Intro to SEO

One of my older presentations. Some parts aren't as relevant any more, but most are.

Transcript

1. the fundamentals by Eric Wu: e@eywu.com
2. Incoming Links Internal Links Content HTTP Header HTML / Markup URLs Domain (TLD) Links Content Site Architecture KEYWORDS
3. S⋅E⋅O [n. es-ee-oh]: the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.
4. Organic Traffic Acquisition + Branding High Conversions Direct Traffic
6. 66% 17% 11% 4% 3% Google Yahoo Microsoft Ask Other
8. Search Result Pages (SeRPs) Listings 1-10
9. Listings 1-4
10. ..... bold ...... bold bold....... bold .... .......... ............. bold bold ......... ...... bold ....... ........... bold ............ www ..... bold bold .........
11. 0 25 50 75 100 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 68 62 48 34 28 9 11 10 8 6 42 12 8 6 5 4 3 3 3 3 % Viewed % of Clicks
14. max: 65 - 70 Characters <title>Auto Repair Shops in Pittsfield, Massachusetts | example.com</title>
15.  Keywords  Location  Relevant  < 65 Characters
16. max displayed: 160-170 Characters <meta name=”description” content=”Find a trustworthy auto repair mechanic in the Pittsfield Massachusetts area. Get phone numbers, reviews, maps, and directions for automotive repair shops to solve your car problems from transmission problems to the check engine light in Pittsfield, MA” />
17.  Keywords  Location  Relevant  Call to Action
18. the shorter the better example.com/auto-repair-pittsfield-ma/
19.  Keywords  Location  Short  Top Level Directory
21.  Diversity  Low subsequent searches  Unique Content  Relevancy  Low return (bounce) rate  Determine User Intent  Head vs Long Tail  Commercial  Navigational  Transactional  Informational  Crawling  OnSite SEO  Indexing  Ranking  200+ search signals  OnPage Factors  OffPage Factors  Unique Content Ux Principles The Algorithm
23.  Diversity  Low subsequent searches  Unique Content  Relevancy  Low return (bounce) rate  Determine User Intent  Head vs Long Tail  Commercial  Navigational  Transactional  Informational  Crawling  OnSite SEO  Indexing  Ranking  200+ search signals  OnPage Factors  OffPage Factors  Unique Content Ux Principles The Algorithm
24. Bots: Dont’s  Don’t execute JavaScript*  Don’t execute Flash  Don’t accept cookies  Don’t read images  Don’t fill out forms* • Do like text • Do like links (clean urls) • Do like patterns (regEx) • Do like semantic tags • Do like clean code Bots: Do’s
25. per / page • Links: < 100* • Bandwidth: 600 kb
26.  Diversity  Low subsequent searches  Unique Content  Relevancy  Low return (bounce) rate  Determine User Intent  Head vs Long Tail  Commercial  Navigational  Transactional  Informational  Crawling  OnSite SEO  Indexing  Ranking  200+ search signals  OnPage Factors  OffPage Factors  Unique Content Ux Principles The Algorithm
27. =
28. 1. Title Tag 2. Header Tags (h1...h6) 3. Body / <p> 4. Anchor (<a>) 5. Alt attribute in <img> 6. Bold / <strong> 7. Lists (<ul>, <ol>, <dl>) 8. Page Weight 9. RDF, MicroFormats* 10. Meta Tags (description, keyword, robots)
29.  Use h1...h6 tags to show hierarchy  Use <p> for content  Use semantic tags when it makes sense to:  <address>  <cite>  <quote>  <caption>  <code>  <fieldset>  <label>  <legend>  RDF / OWL / MicroFormats
30.  keyword rich anchor text  <a href=“”>Anchor Text</a>  rel=”nofollow” for links in:  reviews  untrusted sources  PageRank sculpting*  absolute URLs  http://example.com/my- link/  avoid href=”javascript:”  onclick attribute preferred
31.  Use alt attributes to describe the text within an image  Use caption tag to add relevancy to image  code proximity matters  Use <no script> to describe Flash, AJAX, or Java Applet content
32.  avoid inline JavaScript  avoid inline CSS  use separate .js and .css files  host separate .js, .css, and nav imgs on separate CNAME  robots.txt: disallow: / for entire CNAME  JS Frameworks  (e.g. jQuery, Y!UI, prototype)  CSS Frameworks  (e.g. blueprint, 960 Grids, etc.)
33.  Frames suck  That goes for iframes too  Who’s still using frames in 2009?  Avoid Hiding content  Flash  Excessive AJAX-iness  JavaScript doc.write  Java Applets (really?)
34.  Hidden Text  color: #fffff  font-size: 1pt  display: none  position: so far left / right no one can see it  z-index: 0 // hide under another layer  height: 1px  visibility: hidden
35.  source ordering  place content first in code  place navigation at the bottom  keep content together  tables vs divs
36. HTML SiteMap via <dl>
37. 1. URL structure 2. http headers  301 vs 302 redirects  custom 404 / 503  Last modified / ETag  content-encoding: gzip 3. robots.txt 4. performance for SEO 5. feeds (sitemap.xml, rss, mRSS)
38.  301 = permanent redirect  302 = temporary redirect  avoid other:  javascript redirects  meta refresh