Transcript /~syedm/coms463f03/extrapoint/SearchEngine.ppt

Search Engine
Optimization
By
Tom Fallenstein
Introduction
Why you want high rankings
 Keywords
 Tools to help choose keywords
 Cost, Types of Search Engines
 Ways to Improve Ranking
1. Titles
2. Meta Tags
3. Alt Tags
4. Body Text
5. Keyword Density

Introductions to Search Engines
Search engines are one of the best advertising tools on the
internet and most cost effective, but in order for them to
be useful, a good ranking is crucial.
Close to 90% of internet users find sites through search
engines, like Yahoo, Google, and MSN, and when
seraching 92% of people will click on one of the top ten
results. This is why it is so important to get a high
ranking on search engines.
Keywords
Keywords are the first thing to think about when trying to
improve search engine ranking.
Keywords are the words or phrases you think your
customer will search for.
Example Keywords for my Flapper Costumes.com site
flapper
costume
costumes
flapper dress
1920’s
fashion
style
halloween costume
picture
photo
era
roaring 20’s
flappers
gangster
roaring 20s
1920s
clothing
There are a couple of sites that help you find related keywords or how many
people are searching for certain words.
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ and
http://www.wordtracker.com
Types of Search Engines
Pay Per Clicks (Overture, Find What)
Directories (Open Directory Project, DMOZ)
Engines (Google, Lycos, Altavista, etc)
Yahoo, and MSN are a mix of Directories and Engines
Many Search Engines integrate other engines into their searches.
(Ex. Yahoo uses Yahoo, Google and Overture for results)
(and Google looks for DMOZ listing for better ranking)
This is why it is important to be in as many search engines and rank
well in all of them.
And while Yahoo and other you have to pay to be included you can cut
around that by ranking well in Google.
Show how Yahoo uses google and overture
Titles
The easiest and quickest way to improve listings in a
search engine is to have a short descriptive title which
uses your keywords
Titles are the first thing people see when searching,
weather it’s a company name or just a brief description.
Make sure to use keywords within the title, and try to keep
it around 3-5 words.
Meta Tags
The second thing most search engines look at is the
description of the website, this is commonly kept in what
is called a meta tag.
A meta tag is hidden code at the top of a site.
Meta tags look like this
<meta name=“description” content=“your description”>
<meta name=“keywords” content=“your keywords”>
Show flapper costumes meta tags
Alt Tags
Another helpful way to get good rankings is to use alt tags.
An alt tag is hidden code that goes after the code to an
image and looks like this:
<img scr=“image.jpg” alt=“flapper costume”>
Every image should have an alt tag, because search
engines can only read text, this is a way to describe
what an image is to a search engine.
Keywords in body text
Keywords within the body text of the site can be
just as important as anywhere else.
Search Engines search from the top left to the
bottom right. So the most important keywords
should be towards the top of your page.
Linkable Keywords
Along with keywords in the body of the text, keywords
should also be used in links. Because they are relevant
to search engines.
But try to stick mainly with the links to your other pages of
your site. After doing all of this work to get your
customer or person to your site, you don’t want to give
them an easy link to leave.
Keyword Density
Search engines look how often a word or phrase is
repeated within a site, this is called keyword density.
A common keyword density is 3%-7%. That means
around 3% of the words on the example site would be
the word “flapper”
Conclusion
Use all of these tips on all of the pages, not just the index
page. Search engines link to every page of your site, so
users can come to any page.
Use all or as many of these tips on all of your pages in your
site to improve your search engine ranking
And don’t forget to submit your site to as many search
engines as possible, almost all search engines have a
“submit site” or “add url” page on there site.
Because I use these tips in the flapper costumes.com site,
I rank in the top ten in 6 of the biggest search engines,
and I get over 400 unique visiters per day.