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
the shorter the better
example.com/auto-repair-pittsfield-ma/
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Keywords
Location
Short
Top Level
Directory
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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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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
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)