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SEO For Beginners: by Marcus Sykes Marcus@websterwebdesign - Co.uk

This document provides an introduction to search engine optimization (SEO) for beginners. It discusses key SEO concepts like keywords, meta tags, titles, links and content. Search engines use spiders to crawl websites and analyze HTML code and content to understand what pages are about and how they should be ranked. Proper use of keywords, tags and linking can help increase a website's rankings in search engines. The document also provides a basic overview of HTML and CSS and their role in SEO.

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290 views35 pages

SEO For Beginners: by Marcus Sykes Marcus@websterwebdesign - Co.uk

This document provides an introduction to search engine optimization (SEO) for beginners. It discusses key SEO concepts like keywords, meta tags, titles, links and content. Search engines use spiders to crawl websites and analyze HTML code and content to understand what pages are about and how they should be ranked. Proper use of keywords, tags and linking can help increase a website's rankings in search engines. The document also provides a basic overview of HTML and CSS and their role in SEO.

Uploaded by

ashok_bbsr
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 35

SEO for beginners

By Marcus Sykes
www.websterwebdesign.co.uk
[email protected]
Overview
 Introduction to SEO
 Short description of SEO in general
 Basic overview of HTML and CSS
 This will only serve to highlight the uses of
these languages for SEO
 SEO techniques
 Ways in which we implement SEO
 Viewing and measuring results
 How to maintain your SEO campaign
Introduction to SEO
 SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) involves
altering website code, content, and presence
in order to increase rankings in search
engines
 At least half a billion searches are made
worldwide on a daily basis
 Ifyou are ranked at the top of a search engine,
you are essentially running a free marketing
campaign.
Introduction to SEO
Which search engine?

 There are some main players which you must always


consider optimising for, namely Google, Yahoo, MSN,
AOL, and AskJeeves
 Although Google makes up for almost half of
worldwide searches, it is not always a good tactic to
relate your site prominence only on Google
 If half a billion searches are made per day, this means
that over 250,000,000 are made on other Search
Engines
 Each search engine searches the web and ranks sites
differently, so when you may be at the top of one
search engine, you might not even be listed on
another one
Introduction to SEO
Search Engine Statistics

 Search engine market shares in November


2005 for searches in the USA
Introduction to SEO
How a search engine works

 Search engines use programs called spiders, or bots,


to search the internet and document their findings.
 Spiders firstly go to a webpage and analyse it
 Goes through the HTML code and categorises the most
important words (keywords) in the document.
 It then moves on to any pages that linked from the
current page.
 This is one way how search engines find new pages.
 It also visits pages that may not be linked by other
pages, but were submitted by search engines.
Introduction to SEO
What a search engine sees

 Spiders do not see a page like humans do, as


it cannot describe an image, or tell you how
pretty a site looks
 Instead, it looks at the HTML code and
structures it to make sense.
• Using a text browser, or disabling images and CSS
are a good way of seeing your site through a search
engines eyes.
Introduction to SEO
What a search engine sees (cont.)

www.ialc.org without CSS and Images


Introduction to SEO
What a search engine sees (cont.)

www.ialc.org WITH CSS and Images


Crash Course in HTML/CSS
 (X)HTML is used to describe the data that is on your
page
 CSS is used to format HTML and make it look more
presentable.
 Web standards are continuously trying to separate
content from presentation
 Previously, HTML was used for both content and
presentation.
 Latest Versions of the languages
 XHTML 1.1
 CSS 3
Crash Course in HTML/CSS
HTML Basics

 HTML uses <tags> to describe data


 Data is usually enclosed in these tags
• <tag>Data</tag>
• <tag attribute=“data” />
 Tags can be images, paragraphs, titles, tables,
and more
• Browsers render these tags differently on your
screen.
 There is a tendency to depend on these tags
also for formatting, e.g. using tables to keep
non-tabular data
• Not Good!
Crash Course in HTML/CSS
HTML Basics (cont.)

 Every HTML document has some mandatory elements :

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C ... ml1-transitional.dtd">


<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta … /> Extra information about the document
<title>Document Title</title>
</head>
<body>
Page Content
</body>
</html>
Crash Course in HTML/CSS
HTML Basics (cont.)

 Here are some basic tags important to SEO


 <h1></h1> , <h2></h2> , <h3></h3> , …
• Header tags – Makes text large and bold
 <img src=“location of pic” alt=“alternate text”>
• Image tags – note the alternate text for SEs
 <a href=“link URL” title=“link title”>link</a>
• Link tags - Browsers makes the text inside a link
 <b>Bold Text</b>
• Not recommended, but is said to help in SEO
Crash Course in HTML/CSS
CSS Basics

 CSS can make a simple HTML page look


completely different.
 CSS has little or no impact on SEO
 You can make a site look like whatever you
want without losing SE rankings
 CSS code can be placed within an HTML
document, or in a separate file
 Ifyou use a separate file, you can use it for
every page
• This makes updating the way your site looks very
easily, because you only need to update one file.
SEO Techniques
Keywords

 Keywords are the words on a webpage that


best describe that page
 Keyword selection is the most important step
to effective SEO
 The keywords you use will be the phrases
where you want to be highly ranked on SEs
 Time and research should go into selecting the
appropriate keywords before doing any SEO
• What are the words one would use to find your site?
SEO Techniques
Keywords (cont.)

 Continuation on how search engines work…


 When a spider goes through a webpage, it
determines the weight of frequently used
words in the document, and considers them
the most important in the document.
• The more you use a word in important places, the
more search engines give importance to it.
 The words with highest weight are more likely
to bring up your web page when used as a
search term.
SEO Techniques
Keywords (cont.)

 You must decide whether to focus on less


frequently used keywords (niche) or compete
for the commonly used ones.
 Here are some tools you can use to see
which keywords are searched for frequently
 Google Suggest (beta) (free)
• http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
 Google adwords
• Offers a free keyword tool with its adwords services
 WordTracker (paid)
• www.wordtracker.com
SEO Techniques
Meta Tags

 Meta tags are used to provide a description of


the page, and a list of main keywords it uses.
 There is a debate over whether to cram loads
of keywords into these tags, or just select the
most important ones.
 Search engines are getting smarter everyday,
so they may penalise you for cramming
 Some search engines reportedly don’t even
look at the meta tags (e.g. Google)
SEO Techniques
Title Tag

 The text in this tag shows up on the top of


your browser window.
 Quite important to include keywords here, as
the title will give a general summary for what
your page is about.
 Most search engines see this tag as an
important tag for categorising what type of
site you have.
SEO Techniques
Anchor Tags

 One of the most important tags you must use for SEO.
 Spiders use these to crawl your site, so you must have
links to pages throughout your site.
 Other sites that link to yours will send spiders your way
also.
 Google (and others) use anchor tags to rank your site
in many ways:
 Firstly, text in anchor tags are given a lot of importance.
 If other sites link to you, this must mean your site is
popular, and so you increase in rankings.
• The most popular sites would, in theory, be linked to by
many websites throughout the internet.
SEO Techniques
Anchor Tags (cont.)

 Since anchor tags are so important, it is vital that you


include keywords in these tags
 SEs think the words to describe a link should give a
good indication of what that page is about.
 This is one reason why it is good to have a navigation
bar that uses links to all your sites.
 Better that you use words, not images
 Try and use <a> tags, and not image maps, flash, etc.
 A sitemap is also an effective way of tying your site up
if you link all your pages to this site map.
SEO Techniques
Anchor Tags (cont.)

 Here is an example of why a sitemap is effective

This is a website with a site map.

Sitemap

This is a website without a site map.

Page 4
Page 1

Page 1 and 2 Page 1 and 2 can


can only now reach page 3
reach page 3 Page 2 in many ways
via page 4 Page 3
SEO Techniques
Text and Content

 Throughout your page you will need to use


keywords in order to rank well for that word
 The most important places of your content to
put keywords are in the headers, at the
beginning, and the end of paragraphs.
 It is importance to balance the overuse of
keywords for the sake of SEO and keeping
the text relevant, readable, and informative
 There is no point in having a highly ranked
page if it provides no information to a user, as
they will leave your site immediately
SEO Techniques
H1, H2, H3, etc. Tags

 These tags are considered by search engines


to be a description of your page.
 Very important to put in some keywords there.
 It is always a good idea to structure your
content so that it contains these tags at
beginning of paragraphs, tables, sections,
etc.
 It is quite logical that a search engine gets the
overview of a paragraph from a header tag
 We know what this slide is about by looking at
the title of the slide
SEO Techniques
Images

 Images are not read by search engines, and


so you should avoid using too many images
on your site
 Many sites use images for fancy fonts, when
they contain keywords that are never read by a
search engine
 Always use an alt attribute when including an
image
 Thisgives a spider a description of the image,
and also doubles as making your site
accessible to blind people.
SEO Techniques
Code Structure

 It is important to look at your HTML code and see the


structure of it.
 Some pages have too much code, and too little content
 Some code makes it so that content is found at the
bottom of the page.
• Pages that use tables for layout are notorious for doing
this.
 Make sure that keywords are found at the top of your
source code as well as on the actual web page
 Remember, SEs don’t see pages like we do, they only
see our HTML code.
SEO Techniques
Update your site regularly

 Sites that are updated regularly are spidered


and indexed more frequently by SEs
 Sites that change often are considered by
SEs as sites that provide current information,
and must therefore (although not always)
provide up to date information
 This would provide a more relevant set of
results than providing a user with pages that
were made 10 years ago
 News Items are a great way of including a
regular changing page.
SEO Techniques
Dynamic Code

 Dynamic code can make updating your site


very easy
 Also useful for creating pages on the fly
• E.g. A shopping cart with items you want to buy
 SEs do not always look favourably on pages
with dynamic data
 These pages usually have a ? after the page
name and are followed by data
 You have to regularly update your site if you
want to do well with dynamic pages
• E.g. Forums
SEO Techniques
Inbound Links

 As said before, links from other sites are very


important.
 Google will no list your site if its not found on
an other webpage listed by them
 Methods to get links on other pages
 LinkExchange (free)
 Paid Advertising
• Google Adwords
• Overture
• Specific Websites
Measuring Results
 Once you have started your SEO campaign,
you need to measure your results and make
sure you are improving on SE Rankings
 When you first make changes, SEs may take
up to about four weeks to scan your site for
changes.
 There are millions of web pages for them to
crawl, and so it takes time for them to get to
you.
Measuring Results
Reasons for no improvements

 Sometimes, you may not notice an


improvement in your rankings
 This can be due to many reasons as many
factors affect your SE rankings
• Competition may be doing better
• Marketing
• More linking from other sites
• Better SEO
• Bad choice of keywords
• Too much competition
• Etc.
Measuring Results
Statistics Monitoring

 You can view statistics of visitors to your site.


 Onestat (paid)
 Google Analytics (free)
 StatCounter (free)
 You can see what engines are used more to find your
site
 You can also see which keywords are used to find your
site, which helps with keyword research
 This can help you target particular search engines and
accommodate their searching methods.
Measuring Results
SEO software

 SEO software can be used to scan many SEs


for phrases of your choice and produce visual
results of how your website is doing.
 Much faster than doing this manually
 You can run regular searches and monitor
your positioning easily and efficiently
 Some SEO software can also help you scan
you pages and make suggestions for
improvements.
Measuring Results
SEO software (cont.)

 SEO tools :
 WebPosition
Gold
 Advanced Web Ranking
Resources
 Links to further SEO resources
 www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox.html
 www.searchenginewatch.com
 www.w3schools.com
 www.search-engine-war.co.uk

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