Search Engine Optimization

(source: planetoftunes.com)

There are 2 primary types of search technology systems:

  • Indexes
  • Directories

Search index

A search index comprises several elements:

  • A database of information about web sites and their content
  • Pro-active software, called spiders (or robots or bots), which searches out and retrieves information contained in web pages
  • Software algorithms which analyze, index and categorize the information the spiders retrieve, and "rank" it in an attempt to provide the most accurate and relevant results for a search
  • An interface (a Search Site) to search the database and display results in the form of brief descriptions and links

The most popular indexes are: www.google.com, www.yahoo.com and www.msn.com

Search directory

Search directories contain information about sites but not the actual content and information itself. They describe and categorize sites. These organizations and companies do not pro-actively find sites to index, they reply on site owners submitting their sites for consideration. People, not spiders, oversee entries in the directory. The important ones are:
Open Directory Project: www.dmoz.org and dir.yahoo.com.

Search sites

A Search Site provides a web interface to allow you to search a Search Technology System (an index or directory or both). Some Search Sites search the indexes and/or directories they own (such as www.google.com), while others are simply interfaces for searching another companies' or organization's index and/or directory.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

When someone enters phrases and keywords into a search box at a search site, an algorithm (computer program) finds related web pages in its index (or directory) and displays a list of them in what it thinks is the correct order of relevance, with the most relevant at the top of its search results page. Page ranking (or page weighting) is a measure of relevance, so higher ranked pages appear above lower ranked pages.

Approximately (depending on which statistics you read) 50% of first time visitors to a site find that site by using a search site, the other 50% know the URL and type it into their browser. Therefore, if a site builder/owner wants to generate the maximum traffic, they need their site to be ranked as high as possible by the Google's, Yahoos and MSN's indexes.

Search engine optimization is the process in which a web site builder will try to ensure that the web spiders sent out by search index sites feed information to their search site algorithm in such a way as to give the site builder's site a high ranking in search results for a given search phrase or collection of keywords.

How a site is ranked

A search index uses a number of criteria to rank a page or sites relevance to a given search, such as:

  • An exact match for a search phrase
  • Pages with words from the phrase close together
  • The context of the phrase in the text
  • Page titles with the phrase in them
  • The importance of the phrase in the context of a pages content
  • Quality and usefulness of content
  • The number and relevance of other sites that link to the site/page
  • How long the site/page has existed

Submitting your site

To find out what pages are already in an index (this works for Google, MSN and Yahoo), type "site:domain.com" (eg: "site:steveevans.com") into the search box. If your pages aren't there you can manually submit them. Remember, these are the only indexes that matter. Use these links:

www.google.com/addurl.html

siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit

www.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

Web site technologies - pros & cons

Technology SEO pros SEO cons
JavaScript navigation   Spiders can't read them, don't use them
Text in images   Spiders can't read them, don't use them without the Alt tag configured
Short text links   Spiders prefer unambiguous longer link text
Long text links Say what they are  
Dynamic pages   Spiders have trouble indexing them, may not index them at all, requires expert SEO skills to work around problems
Image maps   Spiders can't read them, don't use them without full text link alternatives
Frames   Spiders have problems with them, don't use them if your are concerned with SEO
(Page) Title tag Well written descriptive tags are important to search indexes. Try putting the page description before the site name  
Flash intros   Spiders can't read text in them, avoid, avoid, avoid!
Flash navigation   No no no no!
Flash elements Use them for appropriate non text information parts of your site, they should not be a substitute for text Remember spiders can't read text in them so be cautious
Text Indexes love well written relevant html text content  
<h1>, <h2> etc tags Important to indexes, use them in a logical manner to indicated hierachy of importance of content (not for styling) and make them straightforward and descriptive  
External CSS Leaves the markup uncluttered and semantic, use them  
Inline CSS   Clutters up the <head> tag unnecessarily, use external CSS
Meta tags Consider the use the <meta name="description" content= ...> and <meta name="keywords" content= ...> tags in the <head> tags of each page Not as important as some think they are
Java applet navigation   Be careful, they can create index problems
JavaScript elements   They create code clutter, use external linked JavaScript elements
Alt tag Short concise human readable URLs, descriptive like the page title are best  
URLs Make them as descriptive as possible  
Dynamically produced URLs   Avoid if possible
Text styling (bold, italic, case, lists etc) Spiders rank a words importance partly on its styling, so take advantage of this fact