Ch – 3 Developing an SEO – Friendly Website

• Content :

• The Theory Behind Keyword Research
• Traditional Approaches : Domain Expertise
• Site Content Analysis
• Keyword Research Tools
• Determined keyword value / potential ROI
• Leveraging the long Tail of keyword Demand
• Trending, Seasonality, and Seasonal Fluctuations in Keyword Demand

• Content :

• Making site accessible to Search Engine
• Creating an optimal Information Architecture
• Root Domains , Subdomains , & Microsites
• Optimization of Domain Names / URLs
• Keyword Targeting
• Content Optimization
• Duplicate Content Issues Controlling content with cookies and session IDs

• Content Delivery and Search Spider Control
• Redirect , CMS Issues
• Optimizing Flash
• Best practices for Multilanguage / country Targeting

• The Theory Behind Keyword Research

• Keyword research is one of the most important, valuable, and high-return activities in the search engine marketing field.
• Through the detective work of dissecting your market’s keyword demand, you learn not only which terms and phrases to target with SEO, but also more about your customer base as a whole.

• Keyword research enables you to predict shifts in demand, respond to changing market conditions, and ensure that you are producing the products, services, and content that web searchers are already actively seeking…
• Every search phrase that’s typed into an engine is recorded in one way or another, and keyword research tools such as the ones we discuss in this chapter allow you to retrieve this information.

• Traditional Approaches : Domain Expertise�Site Content Analysis :

• One of the smartest things you can do when initially conducting keyword research is brainstorm original ideas with business participants before getting keyword tools involved.
• This can be surprisingly effective for coming up with numerous critical keywords.

• Start by generating a list of terms and phrases that are relevant to your industry and pertain to what your site or business offers.
• The brainstorming phase should ideally result in a list of several dozen to several hundred or more keyword searches that will bring relevant visitors to your site.

• Keyword Research Tools :

• A wide variety of options are available for performing keyword research, including tools provided by the search engines, tools developed by third parties, and tools for complex keyword analysis of terms culled during research.

• Determining Keyword Value/Potential ROI :

• Once you have obtained the raw keyword data by doing research with your favorite tools, you need to analyze which keywords have the highest value and the highest ROI.

• Leveraging the long Tail of keyword Demand :

• The long tail of search is where 70% of search queries occur.
• Only 30% of those precious queries happen in the more obvious terms that people use, the so-called “head terms”.
• The long tail of search queries in a given industry is typically not visible via any of the major keyword research services or search engine ad databases (Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing)

• In these instances, there is a method to find those terms that can carry value, but it requires a good amount of research and analysis.

• Identifying Long-Tail Patterns :-
• You can also take another stab at determining long-tail information. As a hypothetical example
• using digital camera, here are 40 searches for two different brands and models of digital cameras from the Keyword Discovery database….

• Each of these received only one search:

• consumer comments on nikon 5.1 mp coolpix l3 digital camera

• new nikon coolpix p3 8 1 mp digital camera memory

• nikon 3 2 mp coolpix digital camera

• nikon 51 mp coolpix s1 digital camera and cradle

• nikon 6 mp coolpix digital camera

• nikon 7 1 mp coolpix 7900 digital camera

• Trending, Seasonality, and Seasonal Fluctuations in Keyword Demand :

• One of the subtleties of keyword research, and of any fully developed SEO strategy, is that the use of keywords varies significantly over time.
• For instance, major holidays inevitably lead to bursts of keyword volume related to those holidays.

• Examples could be searches such as

Halloween costumes, gift ideas for Christmas, or Valentine’s candy….

• If you want to write holiday-related content, it will be important to have your site visible in the SERPs for those search queries prior to that holiday’s buying season so that you’ll get optimum traffic for those terms.

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• To investigate this further, let’s examine the Google Trends data for a period of 12 months for the search term halloween costume ideas….

• Making site accessible to Search Engine :�

• The first step in the SEO design process is to ensure that your site can be found and crawled by the search engines.
• This is not as simple as it sounds, as there are many popular web design and implementation constructs that the crawlers may not understand.

• Indexable Content : To rank well in the search engines, your site’s content—that is, the material available to visitors of your site—should be in HTML text form.
• Images , Flash files , java applets ,and Other nontext content is , for thee most part , virtually invisible to search engine spiders advance in crawling technology…
• Spiderable Link Structures : search engines use links on web pages to help them discover other web pages and websites.

• For this reason, we strongly recommend taking the time to build an internal linking structure that spiders can crawl easily.
• Many sites make the critical mistake of hiding or obfuscating their navigation in ways that limit spider accessibility, thus impacting their ability to get pages listed in the search engines’ indexes.

• Creating an optimal Information Architecture :

• Making your site friendly to search engine crawlers also requires that you put some thought into your site information architecture.
• A well-designed architecture can bring many benefits for both users and search engines.
• Shows what it looks like when you apply this logic to the popular website , Craigslist.org.

• Root Domains , Subdomains , & Microsites :

• Among the common questions that arise when structuring a website (or restructuring one) are whether to host content on a new domain, when to use subfolders, and when to employ microsites.

• When to Use a Subdomain : If your marketing team decides to promote a URL that is completely unique in content or purpose and would like to use a catchy subdomain to do it, using a subdomain can be practical.
• Maps.google.com is an example of where the marketing considerations make a subdomain an acceptable choice.
• One good reason to use a subdomain is in a situation where doing so can
• look more authoritative to users, as a result of creating separation from the main domain.

• Microsites : There is a lot of debate about microsites, and although we generally recommend that you do not saddle yourself with the hassle of dealing with multiple sites and their SEO risks and disadvantages, it is important to understand the arguments, even if there are only a few, in favor of doing so.

• Optimization of Domain Names / URLs :�

• Two of the most basic parts of any website are the domain name and the URLs for the pages of the website.
• This section will explore guidelines for optimizing these important elements.
• Optimizing Domains : When a new site is being conceived or designed, one of the critical items to consider is the naming of the domain, whether it is for a new blog, a company launch, or even just a friend’s website….

• Picking the Right URLs : Search engines place some weight on keywords in your URLs.
• Be careful, however, as the search engines can interpret long URLs with numerous hyphens in them (e.g., Buy-this- awesome-product-now. html) as a spam signal.
• What follows are some guidelines for selecting optimal URLs for the pages of your site (s).

• Keyword Targeting :

• The search engines face a tough task: based on a few words in a query (or sometimes only one), they must return a list of relevant results, order them by measures of importance, and hope that the searcher finds what she is seeking.
• This practice has long been a critical part of search engine optimization, and although other metrics (such as links) have a great deal of value in the search rankings, keyword usage is still at the core of targeting search traffic…..

• The first step in the keyword targeting process is uncovering popular terms and phrases that searchers regularly use to find the content, products, or services your site offers.
• Now, keyword relevance is much more aligned with the usability of a page from a human perspective.
• keyword usage includes creating titles, headlines, and content designed to appeal to searchers in the results , as well as building relevance for search engines to improve your rankings.

• Content Optimization :

• Content optimization relates to how the presentation and architecture of the text, image, and multimedia content on a page can be optimized for search engines.
• Having the right formatting or display won’t boost your rankings directly, but through it, you’re more likely to earn links, get clicks, and eventually benefit in search rankings.

• Duplicate Content Issues :

• Duplicate content can result from many causes, including licensing of content to or from your site, site architecture flaws due to non-SEO-friendly CMS….
• Thus, today we’re faced with a world of “duplicate content issues” and “duplicate content penalties.”
• Here are some definitions that are useful for this discussion:

• Unique content
• Duplicate content filter
• Duplicate content penalty
• Duplicate content filter

• Unique content
• Duplicate content filter
• Duplicate content penalty
• Duplicate content filter

• Controlling content with cookies and session IDs :

• What’s a Cookie? :- A cookie is a small text file that websites can leave on a visitor’s hard disk, helping them to track that person over time.
• Cookie data typically contains a short set of information regarding when you last accessed a site, an ID number, and, potentially, information about your visit….

Figure: Using cookies to store data

• What Are Session IDs? :- Session IDs are virtually identical to cookies in functionality, with one big difference…
• when you close your browser (or restart), session ID information is (usually) no longer stored on your hard drive. Figure 6 illustrates…..
• The website you were interacting with may remember your data or actions, but it cannot retrieve session IDs from your machine that don’t persist..
• In essence, session IDs are like temporary cookies…

• Content Delivery and Search Spider Control :�

• On occasion, it can be valuable to show search engines one version of content and show humans a different version.
• This is technically called “cloaking,” and the search engines’ guidelines have near-universal policies restricting this behavior.
• In practice, many websites, large and small, appear to use some forms of cloaking without being penalized by the search engines.

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• However, use great care if you implement these techniques, and know the risks that you are taking.
• Cloaking and Segmenting Content Delivery :- Before we discuss the risks and potential benefits of cloaking-based practices, take a look at Figure , which shows an illustration of how cloaking works.

How cloaking works

• Redirect :

• A redirect is used to indicate when content has moved from one location to another.
• For example, suppose you have some content at http://www.yourdomain.com/old.html , and you decide to restructure your site.
• As a result of this restructuring, your content may move to http://www.yourdomain.com/critical-keyword.html .

• Once a redirect is implemented, users who go to the old versions of your pages will be sent to the new versions of those pages.
• Without the redirect, the user would get a Page Not Found (404) error.
• With the redirect, the web server tells the incoming user agent (whether a browser or a spider) to instead fetch the requested content from the new URL.

• Content Management System (CMS) Issues :

• When looking to publish a new site, many publishers may wonder whether they need to use a CMS, and, if so, how to ensure that it is SEO-friendly.
• It is essential to determine whether a CMS is necessary before embarking on a web development project.
• You can use the flowchart in Figure to help guide you through the process.

• Due to the inexpensiveness of customizable, free platforms such as Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, and Mambo, it is increasingly rare for a publisher to develop a static site, even when a CMS isn’t required.

• Optimizing Flash :�

• Flash is popular on the Web, but it presents challenges to the search engines in terms of indexing the related content.
• This creates a gap between the user experience with a site and what the search engines can find on that site.
• It used to be that search engines did not index Flash content at all.
• In June 2008, Google announced that it was offering improved indexing of this content( http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html )

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• This announcement indicates that Google can index text content and find and follow links within Flash files.
• However, Google still cannot
• tell what is contained in images within a Flash file…
• Different content is not on different URLs
• The breakdown of text is not clean
• Flash gets embedded
• Flash doesn’t earn external links like HTML

• Best practices for Multilanguage / country Targeting :

• Targeting a Specific Country : Starting with the basics of international targeting, it is important to let the search engines know where your business is based in as many ways as possible.
• These might include :-

• Hosting your site locally, not abroad

• Including the physical local address in plain text on every page of your site

• Setting Google Webmaster Central geotargeting to your country of interest

• Verifying your address with Google Maps

• Getting links from in-country websites

• Using the local language on the website

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