Search Engine Secrets: Build a Search-Engine Friendly Web Site Samsunshine Levy

Thursday, April 12, 2007

NMIPA - Search Engine Secrets: Build a Search-Engine Friendly Web Site

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Search Engine Secrets: Build a Search-Engine Friendly Web Site

Samsunshine Levy

www.thenetcave.com



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Search Engines – Who Needs ‘em?

• Ever heard of these…



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If you do this…



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You can get this



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Great!

• Where do I sign?

• How much do I pay?

• Who do I trust?

• How is it done?



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The Secret Questions

1. Who Wants You?

2. What To Cultivate?

3. When To Change?

4. Where Does It All Go?

5. Why No No-Nos?

6. How is Your House Built?



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Who Wants You?

• You want people…

• But Who Wants You?

• You want people who:– need you; but – don’t yet know that you exist

(Yes, that would be new customer acquisition)

(Don’t use jargon in a presentation)



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Keyword Research

• Wordtracker : www.wordtracker.com– Free Trial (unlimited uses)– Uses MSN daily data

• Google Adwords adwords.google.com– Pretend to want to sign up as a new

advertiser, and research keywords for your campaigns

Non-Targeted Marketing:



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ROI, KEI, SEO & KWP

(Don’t use acronyms in PowerPoint presentations)

• To target a niche market, and achieve best SEO potential:– Maximize Searches &– Minimize Competition

• Content of site will address normal, more competive keywords and keyword phrases

• Narrow down to 15-20 w/ best potential



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What To Cultivate?

Factors to raising your search engine rankings and relevancy are:

• Useful TITLE & META tags on each page

• Keyword-rich, sole-source, expanding, plain HTML textual content

• Footer, Site Map & Linked Text

• Longevity of site & domain name

Plus…



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Search Engine Friendly URLs

• Happy • Unhappy

www.greatskin.com/loccitane/shaving-cream.htmlwww.nmipa.org/members/join

Query Strings / database generated pages:www.skin.com/store/pr.asp?cID=42B&pID=6x5Q&14=z

Unfriendly Spaces:www.skin.com/online%40store/my_great_product.html

Abbreviated or too-long pages/directories:www.skin.com/s/c/d/g/areallygreatpagetolookatnowforyou.htm

Domain Parks:www.skin.com / www.myskin.com / skin.com / myskin.com



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If you have unhappy URLs

• Subdirectories are nice

• Hyphens for spaces, 25 chars

• 301 redirects on domains

• Map old pages to new pages with– Symbolic links– URL rewriting (mod_rewrite)

• XML / RSS feeds

• GoogleBase / Product data feeds

One more thing to cultivate…



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Inbound Links

• Keyword-rich

• Textual

• To authorized domain

• Deep-Linking OK

• Accompanying description

• Reciprocate

• Only from “respected” sites

• Check originating domain



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When To Change?

Change What?

Change The King!

Do You Know The King?



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When To - Be The King

• The C Word

(and linking is Queen)

• Nothing rankshigher at Search Enginesthan a lot of contentabout a term thatsomeone issearching for



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With Content, Just Like With:

• Health

• Wealth

• Happiness

• Hedonism

• Time

• Brains

• Brawn



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More (and more often)

Is Always Better



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When Writing, who are you writing for?

• Primarily Humans, not search engines– Who are the search engines working for?

• Use keywords (more to come)

• Keep pages a minimum length

• Use tools to make it readable– Lists, columns, headers

• Write about what you do– Related terms will come up naturally,

and in context



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Unhappy Content

• Petrogroup?



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Happy Content

• Joan?



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OK, So back to the Question

Q: When To Change (content)?A: As often as you can

Frequent new content additions:

• Create visitor “stickiness”

• Make search engines happy

• Creates valuable depth of content



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Deep Content

• KF articles?



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Frequent Content

• BB nls



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And Now…

• For the slide you’ve all been waiting for



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But First

• A word from our sponsor?

• A dance break?

• Cowgirl ribs?

• More caffeine?



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Make It Easy with CMS

A Content Management System (CMS):

• Let’s you add, edit and delete pages without special knowledge

• Can automatically create META tags

• Can automatically update site maps

• Is built to be fool-proof

• Can auto-create SEO friendly URLs

• Auto-adjusts site-wide navigation



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CMS

• SFB t3



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And Now, Really…

• For the slide you’ve all been waiting for



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Where Does It All Go? 3 Rules of 3

• Choose about 6-8 main, friendly-URL pages

• Choose 3 unique keywords/phrases to use on each page

• Use each phrase 3 times in the page

• Have at least 250 (normal HTML text) words on each page

• Use the 3 terms in TITLE and META tags

• Link from footer and site map



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Example Optimized Content

• HG – 3 terms are



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Example - Content



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Example - Tags

• HG – Title & META



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Keep In Mind

• Use “reasonably-natural” language– You will enjoy our unique, authentic Adobe

homes and the finest in vacation rentals, especially southwestern homes, in New Mexico.

– Real Estate New Mexico vacation rentals Santa Fe shown on website with villas for rent. Santa Fe New Mexico rental properties and New Mexico Real Estate.



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Also Keep In Mind

• Human usability and readability are still the most important:– Bulleted lists– Fixed width text columns– Section headers– Easily readable paragraphs



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Why No No-Nos?

What Not To Do

- or –

How to quickly and easily get blacklisted by search engines



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Black Hat SEO

• Keyword Stuffing

• Invisible Text

• Doorway Pages

• Non-linked Pages

• Cloaking (Browser detection)

• Scraping

• META REFRESH or off-site Redirects



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How Is Your House Built?

No-No Tools & Technology(if you want to be found in search engines or linked to from anywhere)

• Flash Animation (Intros or Whole Site)– Alternative: Use Flash as an accent

• Frames or iFrames– Alternative: Use CSS

• Non-text Text (Flash or images)• Javascript or DHTML drop-down menus

– Alternative: Use CSS nested list drop-downs



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CSS Frame Function

• KF FF page



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CSS Nested List Drop Down

• SFB screenshot



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Good Tools For House Building

• Use URL Rewriting for important or content-rich pages of database generated sites

• Also use XML / RSS Feeds

• For ecommerce sites, send product datafeeds to GoogleBase– And consider Amazon merchant or your own

affiliate program – but that’s another show



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Example XML / RSS feed

• NMCN Calendar



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GoogleBase Example

• KFM screenshot and GoogleBase Listing



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In addition to 3 keywords

Title Tag Guidelines• Use a short page title (in addition to keywords)• Limit to 65 characters

META Description Tag Guidelines (Honest 90s)• some search engines display in results• Limit to 25 words

META Keyword Tag Guidelines (why not)• Do not repeat words• Limit to 10-12 words



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Titles and Tags Example

• Keli E B-B one page



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Footer and Site Map

• Replicate page titles as linked pages in site-wide footer (Server Side Includes)

• Link to a Site Map page in Footer

• Do not use Google’s Site Map creator

• The Site Map page should replicate the titles, linked to pages, with the META descriptions next to the titles



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Footer Example

• HG screenshot



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Site Map Example

• HG



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Bonus Points

Beyond plain content, title and META tags, you should also use these techniques within site content:

• Use HTML header (h1, h2, h3…) tags

• In-page cross-linked text (link to other site pages, especially where descriptive text appears)

• Bold (b, strong) may be given some extra weight when used judiciously



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Bonus Points Example

• A new KF page



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In Review

PREPARE

• Research Keyword Rankings & Relevancy. Choose 15-20 of the best

• Assign 3 keywords to each of 6 pages, then write 250+ words each page

• Use the copy for title and meta tags for a persistent footer and site map



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In Review

BUILD

• Cultivate inbound textual links, preferably using your chosen keywords

• Content is King. More, better, often, CMS

• TITLE and META tags, linked text throughout, maybe bold/strong



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In Review

CHECK

• No Flash. No non-HTML text. No Frames. No Javascript or DHTML menus

• Friendly URLs, URL rewriting and no lost and found visitors

• XML / RSS / GoogleBase / Data Feeds (and podcasts, video and Web 2.0 – but that’s also another show)



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Search Engine Secrets: Build a Search-Engine Friendly Web Site

Samsunshine Levy

www.thenetcave.com

Search Engine Secrets: Build a Search-Engine Friendly Web Site Samsunshine Levy

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