Search Engine Optimization

How do Search Engines Operate?

Search Engine Operations can be broken down into 3 sections:

1. Crawling. Search Engines send out bots, referred to as spiders, which crawl the web and copy websites to search engine storage servers. Spiders follow every link they see unless specified otherwise with rel=”nofollow” attribute within a link(tells spiders not to follow) or with exclusion command in robot.txt file (file on the website server that has instructions for spiders). In some instances sophisticated scripts or dynamic pages are not indexed due to their complexities.

2. Indexing. Once a page is crawled, its copy gets stored on servers for later examination. Information retrieved gets organized and prepared for processing.

3. Ranking. When users run a query, search engines determine relevancy of a website to that query by putting it through as set of algorithms (mathematical equations) that look at more than a 100 factors. Algorithms analyze: links, anchor text of a link, text next to the links, pages from which the link is received, as well as on page factors such as headers, page names, file names, navigation and more. Once analyzed, websites are presented in SERPs(Search Engine Result Pages) from the most relevant to the least relevant. This is done in advance.

What are the obstacles to search engine visibilty?

The biggest bricks on the road are:

• Long tail URLs. For example: http://yoursite.com/0EHND0/ref=2?pfrdm=AIKDER&pf%rd%s=center-0-1&pf Search engines have trouble identifying it and users have no idea as to what may be contained within.
• Pages using frames confuse spiders as to what to show in the results.

Best way to ensure that all pages get indexed, is to include a sitemap. A sitemap is a page that contains links to all other pages. It is also useful to ensure that homepage links to the most important pages, since homepage is most likely the first page that search engines will see.

What is Keyword Research? What are the guidelines?

Search Engine Optimization starts with keyword research. Keyword research is the practice of sourcing customer determined keywords that are most commonly used in a specific industry. Successful keyword research makes a difference of targeting right audience or shouting for the wrong crowd.

The guidelines are to find the most relevant, traffic rich terms that will generate the highest return on investment. In most cases longer, refined terms are the best way to go. For example. Instead of targeting people looking for “men suits”, it is more beneficial to target “Calvin Klein Double Breasted Suits” since prospects looking with second phrase are more likely to buy, because they’ve already made up their mind. Though there may be less traffic with such keywords, longer, refined terms tend to convert more.

In some industries however, general terms are the way to go. Mortgage field is better off targeting “mortgages”, “home loans” and so on. It all comes down to the industry. It is essential to get the keywords right, because SEO campaign will be worthless if the keywords targeted are wrong.

What keyword research tools do you use?

Number of companies offer keyword research platforms including major search engines.

• Google Tool – offers free, keyword research tool.
• Yahoo Search Marketing – offers keyword research for it’s pay per click subscribers.
• WordTracker – professional, subscription based service. Gathers data from a large network of smaller search engines. Also has a free tool.
• Keyword Discovery – professional, subscription based service. Gathers data from 180 small search engines, as well as 3.5 million toolbar users. Free tool.

The most effective keyword research comes from a combination of tools. As SEO professionals we conduct keyword research using all of these tools in an effort to source the most relevant, traffic rich terms for our clients.

What are critical SEO components?

Title Tags. It is crucial to include keywords within titles, as well to write compelling, interesting titles that draw visitors from search engines. Page titles are one of the most important on-page factors that affect search rankings.

Body Text. Search Engine Bots need to see and read your copy in order to analyze the keywords. Website does not stand a chance of being featured is search results if it cannot be crawled. This is why flash is bad in terms of SEO. Spiders do not see text within flash, so it is crucial to feature content accessible to spiders in HTML..

Domain Name. A good, old domain name containing one of your keywords increases the chances of being featured on the first page by 20-30%.

Website Elements. Elements such as image names, URLs, folders, file names, ALT tags – all play their part in the ranking process. It is best to look at them as essential pieces, where a separate piece does not have as much weight, but combined, they boost rankings quite a bit.

Links. There is no search visibility if there are no links. Links are the most important factors that affect search rankings. Not all links are equal.

Part 2