Metadata • “Data about data” • Title, URL • HTML’s META element: keywords, description, author • Detour: CMS Au • Voodoo: the most highly-weighted keywords • Words are broken at periods, slashes, and hyphens – not underlines Words in URLs • High matches for “cat” and “dog”: – www.k-state.edu/dept/cat/dog.html – www.k-state.edu/dept/cat-dog.html • No match for “cat” and “dog”: – www.k-state.edu/dept/cat_dog.html Lq, Lt, Ln • Number of incoming links is a major factor in Google’s “”. • Not all links are weighted the same: .edu links are more valuable. Link Text • To read the report, click here. • Read the Report on Student Retention. Sr, Ss • Social network likes, shares, and pins are the new links. • Google is pushing Google+. Pc, Pl, Ph • Search results are customized to each searcher • Concept of “we’re #3 on Google” is obsolete. Questions