Constructing Websites toward High Ranking Using Search Engine Optimization SEO Pre-Publishing Paper Jasour Obeidat 1 Dr. Raed Hanandeh 2 Master Student CIS PhD in E-Business Middle East University of Jordan jasour_2004@yahoo.com Middle East University of Jordan raedhanandeh@yahoo.com Abstract Search engine handle users to find what they want from billions of web pages spreader on the web. Web pages of high rank found from the first results showed to users. Users select from results and starts navigate web pages. Search engine companies competition concentrated on providing the accurate and relative web pages as an answer to their queries as short as possible period of time. Business companies started follow the fashion of taking from internet the target business environment. Therefore, these companies wish to have highly ranked web pages in order to catch customers. Search engine optimization represent techniques used to provide high ranks. This study concentrate on analyzing the architecture of search engines, and defining factors effects on ranking web pages. This analysis will take into consideration search engine optimization SEO as a technique handle web developers to publish speedy reachable website. Keywords: Search Engine, Search Engine Optimization SEO, Searching Algorithms, Web page Ranking. 1. INTRODUCTION Millions of users are accessing internet daily, managing many operations such as: adding, deleting, modifying, communicating, and sharing information through the web. The popularity of internet is increasing, and this leads for rapid increasing in the number of users. Because of this, internet creates a new channel for future business in the world; many customers, many facilities, and open market. By using internet as a business tool, this lead for reaching a lot of customers distributed over the world with minimum cost and time. 1
Companies found that running in this area will increase their volume of work, and improving their business quality. Because of this, they try to build their own websites, advertising their products and service. Hence, we found there are increasing in the total number of web pages developed and published over internet. So it is important to find a way to reach the needed data from the huge amount of web pages over the web; which was by using search engines. Search engine have become the key solution for millions of users around the world, to find what they want particularly as fast as possible. Search engine defined as a platform serving user needs through using specific searching algorithms. Many reasons behind opening the door for researchers to analyze the mechanisms of search engine; Search engine companies keeping their searching algorithms as a top secret, poor knowledge for detailed search engine optimization mechanisms, and unstable status of web pages over the internet in parallel with variable number of websites that is updated daily. In this paper, we describe the core operations running in search engines, the factors that have effects on ranking web pages, and the way of developing websites toward achieving high rank; using search engine optimization.(nursel Yalcin, Utku Kose, 2010) 2. INTERNET SEARCH ENGINE Search engine is an online system that is able to collect information from the web using specific type of scripts, then storing these information over specific type of database; to be managed and processed based on a certain type of strategies, in order to provide speedy responses for user's queries. Search engine contain five core components: Crawler, Indexer, Search Index, Query Engine, and Search Interface. Providing relevant and accurate results is the important properties of effective search engines. Nowadays, many search engines represented as a competitors in the area of information seeking, and these major search engines are: Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidue, and Yandex (Meng Cue, Songyun Hu, 2011) Data collected by search engine should cover these parts: Uniform Resource Locater (URL) of websites, any keywords handle to define the 2
content of a web page, and any links exist at web page. In the other hand, users should follow clear and easy steps, when they are willing to use search engines, and these steps are: Query formulation which depend on the submitted query that define user's goals, web page selection which defines the operation of choosing particular ranked results from search engine responses, and query modification which interrupts searching in order to edit query (Chen-Yuan Chen, Bih-Yaw Shih,2011). When users choose their search engine, they have to take into consideration these two factors, the first one related to the nature of search, whether it searches in World Wide Web (WWW) or the whole internet. The second one related to whether the search engine capable to balance between number of results, and the length of web page description. 2.1. SEARCH ENGINE ARCHITECTURE In this section, we discuss the architecture of search engine, by defining its basic components and the relationships between them. Figure 1 illustrates search engine architecture. Figure 1. Search Engine Architecture a. Search Index: this is the results of collecting information from the web. It represented as indexed data storage, contains information that is used by search engine for match and retrieves purposes. b. Indexer: this is the operations used for indexing search index database. 3
c. Query engine: it is responsible for providing the interface among search index, user, and the web. This component is responsible for retrieving relevant information that meets user needs from Search Index. In the other hand, it is responsible for ranking web pages. d. User Interface: this is the physical gate that provides user the ability to submit their queries and browse results. e. Crawler: script programs uses hyperlink database, and navigate through the web in order to collect any changes happened to web pages. These changes maybe adding new web pages, deleting existing web pages, or modifying the content of web pages. Figure 2 depicts the Crawler model and its main tasks. Figure 2. Crawler Model in Search Engines 3. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) Search engine optimization can be defined as a strategy used to promote websites in order to have a high rank (i.e. top search results). The idea behind this definition, that there is a correlation between the numbers of users visiting specific website (i.e. website traffic) and the services or products provided at that website. Therefore, researchers in this field use website traffic as a measure for search engine optimization (Chen-Yuan Chen, 2011). 4
Two types of search engine optimization used for improving website position. The first one called White Hat SEO that is responsible for improving website contents in order to increase website relevancy, which leads to an increasing visitors at that website. The second one called Black Hat SEO which is responsible for improving website ranking without affecting website quality (Ron Berman and Zsolt Katona, 2011). Search engine optimization is the way toward an acceptable website rank. Therefore, it is important to know the areas that are covered by ranking algorithms. Table 1 show the most important areas deals with ranking algorithms. Searching Area Procedures Effective Factors Text Based Matching Matching user's queries with Number of term web pages that fulfill query. occurrence in the text. Popularity Deals with documents, depend on the correlation between document qualities and its popularity. - The number of users access document. - The number of links to that document. Freshness Deals with the publications The actual publication or Locality Personalization date of web contents. By detecting users location in order to provide results that is correlated to user culture, language, and so on. Providing results depending on user behavior while navigating internet. refresh date. Freshness -Previously entered queries. - Previous reading time. - Previous selected results. - Locality. - Freshness. Table 1. Searching areas that have its impacts on ranking algorithm. 4. SEARCH ENGINE RANKING AND SEO In order to get a high ranked website using SEO, SEO can be viewed from three basic perspectives: content, technical, and social networking perspectives. From content perspective, it is important to concentrate on the images, and flash files embedded in the websites. From technical perspective, it is necessary to deal with proper architecture, and flexible framing inside webpages. From social networking perspective, it is a new 5
rising domain, should be taken into consideration especially the number of shares processed in websites in order to promote services or products. Figure 3 depicts these perspectives and its relationship with search engine optimization. Figure 3. Search Engine Optimization From its Perspectives. 4.1. Search Engine Optimization from Technical Perspective The hierarchy between website pages define the way that website can be loaded in the users side. The most flexible relationship between webpages, the most suitable website for search engine. Technical perspective deals with the physical structure of the website, besides the logical structure of the website. Directory management is one of them most important physical structure that has implications on the website view. In addition, the logical structure focus on the hyperlinks embedded in webpages texts in order to satisfy web navigation. SEO can deal from this perspective with Frame optimization, and webpage title optimization. By taking the advantages of framing web pages especially for large scale websites, frames increase the ability to make repetitive maintenance in an easy way. Also by adding frames it provides an aggregated display 6
mechanism for multiple web pages inside one page without reflecting it in the URL. Therefore, designing consistent frame in webpages provides a good optimization tool. Text nature that put in webpage titles plays a good role in search engine mechanism. Titles are processed in the search engine text analysis especially when keywords added to the title. 4.2. Search Engine Optimization from Content Perspective As a basic idea, search engines are not concerned to view images. Thus, texts are the most important component that search engines deal with. Images have bad implication while loading web pages since it is responsible for downshifting webpages. Therefore, trying to avoid embedding large volume images represents an important target. From another content side, flash files have big fatal problems. Because of the in-ability of search engine to identify flash files, and extract text data from it. Thus, avoiding embed flash file to webpages will enhance webpages ranking. Unfortunately, all of marketing advertisements uses flash files in order to promote their products and services, and this will have bad implication on website rank over the internet. 4.3. Search Engine Optimization from Social Networking Perspective The huge amount of users working over social websites creates a flexible environment between competitors. In order to, catch those users, and satisfy their needs without consuming the time. Modern e-marketing strategies encourage using micro-blogs in websites to share products, and services etc. Therefore, connectivity with micro-blog such as Facebook has good implication to website ranking, and increasing online traffic of website. According to Spearman's rank correlation coefficient of United States, to present the correlations between different factors and Google search results, figure 4 depicts these results of the year 2012. 7
Figure 4. Spearman Correlation Study of Google Search results.(search Metrics,2013) 5. CONCLUSION Website ranking is critical for any online business. Search Engine Optimization SEO provides some solutions to increase websites ranking. In this study, factors that affect website ranking were categorized to be viewed in three perspectives. Content, Technical, and Social networking are the perspectives proposed in this paper. By taking into consideration these perspectives, web designers will have good advices to build highly ranked website, and reduce the time to arrive to markets through applying them in building websites. 8
6. References Nursel Yalcin, Utku Kose, "What is search engine optimization:seo?", ElSEVIER, December 2010. Meng Cui, Songyun Hu, "Search Engine Optimization for Website Promotion", International Conference of Information Technology, Computer Engineering and Management Sciences, IEEE 2011. Chen-Yuan Chen, Bih-Yaw Shih, Zih-Siang Chen, and Tsung-Hao Chen,"The exploration of internet marketing strategy by search engine optimization: A critical review and comparison", African Journal of Business Management Vol.5 (12), pp.4644-4649, 18 June, 2011. Ron Berman and Zsolt Katona, "The Role of Search Engine Optimization in Search Marketing", January 22, 2011. Search Metrics Website, Google Ranking Factors U.S. 2012, http://www.searchmetrics.com/en/white-paper/google-ranking-factors-us- 2012/, 2012. 9