2. • What is a Search Engine? • What a Search Engine Sees
(1/2) • So What is the Algorithm?
• What is a Search Engine? • What’s an SEO?
(2/2) • What Does a (good) SEO Do?
• Why Search Engine • What SEO is NOT
Marketing? • Farms, Black Hats & “Ethics”
• Major Search Engines (1/2) • Pay Per Click SEM
• Major Search Engines (2/2) • Pay Per Click vs. “Organic”
SEO
• A Search Engine’s Goals &
Objectives • Basic Tips & Optimization
Techniques
• Anatomy of a Search Engine • Resources
• How Do Search Engines
Work?
• Ranking Factors

3. • Def: An internet-based tool that searches an index of documents for
a particular term, phrase or text specified by the user. Commonly used to
refer to large web-based search engines that search through billions of
pages on the internet.
• Different than a Directory
• Common Characteristics:
• Spider, Indexer, Database, Algorithm
• Find matching documents and display them
according to relevance
• Frequent updates to documents searched and
ranking algorithm
• Strive to produce “better”, more relevant results
than competitors

5.  85% of all traffic on the internet is referred from a search engine
 90% of all users don’t look past the first 30 results (most only view top
10)
 Many websites aren’t even indexed, most are poorly optimized and get
very little traffic from the search engines
 Cost-effective advertising
 Clear and measurable ROI
 Operates under this assumption:
More (relevant) traffic + Good Conv. Rate = More Sales/Leads

6. What Search Engines Are the Most
Popular?
Figures below show what percentage of US internet users accessed the corresponding
sites at least once during a given month. Counts only search-specific visits.
(Nielsen//NetRatings – June 2004)
 Google – 41.6%
 Yahoo – 31.5%
 MSN – 27.4%
 AOL – 13.6%
 Ask Jeeves – 7.0%

7.  Google feeds AOL, Netscape, Earthlink &
others
 Yahoo owns Overture, AltaVista, All the Web,
FAST & others
 Google, Yahoo & MSN results account for 80-
90% of all search traffic (rough estimate)

8. • Accumulate large index (database) of web
documents to search
• Provide highly-relevant results to users
(better than competitors)
• Generate revenue via paid advertising and
related business ventures that typically
leverage large amount of traffic

9. Search box
Sponsored
Listings
aka PPC
“Organic”
Results
aka SERPs

10.  Spider “crawls” the web to find new documents (web pages, other
documents) typically by following hyperlinks from websites already in
the database
 Search engine indexes the content (text, code) in these documents by
adding it to their huge databases and periodically updates this content
 Search engine searches its own database when user enters in a search
to find related documents (not searching web pages in real-time)
 Search engine ranks resulting documents using an algorithm
(mathematical formula) that assigns various weights to various ranking
factors

11.  Top Secret! Only select employees of the actual search engines know
for certain
 Reverse engineering, research and experiments gives SEOs (search
engine optimization professionals) a “pretty good” idea of major factors
and approximate weight assignments
 Constantly changing, tweaking, updating is done to the algorithm
 Websites and documents being searched are also constantly changing
 Varies by Search Engine – some give more weight to on-page factors,
some to link popularity

12.  SEO = Search Engine Optimization
 Refers to the process of “optimizing” both the on-page and off-page
ranking factors in order to achieve high search engine rankings for
targeted search terms.
 Refers to the “industry” that revolves around obtaining high
rankings in the search engines for desirable keyword search terms
as a means of increasing the relevant traffic to a given website.
 Refers to an individual or company that optimizes websites for its
clientele.
 Has a number of related meanings, and usually refers to an
individual/firm that focuses on optimizing for “organic” search
engine rankings

14.  Search Engine Submission only
 “Submit your website to 5,000 search engines”
 An overnight process (typically takes 3-4 months to
show significant results)
 A one-time process (in many cases requires a
continual, long-term focus for best results)
 A $29.95 one-time fee!

15. • Black Hat SEO – refers to various “tricks of the trade” that are often questioned
as “ethical” by some SEOs. Typically refers to a tactic intended to misrepresent
a website by displaying different information to the search engine versus the
user.
>> hidden text, redirects, etc.
• “Ethical SEO” – refers to methods used to improve rankings while still presenting
the same information to both users and search engines.
• Link Farms – sites/pages that may have thousands of links, often to unrelated
sites. Typically they provide these links in exchange for links to their site in an
attempt to improve their rankings. Reciprocal linking is common and generally
accepted when not excessive and an attempt is made to provide value to the site
visitor.
• Google Bombing – establishing links with certain anchor text in order to achieve a
high ranking for that term. Again, this becomes questionable when an attempt is
made to misrepresent the website. (Miserable Failure example)

16. • PPC ads appear as “sponsored listings”
• Companies bid on price they are willing to pay “per
click”
• Typically have very good tracking tools and statistics
• Ability to control ad text
• Can set budgets and spending limits
• Google AdWords and Overture are the two
leaders

17. Pay-Per-Click “Organic” SEO
• results in 1-2 days • results take 2 weeks to 4 months
• easier for a novice or one without much • requires ongoing learning and experience
knowledge of SEO to reap results
• ability to turn on and off at any moment • very difficult to control flow of traffic
• generally more costly per visitor and per • generally more cost-effective, doesn’t
conversion penalize for more traffic
• fewer impressions and exposure • SERPs are more popular than sponsored
• easy to compete in highly competitive ads
market space (but it will cost you) • very difficult to compete in highly
• can generate exposure on related sites competitive market space
(AdSense) • can generate exposure on related
• ability to target “local” markets websites and directories
• better for short-term and high-margin • more difficult to target local markets
campaigns • better for long-term and lower margin
campaigns

18. Basic Tips & Optimization Techniques
 Research keywords related to your business
 Identify competitors, utilize benchmarking techniques and identify level
of competition
 Utilize descriptive title tags for each page
 Ensure that your text is HTML text and not image text
 Use text links when possible
 Use appropriate keywords in your content and internal hyperlinks (don’t
overdo!)
 Obtain inbound links from related websites
 Monitor your search engine rankings and more importantly your website
traffic statistics and sales/leads produced
 Educate yourself about search engine marketing or consult a search
engine optimization firm or SEO expert

19. Join us
Add: WZ-30-a,Bhagwan Das Nagar
East Punjabi Bagh, Delhi-110026
Tel.: 011 28316148, 3203571, 30538061
Mobile; +91-8010 298 388, 8010 198 388
E-mail: info@seocertification.org.in