Dan Krueger – Webmaster – UW Stout

Agenda
 Search engine basics
 Characteristics of SE Friendly Sites
 Page Layout Tips for Improved SEO
 Promoting your site
 Analyzing your site traffic
 Optimize for Stout’s GSA
 Advanced searching techniques
Search Engine Basics
 Crawling
Process by which web pages are discovered and added to an index
 Indexing
Compile a massive index of all the words found on:
 The web page itself
 Key content tags (ex. title, alt)

 Process Queries & Rank Results

Search the index for matching pages and return in relevant order
the most relevant results to the user
 Serving Results
Characteristics of SE Friendly
Sites
 They give visitors the info they are looking for
 They make sure that other sites link to them
 They make their site easily accessible
Characteristics of SE Friendly
Sites
 They don’t fill their pages with lists of keywords
 They don’t “cloak” or put up “crawler only”
pages
 They don’t use images to display important
names, content or links
 They don't create multiple copies of a page
under different URLs
 Don’t necessarily use a SEO service
Page Layout Tips for
Improved SEO
 Create unique, accurate page titles
 Make use of “description” meta tag
 Improve the structure of your URLs
 Make your site easier to navigate
 Offer quality content and services
 Write better anchor/link text
 Use heading tags appropriately
 Optimize your use of images
Create unique, accurate page
titles
Accurately describe the page’s content
 Create unique Title tags for each page
 Use brief, but descriptive titles
 Shows in search results
Make use of “description”
meta

tag
Accurately summarize the page’s content
 Use unique descriptions for each page
 “May” show in search results
Improve the structure of
your URLs
 Use words in URLs
 Create a simple directory structure
 Provide one version of a URL to
reach a document
Make your site easier to
navigate
 Create a naturally flowing hierarchy
 Use mostly text for navigation
 Consider what happens when a user
removes part of your URL
Offer quality content and
services
 Write easy-to-read text
 Stay organized around the topic
 Use relevant language
 Create fresh, unique content
 Offer exclusive content or services
 Create content primarily for your
users, not search engines
Write better anchor text
 Choose descriptive text
 Write concise text
 Think about anchor text for internal links too
Use heading tags
appropriately
 Imagine you're writing an outline
 Use headings sparingly across the page
Optimize the use of
Images
 Use brief, but descriptive filenames and
alt text
 Supply alt text when using images as links
 Store images in a directory of their own
 Use commonly supported file types
Promoting your site
 Blog about new content/services
 Don’t forget about offline promotion
 Know about social media sites
 Reach out to a related community
Analyzing your site
traffic
 Get insight on how users reach and behave on
our site
 Discover the most popular content on your site
 Measure the impact of optimizations you make
to your site
 Discover additional keywords that searchers
might use to find your site
 All CommonSpot site traffic is captured with
Google Analytics. Contact webmaster group
to get started: [email protected]
Optimize for Stout’s GSA
 GSA – What is it?
Google Search Appliance
 Keymatches
Keymatches prioritize and establish a specific result in
response to a particular search term.
 Synonyms
Same principle as keymatches only it suggests alternate
terms, which may bring better results.
 Go to the following site to submit GSA requests:
http://www3.uwstout.edu/webdev/optimizing_google.cfm
Advanced Search
Techniques
Basic Examples
biking Italy the words biking and Italy
recycle steel OR iron information on recycling steel or recycling
iron
"I have a dream“ the exact phrase I have a dream
salsa –dance the word salsa but NOT the word dance
Louis +I France information about Louis the First (I), weeding
out other kings of France
castle ~glossary glossaries about castles, as well as
dictionaries, lists of terms, terminology,
etc.
fortune-telling all forms of the term, whether spelled as a
single word, a phrase, or hyphenated
define:imbroglio definitions of the word imbroglio from the Web
Advanced Search
Techniques
Calculation Examples
+–*/ basic arithmetic
12 + 34 - 56 * 7 / 8

% of percentage of 45% of 39

^ or ** raise to a power 2^5 or 2**5

old units in new units convert units

300 Euros in USD,
130 lbs in kg,
31 in hex
Advanced Search
Techniques
Restrict Search
city1 city2 Book flights
site: Search only one website or domain.
[#]..[#] Search within a range of numbers.
filetype: (or ext:) Find documents of the specified type.
link: Find linked pages
i.e., show pages that point to the URL.
book (or books) Search full-text of books.
phonebook: Disney CA Search for Disney's phone numbers in
CA
rphonebook: Show residential phonebook listings.
movie: Find reviews and showtimes.
stocks: Given ticker symbols, show stock info
weather Show weather for a given a location
(zip code or city)
Advanced Search
Techniques
Restrict Search
info: (or id:)Find info about a page.
related: List web pages that are similar/related to the URL
inanchor: The terms must appear in anchor text of links to the page
intext: The terms must appear in the text of the page
intitle: The terms must appear in the title of the page
inurl: The terms must appear in the URL of the page
Resources
 Webmaster Group: [email protected]
http://www3.uwstout.edu/webdev
 SEO Cheat Sheet:
http://www.seomoz.org/user_files/SEO_Web_D
eveloper_Cheat_Sheet.pdf
 SEO Guide (more in depth):
http://www.seomoz.org/article/beginners-1-page
 Google Searching Help:
http://search.uwstout.edu/user_help.html
http://www.googleguide.com/
Keyword Research
 http://www.wordtracker.com/
 http://www.google.com/sktool/#
 https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
 http://www.wordstream.com/keyword-research
 http://www.trellian.com/
 http://advertising.yahoo.com/smallbusiness/ysm
 http://www.seotoolset.com/cgi-bin/checktraffic.cgi
 http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/
 http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/