doc. RNDr. Tomáš Skopal, Ph.D. Department of Software Engineering, Faculty of Information Technology, Czech Technical University in Prague

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1 Praha & EU: Investujeme do vaší budoucnosti Evropský sociální fond course: Searching the Web and Multimedia Databases (BI-VWM) Tomáš Skopal, 2011 SS2010/11 doc. RNDr. Tomáš Skopal, Ph.D. Department of Software Engineering, Faculty of Information Technology, Czech Technical University in Prague

2 motivation long-term SEO creating web pages keyword generation & content creation page structure building links social media optimization unethical SEO T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 2

3 what about the web-page content? now we know the search technology (IR models + PageRank), but how to properly create a web page to be found by the engines? user point of view as opposed to the search engine technology we have discussed so far observe connections to information retrieval models and link analysis (see previous lectures) in the recipes that will follow Search Engine Optimization (SEO) a bit confusing name not an optimization of the search engine (algorithms), but optimization of web pages to be well-ranked by search engines T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 3

4 Q: Is it even important to perform SEO? when the search engines are responsible to discover the topic and relevancy of a web page? A: Yes, it is! there is extremely high competition on the Web billions of web pages the business marketing is moving to the Internet at a large scale search engine users query by only a few keywords high ranking (on the first page) by search engines is essential for business web pages T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 4

5 SEO = soft-skill methodology of creating web-pages basically web design techniques, but taking into account the technology of web search engines priority on ranking the web page, not GUI the thesis of SEO the content of web page that is good to human is not enough, it should be also good to the machine ethical issues ethical SEO augmenting the organic content of the web pages for long-term SEO effect unethical SEO aggressive manipulation just for immediate SEO effect SEO is regular business good page ranking = good visibility of the page to the customers = effective marketing of a business = = (possibly) successful business T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 5

6 search engines rank pages, not sites, so every single web page must be optimized the following entities deserve attention within a web page filenames <title> tag header tags <meta> tags text modifiers optimize images building internal links (outlinks) T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 6

a web page = single html/php/asp file use file names relevant to the web page content if search engines reveals that file name is not related to the web page content, it will decrease the rating note

7 a web page = single html/php/asp file use file names relevant to the web page content if search engines reveals that file name is not related to the web page content, it will decrease the rating note that filenames appear in the search-engines results hyphens are treated as spaces (separators) by search engines keep URLs as short as possible T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 7

text appearing in the search-engine results limit the title to at most 64 characters

8 most important information on the web page, the primary ranking factor for search engines should be a concise statement summarizing the main point also the clickable text appearing in the search-engine results limit the title to at most 64 characters (more doesn t show) T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 8

9 html headers play an important role in web page ranking <h1> is the most important, <h6> is the least important hence, the visual importance (h1 is largest font) is the same as the importance for search engines T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 9

the text defined inside tag <meta name= description content= text > is listed by the search engine not all engines, e.g., Google uses different method still used by ask.

10 the text defined inside tag <meta name= description content= text > is listed by the search engine not all engines, e.g., Google uses different method still used by ask.com, AltaVista, AllTheWeb and Teoma nowadays not very important to search engines for ranking purposes, but still important as method to deliver the message to search-engine users T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 10

meta tag keywords used mainly in the beginnings of search engines, not significant nowadays misused by keyword spammers meta tag robots used for controlling the web spiders,

11 meta tag keywords used mainly in the beginnings of search engines, not significant nowadays misused by keyword spammers meta tag robots used for controlling the web spiders, but nowadays replaced by file robots.txt (see later slides) still useful is you have not control over robots.txt T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 11

important keywords could be emphasized by

12 important keywords could be emphasized by tags <strong>, <em>, <b>, <i>, <u> again, as these tags make the text visually important, the search engines treat them important as well T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 12

using images in web pages increases the visual attractiveness of a web page however, search engines cannot read the content of images to make an image readable by search engine, you have to properly

13 using images in web pages increases the visual attractiveness of a web page however, search engines cannot read the content of images to make an image readable by search engine, you have to properly fill the alt image tags use keywords relevant just to the image, not to the whole page beware of using the alt tag for keyword spamming, as this would lead to a ranking penalty T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 13

create an internal structure of links, to allow spiders quickly navigate in your website use descriptive anchor text as search engines determine from

ones links within a block of text are more important than isolated ones create a menu on the top of each web page consisting of links to main categories

14 create an internal structure of links, to allow spiders quickly navigate in your website use descriptive anchor text as search engines determine from anchor text what is the web page about the link placement in the web page layout matters links at the top positions are more important than the bottom ones links within a block of text are more important than isolated ones create a menu on the top of each web page consisting of links to main categories do not use images as links the alt text is not used by search engines as the anchor text T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 14

keyword generation is the most important part of the SEO process involves all the text mentioned earlier (full-text as well as html tags) three steps analyze the potential impact of desired

15 keyword generation is the most important part of the SEO process involves all the text mentioned earlier (full-text as well as html tags) three steps analyze the potential impact of desired keywords web-based services for keyword analysis select the appropriate keywords put the selected keywords into right places T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 15

16 need to establish a proper mix of generic keywords (long tail/head terms) = one or two keywords e.g., racing could generate a lot of traffic, but are highly competitive specific keywords (tail terms) = two or three keywords e.g., old cars racing generate less traffic, but result in more targeted search T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 16

17 usage of head vs. tail keywords use highly competitive head keywords on your main page, as this will probably the most popular (needs lots of traffic) use less competitive head keywords and tail keywords on the subpages, quickly targeting the user to a specific topic focus on tail terms most pages should contain tail terms, because the chances to obtain good rating only with head terms is very low (head terms define a whole category or industry) repeatedly maintaining and observing impact of tail terms is a long-term SEO strategy (simply, be patient) T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 17

18 use web applications that help you to select the right keywords (valid on March 22, 2011) T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 18

19 find out the best-traffic sites for a certain keyword find out the best-traffic keywords for a certain site T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 19

20 see Ads, PPC (pay-perclick) keywords, organic (content) keywords, competitors T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 20

21 without organic content, any web page is useless make the content of web pages attractive write primarily for people not search engines use proper keyword density use latent semantics avoid duplicate content keep content current optimize non-html documents T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 21

22 writing for people is not in contradiction with writing for search engine the relevant content is what matters write natural, persuasive, original content avoid poor grammar, use friendly tone early consider multi-language site if your ambitions could grow beyond borders (English) write informative content, not a plenty of rubbish use bold-type headings use call-to-action statement (e.g., Sign Up Today) T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 22

23 repeat target keywords and do not repeat the nontarget keywords make sure you repeat one or two target keywords on each page, while not repeating nontarget keywords e.g., repeat information retrieval many times, but do not repeat internet requires a certain stylistic talent of the author observe the connection with vector model of information retrieval (see previous lectures) repeating target keywords boosts the document vector in the appropriate dimensions not repeating other keywords will not boosts the other dimensions in summary, for the cosine similarity the target keywords are the most significant try also T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 23

24 keep in mind that words have semantics and that some distinct words are related to each other because of context they share e.g., Obama is related to President and United States by using semantically related keywords, you can prevent penalization because of possible overoptimization detected by the search engine e.g., do not create inlinks/outlinks to/from your web page all with the same anchor text observe the connection with latent semantics indexing (extension of vector model, see previous lectures) T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 24

search engines penalize web pages that have duplicate content search engines avoid to index duplicate content does not matter if you web page is the original or the plagiarism (the search engine

25 search engines penalize web pages that have duplicate content search engines avoid to index duplicate content does not matter if you web page is the original or the plagiarism (the search engine cannot recognize origin and so penalizes both pages) hence, even if your content is original, somebody else could simply cut-and-paste it into another page try to eliminate duplicates T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 25

26 search engines favor web sites that have fresh content penalties for outdated pages and rewards fresh content the rate of updates indicates how the authors valuate their web page, hence, frequently updated pages are hot create pages containing user-generated content special cases are blogs and social networks (see later slides) make the content of your web pages user-generated to some extent provide testimonials, forum and review features at your web site subscribe by RSS to other relevant sources (blogs, news feeds) and (automatically) post the content but beware of the duplicate content T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 26

27 today s search engines index various non-html documents, like PDFs, MS Office, etc. if you use these documents on your web pages, optimize them as they would be web pages special attention should be given to the readability of the documents, e.g., make sure a PDF s pages are not bitmaps, but machine-readable text some engines index only first few pages of PDFs, so avoid long documents T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 27

28 design of website sitemap & robots.txt files company information & privacy policy.htaccess file T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 28

choose suitable domain name make it short and easily recognizable build your website around thematic structure establish a hierarchy of links link from the main page to subcategories do not link

29 choose suitable domain name make it short and easily recognizable build your website around thematic structure establish a hierarchy of links link from the main page to subcategories do not link directly from main page to a leaf in the site hierarchy link just to thematically tightly related page avoid broken links and error messages T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 29

sitemap a file (html/php/xml) that helps navigate robots over your site should follow the hierarchy of website, but is more concise try www.xml-sitemaps.com robots.

30 sitemap a file (html/php/xml) that helps navigate robots over your site should follow the hierarchy of website, but is more concise try robots.txt provides the search-engine s spiders with information about which pages should be crawled/indexed and which not placed in the root directory of a Web server (e.g., Apache) allows to control crawling multimedia (saving bandwidth) and copyrighted information T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 30

having a company information page in your web site helps in increasing the ranking increases the credibility of the site to users but also to engines engines may favor sites with such page and

31 having a company information page in your web site helps in increasing the ranking increases the credibility of the site to users but also to engines engines may favor sites with such page and penalize otherwise spammers usually don t provide pages with company info having a privacy policy page is a good practice privacy policy page clearly states the ways of processing any information that users enter into that site similar to the previous case do not copy a general privacy policy from another web site, make your own T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 31

32 .htaccess file allows to control the functionality of Apache server, and could be used multiple times in the web site hierarchy (and also for the entire server) multiple uses password-protecting directories banning visitors (bots) from certain sources e.g., spamming engines preventing bandwidth from image linkers try T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 32

33 evaluate potential linking partners acquire quality links request on-way links community participation social media optimization buy links T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 33

34 evaluate domains that you want to acquire a link from Google treats older domains with more respect try try to obtain links from.edu and.gov sites search engines know that these sites are much less likely to link to low-quality web pages (like.com or.net do) if you cannot obtain a direct link from.gov,.edu, try to obtain a link from another site that is pointed by.gov,.edu make sure that the prospective linking pages have original and relevant content to your pages subject try to focus on pages that are already authorities (ranking well) for the keywords you are targeting acquire links from high-traffic pages (use T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 34

focus on finding a few high-quality links instead of a lot of low-quality ones one quality link could be better than hundreds of low-quality observe the connection to PageRank (see previous lecture)

35 focus on finding a few high-quality links instead of a lot of low-quality ones one quality link could be better than hundreds of low-quality observe the connection to PageRank (see previous lecture) check PageRank of the prospective linking pages use a link directory and put links to your web page e.g., use an article directory and write articles containing links to your web pages e.g., T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 35

spend the major efforts of your link-building activity to requesting one-way links (i.e., no reciprocity) an old-fashion way use an email/phone to the web site owner you like to link from try to

36 spend the major efforts of your link-building activity to requesting one-way links (i.e., no reciprocity) an old-fashion way use an /phone to the web site owner you like to link from try to develop a conversation, which could lead to partnership (not just one link) most difficult and time-consuming way, but highly effective, as those pages are hand-picked by you (highly relevant) make sure the anchor text on the linking page is relevant search for relevant pages using a search engine then try that lists many web sites whose owners do not sell backlinks, so they could make it for free T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 36

participate in online communities like blogs, forums commenting blog/forum posts (including links to your web page) is a very good source of obtaining quality backlinks as communities are moderated,

37 participate in online communities like blogs, forums commenting blog/forum posts (including links to your web page) is a very good source of obtaining quality backlinks as communities are moderated, beware of spamming, post useful comments look for blogs/forums that have PageRank over 4 and are thematically related to your web site to find keyword-relevant blogs, try or T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 37

social media optimization (SMO) is a large subpart of SEO, as social networks dominate the Web SMO focuses on generating traffic by participation in various social media Web sites allows to build a

38 social media optimization (SMO) is a large subpart of SEO, as social networks dominate the Web SMO focuses on generating traffic by participation in various social media Web sites allows to build a large contact list of fans/supporters that can help spread the word about your web site social network provide platforms for other to vote on your content create fan page on FaceBook network with FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn sharing original and fun videos on youtube.com can attract many visitors to your websites T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 38

last but not least, buy backlinks from the most respected and strategic web sites the whole SEO process will cost you a lot of money (it is a process that requires labor, not an open-source SW), so

39 last but not least, buy backlinks from the most respected and strategic web sites the whole SEO process will cost you a lot of money (it is a process that requires labor, not an open-source SW), so don t be restricted to free services use link broker networks, like individual link-placement fees are prepaid on a monthly basis, ranging from $10 to $1000 per Web site an advantage is that you can choose the anchor text however, be careful in choosing a link broker Google criticizes the practice of buying links and labels them as spam on the other hand, major SEO companies still use link buying as a very effective SEO practice T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 39

40 Google analytics is a free analytics solution to give you a complete view on activity on your site (ww.google.com/analytics) such a solution is important in the long-term SEO process, as you can observe which tricks work and which do not besides creating account on Google, you need to install tracking code into all pages of your site then, begin to use the Analytics Reports T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 40

41 A free set of tools for monitoring various SEO aspects of a site search queries links to your site keywords importance (as viewed by Google) crawling errors submission of sitemap files HTML suggestions T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 41

42 T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 42

43 ethical SEO costs money, takes time, and still does not guarantee ranking of your web on the search engine s first page the effect comes slowly and (paid) human labor is required unethical SEO activities could be recognized by offering guaranteed and fast results this could be done just by massive spamming and other adjustments that manipulate the web page content they use automated tools instead of human labor short-term effect the engines are likely to discover such odd behavior and penalize or even ban the page T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 43

44 misusing the meta tags for spamming keywords invisible text/headers for spamming keywords software for mass-submits of your web page links to thousands of online quest books, forums, blogs, directories, etc. today s search engines are sophisticated enough to recognize organic links vs. spammed ones link farms connection to link analysis (graphs) TrustRank by Yahoo used to semi-automatically separate useful web pages from spam T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 44

45 K. B. Jones, Search engine optimization, Wiley, 2010 A. N. Langville, C. D. Meyer, Google s PageRank and Beyond, Princeton University Press, 2006 T. Skopal (FIT CTU) Search engine optimization (BI-VWM, Lect. 5) 45

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