Aurélie Gandour, Amanda Regolini Cemagref Grenoble

Search Engine Optimization of a Forest Fragmentation Content Management System: Example of the Fragfornet

Website

Aurélie Gandour, Amanda Regolini

Cemagref Grenoble

Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011

2 Euraslic 14 – Lyon, France – 05/18/2011

Summary

• FragForNet: A Forest Fragmentation Network

• Search Engine Optimization:

What Search Engine to take into account?

Definition of a keywords’ pool

How to do an In Page Optimization?

• Unwinding of FragForNet’s SEO

• Results of FragForNet’s SEO

Google positionning

Keywords used by visitors

Website’s traffic

• Conclusion


Fragmentation Forest Network

Researchers

Information Professional

Portal + Mailing List

Decision-makers

Socio-economical actors

FragForNet : A Forest Fragmentation Network



http://fragfornet.grenoble.cemagref.fr



• Goal: touching a larger audience

• What to do? Gaining a better position for selected keywords onsearch engines pages of results

• How to do it? Search Engine Optimization (SEO)


SEO: What search engine to take into account?

( http://gs.statcounter.com/ )


SEO: definition of a keywords’ pool

• Establish a wide list of potential keywords and expressions

• Analyze those keywords potential by grading them:

• Keep the keywords with the highest marks and build the website’s indexing strategy on this pool

Interest Feasibility

Average number of monthly requests Mark Number of found results Mark

0 - 1 000 0 0 - 1 000 000 20

1 000 - 10 000 5 1 000 000 - 10 000 000 15

10 000 - 50 000 10 10 000 000 - 50 000 000 10

50 000 - 100 000 15 50 000 000 - 100 000 000 5

100 000 and above 20 100 000 000 and above 0


SEO: In Page Optimization

• Goal: optimizing pages of the site on keywords of the pool by placing them on strategical spots

• Where to place keywords for a maximum impact:

<title> tags

As high as possible within the HTML code

Structure : [Content] – [Rubric] – [Site’s name]

Containing 5 to 10 descriptive words

The page’s title shall match the editorial title



Visible text

« Content is King »

Each page must contain at least 100 words

Important keywords at the beginning

Underlining keywords for more weight (in title tags <hn>, <strong> tags, or links <a>)

A keyword density between 2 and 5%



URL

Possess your own domain name

The older, the better

Important keywords in the URL

No accentuated character

Lower cases only



Meta tags

Meta description tag: can be used by Google as an abstract of the page but no optimization utility

Meta keywords tag: not taken into account anymore by search engines

« Lang » option: useful only if metatags are filled in

Attributes of the IMG tag

ALT: taken into account by Google only


Unwinding of Fragfornet’s SEO (year 2010)

• January – February: preliminary study and creation of the keywords’ pool

• May – June: in page optimization of the website

• June: first results; intense following of the SEO’s immediate consequences

• Follow up:

- at the beginning of each month, data recollection and production of a short report- to maintain a good positioning, the updates of the website have increased from 1 each month to 2 or 3 each week.


Results of FFN’s SEO: Google positioning

• Observation: FragForNet’s position within Google’s results pages for simple searches based on the keywords’ pool

• Results:

Fragfornet stayed invisibled for many keywords (not in the first 100 results)

Fragfornet’s position varies greatly under the impulse of news updates

It is essential to update the site very regularly to maintain its Google ranking


Results of FFN’s SEO: Keywords used by visitors

• Observation: lists of the keywords used in search engines by FFN visitors to access our website

• Results:

Top keywords = generic words for which FFN stayed invisble on Google (« biodiversity », « fragmentation », « ecology », etc.)

Those keywords are used in more complex request (like « Brazil biodiversity loss » or « koala landscape fragmentation »)

The pool’s keywords use in such requests has doubled after the site’s optimization and is now stable around 6% of the keywords used to reach our website


Results of FFN’s SEO: Keywords used by visitors

% of relevant keywords within the keywords used by visitors to access Fragfornet

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

jan-10 june-10 july-10 aug-10 sept-10 oct-10 nov-10 dec-10 jan-11 feb-11 mar-11 apr-11


Results of FFN’s SEO: Site’s traffic

• Observation: Number of different visitors by month

• Results:

The website’s traffic has always varied a lot, according to the period of the year or the events to which FFN’s members participate

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

Nov

-07

Jan-

08

Mar

-08

May

-08

Jul-0

8

Sep

-08

Nov

-08

Jan-

09

Mar

-09

May

-09

Jul-0

9

Sep

-09

Nov

-09

Jan-

10

Mar

-10

May

-10

Jul-1

0

Sep

-10

Nov

-10

Jan-

11

Mar

-11

Number of different visitors by month since Fragfornet's website launch


Results of FFN’s SEO: Google positioning

Nevertheless, if we compare the traffic for a same month over the years, we observe that the optimization of the website benefited the network with an increase in its traffic

Evolution of Fragfornet's traffic, functions of month and year

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

1000

2008 2009 2010

Nu

mb

er o

f d

iffe

ren

t vi

sito

rs

july august september


Conclusion

• SEO shall be incorporated at the very beginning of website’s project planning

• SEO is meant to be an uninterrupted, long-term work, lasting the whole life of the website

• Optimization follow-up, what to do?

Continue to gather data like presented above to better evaluate and anticipate FFN’s needs in optimization

Update very regularly the site to maintain its attractiveness

Consider an optimization on « off-page » criterions (quantity and quality of the external links leading to our site)


Thank you for your attention…

Aurélie Gandour, Amanda Regolini Cemagref Grenoble

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