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the fundamentals
by Eric Wu: e@eywu.com
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Incoming Links
Internal Links
Content
HTTP Header
HTML / Markup
URLs
Domain (TLD)
Links
Content
Site
Architecture
KEYWORDS
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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.
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Organic Traffic Acquisition
+ Branding
High Conversions Direct Traffic
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No content
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66%
17%
11%
4%
3%
Google
Yahoo
Microsoft
Ask
Other
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Search Result Pages (SeRPs)
Listings 1-10
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Listings 1-4
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..... bold ...... bold bold.......
bold .... .......... ............. bold bold .........
...... bold ....... ........... bold ............
www ..... bold bold .........
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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
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max: 65 - 70 Characters
Auto Repair Shops in Pittsfield, Massachusetts
| example.com
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Keywords
Location
Relevant
< 65 Characters
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max displayed: 160-170 Characters
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Keywords
Location
Relevant
Call to Action
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the shorter the better
example.com/auto-repair-pittsfield-ma/
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Keywords
Location
Short
Top Level
Directory
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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
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No content
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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
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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
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per / page
• Links: < 100*
• Bandwidth: 600 kb
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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
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=
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1. Title Tag
2. Header Tags (h1...h6)
3. Body /
4. Anchor ()
5. Alt attribute in
6. Bold /
7. Lists (
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Use h1...h6 tags to show
hierarchy
Use
for content Use semantic tags when it makes sense to:
RDF / OWL / MicroFormats
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keyword rich anchor text
Anchor Text
rel=”nofollow” for links in:
reviews
untrusted sources
PageRank sculpting*
absolute URLs
http://example.com/my-
link/
avoid href=”javascript:”
onclick attribute
preferred
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Use alt attributes to
describe the text within
an image
Use caption tag to add
relevancy to image
code proximity matters
Use to
describe Flash, AJAX, or
Java Applet content
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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.)
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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?)
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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
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source ordering
place content first in
code
place navigation at
the bottom
keep content
together
tables vs divs
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HTML SiteMap via
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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)
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301 = permanent redirect
302 = temporary
redirect
avoid other:
javascript redirects
meta refresh