Robert Clarksons guide to successful search engine optimisation.

1. Search Engine Optimisation
(SEO)
Robert Clarkson
Southern Institute of Technology

2. What is SEO?
Back in the olden days of the internet (1994 ish) websites were
built purely with the human viewer in mind.
Since the rise of search engines as a means of finding
websites we now need to build a website tailored, not only for
the human viewer but the search robot (spider / indexer) as
well.
SEO concerns improving how a website looks to a search
engine. It also concerns how well a website ranks for particular
keywords or search strings.

3. SEO - the holy grail
The websites that have the
highest ranking have interesting
original and compelling content,
that people are going to want to
search for, read, and to share.

4. How is a website ranked?
PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page
and used by the Google Internet search engine, that assigns a
numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of
documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of
"measuring" its relative importance within the set.
The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with
reciprocal quotations and references.(eg hyperlinks)
PR is commonly referred to by internet marketers as "Google
Love".

5. Google describes Page Rank
"PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by
considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion
terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a
higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of
the search results.
PageRank also considers the importance of each page that
casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have
greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We
have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve
search quality and create useful products, and our technology
uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a
page's importance."
More info:
http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/tech.html

6. How can we measure ranking?
Search for a keyword(s) using a search engine.

7. SEO - the problem
The problem is that not all websites can be top of the list. You
might have the best website possible, but still appear below
your competitors.
SEO is the method with which we can ensure that our website
is represented as best as possible to the search engines.
Therefore placing us as high up in the rankings as possible.
Ideally we're aiming for the number 1 spot, but to be ranked on
the first page for high competition keywords is also good.

8. SEO the good and the dark side
There are two paths the web developer can take with SEO. It
can be done well, or it can be done badly.
Good SEO ensures that
• The keywords are used appropriately
• Images are alt tagged appropriately
• Interesting and fresh content is available
• The website is built well, and loads fast
• Appropriate videos are embeded.
• Good quality links point to the website

9. BAD SEO
Bad SEO is using:
• Keyword stuffing
• Hidden or invisible text - use the same color font and
background to hide our dastardly keyowrd stuffing plans.
• Meta-tag stuffing
• Doorway pages
• Scraper sites - Stealing and copying content from other sites
• Article spinning - Altering stolen content so it appears orig.
• Link emails spamming,
• and other dirty tricks....

10. THIS IS BAD SEO
Monster Trucks monster monster
Monster trucks, is monster in monster on wednesdays trucks
monster of great times. trucking great happy hire monster
trucks trucks ...
Great big Monster Trucks
Monster trucks monster amazing stupendus, dastardly monster
trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster
trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster
trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster
trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster
trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster trucks monster
trucks monster trucks monster trucks....

11. False or spoofed PageRank (PR)
While the PageRank shown in the Toolbar is considered to be
derived from an accurate PageRank value (at some time prior
to the time of publication by Google) for most sites, this value
was at one time easily manipulated. A previous flaw was that
any low PageRank page that was redirected, via a HTTP 302
response or a "Refresh" meta tag, to a high PageRank page
caused the lower PageRank page to acquire the PageRank of
the destination page.
In theory a new, PR 0 page with no incoming links could have
been redirected to the Google home page—which is a PR 10—
and then the PR of the new page would be upgraded to a
PR10. This spoofing technique, also known as 302 Google
Jacking, was a known failing or bug in the system.

12. How can we monitor our site stats?
You can see a websites PageRank using google toolbar or
similar, however it doesnt really help us to know this as then we
only know whether our site is good or bad.
To do SEO we need to monitor our website's statistics, to
understand how people are landing on our site and what they
are clicking on.
2 tools available by Google allow us to do this:
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Google Analytics

13. Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools is a no-charge web service by
Google for webmasters. It allows webmasters to check
indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites.
• Submit and check a sitemap
• Check and set the crawl rate, and view statistics about how
Googlebot accesses a particular site
• List internal and external pages that link to the site
• See what keyword searches on Google led to the site being
listed in the SERPs, and the click through rates of such
listings
• View statistics about how Google indexes the site, and if it
found any errors while doing it

15. Google Analytics
Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google that
generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website.
The product is aimed at marketers as opposed to webmasters
and technologists from which the industry of web analytics
originally grew.

18. Improving relevance for keywords
Most important page of the website to google (and to the
human viewer) is the index page.
The words on this page should give meaning to the rest of the
site. Therefore essential we use the keyword properly on this
page.
H1 tags, there should generally only be one H1 tag on a page,
and this ideally should contain the keyword. The keyword
should also be in the text following the H1 and we should talk
about the keyword.
Other keywords that are important should also be present on
the homepage.

19. Title tags for each page
Inside the <head> tag each page also has a <title> tag. This is
important for SEO, as this information is what shows up as the
main headings on each site.
<title>PB Tech - Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop
Computers, LCD Monitors, Tablets and more!</title>

20. Meta tags
Also inside the <head> tag are the <meta> tags:
<meta name='description' content='pbtech.co.nz
offers the best
prices on computer products, laptop computers,
LCD monitors, tablets, electronics,
smartphones,
office supplies, and more with fast shipping
and
top-rated customer service.' />

21. Meta Keywords
<meta name='keywords' content='Computer
Components, PC Parts,
Tablets, LCD Monitors, Video Cards, Processors
and CPUs,
Computer Memory, RAM, Printers, Notebook
Computers,
Laptops, Motherboards, Flash Memory, Speakers,
LED TV, SmartPhones' />

22. Robots tag
Also inside the head tag is the "robots" tag.
<meta name='robots' content='index,follow' />
This is a directive to search engine crawlers to say whether
they are allowed to "index" or store the data on the page, and
whether they should follow the links on this page to index other
pages.
This can also be set to:
NOINDEX and or NOFOLLOW
However this is just used to set a preference to the crawlers, as
they can really do what they like.

23. Images
Image alt tags should be utilised for keywords as well.
<img src="/imglib/MS_PARTNER.jpg"
alt="Registered Microsoft partner" />
These keywords must be relevant to the image though.
ie. NOT a picture of an apple and then alt text is: "monster
truck hire!!"

24. rel="nofollow"
In early 2005, Google implemented a new value, "nofollow", for
the rel attribute of HTML link and anchor elements, so that
website developers and bloggers can make links that Google
will not consider for the purposes of PageRank—they are links
that no longer constitute a "vote" in the PageRank system. The
nofollow relationship was added in an attempt to help combat
spamdexing.
<img src="/imglib/MS_PARTNER.jpg"
alt="Registered Microsoft partner"
rel="nofollow" />

25. Adding keywords in internal links
<a href="monster_truck_hire.html">Hire monster trucks</a>
Good use of naming with files, and the link text is important, as
it sums up the page it is referencing.

26. Offpage/offsite optimisation
Even better is off site links with the same format coming from
well ranked websites.
If high ranked website www.bbc.co.uk links to your website:
<a href="www.monstertrucks.co.nz">Hire monster trucks</a>
This is great for you, as Google already knows that
www.bbc.co.uk provides interesting fresh compelling reliable
information, and by linking to you, bbc has essentially given
your site some "kudos", and Google recognises this.
However the same works in reverse if
www.dodgyspammers.com links to your site, then Google
more than likely busts your ranking because of it.

27. Google Local and other Directories
Another good SEO strategy for businesses is to be listed in the
main directories.
• Yellow pages
• Finda
• Google Local
• ...
The idea here being the more incoming links from decent sites
the better

28. Case Study: The PC Mechanic
So my business is the PC Mechanic.
I want to appear high in the list for "computer repair
queenstown"
To improve my ranking I was adding fresh interesting content
involving "common computer problems and mistakes to my
blog"
However when I checked my webmaster tools, i found that the
most prevelent keyword on my website was "mechanic" with
over 81 occurrances!!!

29. Case Study: The PC Mechanic
So when i typed in "mechanic queenstown" i was top of the list!
This is not good, as i don't want to be top of the list for
'mechanic" as that is not the customer I am looking for.
I wondered why "mechanic" was so prevalent on my site?
When i checked my blog i could see my username was "The
PC Mechanic" and everytime i had created a blog post, this
was copied numerous times into various sections.

30. Case Study: The solution
For this particular problem the solution was simple, change my
username to something other than "The PC Mechanic" like
"admin" or "pcm".
This then changed all the occurances, and put my new most
prevailent keyword to "computer" closely followed by "repair"
then "queenstown"

31. SEO in practice
For a site like "The PC Mechanic", I am only interested in clicks
from people in and around queenstown.
I'm not interested in being top of the list for "computer repair" in
New Zealand as i will not be able to be called out to Auckland
or Christchurch.
This is not to say that this is the case for all businesses, and it
is something we have to take into consideration when doing
SEO.

32. Car Rentals
High competition keywords "car rental". Many companies in NZ
doing SEO for these keywords.
These websites will be pushing their SEO as much as they can,
testing out different options, and attempting to get high ranking
inbound links.
About car rental....

33. SEO in practice
Google are constantly changing (improving) the pagerank
algorthm. Recent additions include: Speed at which the website
loads, and addition of videos, downloadable PDFs, all improve
ranking.
Google do not release finer details about how they measure
websites, otherwise it would be easier for people to cheat the
system.
This means that if you are doing SEO for a client against other
companies (probably also doing SEO). If both companies want
to be top of the list for highly sought after keywords, then I like
to think of the analagy as competing sports teams.

34. Don't forget to submit your domain!
If your domain name is new, then for gooooooooogle to know
about your site, you must submit your domain.
This tells the google crawler to index your website.
www.google.com/addurl/