Internet:Search Engine Optimisation

Overview
Making your web page appear first in a search engine is an important part of web page development. Paying for space on google is one way to raise your profile, however there are some basic things you should do to help the rating of your web site.

Ways to improve your search engine ranking
Marziah Karch (2009) lists several ways that you can improve your ranking in google.


 * 1) Keyword phrases (in the Meta tag). Ask other people what words/phrases they would use. Check Google trends
 * 2) Density: How often a keyword appears on the page, particularly in the first 200 words. Don't try tricking it (e.g. invisible text)
 * 3) Name your pages (use title tag
 * 4) Link early, link often. Google looks at links both to and from your site. Use "Read more about Internet rankings" rather than "click here"
 * 5) Submit to the right directories. Avoid link farms (Google already knows them!)
 * 6) Social Networking: Twitter, Blog sites, Links sites (like Del.ico.us) are indexed frequently
 * 7) Be graphic friendly. Care with Flash (tend to be avoided by Search engines), and give images alt attributes.
 * 8) Good design is popular design (as hopefully more people will read it)

Open Directory Project
(ODP - Open Directory Project,2009) http://www.dmoz.org/

The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. (How to submit to the Open Directory Project, n.d.)
 * It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.
 * Instead of fighting the explosive growth of the Internet, the Open Directory provides the means for the Internet to organize itself.
 * Is a major data source for search engines (including Google).
 * Being linked from the ODP will usually boost your ranking in Google and thus provide your site with lots of highly targeted traffic, much more than what you will get through the directory itself.

Social media now directly influences search rankings
SEOMoz highlighted that Google’s search results are now being adjusted on a per-person basis depending on the searcher’s social connections. Important because


 * 1) Influencers who have large social networks are no longer just spreading word of mouth, they’re now causing search engine adjustments (at least on Google and Bing) based on what they share.
 * 2) “#1 ranking for a keyword” on Google is less meaningful now if the #1 is displaced by social sharing influence. My #1 for a search term will be significantly different than yours because we follow different people.
 * 3) If you’re marketing something, there’s now a direct incentive to build your network as large as possible among your prospective customers. Size matters.

Source: Penn (2011)

Search engine issues

 * Dec 2, 2010: Google Changes Its Rank Algorithm In Response To DecorMyEyes Story. Where negative attention online and complaint links from customer service sites like Get Satisfaction can actually be a benefit to business (Tsotsis, 2010).

schema.org
Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! in June 2011 launched schema.org, an initiative aimed at creating and supporting common ways to represent Web page metadata. The project offers Web publishers the tools needed to make Web pages easier for search engines to understand. "With schema.org, site owners can improve how their sites appear in search results not only on Google, but on Bing, Yahoo!, and potentially other search engines as well in the future," says Google fellow Ramanathan Guha. Schema.org hosts definitions for HTML tags that Webmasters can use for data markup. Schema.org is similar to sitemaps.org, an XML-based schema that helps search engines navigate Web sites, which was created by Google in 2005 and subsequently supported by Microsoft and Yahoo!. Schema.org solves some of the limitations of automated data analysis. "Automated data extraction is great when it works, but it can be error prone because different sites can represent the same information in so many different ways," according to the schema.org Web site.

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo Back Search Metadata Projec(Claburn, 2011, Jun 3)

Resources

 * SEO Tools (2006) - Search Engine Optimization Tools
 * 18 Most Valuable SEO WordPress Plugins, Skyje (2011)