Natural Search Engine Optimization Chapter 1

"We're number one!"

That's the dream of site owners everywhere as they seek to attain the highest search engine rankings for their sites. It's the Web's equivalent of having the best storefront location. The process of attaining those high rankings is called search engine optimization (SEO).

The SEO process consists of two main components: on-site optimization and off-site optimization. On-site SEO focuses on three objectives: keyword-optimizing your content, effective content creation, and strategic cross-linking. Off-site SEO focuses on maximizing the number and popularity of inbound links with keywords that match your particular subject.

In the past, on-site optimization was enough to boost your website rankings. But the abuse of some meta tags and other SEO shenanigans such as invisible text and keyword stuffing(1) have forced search engines to weigh external factors, such as inbound links, more heavily than on-site optimization.

So, how do you achieve your SEO dream now? Today's successful SEO strategy requires a long-term approach with frequent postings, targeted content, and regular online promotion designed to boost inbound links - in short, a combination of off-site and on-site SEO.

The Benefits of SEO

The benefits of high rankings are many. The chapter briefly documents the effects of high rankings on sites including higher conversion rates, higher traffic, and higher perceived credibility. Studies have shown that most people only look at the first few pages of results, with about 75% only looking at the first SERP (Search Engine Result Page).

Best and Worst SEO Practices

The chapter goes on to briefly outline some common barriers that harm the rankings of websites, and some solutions. The bulk of the chapter shows the top 10 SEO best practices with a tutorial using a hypothetical client. Using this example, the chapter shows how to research and optimize keyphrases, write keyword optimized meta information (title, meta description, headers, body copy etc.), search-friendly URIs, and how to promote your site for maximum rankings. Along the way the chapter covers:

• Natural Search Engine Optimization
• The Benefits of SEO
• Figure 1-1: New traffic and conversion rate versus Google position
• Core SEO Techniques
• Common SEO Barriers
• Inadequate inbound links
• Drowning in splash pages
• Figure 1-2: Relationship between average number of inlinks and position in hierarchy
• Flash fires
• Code: The Two Div Flash Trick
• Unprofessional design
• Fix your focus
• Obscure navigation
• Give up graphics-based navigation
• Junk JavaScript-only navigation
• Duplicate content
• Ten Steps to Higher Search Engine Rankings
• Best Practices
• Deploy keywords strategically
• Reinforce the theme of your site
• Figure 1-3: The Long Tail
• Optimize key content
• Optimize on-site links
• Make it linkworthy
• Acquire inbound links
• Step 1: Determine Your Keyword Phrases
• Tools for keyword research
• Figure 1-4. Wordtracker's free keyword suggestion tool
• Figure 1-5. Building a keyword list with Wordtracker
• Find your primary keyphrase
• Top Search Engine Ranking Factors
(sidebar)
• Step 2: Sort by Popularity
• Wordtracker Keyword Research Tool
(sidebar)
• Figure 1-6. Sorting and pruning keywords in Wordtracker
• Figure 1-7. Choosing search engines to target for competitive analysis of keywords in Wordtracker
• Step 3: Refine Keyword Phrases and Re-Sort
• Right-size your keyphrases
• Figure 1-8. Keyword effectiveness index for Google in Wordtracker
• Figure 1-9. Wordtracker's keyword evaluator tool
• Figure 1-10. Optimum keyphrase length--query length versus conversion rates
• Target multiple keyphrases
• Step 4: Write a Title Using the Top Two or Three Phrases
• Keywords trump company name (usually)
• An experiment in stuffing (shows benefits of using natural, sentence-like title text)
• Figure 1-11. Google reinstating the PDF optimization article
• Step 5: Write a Description Meta Tag
• Step 6: Write a Keywords Meta Tag
• Step 7: Make Search-Friendly Headlines
• Write headlines that pop
• Keyphrase headlines early
• Step 8: Add Keywords Tactically
• Keyphrase anchor text
• Buy keyphrased domain names
• Figure 1-12. Hostname keywords versus search rankings
• Step 9: Create Valuable Keyword-Focused Content
• Figure 1-13. The user experience honeycomb
• Sharpen your keyword-focused content
• Create search-friendly URIs
• Write compelling summaries
• Automatically categorize with blogs
• Figure 1-14. Example blog with categories
• Code: Automatically Categorizing with Movable Type
• Figure 1-15. Creating an entry with categories in Movable Type
• Code: Subcategory creation with Movable Type
• Figure 1-16. Adding a subcategory in Movable Type
• Create tag clouds
• Figure 1-17. Sample tag cloud from Technorati.com
• Figure 1-18. Turning on tags in Movable Type
• Code: Tag Cloud Example in Movable Type
• Deploy strange attractors
• Figure 1-19. Babel Fish, a free language-translator tool
• Step 10: Build Inbound Links with Online Promotion
• Leverage higher-ranking pages
• Don't dilute your PageRank
• Employ social networking and user-generated content
• Be leery of link exchange voodoo
• Pay for links
• Hurl harmful outlinks
• The Google Sandbox and Penalty Box
(sidebar)
• Use the nofollow trick
• Code Example: The Nofollow Trick
• Reduce risky redirects
• Permanent redirects
• Canonical URIs
• Code: Redirect examples
• Measuring inbound links
• Figure 1-20. Marketleap's link popularity checker
• Summary
• The Future of SEO: Metadata (sidebar)

Footnotes

Keyword stuffing

is a practice whereby keywords are "stuffed" within HTML elements too many times."Too many" varies with each HTML element and search engine.For example, Google may flag more than three uses of the same phrase in an HTML title tag, but multiple keywords within body text is OK.In general, adopting an approach that uses natural, sentence-like titles and text is best.

Oneupweb.2005."Target Google's Top Ten to Sell Online."

http://www.oneupweb.com (accessed February 19, 2008).

Jansen, B.J. 2007. "The comparative effectiveness of sponsored and non-sponsored links for Web e-commerce queries."

ACM Transactions on the Web 1 (1): 25 pages.

Pan, B.et al.2007."In Google We Trust: Users' Decisions on Rank, Position, and Relevance."

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (3): 801-823. Most people click on the first SERP result.

Dou, Z. et al. "A Large-scale Evaluation and Analysis of Personalized Search Strategies."

In WWW 2007 (Banff, Alberta, Canada: May 8-12, 2007), 581-590.

Cilibrasi, R., and P.Vitányi. 2007. "The Google Similarity Distance."

IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering 19 (3): 370-383.

Mandl, T. 2007. "The impact of website structure on link analysis."

Internet Research 17 (2): 196-206. Higher is better. Figure 1-2 reprinted by permission.

Adobe Systems Inc.March 2008."Flash content reaches 98% of Internet viewers."

http://www.adobe.com/ products/player_census/flashplayer/ (accessed May 31, 2008).Adobe claims that more than 98% of users have Flash 8 or earlier installed in mature markets; 97.2% of the same group had Flash 9 installed.

Lindgaard, G.et al. 2006. "Attention web designers: You have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression!."

Behaviour and Information Technology 25 (2): 115-126.

Robins, D., and J. Holmes. 2008. "Aesthetics and credibility in web site design."

Information Processing and Management 44 (1): 386-399.The same content with a higher aesthetic treatment was judged to have higher credibility. Credibility judgments took, on average, 2.3 seconds.

Google. 2007. "Webmaster Guidelines."

Webmaster Help Center, http://www.google.com/support/ webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769 (accessed March 21, 2008).

Google. 2007. "Duplicate content."

Webmaster Help Center, http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/ bin/answer.py?answer=66359 (accessed March 26, 2008).

Evans, M. 2007. "Analysing Google rankings through search engine optimization data."

Internet Research 17 (1): 21-37.Inlinks, PageRank, and domain age (to some degree after the second SERP) help rankings.The number of pages did not correlate with higher rankings.

Sullivan, D. May 10, 2006. "Watching Google Press Day, Slides & Live Commentary."

Search Engine Watch, http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060510-123802 (accessed February 19, 2008).

Fishkin, R., and J. Pollard. April 2, 2007. "Search Engine Ranking Factors Version 2."

SEOMoz.org, http:// www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors (accessed February 8, 2008).

Oneupweb. 2005. "How Keyword Length Affects Conversion Rates."

http://www.oneupweb.com (accessed April 14, 2008), 2.

Pasca, M. "Organizing and Searching the World Wide Web of Facts-Step Two: Harnessing the Wisdom of the Crowds."

In WWW 2007 (Banff, Alberta, Canada: May 8-12, 2007), 101-110. Google search statistics.

Nielsen, J. March 3, 2008. "Company Name First in Microcontent? Sometimes!"

Useit Alertbox, http:// www.useit.com/alertbox/microcontent-brand-names.html (accessed March 24, 2008).

Noruzi, A. 2007. "A Study of HTML Title Tag Creation Behavior of Academic Websites."

The Journal of Academic Librarianship 33 (4): 501-506.

Nielsen, J. September 6, 1998. "Microcontent: How to Write Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines."

Useit Alertbox, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980906.html (accessed February 19, 2008).

Sistrix. May 2007. "Google Ranking Factors."

http://www.sistrix.com/ranking-faktoren/ (accessed March 26, 2008).Sistrix found that keywords in h1 headers did not correlate with higher rankings, but having keywords in h2-h6 headers did correlate. In German.

Sistrix. "Google Ranking Factors."

Sistrix found that keywords in hostnames correlated with higher rankings in SERPs, especially for positions 1 to 5.

Morville, P. June 21, 2004. "User Experience Design."

Semantic Studios, http://www.semanticstudios.com/ publications/semantics/000029.php (accessed February 9, 2008). Figure 1-13 used by permission.

Spenser, S. July 23, 2007. "Underscores are now word separators, proclaims Google."

CNET, http://www. cnet.com/8301-13530_1-9748779-28.html (accessed March 21, 2008).This summary of a talk given by Matt Cutts of Google includes query string information.

23Kenkai.com. "Google PageRank Table-Compare Pagerank Values."

http://www.kenkai.com/googlepagerank- table.htm (accessed February 9, 2008).

Boser, G. March 11, 2007. "Understanding the 301 redirect."

SEO Buzz Box, http://www.seobuzzbox.com/ understanding-the-301-redirect/ (accessed March 29, 2008).

Cutts, M. January 4, 2006. "SEO advice: discussing 302 redirects."

Mattcutts.com, http://www.mattcutts.com/ blog/seo-advice-discussing-302-redirects/ (accessed March 29, 2008).

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/13/yahoo-embraces-the-semantic-web-expect-the-web-to-organizeitself- in-a-hurry/

http://www.microformats.org

http://gmpg.org/xfn/11

http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2426.txt

http://www.w3.org/RDF/

http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-syntax/

http://www.w3.org/TR/curie

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