SEO Web Optimization Information
Contents
- History
- Webmasters
and Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores
- Getting
indexed
- Preventing
indexing
- White
hat versus black hat
- As
a marketing strategy
- International
markets
History
Webmasters and content providers began optimizing
sites for Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores in the mid-1990s, as
the first Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores were cataloging the early
Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was
submit 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. The process involves a Google, Yahoo! Live and many more
spider downloading a page and storing it on the
Google, Yahoo! Live and many more'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, as well as any 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 Google, Yahoo! Live and many more results, creating
an opportunity for both white hat and black hat
SEO practitioners. According to industry analyst
Danny Sullivan, the earliest known use of the
phrase SEO Web Optimization was a spam message
posted on Usenet on July 26, 1997.
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 provided 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 account of keywords in the meta tag
were not truly relevant to the site's actual keywords.
Inaccurate, incomplete, and inconsistent data
in meta tags caused pages to rank for irrelevant
searches. Web content providers also manipulated
a number of attributes within the HTML source
of a page in an attempt to rank well in Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores.
By relying so much on factors
exclusively within a webmaster's control, early
Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores suffered from abuse and ranking
manipulation. To provide better results to their
users, Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores 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 Google, Yahoo! Live and many more
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. Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores responded
by developing more complex ranking algorithms,
taking into account additional factors that were
more difficult for webmasters to manipulate.
While graduate students at Stanford
University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed
"backrub", a Google, Yahoo! Live and many more 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. 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.
Google headquartersPage and Brin founded Google
in 1998. Google attracted a loyal following among
the growing number of Internet users, who liked
its simple design. 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 Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores 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 Google, Yahoo! Live and many more, and these methods proved
similarly applicable to gaining 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. In recent years major Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores
have begun to rely more heavily on off-web factors
such as the age, sex, location, and search history
of people conducting searches in order to further
refine results.
By 2007, Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores 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. The three
leading Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's
Live Search, 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 SEO Web Optimization, and have published their opinions
in online forums and blogs. SEO practitioners
may also study patents held by various Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores to gain insight into the algorithms.
Webmasters and Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores
By 1997 Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores recognized that webmasters
were making efforts to rank well in their Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores, and that some webmasters were even manipulating
their rankings in search results by stuffing pages
with excessive or irrelevant keywords. Early Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores, such as Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms
in an effort to prevent webmasters from manipulating
rankings.
Due to the high marketing value
of targeted search results, there is potential
for an adversarial relationship between Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores and SEOs. In 2005, an annual conference,
AIRWeb, Adversarial Information Retrieval on the
Web, 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.
Wired magazine reported that the same company
sued blogger Aaron Wall for writing about the
ban. Google's Matt Cutts later confirmed that
Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some
of its clients.
Some Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores 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 Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores now have a vested
interest in the health of the optimization community.
Major Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores provide information and guidelines
to help with site optimization. Google has a Sitemaps
program 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.
Getting indexed
The leading Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores, Google, Yahoo! and
Microsoft, use crawlers to find pages for their
algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked
from other Google, Yahoo! Live and many more indexed pages do not
need to be submitted because they are found automatically.
Some Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores, notably Yahoo!, operate a
paid submission service that guarantee crawling
for either a set fee or cost per click. Such programs
usually guarantee inclusion in the database, but
do not guarantee specific ranking within the search
results. Yahoo's paid inclusion program has drawn
criticism from advertisers and competitors. Two
major directories, the Yahoo Directory and the
Open Directory Project both require manual submission
and human editorial review. 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.
Google, Yahoo! Live and many more crawlers may look
at a number of different factors when crawling
a site. Not every page is indexed by the Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores. Distance of pages from the root directory
of a site may also be a factor in whether or not
pages get crawled.
Preventing indexing
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 Google, Yahoo! Live and many more's database by using a meta tag specific
to robots. When a Google, Yahoo! Live and many more 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 Google, Yahoo! Live and many more 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.
White hat versus black hat
SEO techniques can be classified into two broad
categories: techniques that Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores recommend
as part of good design, and those techniques of
which Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores do not approve. The Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores attempt to minimize the effect of the
latter, among them spamdexing. Industry commentators
have classified these methods, and the practitioners
who employ them, as either white hat SEO, or black
hat SEO. 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 Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores
discover what they are doing.
An SEO technique is considered
white hat if it conforms to the Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores'
guidelines and involves no deception. As the Google, Yahoo! Live and many more guidelines 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 Google, Yahoo! Live and many more 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 Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores, 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, although the two
are not identical.
Black hat SEO attempts to improve
rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the
Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores, 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 Google, Yahoo! Live and many more, a technique known as cloaking.
Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores 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 Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores' algorithms, or by a manual
site review. One infamous example was the February
2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh
Germany for use of deceptive practices. Both companies,
however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending
pages, and were restored to Google's list.
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.
However, more Google, Yahoo! Live and many more 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.
A successful Internet marketing campaign may drive
organic traffic to web pages, but it also may
involve the use of paid advertising on Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores and other pages, building high quality
web pages to engage and persuade, addressing technical
issues that may keep Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores 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.
SEO may generate a return on
investment. However, Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores 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 Google, Yahoo! Live and many more
traffic can suffer major losses if the Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores stop sending visitors. It is considered
wise business practice for website operators to
liberate themselves from dependence on Google, Yahoo! Live and many more traffic. A top-ranked SEO blog Seomoz.org
has reported, "Search marketers, in a twist
of irony, receive a very small share of their
traffic from Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores." Instead, their
main sources of traffic are links from other websites.
International markets
A Baidu search results pageThe Google, Yahoo! Live and many mores'
market shares vary from market to market, as does
competition. In 2003, Danny Sullivan stated that
Google represented about 75% of all searches.
In markets outside the United States, Google's
share is often larger, and Google remains the
dominant Google, Yahoo! Live and many more worldwide as of 2007. As
of 2006, Google held about 40% of the market in
the United States, but Google had an 85-90% market
share in Germany. While there were hundreds of
SEO firms in the US at that time, there were only
about five in Germany.
In Russia the situation is reversed.
Local Google, Yahoo! Live and many more Yandex controls 50% of the
paid advertising revenue, while Google has less
than 9%. In China, Baidu continues to lead in
market share, although Google has been gaining
share as of 2007.
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. |
