Search Engine Optimisation
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a specialised form of search engine marketing and the process whereby a web master can improve the
volume and quality of traffic to a website directed from search engines.
SEO is not limited just to web pages; a highly skilled search engine optimiser can amplify specific kinds of searches such as image search,
local search and industry-specific vertical search engines.
Typically speaking, the longer a website has been indexed and the higher it is listed within the index, the greater likelihood more
searchers will visit that site. (Or in other words, the vast difference between a spot in the top five compared to a ranking in the bottom
one hundred).
As an online marketing strategy to increase a site’s relevancy, a search engine optimiser considers how the search engine’s algorithms
operate, specific keywords people may search for and the way in which they might search. Typically, search engine optimisers would review
the site’s coding, presentation and structure, as well as fix problems which prevent search engines from correctly indexing or ‘spidering’
a website. Other, more noticeable techniques may include adding unique content to a site and ensuring that the content can be easily read and
indexed by search engines, whilst ensuring that the site is appealing to human visitors.
The term SEO can also refer to search engine optimisers, a term which has been adopted by the IT industry and the consultants who carry out
optimisation projects on behalf of clients. Search engine optimisers may offer SEO as a stand-along service or as part of a broader marketing
package. Effective SEO usually requires changes to the HTML source code of a site, and therefore should be incorporated into the web site
development and design. A web site which has been optimised to be search engine friendly, often refers to web site designs, menus, content
management system (CMS) and shopping carts which are easily optimised and maintained.
The History of Search Engine Optimisation
As the Internet was rapidly gaining popularity during the mid 1990s, webmasters and content providers began maximising their web sites
for search engines. The first search engines essentially catalogued the early Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit a page
(or URL) to the various search engines. This process would initiate the search engine to send a spider to crawl that page, extract the links
to other pages within it, and return information found on the page to be indexed within the search engine’s index.
This process involved a search engine spider downloading a web page and storing it on the search engine’s own server, where a second program,
known as an indexer, would extract information from the page. This included the words the site contained and where they were located within
the page, as well as any links on the pages. These links would subsequently be placed into the downloader’s scheduler for crawling at a later time.
Furthermore, intelligent indexers would place weight on certain words found within the page to enhance its index thereby ensuring its search results were highly accurate.
As time went on, webmasters and site owners began to recognise the value of having their sites highly ranked and visible within the search
engines results. This created an opportunity for both positive and negative search engine optimisation.
Earlier versions of search engine algorithms relied on webmasters providing information such as the keyword ‘meta tags’. Meta tags provided
the search engines a guide to each page’s content, however, using meta data to index pages was found to be very unreliable as some webmasters
abused these meta tags by including irrelevant keywords to artificially increase site visitors.
Incomplete, inaccurate and inconsistent meta data in the meta tags caused pages to rank highly in irrelevant searches and fail to rank for
relevant searches. This led to webmasters and site owners manipulating a number of attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt
to rank higher within the search engines.
By relying on these factors exclusively within the webmasters control, early search engines suffered highly from abuse and ranking
manipulation. In an effort to provide better search results to their users, search engines had to evolve and ensure their results pages
showed the most relevant search results instead of unrelated pages which were falsely configured to rank higher by unscrupulous webmasters.
The search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, which took into account additional factors which were more
difficult for webmasters to manipulate.
Webmasters and Search Engines
By 1997, search engines recognised that some webmasters were making efforts to rank well within their search engines. Early search
engines adjusted their algorithms to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings by filling pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords.
Repeating what you said up top.
Due to the high demand of targeted search results, some SEO companies employ overly aggressive techniques which can get a website banned
from the search results. Google, and many of the other search engines, have been known to remove web sites for their indexes both temporarily
(while their unfavoured content is removed) and permanently.
However, not all is bad; some search engines have reached out to the SEO industry. With the advent of paid inclusion and pay per
click/impression programs, some search engines have a vested interest in the growth of the optimisation community.
Getting Listings
Clearly, today’s leading search engines are Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft. These search engines use crawlers to find pages for their
search results. Pages which are linked from other search engines indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically.
Some search engines such as Yahoo!, operate a paid submission service that guarantees they will crawl a web site for either a fee or a
cost per click. These programs generally guarantee that the site will be included within the index, however, they do not guarantee a
specific ranking within the search results.
There are also the directories such as Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory Project. These directories require manual submission and
human editorial review.
Search engine crawlers decide upon a number of different factors when crawling a web 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 a page is crawled.
Preventing Listings
Generally, there are some pages which require discretion which an Administrator does not wish to be indexed. The simplest way to ensure
a page is not indexed within a search engine is to ensure there are no public links pointing to it. However, this is rarely a feasible option.
To avoid undesirable search listings, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the robots.txt file
in the root directory of the domain. Alternatively, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine’s index by using a meta tag
specific to the robots.
When a search engine visits a site, the robots.txt is the first file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed (inspected) 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 the robots.txt file,
it may on occasion do crawl pages a webmaster does not wish to be crawled.
Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login pages such as administration pages, 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.
Positive vs. Negative Search Engine Optimisation
Search engine optimisation techniques are often classified into two categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of
a good design and techniques that search engines do not approve of and attempt to minimise the effect of (this is referred to as spamdexing).
Positive search engine optimisation tends to produce results which guarantees the website will have longevity, whereas negative search
engine optimisation risks that a sites will be banned once the search engines discover the sneaky or deceptive methods that are being used.
A SEO technique is often considered positive if it conforms to the search engines’ guidelines and involves no deception. It is important
to keep in mind that the search engine guidelines are not written as a series of rules; they merely ensure that the content indexes correctly
within the search engines.
Positive SEO is generally summed up as creating usable, informative content for users which then makes that content easily accessible
to the search engines, rather than attempting to deceive the algorithm.
Negative SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, usually by applying techniques which
involve deception. An example of this is to use text that is hidden, either as text coloured similar to the background, via an invisible
div section or positioned off the screen. Another example is when a webmaster builds a page for the search engines, but redirects users to
another page which is more human friendly.
This method of sending users from search engine indexed pages to a different page is negative as a rule. The practice of serving one
version of a page to the search engine, and another version to a human is often referred to as cloaking.
It is very likely that a search engine will penalise a site they discover using these negative SEO techniques either by reducing their
rankings or removing them completely from their index. Such penalties have been known to be applied both automatically by the search engines’
algorithms and by a manual site review.
An infamous example was the February 2006 Google removal of BMW Germany for use of deceptive practices. BMW, however, quickly apologised
and fixed the offending pages and were restored to Google's index.
Positive search engine optimisation can also be referred to as ‘White Hat SEO’ while negative search engine optimisation can alternatively
be known as ‘Black Hat SEO’.
Using SEO as a Marketing Strategy
Eye tracking researchers have found that viewers scan a search results page from top to bottom and from left to right, while searching
for a relevant result. Therefore, placement at or near the top of the rankings increases the number of searchers who will visit a site.
However, a high number of search engine referrals does not guarantee more sales or revenue. SEO is not necessarily an appropriate strategy
for every web site and other Internet marketing strategies can be much more effective.
A successful Internet marketing campaign may drive organic search results to pages, while also involving the use of paid advertising on
search engines and other pages and/or building high quality web pages to engage and persuade.
Addressing technical issues that may keep search engines from crawling and indexing sites can also prove very successful. Also, setting
up analytics programs to enable site owners to measure their results and successes and to help improve a site's conversion rate is a common
technique often overlooked.
Search engine optimisation may generate a return on investment, however, search engines are not paid to organise search traffic.
Algorithms change, and there are no guarantees that they will forever continue to produce referrals. Due to this lack of guarantee and
certainty, a business must look to all avenues while including search engine optimisation techniques.