IBIMA Publishing Journal of Internet and e-business Studies http://www.ibimapublishing.com/journals/JIEBS/jiebs.html Vol. 2011 (2011), Article ID 969476, 11 pages DOI: 10.5171/2011.969476 Improving Website Ranking through Search Engine Optimization Ali H. Al-Badi 1, Ali O. Al Majeeni 2, Pam J. Mayhew 2 and Abdullah S. Al-Rashdi 3 1Information Systems Department, College of Commerce and Economics, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman 2 School of Computing Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK 3Center for Information Systems, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract Internet is fast becoming critically important to commerce, industry and individuals. Perhaps the most important single component of this communication network is the Search Engine (SE). Successful Websites rank high in SEs hits, whereas unsuccessful Websites may not rank at all. In an effort to increase the ranking of Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) amongst international universities, it was recommended to apply “Webometrics” measures. Hence, it was necessary to enhance the university's Website ranking. Therefore, the primary aim of this research is to explore the factors and techniques that contribute to a page ranking highly in a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). The research is divided into two parts. The first part is a descriptive/interpretive analysis aiming to provide an outline of the current and relevant literature with regard to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It covers how SEs work, and explores the guidelines that are available for Web designers to optimize Web pages, thereby increasing their visibility and ranking. Furthermore, it provides a short history of the most important SEs, differentiates between them, and reviews the approaches they use to crawl, index, and display search results. It also provides an account of the different factors/methods impacting Website ranking. The second part documents an action research project undertaken to enhance the visibility and ranking of the SQU Website. The main findings are that, for a site to rank well, it must use a combination of increasingly sophisticated techniques and tools, and not to rely on outdated methods such as Meta tags (especially the keywords). Fortunately, there are many online tools which can assist in tuning a site to work better, as well as other freely available good pieces of advice. Keywords: Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine, crawl, index, user behavior, understanding target audience, Web usability, Website traffic, Web robots, Meta tags, Website Visitor Analysis, Search Engine Watch, Google AdWords ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Introduction and Background appropriate information is critical. Search Engines (SEs) are the tools used to find this It has been said that “If Content is King, content, and they can be classified into three Quality is Queen” (Langlois, 2010), and this groups: is particularly appropriate when applied to the Internet. The pair go hand in hand i.e. • General : e.g. Google, Yahoo, Bing the Web content is worthless if it is not of a (formerly Live Search, Windows Live good quality. With seemingly endless Search, and MSN Search), and ask content available online, the findability of (formerly AskJeeves.com); Copyright © 2011 Ali H. Al-Badi, Ali O. Al Majeeni, Pam J. Mayhew and Abdullah S. Al-Rashdi. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License unported 3.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that original work is properly cited. Contact author: Ali H. Al-Badi. E-mail: [email protected] Journal of Internet and e-business Studies 2 • Vertical Search : specialist SEs that focus strong arguments for the importance of on specific resources reducing the search in almost every aspect of our number of irrelevant hits, e.g. Travelocity personal and business lives. and Expedia; Website Optimization and Marketing • Location Based SEs : these use geographical information (such as zip It is one of the primary goals of today’s Web codes or IP addresses) about the users to designers to maximize the position of their provide more relevant results. Web pages in SE rankings. If one wants a particular Website to be returned as a Most of today’s SEs search for Web pages highly ranked hit, that site must be found by utilizes a user supplied text sample (a the Web robot, then fully descriptive keyword or phrase). The SE returns a list of information must be extracted and the site “hits” or Web references that match the indexed. The process of designing and sample; these are displayed on the Search tuning a Website to maximize its findability Engine Results Page (SERP), listed and and improve its ranking is known as “Search sorted by relevance. Gathered information Engine Optimization” (SEO) (Fleischner, is not limited to the text, and can include 2011; Kent, 2008; Interleado, 2009). There images, PDF files and other types of content. are two ways of employing SEO: firstly, SEs may rank hits differently; a hit ranked white hat SEO , which refers to the legitimate high by one could be ranked low by another. methods supported by SEs; these methods What is found and how it is ranked, is do not attempt to deceive SEs, and they determined by the SE’s algorithms, as well produce quality, long-term results. as the way keywords are presented to the Techniques include: offering quality and SEs, and the way Web pages are designed to relevant content, proper metadata and expose keywords to search processes. effective keywords, and having inbound links from other relevant high-quality pages. So, how do SEs know what information is to Secondly, black hat SEO, in which designers be found on individual Web pages? They attempt to deceive SEs by manipulating know by using software applications called their Web pages content to suggest that they “Web Robots”; these robots “crawl around” are something other than what they actually Internet Websites gathering data, which is are. Therefore, black hat SEO is not really then organized and indexed. Once this is optimization; it is more a form of SE done, the data can be searched quickly and deception (Wilding, 2009; Deitel, 2008). easily. Since SEs do not all work in the same way, results may differ. Deitel provides an The term SEO can also be applied to a new account of major SEs in his book (Deitel, breed of companies, which seek to 2008). Similarly, John Battelle’s book “ The determine the most important factors to be Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote used to make a Web page rank highly in the Rules of Business and Transformed Our SERPs (Evans, 2007). Table 1, below, shows Culture ” (Battelle, 2006) provides an some examples of this emerging industry. extensive history of SEs, and presents Table 1: Search Engines Optimization Companies No SEO company name SEO company URL 1 SEOMoz.org http://www.seomoz.org/ 2 HighRankings.com http://www.highrankings.com/ 3 SearchEngineWatch.com http://searchenginewatch.com/ 4 SearchEngineWorld.com http://searchengineworld.com/ 5 MarketLeap.com http://marketleap.com/ 6 Bruce Clay Inc http://www.bruceclay.com/ 7 SEO inc http://www.seoinc.com/ 3 Journal of Internet and e-business Studies De spite the proliferation of SEO companies, Factors/Methods Impacting Website and the individual efforts in this regard, the Ranking accumulated knowledge only represents partial information of SE's heuristics, based Perhaps at one time, when the Internet was mainly on trial and error approach young, getting one's site recognized and (Fortunato et al, 2006). Many previous ranked highly was a simple matter. One studies (such as Ledford, 2009; Evans, 2007; method that was once thought to be Bifet et al., 2005; Moran and Hunt, 2006; effective was to use Meta tags. It was felt Fortunato et al., 2006; Pringle et al., 1998; that SEs would give such tags emphasis in Khaki-Sedigh and Roudaki, 2003) have ranking sites, and this was a common attempted to explore the factors that could misconception held by some, even today. potentially influence a SE’s ranking of a Nowadays, things are much more complex. Website. Obviously, SEs use a variety of In this section we provide a review of Meta mechanisms to rank Web pages (Sullivan, tags, detailing why they arose and how they 2007; Evans, 2007). These factors have been fell from favor. This is followed by an classified into two main categories: Query- overview of design factors that need to be Factors , which are based on the content of a considered when designing a site for high Web page, such as the existence and visibility and better ranking. frequency of keywords in Title Tag, and Query-Independent Factors , which are based Meta tags on information obtained from external Web pages that are linked to a Web page under Meta tags are used to provide SEs with consideration. However, all these factors are information that is not visible when the rather difficult to quantify as the SEs do not page is displayed in a browser (Sullivan, reveal which factors they use when 2002); their role in improving Website determining a Website’s ranking. Therefore, visibility is often misunderstood. Meta tags it is clear that to maximize one’s Website go within the Web page's header. The ranking, it is not sufficient to rely upon any header of any HTML file consists of the one mechanism or factor, and thus a following components: number of measures must be adopted. a. Title : this is usually shown in SE listings, Another method whereby Website ranking in the title bar of the browser, and is may be improved is “Search Engines used in bookmarks (favorites). Marketing” (SEM). It is a method of promoting Websites to increase traffic and b. Description : SEs sometimes display this search results by raising the site’s visibility text in the SERP.