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Search Engine Optimization
Article from : Wikipedia
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion. Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.
The acronym "SEO" can also refer to "search engine optimizers," a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems, images, videos, shopping carts, and other elements that have been optimized for the purpose of search engine exposure.
Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms, keyword stuffing and article spinning that degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.
History
Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit the address of a page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a spider to "crawl" that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed.[1] The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own server, where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various information about the page, such as the words it contains and where these are located, as well as any weight for specific words, and all links the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date.
Site owners started to recognize the value of having their sites highly ranked and visible in search engine results, creating an opportunity for both white hat and black hat SEO practitioners. According to industry analyst Danny Sullivan, the phrase search engine optimization probably came into use in 1997.[2]
Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta tag, or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta tags provide a guide to each page's content. But using meta data to index pages was found to be less than reliable because the webmaster's choice of keywords in the meta tag could potentially be an inaccurate representation of the site's actual content. Inaccurate, incomplete, and inconsistent data in meta tags could and did cause pages to rank for irrelevant searches.[3] Web content providers also manipulated a number of attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines.[4]
By relying so much on factors such as keyword density which were exclusively within a webmaster's control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation. To provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their results pages showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters. Since the success and popularity of a search engine is determined by its ability to produce the most relevant results to any given search, allowing those results to be false would turn users to find other search sources. Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate.
Graduate students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed "backrub," a search engine that relied on a mathematical algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages. The number calculated by the algorithm, PageRank, is a function of the quantity and strength of inbound links.[5] PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly surfs the web, and follows links from one page to another. In effect, this means that some links are stronger than others, as a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random surfer.
Page and Brin founded Google in 1998. Google attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.[6] Off-page factors (such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis) were considered as well as on-page factors (such as keyword frequency, meta tags, headings, links and site structure) to enable Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines that only considered on-page factors for their rankings. Although PageRank was more difficult to game, webmasters had already developed link building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine, and these methods proved similarly applicable to gaming PageRank. Many sites focused on exchanging, buying, and selling links, often on a massive scale. Some of these schemes, or link farms, involved the creation of thousands of sites for the sole purpose of link spamming.[7]
By 2004, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms to reduce the impact of link manipulation. Google says it ranks sites using more than 200 different signals.[8] The three leading search engines, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Notable SEOs, such as Rand Fishkin, Barry Schwartz, Aaron Wall and Jill Whalen, have studied different approaches to search engine optimization, and have published their opinions in online forums and blogs.[9][10] SEO practitioners may also study patents held by various search engines to gain insight into the algorithms.[11]
In 2005 Google began personalizing search results for each user. Depending on their history of previous searches, Google crafted results for logged in users.[12] In 2008 Bruce Clay, said that "ranking is dead" because of personalized search. It would become meaningless to discuss how a website ranked, because it's rank would potentially be different for each user and each search.[13]
In 2007 Google announced a campaign against paid links that transfer PageRank.[14] In 2009 Google disclosed that they had taken measures to mitigate the effects of PageRank sculpting by use of the nofollow attribute on links.[15]
Relationship with search engines
By 1997 search engines recognized that webmasters were making efforts to rank well in their search engines, and that some webmasters were even manipulating their rankings in search results by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords. Early search engines, such as Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms in an effort to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings.[16]
Due to the high marketing value of targeted search results, there is potential for an adversarial relationship between search engines and SEOs. In 2005, an annual conference, AIRWeb, Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web,[17] was created to discuss and minimize the damaging effects of aggressive web content providers.
SEO companies that employ overly aggressive techniques can get their client websites banned from the search results. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal reported on a company, Traffic Power, which allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients.[18] Wired magazine reported that the same company sued blogger and SEO Aaron Wall for writing about the ban.[19] Google's Matt Cutts later confirmed that Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its clients.[20]
Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry, and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences, chats, and seminars. In fact, with the advent of paid inclusion, some search engines now have a vested interest in the health of the optimization community. Major search engines provide information and guidelines to help with site optimization.[21][22][23] Google has a Sitemaps program[24] to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website. Google guidelines are a list of suggested practices Google has provided as guidance to webmasters. Yahoo! Site Explorer provides a way for webmasters to submit URLs, determine how many pages are in the Yahoo! index and view link information.[25]
Methods
Main article: search engine optimization methods
Getting indexed
The leading search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. Some search engines, notably Yahoo!, operate a paid submission service that guarantee crawling for either a set fee or cost per click.[26] Such programs usually guarantee inclusion in the database, but do not guarantee specific ranking within the search results.[27] Two major directories, the Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory Project both require manual submission and human editorial review.[28] Google offers Google Webmaster Tools, for which an XML Sitemap feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that aren't discoverable by automatically following links.[29]
Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by the search engines. Distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled.[30]
Preventing crawling
Main article: Robots Exclusion Standard
To avoid undesirable content in the search indexes, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard robots.txt file in the root directory of the domain. Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine's database by using a meta tag specific to robots. When a search engine visits a site, the robots.txt located in the root directory is the first file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed, and will instruct the robot as to which pages are not to be crawled. As a search engine crawler may keep a cached copy of this file, it may on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not wish crawled. Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login specific pages such as shopping carts and user-specific content such as search results from internal searches. In March 2007, Google warned webmasters that they should prevent indexing of internal search results because those pages are considered search spam.[31]
Increasing prominence
A variety of other methods are employed to get a webpage shown up in the searchs results. These include:
Cross linking between pages of the same website. Giving more links to main pages of the website, to increase PageRank used by search engines.[32] Linking from other websites, including link farming and comment spam.
Writing content that includes frequently searched keyword phrase, so as to be relevant to a wide variety of search queries.[33] Adding relevant keywords to a web page meta tags, including keyword stuffing.
URL normalization of web pages accessible via multiple urls, using the "canonical" meta tag.[34]
White hat versus black hat
SEO techniques can be classified into two broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design, and those techniques of which search engines do not approve. The search engines attempt to minimize the effect of the latter, among them spamdexing. Some industry commentators have classified these methods, and the practitioners who employ them, as either white hat SEO, or black hat SEO.[35] White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanently once the search engines discover what they are doing.[36]
An SEO technique is considered white hat if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines[21][22][23][37] are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see. White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility,[38] although the two are not identical.
Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking.
Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms, or by a manual site review. Infamous examples are the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany for use of deceptive practices.[39] and the April 2006 removal of the PPC Agency BigMouthMedia.[40] All three companies, however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's list.[41]
Many Web applications employ back-end systems that dynamically modify page content (both visible and meta-data) and are designed to increase page relevance to search engines based upon how past visitors reached the original page. This dynamic search engine optimization and tuning process can be (and has been) abused by criminals in the past. Exploitation of Web applications that dynamically alter themselves can be poisoned.[42]
Grey hat techniques
Gray hat techniques are those that are neither really white nor black hat. Some of these gray hat techniques may be argued either way. These techniques might have some risk associated with them. A very good example of such a technique is purchasing links.
While Google is against sale and purchase of links there are people who subscribe to online magazines, memberships and other resources for the purpose of getting a link back to their website.
As a marketing strategy
Eye tracking studies have shown that searchers scan a search results page from top to bottom and left to right (for left to right languages), looking for a relevant result. Placement at or near the top of the rankings therefore increases the number of searchers who will visit a site.[43] However, more search engine referrals does not guarantee more sales. SEO is not necessarily an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be much more effective, depending on the site operator's goals.[44] A successful Internet marketing campaign may drive organic traffic to web pages, but it also may involve the use of paid advertising on search engines and other pages, building high quality web pages to engage and persuade, addressing technical issues that may keep search engines from crawling and indexing those sites, setting up analytics programs to enable site owners to measure their successes, and improving a site's conversion rate.[45]
SEO may generate a return on investment. However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees of continued referrals. Due to this lack of guarantees and certainty, a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic can suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending visitors.[46] It is considered wise business practice for website operators to liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic.[47] A top-ranked SEO blog Seomoz.org[48] has suggested, "Search marketers, in a twist of irony, receive a very small share of their traffic from search engines." Instead, their main sources of traffic are links from other websites.[49]
International markets
Optimization techniques are highly tuned to the dominant search engines in the target market. The search engines' market shares vary from market to market, as does competition. In 2003, Danny Sullivan stated that Google represented about 75% of all searches.[50] In markets outside the United States, Google's share is often larger, and Google remains the dominant search engine worldwide as of 2007.[51] As of 2006, Google had an 85-90% market share in Germany.[52] While there were hundreds of SEO firms in the US at that time, there were only about five in Germany.[52] As of June 2008, the marketshare of Google in the UK was close to 90% according to Hitwise.[53] That market share is achieved in a number of countries.[54]
As of 2009, there are only a few large markets where Google is not the leading search engine. In most cases, when Google is not leading in a given market, it is lagging behind a local player. The most notable markets where this is the case are China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and Czech Republic where respectively Baidu, Yahoo! Japan, Naver, Yandex and Seznam are market leaders.
Successful search optimization for international markets may require professional translation of web pages, registration of a domain name with a top level domain in the target market, and web hosting that provides a local IP address. Otherwise, the fundamental elements of search optimization are essentially the same, regardless of language.[52]
Legal precedents
On October 17, 2002, SearchKing filed suit in the United States District Court, Western District of Oklahoma, against the search engine Google. SearchKing's claim was that Google's tactics to prevent spamdexing constituted a tortious interference with contractual relations. On May 27, 2003, the court granted Google's motion to dismiss the complaint because SearchKing "failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted."[55][56]
In March 2006, KinderStart filed a lawsuit against Google over search engine rankings. Kinderstart's web site was removed from Google's index prior to the lawsuit and the amount of traffic to the site dropped by 70%. On March 16, 2007 the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (San Jose Division) dismissed KinderStart's complaint without leave to amend, and partially granted Google's motion for Rule 11 sanctions against KinderStart's attorney, requiring him to pay part of Google's legal expenses.[57][58]
Notes
1.^ Brian Pinkerton. "Finding What People Want: Experiences with the WebCrawler" (PDF). The Second International WWW Conference Chicago, USA, October 17–20, 1994. http://www.webir.org/resources/phd/pinkerton_2000.pdf. Retrieved 2007-05-07.
2.^ Danny Sullivan (June 14, 2004). "Who Invented the Term "Search Engine Optimization"?". Search Engine Watch. http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showpost.php?p=2119&postcount=10. Retrieved 2007-05-14. See Google groups thread.
3.^ Cory Doctorow (August 26, 2001). "Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia". e-LearningGuru. http://www.e-learningguru.com/articles/metacrap.htm. Retrieved 2007-05-08.
4.^ Pringle, G., Allison, L., and Dowe, D. (April 1998). "What is a tall poppy among web pages?". Proc. 7th Int. World Wide Web Conference. http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~lloyd/tilde/InterNet/Search/1998_WWW7.html. Retrieved 2007-05-08.
5.^ Brin, Sergey and Page, Larry (1998). "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine". Proceedings of the seventh international conference on World Wide Web. p. 107–117. http://www-db.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html. Retrieved 2007-05-08.
6.^ Thompson, Bill (December 19, 2003). "Is Google good for you?". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3334531.stm. Retrieved 2007-05-16.
7.^ Zoltan Gyongyi and Hector Garcia-Molina (2005). "Link Spam Alliances" (PDF). Proceedings of the 31st VLDB Conference, Trondheim, Norway. http://infolab.stanford.edu/~zoltan/publications/gyongyi2005link.pdf. Retrieved 2007-05-08.
8.^ "Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine". New York Times. June 3, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/business/yourmoney/03google.html. Retrieved 2007-06-06.
9.^ Danny Sullivan (September 29, 2005). "Rundown On Search Ranking Factors". Search Engine Watch. http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050929-072711. Retrieved 2007-05-08.
10.^ "Search Engine Ranking Factors V2". SEOmoz.org. April 2, 2007. http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors. Retrieved 2007-05-14.
11.^ Christine Churchill (November 23, 2005). "Understanding Search Engine Patents". Search Engine Watch. http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3564261. Retrieved 2007-05-08.
12.^ "Google Personalized Search Leaves Google Labs - Search Engine Watch (SEW)". searchenginewatch.com. http://searchenginewatch.com/3563036. Retrieved 2009-09-05.
13.^ "Will Personal Search Turn SEO On Its Ear?". www.webpronews.com. http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/11/17/seo-about-to-get-turned-on-its-ear. Retrieved 2009-09-05.
14.^ "8 Things We Learned About Google PageRank". www.searchenginejournal.com. http://www.searchenginejournal.com/8-things-we-learned-about-google-pagerank/5897/. Retrieved 2009-08-17.
15.^ "Google Loses “Backwards Compatibility” On Paid Link Blocking & PageRank Sculpting". searchengineland.com. http://searchengineland.com/google-loses-backwards-compatibility-on-paid-link-blocking-pagerank-sculpting-20408. Retrieved 2009-08-17.
16.^ Laurie J. Flynn (November 11, 1996). "Desperately Seeking Surfers". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE0DF123BF932A25752C1A960958260. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
17.^ "AIRWeb". Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web, annual conference. http://airweb.cse.lehigh.edu/. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
18.^ David Kesmodel (September 22, 2005). "Sites Get Dropped by Search Engines After Trying to 'Optimize' Rankings". Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB112714166978744925.html?apl=y&r=947596. Retrieved 2008-07-30.
19.^ Adam L. Penenberg (September 8, 2005). "Legal Showdown in Search Fracas". Wired Magazine. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,68799,00.html. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
20.^ Matt Cutts (February 2, 2006). "Confirming a penalty". mattcutts.com/blog. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/confirming-a-penalty/. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
21.^ a b "Google's Guidelines on Site Design". google.com. http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html. Retrieved 2007-04-18.
22.^ a b "Site Owner Help: MSN Search Web Crawler and Site Indexing". msn.com. http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx?t=SEARCH_WEBMASTER_REF_GuidelinesforOptimizingSite.htm. Retrieved 2007-04-18.
23.^ a b "Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines". help.yahoo.com. http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/basics/basics-18.html. Retrieved 2007-04-18.
24.^ "Google Webmaster Tools". google.com. http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
25.^ "Yahoo! Site Explorer". yahoo.com. http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
26.^ "Submitting To Search Crawlers: Google, Yahoo, Ask & Microsoft's Live Search". Search Engine Watch. 2007-03-12. http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167871. Retrieved 2007-05-15.
27.^ "Search Submit". searchmarketing.yahoo.com. http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srchsb/index.php. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
28.^ "Submitting To Directories: Yahoo & The Open Directory". Search Engine Watch. 2007-03-12. http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167881. Retrieved 2007-05-15.
29.^ "What is a Sitemap file and why should I have one?". google.com. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40318&topic=8514. Retrieved 2007-03-19.
30.^ Cho, J., Garcia-Molina, H. (1998). "Efficient crawling through URL ordering". Proceedings of the seventh conference on World Wide Web, Brisbane, Australia. http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/1998-51. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
31.^ "Newspapers Amok! New York Times Spamming Google? LA Times Hijacking Cars.com?". Search Engine Land. May 8, 2007. http://searchengineland.com/070508-165231.php. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
32.^ [1] Link Development"
33.^ [2] "keyword rich text"
34.^ [3]
35.^ Andrew Goodman. "Search Engine Showdown: Black hats vs. White hats at SES". SearchEngineWatch. http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3483941. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
36.^ Jill Whalen (November 16, 2004). "Black Hat/White Hat Search Engine Optimization". searchengineguide.com. http://www.searchengineguide.com/whalen/2004/1116_jw1.html. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
37.^ "What's an SEO? Does Google recommend working with companies that offer to make my site Google-friendly?". google.com. http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html. Retrieved 2007-04-18.
38.^ Andy Hagans (November 8, 2005). "High Accessibility Is Effective Search Engine Optimization". A List Apart. http://alistapart.com/articles/accessibilityseo. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
39.^ Matt Cutts (February 4, 2006). "Ramping up on international webspam". mattcutts.com/blog. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ramping-up-on-international-webspam/. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
40.^ seobook (April 4, 2006). "Big Mouth Media Banned for Excessive Hidden Text Spamming - Google's Matt Cutts Confirms Hand Job". threadwatch.org. http://www.threadwatch.org/node/6276. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
41.^ Matt Cutts (February 7, 2006). "Recent reinclusions". mattcutts.com/blog. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/recent-reinclusions/. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
42.^ Gunter Ollmann (August, 2008). "SEO Code Injection". Technicalinfo.net. http://www.technicalinfo.net/papers/SEOCodeInjection.html.
43.^ "A New F-Word for Google Search Results". Search Engine Watch. March 8, 2005. http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3488076. Retrieved 2007-05-16.
44.^ "What SEO Isn't". blog.v7n.com. June 24, 2006. http://blog.v7n.com/2006/06/24/what-seo-isnt/. Retrieved 2007-05-16.
45.^ Melissa Burdon (March 13, 2007). "The Battle Between Search Engine Optimization and Conversion: Who Wins?". Grok.com. http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/03/13/the-battle-between-search-engine-optimization-and-conversion-who-wins/. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
46.^ Andy Greenberg (April 30, 2007). "Condemned To Google Hell". Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/technology/2007/04/29/sanar-google-skyfacet-tech-cx_ag_0430googhell.html?partner=rss. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
47.^ Jakob Nielsen (January 9, 2006). "Search Engines as Leeches on the Web". useit.com. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/search_engines.html. Retrieved 2007-05-14.
48.^ "SEOmoz: Best SEO Blog of 2006". searchenginejournal.com. January 3, 2007. http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seomoz-best-seo-blog-of-2006/4195/. Retrieved 2007-05-31.
49.^ "A survey of 25 blogs in the search space comparing external metrics to visitor tracking data". seomoz.org. http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-blog-stats#4. Retrieved 2007-05-31.
50.^ "The search engine that could". USA Today. 2003-08-26. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-08-25-google_x.htm. Retrieved 2007-05-15.
51.^ Greg Jarboe (2007-02-22). "Stats Show Google Dominates the International Search Landscape". Search Engine Watch. http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3625072. Retrieved 2007-05-15.
52.^ a b c Mike Grehan (April 3, 2006). "Search Engine Optimizing for Europe". Click. http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3595926. Retrieved 2007-05-14.
53.^ Jack Schofield (2008-06-10). "Google UK closes in on 90% market share". Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2008/jun/10/googleukclosesinon90mark. Retrieved 2008-06-10.
54.^ Alex Chitu (2009-03-13). "Google's Market Share in Your Country". Google Operating System. http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/03/googles-market-share-in-your-country.html. Retrieved 2009-05-16.
55.^ "Search King, Inc. v. Google Technology, Inc., CIV-02-1457-M" (PDF). docstoc.com. May 27, 2003. http://www.docstoc.com/docs/618281/Order-(Granting-Googles-Motion-to-Dismiss-Search-Kings-Complaint). Retrieved 2008-05-23.
56.^ Stefanie Olsen (May 30, 2003). "Judge dismisses suit against Google". CNET. http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-1011740.html. Retrieved 2007-05-10.
57.^ "Technology & Marketing Law Blog: KinderStart v. Google Dismissed—With Sanctions Against KinderStart's Counsel". blog.ericgoldman.org. http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2007/03/kinderstart_v_g_2.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-23.
58.^ "Technology & Marketing Law Blog: Google Sued Over Rankings—KinderStart.com v. Google". blog.ericgoldman.org. http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2006/03/google_sued_ove.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-23
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion. Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.
The acronym "SEO" can also refer to "search engine optimizers," a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems, images, videos, shopping carts, and other elements that have been optimized for the purpose of search engine exposure.
Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms, keyword stuffing and article spinning that degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.
History
Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit the address of a page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a spider to "crawl" that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed.[1] The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own server, where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various information about the page, such as the words it contains and where these are located, as well as any weight for specific words, and all links the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date.
Site owners started to recognize the value of having their sites highly ranked and visible in search engine results, creating an opportunity for both white hat and black hat SEO practitioners. According to industry analyst Danny Sullivan, the phrase search engine optimization probably came into use in 1997.[2]
Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta tag, or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta tags provide a guide to each page's content. But using meta data to index pages was found to be less than reliable because the webmaster's choice of keywords in the meta tag could potentially be an inaccurate representation of the site's actual content. Inaccurate, incomplete, and inconsistent data in meta tags could and did cause pages to rank for irrelevant searches.[3] Web content providers also manipulated a number of attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines.[4]
By relying so much on factors such as keyword density which were exclusively within a webmaster's control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation. To provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their results pages showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters. Since the success and popularity of a search engine is determined by its ability to produce the most relevant results to any given search, allowing those results to be false would turn users to find other search sources. Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate.
Graduate students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed "backrub," a search engine that relied on a mathematical algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages. The number calculated by the algorithm, PageRank, is a function of the quantity and strength of inbound links.[5] PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly surfs the web, and follows links from one page to another. In effect, this means that some links are stronger than others, as a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random surfer.
Page and Brin founded Google in 1998. Google attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.[6] Off-page factors (such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis) were considered as well as on-page factors (such as keyword frequency, meta tags, headings, links and site structure) to enable Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines that only considered on-page factors for their rankings. Although PageRank was more difficult to game, webmasters had already developed link building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine, and these methods proved similarly applicable to gaming PageRank. Many sites focused on exchanging, buying, and selling links, often on a massive scale. Some of these schemes, or link farms, involved the creation of thousands of sites for the sole purpose of link spamming.[7]
By 2004, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms to reduce the impact of link manipulation. Google says it ranks sites using more than 200 different signals.[8] The three leading search engines, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Notable SEOs, such as Rand Fishkin, Barry Schwartz, Aaron Wall and Jill Whalen, have studied different approaches to search engine optimization, and have published their opinions in online forums and blogs.[9][10] SEO practitioners may also study patents held by various search engines to gain insight into the algorithms.[11]
In 2005 Google began personalizing search results for each user. Depending on their history of previous searches, Google crafted results for logged in users.[12] In 2008 Bruce Clay, said that "ranking is dead" because of personalized search. It would become meaningless to discuss how a website ranked, because it's rank would potentially be different for each user and each search.[13]
In 2007 Google announced a campaign against paid links that transfer PageRank.[14] In 2009 Google disclosed that they had taken measures to mitigate the effects of PageRank sculpting by use of the nofollow attribute on links.[15]
Relationship with search engines
By 1997 search engines recognized that webmasters were making efforts to rank well in their search engines, and that some webmasters were even manipulating their rankings in search results by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords. Early search engines, such as Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms in an effort to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings.[16]
Due to the high marketing value of targeted search results, there is potential for an adversarial relationship between search engines and SEOs. In 2005, an annual conference, AIRWeb, Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web,[17] was created to discuss and minimize the damaging effects of aggressive web content providers.
SEO companies that employ overly aggressive techniques can get their client websites banned from the search results. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal reported on a company, Traffic Power, which allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients.[18] Wired magazine reported that the same company sued blogger and SEO Aaron Wall for writing about the ban.[19] Google's Matt Cutts later confirmed that Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its clients.[20]
Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry, and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences, chats, and seminars. In fact, with the advent of paid inclusion, some search engines now have a vested interest in the health of the optimization community. Major search engines provide information and guidelines to help with site optimization.[21][22][23] Google has a Sitemaps program[24] to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website. Google guidelines are a list of suggested practices Google has provided as guidance to webmasters. Yahoo! Site Explorer provides a way for webmasters to submit URLs, determine how many pages are in the Yahoo! index and view link information.[25]
Methods
Main article: search engine optimization methods
Getting indexed
The leading search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. Some search engines, notably Yahoo!, operate a paid submission service that guarantee crawling for either a set fee or cost per click.[26] Such programs usually guarantee inclusion in the database, but do not guarantee specific ranking within the search results.[27] Two major directories, the Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory Project both require manual submission and human editorial review.[28] Google offers Google Webmaster Tools, for which an XML Sitemap feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that aren't discoverable by automatically following links.[29]
Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by the search engines. Distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled.[30]
Preventing crawling
Main article: Robots Exclusion Standard
To avoid undesirable content in the search indexes, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard robots.txt file in the root directory of the domain. Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine's database by using a meta tag specific to robots. When a search engine visits a site, the robots.txt located in the root directory is the first file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed, and will instruct the robot as to which pages are not to be crawled. As a search engine crawler may keep a cached copy of this file, it may on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not wish crawled. Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login specific pages such as shopping carts and user-specific content such as search results from internal searches. In March 2007, Google warned webmasters that they should prevent indexing of internal search results because those pages are considered search spam.[31]
Increasing prominence
A variety of other methods are employed to get a webpage shown up in the searchs results. These include:
Cross linking between pages of the same website. Giving more links to main pages of the website, to increase PageRank used by search engines.[32] Linking from other websites, including link farming and comment spam.
Writing content that includes frequently searched keyword phrase, so as to be relevant to a wide variety of search queries.[33] Adding relevant keywords to a web page meta tags, including keyword stuffing.
URL normalization of web pages accessible via multiple urls, using the "canonical" meta tag.[34]
White hat versus black hat
SEO techniques can be classified into two broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design, and those techniques of which search engines do not approve. The search engines attempt to minimize the effect of the latter, among them spamdexing. Some industry commentators have classified these methods, and the practitioners who employ them, as either white hat SEO, or black hat SEO.[35] White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanently once the search engines discover what they are doing.[36]
An SEO technique is considered white hat if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines[21][22][23][37] are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see. White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility,[38] although the two are not identical.
Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking.
Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms, or by a manual site review. Infamous examples are the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany for use of deceptive practices.[39] and the April 2006 removal of the PPC Agency BigMouthMedia.[40] All three companies, however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's list.[41]
Many Web applications employ back-end systems that dynamically modify page content (both visible and meta-data) and are designed to increase page relevance to search engines based upon how past visitors reached the original page. This dynamic search engine optimization and tuning process can be (and has been) abused by criminals in the past. Exploitation of Web applications that dynamically alter themselves can be poisoned.[42]
Grey hat techniques
Gray hat techniques are those that are neither really white nor black hat. Some of these gray hat techniques may be argued either way. These techniques might have some risk associated with them. A very good example of such a technique is purchasing links.
While Google is against sale and purchase of links there are people who subscribe to online magazines, memberships and other resources for the purpose of getting a link back to their website.
As a marketing strategy
Eye tracking studies have shown that searchers scan a search results page from top to bottom and left to right (for left to right languages), looking for a relevant result. Placement at or near the top of the rankings therefore increases the number of searchers who will visit a site.[43] However, more search engine referrals does not guarantee more sales. SEO is not necessarily an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be much more effective, depending on the site operator's goals.[44] A successful Internet marketing campaign may drive organic traffic to web pages, but it also may involve the use of paid advertising on search engines and other pages, building high quality web pages to engage and persuade, addressing technical issues that may keep search engines from crawling and indexing those sites, setting up analytics programs to enable site owners to measure their successes, and improving a site's conversion rate.[45]
SEO may generate a return on investment. However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees of continued referrals. Due to this lack of guarantees and certainty, a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic can suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending visitors.[46] It is considered wise business practice for website operators to liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic.[47] A top-ranked SEO blog Seomoz.org[48] has suggested, "Search marketers, in a twist of irony, receive a very small share of their traffic from search engines." Instead, their main sources of traffic are links from other websites.[49]
International markets
Optimization techniques are highly tuned to the dominant search engines in the target market. The search engines' market shares vary from market to market, as does competition. In 2003, Danny Sullivan stated that Google represented about 75% of all searches.[50] In markets outside the United States, Google's share is often larger, and Google remains the dominant search engine worldwide as of 2007.[51] As of 2006, Google had an 85-90% market share in Germany.[52] While there were hundreds of SEO firms in the US at that time, there were only about five in Germany.[52] As of June 2008, the marketshare of Google in the UK was close to 90% according to Hitwise.[53] That market share is achieved in a number of countries.[54]
As of 2009, there are only a few large markets where Google is not the leading search engine. In most cases, when Google is not leading in a given market, it is lagging behind a local player. The most notable markets where this is the case are China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and Czech Republic where respectively Baidu, Yahoo! Japan, Naver, Yandex and Seznam are market leaders.
Successful search optimization for international markets may require professional translation of web pages, registration of a domain name with a top level domain in the target market, and web hosting that provides a local IP address. Otherwise, the fundamental elements of search optimization are essentially the same, regardless of language.[52]
Legal precedents
On October 17, 2002, SearchKing filed suit in the United States District Court, Western District of Oklahoma, against the search engine Google. SearchKing's claim was that Google's tactics to prevent spamdexing constituted a tortious interference with contractual relations. On May 27, 2003, the court granted Google's motion to dismiss the complaint because SearchKing "failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted."[55][56]
In March 2006, KinderStart filed a lawsuit against Google over search engine rankings. Kinderstart's web site was removed from Google's index prior to the lawsuit and the amount of traffic to the site dropped by 70%. On March 16, 2007 the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (San Jose Division) dismissed KinderStart's complaint without leave to amend, and partially granted Google's motion for Rule 11 sanctions against KinderStart's attorney, requiring him to pay part of Google's legal expenses.[57][58]
Notes
1.^ Brian Pinkerton. "Finding What People Want: Experiences with the WebCrawler" (PDF). The Second International WWW Conference Chicago, USA, October 17–20, 1994. http://www.webir.org/resources/phd/pinkerton_2000.pdf. Retrieved 2007-05-07.
2.^ Danny Sullivan (June 14, 2004). "Who Invented the Term "Search Engine Optimization"?". Search Engine Watch. http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showpost.php?p=2119&postcount=10. Retrieved 2007-05-14. See Google groups thread.
3.^ Cory Doctorow (August 26, 2001). "Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia". e-LearningGuru. http://www.e-learningguru.com/articles/metacrap.htm. Retrieved 2007-05-08.
4.^ Pringle, G., Allison, L., and Dowe, D. (April 1998). "What is a tall poppy among web pages?". Proc. 7th Int. World Wide Web Conference. http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~lloyd/tilde/InterNet/Search/1998_WWW7.html. Retrieved 2007-05-08.
5.^ Brin, Sergey and Page, Larry (1998). "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine". Proceedings of the seventh international conference on World Wide Web. p. 107–117. http://www-db.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html. Retrieved 2007-05-08.
6.^ Thompson, Bill (December 19, 2003). "Is Google good for you?". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3334531.stm. Retrieved 2007-05-16.
7.^ Zoltan Gyongyi and Hector Garcia-Molina (2005). "Link Spam Alliances" (PDF). Proceedings of the 31st VLDB Conference, Trondheim, Norway. http://infolab.stanford.edu/~zoltan/publications/gyongyi2005link.pdf. Retrieved 2007-05-08.
8.^ "Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine". New York Times. June 3, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/business/yourmoney/03google.html. Retrieved 2007-06-06.
9.^ Danny Sullivan (September 29, 2005). "Rundown On Search Ranking Factors". Search Engine Watch. http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050929-072711. Retrieved 2007-05-08.
10.^ "Search Engine Ranking Factors V2". SEOmoz.org. April 2, 2007. http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors. Retrieved 2007-05-14.
11.^ Christine Churchill (November 23, 2005). "Understanding Search Engine Patents". Search Engine Watch. http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3564261. Retrieved 2007-05-08.
12.^ "Google Personalized Search Leaves Google Labs - Search Engine Watch (SEW)". searchenginewatch.com. http://searchenginewatch.com/3563036. Retrieved 2009-09-05.
13.^ "Will Personal Search Turn SEO On Its Ear?". www.webpronews.com. http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/11/17/seo-about-to-get-turned-on-its-ear. Retrieved 2009-09-05.
14.^ "8 Things We Learned About Google PageRank". www.searchenginejournal.com. http://www.searchenginejournal.com/8-things-we-learned-about-google-pagerank/5897/. Retrieved 2009-08-17.
15.^ "Google Loses “Backwards Compatibility” On Paid Link Blocking & PageRank Sculpting". searchengineland.com. http://searchengineland.com/google-loses-backwards-compatibility-on-paid-link-blocking-pagerank-sculpting-20408. Retrieved 2009-08-17.
16.^ Laurie J. Flynn (November 11, 1996). "Desperately Seeking Surfers". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE0DF123BF932A25752C1A960958260. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
17.^ "AIRWeb". Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web, annual conference. http://airweb.cse.lehigh.edu/. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
18.^ David Kesmodel (September 22, 2005). "Sites Get Dropped by Search Engines After Trying to 'Optimize' Rankings". Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB112714166978744925.html?apl=y&r=947596. Retrieved 2008-07-30.
19.^ Adam L. Penenberg (September 8, 2005). "Legal Showdown in Search Fracas". Wired Magazine. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,68799,00.html. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
20.^ Matt Cutts (February 2, 2006). "Confirming a penalty". mattcutts.com/blog. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/confirming-a-penalty/. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
21.^ a b "Google's Guidelines on Site Design". google.com. http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html. Retrieved 2007-04-18.
22.^ a b "Site Owner Help: MSN Search Web Crawler and Site Indexing". msn.com. http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx?t=SEARCH_WEBMASTER_REF_GuidelinesforOptimizingSite.htm. Retrieved 2007-04-18.
23.^ a b "Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines". help.yahoo.com. http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/basics/basics-18.html. Retrieved 2007-04-18.
24.^ "Google Webmaster Tools". google.com. http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
25.^ "Yahoo! Site Explorer". yahoo.com. http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
26.^ "Submitting To Search Crawlers: Google, Yahoo, Ask & Microsoft's Live Search". Search Engine Watch. 2007-03-12. http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167871. Retrieved 2007-05-15.
27.^ "Search Submit". searchmarketing.yahoo.com. http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srchsb/index.php. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
28.^ "Submitting To Directories: Yahoo & The Open Directory". Search Engine Watch. 2007-03-12. http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167881. Retrieved 2007-05-15.
29.^ "What is a Sitemap file and why should I have one?". google.com. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40318&topic=8514. Retrieved 2007-03-19.
30.^ Cho, J., Garcia-Molina, H. (1998). "Efficient crawling through URL ordering". Proceedings of the seventh conference on World Wide Web, Brisbane, Australia. http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/1998-51. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
31.^ "Newspapers Amok! New York Times Spamming Google? LA Times Hijacking Cars.com?". Search Engine Land. May 8, 2007. http://searchengineland.com/070508-165231.php. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
32.^ [1] Link Development"
33.^ [2] "keyword rich text"
34.^ [3]
35.^ Andrew Goodman. "Search Engine Showdown: Black hats vs. White hats at SES". SearchEngineWatch. http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3483941. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
36.^ Jill Whalen (November 16, 2004). "Black Hat/White Hat Search Engine Optimization". searchengineguide.com. http://www.searchengineguide.com/whalen/2004/1116_jw1.html. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
37.^ "What's an SEO? Does Google recommend working with companies that offer to make my site Google-friendly?". google.com. http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html. Retrieved 2007-04-18.
38.^ Andy Hagans (November 8, 2005). "High Accessibility Is Effective Search Engine Optimization". A List Apart. http://alistapart.com/articles/accessibilityseo. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
39.^ Matt Cutts (February 4, 2006). "Ramping up on international webspam". mattcutts.com/blog. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ramping-up-on-international-webspam/. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
40.^ seobook (April 4, 2006). "Big Mouth Media Banned for Excessive Hidden Text Spamming - Google's Matt Cutts Confirms Hand Job". threadwatch.org. http://www.threadwatch.org/node/6276. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
41.^ Matt Cutts (February 7, 2006). "Recent reinclusions". mattcutts.com/blog. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/recent-reinclusions/. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
42.^ Gunter Ollmann (August, 2008). "SEO Code Injection". Technicalinfo.net. http://www.technicalinfo.net/papers/SEOCodeInjection.html.
43.^ "A New F-Word for Google Search Results". Search Engine Watch. March 8, 2005. http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3488076. Retrieved 2007-05-16.
44.^ "What SEO Isn't". blog.v7n.com. June 24, 2006. http://blog.v7n.com/2006/06/24/what-seo-isnt/. Retrieved 2007-05-16.
45.^ Melissa Burdon (March 13, 2007). "The Battle Between Search Engine Optimization and Conversion: Who Wins?". Grok.com. http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/03/13/the-battle-between-search-engine-optimization-and-conversion-who-wins/. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
46.^ Andy Greenberg (April 30, 2007). "Condemned To Google Hell". Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/technology/2007/04/29/sanar-google-skyfacet-tech-cx_ag_0430googhell.html?partner=rss. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
47.^ Jakob Nielsen (January 9, 2006). "Search Engines as Leeches on the Web". useit.com. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/search_engines.html. Retrieved 2007-05-14.
48.^ "SEOmoz: Best SEO Blog of 2006". searchenginejournal.com. January 3, 2007. http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seomoz-best-seo-blog-of-2006/4195/. Retrieved 2007-05-31.
49.^ "A survey of 25 blogs in the search space comparing external metrics to visitor tracking data". seomoz.org. http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-blog-stats#4. Retrieved 2007-05-31.
50.^ "The search engine that could". USA Today. 2003-08-26. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-08-25-google_x.htm. Retrieved 2007-05-15.
51.^ Greg Jarboe (2007-02-22). "Stats Show Google Dominates the International Search Landscape". Search Engine Watch. http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3625072. Retrieved 2007-05-15.
52.^ a b c Mike Grehan (April 3, 2006). "Search Engine Optimizing for Europe". Click. http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3595926. Retrieved 2007-05-14.
53.^ Jack Schofield (2008-06-10). "Google UK closes in on 90% market share". Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2008/jun/10/googleukclosesinon90mark. Retrieved 2008-06-10.
54.^ Alex Chitu (2009-03-13). "Google's Market Share in Your Country". Google Operating System. http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/03/googles-market-share-in-your-country.html. Retrieved 2009-05-16.
55.^ "Search King, Inc. v. Google Technology, Inc., CIV-02-1457-M" (PDF). docstoc.com. May 27, 2003. http://www.docstoc.com/docs/618281/Order-(Granting-Googles-Motion-to-Dismiss-Search-Kings-Complaint). Retrieved 2008-05-23.
56.^ Stefanie Olsen (May 30, 2003). "Judge dismisses suit against Google". CNET. http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-1011740.html. Retrieved 2007-05-10.
57.^ "Technology & Marketing Law Blog: KinderStart v. Google Dismissed—With Sanctions Against KinderStart's Counsel". blog.ericgoldman.org. http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2007/03/kinderstart_v_g_2.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-23.
58.^ "Technology & Marketing Law Blog: Google Sued Over Rankings—KinderStart.com v. Google". blog.ericgoldman.org. http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2006/03/google_sued_ove.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-23
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
WEBSITE TRAFFIC PART II
Here are some of the ways, that I've tried myself in driving traffic to my blog.
1. JOIN ONLINE FORUM
Every blogger should be active in online forum. But, blogger should always remember that, they should not spam in forums just to drive traffic to their blog. The purpose of joining forum is toe contribute an excellent content and help others in need. In this way, they will notify us as an expert and in the same time will visit our blog regularly.
2. SUBMIT OUR RSS FED TO FEED DIRECTORIES
We can use any software to do this or we can manually did it just like we submit our blog link in blog directories.
3. CLAIM OUR BLOG AT TECHNOCRATI
Technocrati is one of the best site to sign up for. For me, for any serious blogger, they should sign up in technocrati and claim their blog there.
4. JOIN MYBLOGLOG
A good social community like mybloglog is a must use for every blogger. We can use the widget of mybloglog in our blog. We can get constant traffic by making friends with other bloggers and in the same time building our own community there. Just join this community today.
5. JOIN HUBPAGE
Hubpage is also a good site to sign up for. We can put our blog link there.
6. JOIN BLOGCATALOG
Our blog should be in blogcatalog. We cn use it's widget on blog and receive a nice flow of traffic after a while. Here's mine http://www.blogcatalog.com/directory/blogging
7. JOIN BLOGRUSH
Blogrush is also an xcellent site for me to signup for. Just like blogcatalog, we can use it's widget on our blog.
8. USE CRAIGLIST
There dozens of different ways that we can use from the craiglist in promoting our blog. I'm suggesting that, every blogger should use every single one of it to promote our blog.
9. USE BUSINESS CARD
A simple but effective ways of promoting our blog.
10. USE YOUTUBE
We can make a video in promoting our blog and submit it to youtube, the most visited video site nowadays.
Happy promoting blog guys. See you later. Cheers.
1. JOIN ONLINE FORUM
Every blogger should be active in online forum. But, blogger should always remember that, they should not spam in forums just to drive traffic to their blog. The purpose of joining forum is toe contribute an excellent content and help others in need. In this way, they will notify us as an expert and in the same time will visit our blog regularly.
2. SUBMIT OUR RSS FED TO FEED DIRECTORIES
We can use any software to do this or we can manually did it just like we submit our blog link in blog directories.
3. CLAIM OUR BLOG AT TECHNOCRATI
Technocrati is one of the best site to sign up for. For me, for any serious blogger, they should sign up in technocrati and claim their blog there.
4. JOIN MYBLOGLOG
A good social community like mybloglog is a must use for every blogger. We can use the widget of mybloglog in our blog. We can get constant traffic by making friends with other bloggers and in the same time building our own community there. Just join this community today.
5. JOIN HUBPAGE
Hubpage is also a good site to sign up for. We can put our blog link there.
6. JOIN BLOGCATALOG
Our blog should be in blogcatalog. We cn use it's widget on blog and receive a nice flow of traffic after a while. Here's mine http://www.blogcatalog.com/directory/blogging
7. JOIN BLOGRUSH
Blogrush is also an xcellent site for me to signup for. Just like blogcatalog, we can use it's widget on our blog.
8. USE CRAIGLIST
There dozens of different ways that we can use from the craiglist in promoting our blog. I'm suggesting that, every blogger should use every single one of it to promote our blog.
9. USE BUSINESS CARD
A simple but effective ways of promoting our blog.
10. USE YOUTUBE
We can make a video in promoting our blog and submit it to youtube, the most visited video site nowadays.
Happy promoting blog guys. See you later. Cheers.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Web Site Traffic
There are many ways of driving traffic to our web site. I'll try to list down the ways that I've came across.
1. PROVIDE LATEST INFORMATION
Always update the content of our web site or blog and give the latest information to the visitors of our web site or blog. This will in the same time bring us the new visitors and retaining the existing ones.
2. SUBMIT OUR WEB SITE OR BLOG TO ONLINE DIRECTORIES
For me, this is a longer term strategy, which aims at creating incoming links, which in the same time help to form the foundation of our search engine optimization.
3. BLOGLET SUBSCRIPTION
Set up a Bloglet subscription form on our blog and invite everyone in our network to subscribe. Here's the link http://www.bloglet.com
4. LINK IN OUR EMAIL SIGNATURE
Add a link of our blog in our email signature.
5. NEWSLETTER
In publishing a newsletter, always remember to put our blog or website link in every issue that we wrote in.
6. COMMITMENT
This is a very important tools to drive traffic to our blog or website. A commitment of 10 or 15 minutes a day can help increase the number of traffic to our blog or web.
These are what in my mind now. Will update other ways later.
Thanks for dropping by. Cheers.
1. PROVIDE LATEST INFORMATION
Always update the content of our web site or blog and give the latest information to the visitors of our web site or blog. This will in the same time bring us the new visitors and retaining the existing ones.
2. SUBMIT OUR WEB SITE OR BLOG TO ONLINE DIRECTORIES
For me, this is a longer term strategy, which aims at creating incoming links, which in the same time help to form the foundation of our search engine optimization.
3. BLOGLET SUBSCRIPTION
Set up a Bloglet subscription form on our blog and invite everyone in our network to subscribe. Here's the link http://www.bloglet.com
4. LINK IN OUR EMAIL SIGNATURE
Add a link of our blog in our email signature.
5. NEWSLETTER
In publishing a newsletter, always remember to put our blog or website link in every issue that we wrote in.
6. COMMITMENT
This is a very important tools to drive traffic to our blog or website. A commitment of 10 or 15 minutes a day can help increase the number of traffic to our blog or web.
These are what in my mind now. Will update other ways later.
Thanks for dropping by. Cheers.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
TRAFFIC
As we know, traffic is one of the most important things that we need for generating online money. Through my reading, I've found very useful tips of driving traffic to our website. I can share with you guys the article that I've read here. The article is "How To Drive Traffic to Your Blog - The Advice of a 12 Year Old".
The first thing that we need to know is to learn the basics, which we have to understand that, the internet is a very big place. There are several billion of webpages and often with very little time available to the end-user, they’ll use several techniques to find what they’re looking for.
The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is also play impoprtant roles in driving traffic to our webpage or blog. It is the most popular optimization agent that been used nowadays for our webpage or blog be found easily. It can be easy andhard based on many factors.
According to David, the best thing to start a webpage or blog is to build a quality content for the visitors to see and then we can progress to the formula of "THE THREE Cs". By doing this, we can simply attract the genuine interested people to actively play his or her part in giving a quality feedback on the ways to improve, design and usability to us in developing our webpage.
Now, let us see what is the "THE THREE Cs" formula.
The first C is "COMMUNITY"
Whether you start up your own community, or join others, via means of MyBlogLog, MySpace, LinkedIn, Xing and others, this is a guaranteed and proven way to get visitors, to get hits, impressions, and often quality traffic, because you know that these people haven’t just clicked on a random link or search engine listing, but have seen you or your website’s profile, and followed it through to your homepage/landing page. The best ways to get the profiles themselves noticed?
The second C is "COMMUNICATION"
I don’t mean ’spam’ by this either. Get involved in genuine discussions, with other people of similar interests, start up a civilized, profitable, knowledgeable discussion, then when you’re finished, ask if they’d take a look at your blog or website. You’d be surprised how many loyal readers have come to my own blog in this way. Simply leave comments in communities, on social networks, on other blogs, etc. Still not quite your way of dealing with people?
The third C is "CONSIDERING"
All the time, you have to consider the reader. Who are you writing for? The reader. Who will be navigating your blog? The reader. Who should you devote your time, energy and attention to? The reader. Consideration is important, and you can show this in many ways. Either by having a clutter-free, easy-to-follow design, or you could alternatively try getting the readers involved, by asking questions in blog posts, or website statements, and opening up comments. If people comment, strike up a conversation with them, and keep them coming back. Answer their queries and requests with solid, reliable, dependable answers, and take note of the feedback they leave by using it, and putting it into action. If someone states that your text is hard to read, change the colour to stop it clashing so much with the background, or simply make it slightly larger.
There are lots of ways you can show consideration to your audience, and it shows just how loyal you are to your readers through this. If someone spots an inaccuracy in a blog post and tells you, don’t be lazy. Go change it! They’ll keep coming back, they’ll tell their friends, and in turn this C will do word-of-mouth marketing wonders.
Hopefuly these tips and advice can be really useful to us in driving thousands of traffic to oue web or blog and generate the tons of online money.
I qoute from the full article, that can be read at : http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/02/13/how-to-drive-traffic-to-your-blog-the-advice-of-a-12-year-old/
The first thing that we need to know is to learn the basics, which we have to understand that, the internet is a very big place. There are several billion of webpages and often with very little time available to the end-user, they’ll use several techniques to find what they’re looking for.
The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is also play impoprtant roles in driving traffic to our webpage or blog. It is the most popular optimization agent that been used nowadays for our webpage or blog be found easily. It can be easy andhard based on many factors.
According to David, the best thing to start a webpage or blog is to build a quality content for the visitors to see and then we can progress to the formula of "THE THREE Cs". By doing this, we can simply attract the genuine interested people to actively play his or her part in giving a quality feedback on the ways to improve, design and usability to us in developing our webpage.
Now, let us see what is the "THE THREE Cs" formula.
The first C is "COMMUNITY"
Whether you start up your own community, or join others, via means of MyBlogLog, MySpace, LinkedIn, Xing and others, this is a guaranteed and proven way to get visitors, to get hits, impressions, and often quality traffic, because you know that these people haven’t just clicked on a random link or search engine listing, but have seen you or your website’s profile, and followed it through to your homepage/landing page. The best ways to get the profiles themselves noticed?
The second C is "COMMUNICATION"
I don’t mean ’spam’ by this either. Get involved in genuine discussions, with other people of similar interests, start up a civilized, profitable, knowledgeable discussion, then when you’re finished, ask if they’d take a look at your blog or website. You’d be surprised how many loyal readers have come to my own blog in this way. Simply leave comments in communities, on social networks, on other blogs, etc. Still not quite your way of dealing with people?
The third C is "CONSIDERING"
All the time, you have to consider the reader. Who are you writing for? The reader. Who will be navigating your blog? The reader. Who should you devote your time, energy and attention to? The reader. Consideration is important, and you can show this in many ways. Either by having a clutter-free, easy-to-follow design, or you could alternatively try getting the readers involved, by asking questions in blog posts, or website statements, and opening up comments. If people comment, strike up a conversation with them, and keep them coming back. Answer their queries and requests with solid, reliable, dependable answers, and take note of the feedback they leave by using it, and putting it into action. If someone states that your text is hard to read, change the colour to stop it clashing so much with the background, or simply make it slightly larger.
There are lots of ways you can show consideration to your audience, and it shows just how loyal you are to your readers through this. If someone spots an inaccuracy in a blog post and tells you, don’t be lazy. Go change it! They’ll keep coming back, they’ll tell their friends, and in turn this C will do word-of-mouth marketing wonders.
Hopefuly these tips and advice can be really useful to us in driving thousands of traffic to oue web or blog and generate the tons of online money.
I qoute from the full article, that can be read at : http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/02/13/how-to-drive-traffic-to-your-blog-the-advice-of-a-12-year-old/
Make Money Online
Hi there,
I'm was writing this blog for the purpose to gather information on the effective various ways of generating the online money. And it was not in my mind to write on the get-rich-quick program.
As we know, when we talk about generating money online, there are various ways of doing it. Many internet millionare has come out with their own ways in genereting tons of online money.
Part from the existing various ways, like it or not, we have to have a huge traffic to our web or blog. Bare in mind that, if our web or blog is loading slow, the visitors will simply exit form it after waiting for so long. This will certainly caused a loss to us, as the visitors have no chance waht so ever to see the adsene in our web or blog. The consequence is that, we cannot generate a single cent whenever the visitors cannot stay longer to browse our web or blog.
If anybody has their input and would like to contribute on this matter, kindly leave your comment. And It is hope that I can gain more knowledge on the best way of making online money through this blog.
Thanks alot for dropping by. See you later. Cheers.
I'm was writing this blog for the purpose to gather information on the effective various ways of generating the online money. And it was not in my mind to write on the get-rich-quick program.
As we know, when we talk about generating money online, there are various ways of doing it. Many internet millionare has come out with their own ways in genereting tons of online money.
Part from the existing various ways, like it or not, we have to have a huge traffic to our web or blog. Bare in mind that, if our web or blog is loading slow, the visitors will simply exit form it after waiting for so long. This will certainly caused a loss to us, as the visitors have no chance waht so ever to see the adsene in our web or blog. The consequence is that, we cannot generate a single cent whenever the visitors cannot stay longer to browse our web or blog.
If anybody has their input and would like to contribute on this matter, kindly leave your comment. And It is hope that I can gain more knowledge on the best way of making online money through this blog.
Thanks alot for dropping by. See you later. Cheers.
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