Search Engine Optimization

Improving Web Traffic & Page Rank

Amit Solankihttp://amitsolanki.com

Why do we need SEO

Higher ranking in search engine result pages (SERPs) increases site traffic

increases perceived relevance increases trust

increases conversion rates

Definition

“Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via ‘natural’ (‘organic’ or ‘algorithmic’) search results.”

Target Audience

Humans Search Engines

Page Titles

DOS

keep it short (only 40-60 characters displayed by search engines)

include your keywords

include your name/company name

unique titles for each page

DON’T

assume slogan does the job

e x c e s s i v e r e p e t i t i o n o f keywords

duplicate site navigation

Your Domain/Url

contain relevant keywordsE.g. go for property.com instead of xyz.com unless xyz is famous

plain english and smart urlE.g. property.com => delhiproperties.com

focus target locationE.g. delhiproperties.in

Inbound Links

a site without inbound relevant links is a dead site !!! link your site from other sites

referral links need to be non-reciprocal

do not get into exchange links may be penalized by search engines

sites linking to your site google with link:yourdomain

Whois Record

Do not hide your whois record search engines may ignore if registrant details can’t be seen

Google Page Rank(PR)

wait time ~ 3-6 months rank between 1- 6 out of 10 10/10 excellent - very rare

Holding Page

recommended during planning and building relevant data with suitable content inbound links reduces wait time to increase google PR

Meta Tags

Important in cases where no html, all flash based sites

searches your site using your url not keywords when off page factors make your site relevant match for a

search but no exact match is found on your site’s text less sophisticated search engines use description tag as a

workaround for their inability to display snippets

search engines display about 150 chars. in description listing - lot of space

Meta Tags

hidden tag keep it informative pair it with page title - don’t repeat include your keywords - don’t overdo make it unique - similar to page titles

Meta Tags

four valid attributes content - only required attributes http-equiv name scheme

Examples<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html" />

<meta name="keywords" content="villa,plots,flats" />

<meta name="description" content="A place to buy/sell/rent all types of residential and commercial properties" />

<meta name="robots" content="nofollow" />

Category/Product URLs

Sensible inner page urls

E.g. delhiproperties.in/property123.html ✗

delhiproperties.in/residential/3bhk-flat-at-patel-nagar.html ✓

Other SEO Strategies

swap out less-effective generic terms for keywords on a case-by-case basis

make sure your company name exists in text form once on every page

include keywords in links wherever possible add keyword-rich captions to photos add a keyword-rich tagline at the bottom of the page add keywords to page headers

Robotsaka bot, webbot, crawler, spider

Robot Walkthrough

Reasons why robot may not index your page can’t follow links created by fancy drop down, JS

use text links on all pages to connect to home/landing page

no standalone landing page built in flash on iframe

too much info asked from visitors eliminate excessive requirements such as cookies robots doesn’t have javascript

Robot Walkthrough

Reasons why robot may not index your page server outage interrupted indexing

get a reliable host and setup monitoring services

site is too big robots do not index all pages add links not more than two clicks away from homepage

meta tag to keep away bots <meta name="robots" content="noindex" />

site penalized for violating search engine guidelines

Robots Exclusion Standard

Also known as Robots Exclusion Protocol or robots.txt protocol allows all robots to visit all files

User-agent: *

Disallow:

specific robot to keep out of a directoryUser-agent: BadBot

Allow: /profiles/default.html

Disallow: /profiles/

Crawl-delay: 10

Sitemap: http://delhiproperties.in/news/sitemap_index.xml

References

Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day, 2nd Edition, Wiley Publishing, Inc

http://www.webstore.co.uk/document.aspx?id=GoogleTips.htm

Thanks

Amit Solankiamitkssolanki@gmail.com