Search Engines

How American consumers found Web sites
to research purchases:

(from Doubleclick, March 2003)
Source: eMarketer

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Checklist

Plan SEO BEFORE you or your web designer builds your web site.
(Ask your web designer what sites they've built appear on the first page of Google and how they got them there.)
Use text links with corresponding keywords. (Keyword: the word or phrase that someone types in the search engine to find you. Also keyphrase.) On this same page, you'll see that the link to the windsurfing page is called "Windsurfing Lessons."
Name your files with corresponding keywords. For example, on www.hoodriverwaterplay.com, the page for windsurfing lessons is named windsurfing_lessons.htm. http://www.hoodriverwaterplay.com/windsurfing_lessons.htm
Page titles should include the corresponding keywords. For example on this same page you'll see the page title at the very top of your browser. "Windsrufing Lessons at Hood River WaterPlay"
Each page should have a heading formatted with a H1 tag. On this same page, the heading at the top of the page," Windsurfing Lessons For All Ages & Abilities!" is formatted wtih a H1 tag (Heading 1 tag) that tells Google that this is a heading. This keyword-rich heading is weighed more heavily than if it was formatted as a paragraph with a big, bold, red font.
Provide lots of information with the relevant keywords used appropriately. (Don't repeat keywords too much. That's a trick that will backfire. The search engines are smart.)
Work at getting other sites to link to you.
Provide engaging information that keeps people on your site and stops them from clicking the Back button on their browser.
Get your site listed in the search engines by asking someone to put a link to your site on their site. Don't use submission services that promise to submit your site to "over 400 search engines." A simple link to your site from another site that's been around for a while and shows up int he search engines is the more effective and easiest way to get your web site listed in all search engines.
Be very wary of sales pitches that make incredible promises. (We can get you #1 position in Google...) Be very ware of these.

I highly recommend the above book and newsletter. It's updated monthly through an on-line subscription.

Getting ranked high up on the search engines involves setting up multiple "entry pages" for each of the top 10 search engines for each keyword. The process is an adage to the saying, "You get out of it what you put into it." There are no shortcuts. I recommend reviewing your placement in the top 10 search engines monthly and then tweaking your keyword density and placement accordingly. Unfortunately, search engines re-index sites only every 30-90 days. So it's a slow process.

Also...

Search Engine Watch
This site belongs to search engine expert Danny Sullivan and
is packed full of the most recent search engine developments.
http://www.searchenginewatch.com

Search Engine Guide
This site provides a wealth of information and articles
about all aspects of search engines. Weekly and daily
newsletters are offered, which compile updates and
information from across the industry.
http://www.searchengineguide.com

http://www.wordtracker.com/

Through a series of simple steps, Wordtracker shows you which are the best keywords to use for the pages on your site.

Wordtracker's suggestions are based on over 300 million keywords and phrases that people have used over the previous 90 days. (In other words, there is no "guessing" when you use Wordtracker. Everything is based on the keywords millions of people have actually typed into search engines.)

Best of all, our competitive analysis tool enables you to find those "best keywords" - the ones your potential customers use, but which your competitors don't know about.

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com is a free site where you can try out Wordtracker

Media Metrix
Search Engine Ratings
By Danny Sullivan
Editor, SearchEngineWatch.com
Oct. 12, 2000

http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/mediametrix.html

KEY: YH=Yahoo, MSN=MSN, AOL=AOL, LY=Lycos, GO=Go (Infoseek), NS=Netscape,
EX=Excite, AV=AltaVista, LS=LookSmart, iWN=iWon, NBC=NBCi (Snap),
AJ=Ask Jeeves, GT=GoTo, GG=Google, G2N=Go2Net, DP=DogPile, DH=Direct Hit
MC=MetaCrawler, MM=Mamma, NL=Northern Light.

Submitting your site

The best way to submit your site to the search engines is to put a link to your site from a site that's been around for a while and is indexed by all the major search engines. Next time the search engines visit that site, they'll follow the link to your site. Then you're all set.

You can manually submit to all the search engines, but it won't speed things up at all. And definitely beware of any spam that tells you they'll submit your site for you. At best these companies will waste your money. At worst, these companies may get you blacklisted.

Graphics vs. Text for Hyperlinks

See http://www.your-shopper.com/. This is an excellent example of a site that uses graphic links, but also adds text links at the bottom. Search engines much prefer to follow text links.

Also http://tlc.ousd.k12.ca.us/~acody/cartoonlaws.html

www.miterbox.com is a great example of a site that is "search engine proof."

While the significance of portals in driving traffic may be waning, ActivMedia found that small-budget online marketers (with annual promotional budgets averaging less than $5000 per year), continue to rate search-engine positioning as the most effective site promotion technique:

Site Promotional Method	Rated Excellent/Very Good
Search engine positioning	66%
E-mail	54
Brochures	42
Catalogs (Print)	40
Tradeshows	37

Source: Sep. 1999 ActivMedia Research LLC

Meta Tags

http://www.searchenginehelp.com

Table Trick

Table trick

Class Exercise:

The point of this exercise is to learn how to count keywords, both visible and not visible.

Find a competitive web-site that ranks well in a major search engine. Try www.google.com if you like.
Select All (Ctrl A) and Copy it (Ctrl C)
Paste this into a blank Word document.
Do a search and replace for a keyword replacing it with itself. This counts the number of occurrences of this word.
Go back to the web-page in your browser.
Click on "View" and then "Source" and Select All (Ctrl A) and Copy it (Ctrl C)
Paste the source (Ctrl V) into a blank Word document
Do a search and replace for the same keyword as above and see if the count is the same.