Search Engine

Optimization

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Which search engines have you used except Google?

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The search engine market

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Search engines are popular and important.

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Most visited website that is not search engine, Facebook or YouTube 5
What are the most popular websites in Hong Kong except
Google, Facebook and YouTube?

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 Why is search engine important?

“A search is a statement of intent.”

– Susan Athey, Former Chief Economist at Microsoft

Search engines are the doorway to the Internet

80% of sites are found through search engines.

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 Types of search

Informational: Generic Search

(e.g., “high cholesterol”, “school ranking”)
Navigational: Brand Names
(e.g., “United Airlines”, “HKTVMall”)
Transactional: Specific information on products/services
(e.g., “Macbook Pro”, “Diet Coke”)

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How does search engine work?

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 How does search engine work?

Crawl the web via spiders (a.k.a. web crawlers).

It goes from page to page.

It follows links and recording what it finds.

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Crawlable?

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Crawlable?

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 How does Google find your homepage?

You can submit an individual URL to Google.

Google finds you through links from other websites.
Google finds you from online libraries, books and other
materials…

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 How does Google find your homepage?

After crawling, search engines index the pages.

The index is what the spider creates. It is a “library” of pages on the
Internet. The search engine creates databases for keywords, so it
knows where to go to when a user enters a query.
Yes, we know you are there (crawlable) but we cannot communicate
with you (non-indexable). (Search engine only speaks HTML)
Your webpage may have Images, Flash files, Java applets, and other
non-text content.

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 How does Google find your homepage?

After indexing, search engines process user queries.

Users input a search query by typing a keyword or
phrase into the search bar. The engine then checks its
index to find relevant pages and delivers them ordered
from most relevant to least relevant.

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 How does Google find your homepage?

Finally, search engines return ranked results from the index

in the SERP (search engine results page).
Users input a search query by typing a keyword or
phrase into the search bar. The engine then checks its
index to find relevant pages and delivers them ordered
from most relevant to least relevant.

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 How does Google find your homepage?

1. Crawl the web via spiders.

2. Index the Web pages they find.
3. Process user queries.
4. Return ranked results from the index in the SERP.

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How does Google make money?

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Paid Search

Organic Search

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Search Engine Marketing

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 Search Engine Marketing

Definition: A form of Internet marketing that involves the

promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search
engine results pages (SERPs).

Type of SEM: SEO + PPC

SEO: Search engine optimization
PPC: Paid search advertising

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 Search Engine Marketing

Organic & paid search responsible for 68% of all site traffic.

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Search Engine Optimization

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How many users will visit the second page of the search
results?
50%? 20%? What is your estimate?

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 How many users will visit the second page of the search
results?
50%? 20%? What is your estimate?
It is 6%! Only 6% of the users bother to visit the second page!

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Eye tracking studies reveal an F pattern

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 SEO considerations

What are the goals of our business?

Who do we want to visit our website?
What do we want our target audience to do on our
website?
What pages do we want them to visit and what path
must they follow to get there?

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 Brainstorming Ideas

Go to the following HKU page: www.fbe.hku.hk

Pair with your classmates, can you come up with some
ideas to improve the content/structure of this webpage?
Think from the perspective of a potential visitor,
Prospective students, Current students, Alumni,
Employee, Donor

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 On-page and Off-page SEO

On-page (or on-site):

Technical Structure (Page Title, Headers, Page Body,
Image Tags, URL, Meta Description)
Content Tactics
Off-page (or off-site):
Backlinks (who link to you)
Social Engagement

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Google says that...

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 The Six Secrets of On-the-Page Optimization

#1: The most important piece of on-page optimization is

title of the page
Displayed at the top of the browser and in the natural
listings.
Each page should have its own title; unique and
includes chosen keywords; short and focused.

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The Six Secrets of On-the-Page Optimization

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 The Six Secrets of On-the-Page Optimization

Accurate title: It appears elsewhere and affects visitors.

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The Six Secrets of On-the-Page Optimization

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The Six Secrets of On-the-Page Optimization

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 The Six Secrets of On-the-Page Optimization

#2: Incorporate key words into your URL (your page

address)

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 Simple URL

Make your URL easier to understand:

Good example: www.example.com/green-dress.html
Bad example: www.example.com/greendress.html
Make your URL short:
Good example: www.example.com/dress/
Bad example: www.example.com/category/dress/
Contain keywords in your URL:
Good example: http://www.example.com/green-dress.html
Bad example: http://www.example.com/112.html

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 The Six Secrets of On-the-Page Optimization

#3: The meta description does not influence the ranking so

much, but substantially impacts the “clickability” of your
result as it is what the search engine picks up.

Meta Description

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 The Six Secrets of On-the-Page Optimization

#4: Headers: Visible in the source

code, contribute towards Google’s
perception of the subject matter of
the page. Make sure the header has
the keyword.
#5: Page Body: Context and
proximity in the text play a role –
keywords should be close to the
beginning of the body copy.

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 The Six Secrets of On-the-Page Optimization

#6:Alt tags are descriptions of images on your website

Help people who use screen readers to use your website
Allow Google to interpret images, index them and
support your ranking

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 Other Tips: Mobile Friendliness

Question: How to design the mobile version of your

webpage to make it mobile friendly? Any ideas?

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 Other Tips: Mobile Friendliness

Simplify the mobile version of your website to reduce

the load time.
Design for the fat finger: Make sure your buttons are not
too small.
Don’t use Flash: The plugin may not be available on
your user’s phone, which means they'll miss out on all
the fun. If you want to create special effects, use HTML5
instead.

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 Other Tips: Content Tactics

Regular, helpful content targeted at your audience

(tutorials, how to guide, etc.).
Make sure content is keyword rich – but not too rich
Use synonyms, avoid keyword stuffing
Rule of thumb: keyword density 2-4% of content
Freshness or signs that your site is alive and growing
(e.g., news feed).

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 On-page and Off-page SEO

On-page (or on-site):

Technical Structure (Page Title, Headers, Page Body,
Image Tags, URL, Meta Description)
Content Tactics
Off-page (or off-site):
Backlinks (who link to you)
Social Engagement

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If you only had a video of a party, how could
you tell who is most influential?

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 Backlinks

Inbound links (backlinks): Links that point back to your

website from an external site
Based on a citation concept; considered ‘online currency’
A ‘silent’ vote of confidence from the site linking to you
When Google began, this was the most important factor to
determine ranking/relevance. How?
Number of backlink sites
Quality of backlink sites
Share of links on backlink sites

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 Page Rank

PageRank is a numeric value measuring the importance of a

page on the web. Named after Larry Page (co-founder of
Google)
A link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical
weighting to each element (webpage) in the entire set (web)
to measure the importance of the page.
Sum of the PageRank of all pages in a system is set to 1.

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 Page Rank

Let PR(U ) be the page rank of page U .

Assuming m webpages V1 , … , Vm send incoming links to
page U , then

PR(V1 ) PR(V2 ) PR(Vm )

PR(U ) = + +⋯+
L(V1 ) L(V2 ) L(Vm )
where L(Vi ) = number of outgoing links from page Vi .

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 Page Rank

Here, B and C send links to A, so PR(A) is

affected by PR(B) and PR(C).
Similarly, PR(A) affects PR(D).

PR(B) PR(C)
PR(A) = +
3 2

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Page Rank

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 Page Rank

Only C sends a link to A: PR(A) = PR(C)

Only A sends a link to B: PR(B) = PR(A)/2
Both A and B send links to C: PR(C) = PR(A)/2 + PR(B)
And all ranks add to 1: PR(A) + PR(B) + PR(C) = 1
Solve the model: PR(A) = 0.4, PR(B) = 0.2, PR(C) = 0.4.

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Exercise

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 Link Building

Create link worthy content

Write content that others want to read and link;
Create tools and documents that others want to use;
Create and host a game that others want to play
Content variety
Many types of contents available; Examples include
blogging, white papers, videos, webinars, podcasts,
webcasts, and infographics.

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 Link Building

Web PR
Submitting guest blog posts to popular blogs in your
industry. Generally, you will get a link back to your
website in an author box at the top or bottom of your
post’s content. Submit your website to applicable
industry directories
Competitor analysis
Who is linking to your competitors? They may link
to you.
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 Tracking Inbound Links

There are several tools that help you track inbound links to
your website. For example, you can use ahrefs to track the
links:
ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com/backlink-checker

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 SEO: The White and Black

White Hat SEO (legitimate):

Conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves
no deception
Create content for users and search engines
Black Hat SEO (illegitimate)
Going overboard with SEOs…
Trying to deceive search engine to increase rank
Use reputable SEO company & beware guarantees “#1
site on Google”

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 SEO: The White and Black

Just a few examples from 1000s of such practices --- you will
be penalized by search engines when uncovered.
Keyword stuffing: overusing the same keywords
throughout one page in order to maximize its visibility and
organic traffic.

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Cloaking: search fake content to search engine spider

https://www.youtube.com/embed/QHtnfOgp65Q?enablejsapi=1

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 SEO: The White and Black

Paid Links: pay other websites to link to their page to get

high rankings.
Example: JCPenny paid other websites to link to JCP.com.
After being caught, it was blocked from ranking in the first
page of results at Google for 3 months. Lost $30mm in sales.

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 Google Panda

Google Panda is an algorithm used to reward

high-quality websites and diminish the presence
of low-quality websites in Google’s organic search engine
results.
It punishes thin content, duplicate content, low-quality
content, high ad-to-content ratio, content mismatching
search query.
It rewards original content and outbound links to reputable
websites.

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Hubspot Website Grader

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ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com/backlink-
checker/?

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Similar Web: https://www.similarweb.com/

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A/B Testing

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 A/B testing

Suppose that you have two (or more) versions of a website,

and you do not know which one is better.
What should you do?

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 A/B testing

We randomly assign users into two groups, A and B. Then,

we see how users in different groups respond differently to
the two designs, and compare their outcomes.

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 Example of A/B test: Speed matters.

A faster website is always better. However, a faster website

is also more costly. What is the value of a faster website?

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 Example of A/B test: Speed matters.

While we may not be able to speed up the connection, it is

rather easy to slow down. Consider the following two
groups:
Group A: The original speed
Group B: Intentionally slow down by 100 msec.
We then compare the performance of the two groups to see
the effect of speed.

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 Example of A/B test: Speed matters.

At Amazon, a 100 msec slow down experiment decreased

sales by 1% (Linden 2006).

An experiment at Bing revealed that a 100 msec slowdown

is associated with a 0.6% change in revenue (Kohavi et al.
2013).

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Example of A/B test

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 Example of A/B test

Nobody thought this simple change, among the hundreds

suggested, would be the best revenue-generating idea in
Bing’s history! The feature was prioritized low and
languished in the backlog for more than six months until a
software developer decided to try the change, given how
easy it was to code. An engineer implemented the idea and
began evaluating the idea on real users, randomly showing
some of them the new title layout and others the old one.

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 Example of A/B test

A few hours after starting the test, a revenue-too-high alert

triggered, indicating that something was wrong with the
experiment. The Treatment, that is, the new title layout, was
generating too much money from ads.

Bing’s revenue increased by a whopping 12%, which at the

time translated to over $100M annually in the US, without
hurting key user-experience metrics. The experiment was
replicated multiple times over a long period.

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 Example of A/B test

Amazon placed a credit-card offer on the home page. It was

highly profitable but had a very low click-through rate
(CTR). What would you do to make it more effective?

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 Example of A/B test

The team ran an experiment to move the offer to the

shopping cart page that the user sees after adding an item,
showing simple math highlighting the savings the user
would receive.

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