ArbCamp – Search Optimization – 1 pm session
Notes from the Search Optimization Session at 1pm
Ross Johnson – speaker
Why using search vs Yellow book or asking a friend?
Easy way to find answer to question ↠key!
1. Must provide relevant results – search engine goals
- How to make yours the most relevant?
- No way to trick your way to the top by cloaking, hidden words
- Development of content – what content is on the site
- Links – how many times your site is linked to from other sites
- Find ways to find high-quality links so your site is more relevant and carries more authority
- Content:
- Create article – link baiting. Something that people will link to. Even controversial content is useful.
- Link bait strategy:
- Who do you want to link to you? Research your market.
- What things are they already looking at?
- Something new and original
- Who do you want to link to you? Research your market.
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- Know the medium
- Web is 3-5 seconds.
- Headlines and pictures scan
- Know the medium
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- Every section should have catchy headline
- Copy should be scannable (quickly read)
- Anything you write for web, cut in half, then cut in half again
- Every section should have catchy headline
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- Know where to distribute the article to
- Research the market – forums, community, link to article in signature
- Digg.com <- post here in different sections . OK to post your own stuff here
- Netscape service has niche communities as well <- post article link there
- Facebook groups <- create one, link your article there
- Get involved in these communities – put link to site in signature in forum. Write helpful posts and responses.
- Know where to distribute the article to
- Not all strategies will work – keep trying. Patience is key to get yourself up on the relevance list
- Each page of your website should be targeted to different keywords
- White paper
- How-to on particular topic
- Podcast
- Take a tool you’ve built (ie: mortgage calculator)
- Contest
- Interviews – interview someone & have their blog point to your site
- Guest blogger -
- Free service – background, music, tool for myspace, etc.
- Search engine differences -
- Google developed link relevance. Yahoo/MSN have adopted this as well
- On-page factors
- Text readable by search engines. No flash or images (or alternate text for images), no Javascript because this is client-side. PHP works because it is server side. Search-engine bots aren’t designed to handle Javascript now.
- Any text that is important for ranking is readable without graphics or flash
- Meta-keywords – search engines ignore these! Don’t bother with these
- Page title: huge on-page factor for ranking – keywords should be in title! The closer to the start the better. Keywords first then company name
- Search engines view site by going through links and builds references through that. Javascript or flash is bad for search engines.
- Have site map to avoid this.
- Duplicate content is checked for by search engines – and ranked lower.
- RSS Feeds – help or no? Google likes fresh content. Can be good for people to subscribe and link to it – but not inherent to raise your ranking
- Popurl – delicious for bookmarks – list of other peoples content
- Godaddy traffic blaster – redirects traffic through their site – doesn’t help with your own traffic
- Wordpress SEO
- Blogs to stay current with this
- SEOMOZ.org
- SEOBOOK.com
- No-No’s
- Hiding keywords or text. Don’t make text same as background, search engines are onto this.
- Displaying different pages for people versus search engines
- Publish press releases
- Companies can publish this online – some free work for SEO only
- PRWEB.com, PRLEEP.com, PR.com – will distribute all over and let you have a link back to your site
- Tools on site design in Google
- What keywords you do use
- Google.com/adwords <- search for related terms
- Inventory.overture.com <- search for related terms
