Search Engine Optimization For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

\* A Web site's position in search results will affect the number of times it is visited; this book shows Web site designers, owners, and Search Engine Optimizers (SEOs) how to build sites that rank high in the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Inktomi, Alta Vista, Overture) and generate high traffic \* This is the first book to cover the entire spectrum of search engine optimization, including important though often-ignored search systems, such as specialty directories and Yellow Pages \* Covers creating search engine-friendly sites and pages; registering sites with standard search engines, directories, shopping directories, and retailers; using registration software and services; understanding tools used to monitor site traffic; advertising on search engines; and developing links to boost ranks \* Introduces the reader to the nature of search engines, explains the different types, and shows which ones are the most important \* Includes a jump-start chapter with simple tricks for quickly boosting a site's ranking \* Companion Web site includes articles and links to important news and registration sites Team DDU Search Engine Optimization for Dummies 1 Cover 1 Table of Contents 14 Introduction 24 About This Book 24 Foolish Assumptions 25 How This Book Is Organized 26 Part I: Search Engine Basics 26 Part II: Building Search-Engine-Friendly Sites 26 Part III: Adding Your Site to the Indexes and Directories 27 Part IV: After You've Submitted 27 Part V: The Part of Tens 27 Part VI: Appendix 27 Icons Used in This Book 28 Part I: Search Engine Basics 30 Chapter 1: Surveying the Search Engine Landscape 32 What Are Search Engines and Directories? 33 Keeping the terms straight 35 Why bother with search engines? 36 Where Do People Search? 37 Aren't I missing some sites? 42 Multiple feeds 42 What the Future Holds - The List Expands 43 Reviewing the Final List - Search Systems You Really Need 45 Determining Your Plan of Attack 46 Gathering Your Tools 47 The Google Toolbar 48 The Alexa Toolbar 48 Understanding the Limitations 49 Chapter 2: Your One-Hour Search-Engine-Friendly Web Site Makeover 50 Is Your Site Indexed? 50 Google 51 Yahoo! 53 The others 53 What if you're not listed? 53 How to tell if your site is invisible 54 Picking Good Keywords 55 Examining Your Pages 57 Are you using frames? 57 Look at the TITLE tags 58 Examine the DESCRIPTION tag 59 Can the search engines get through? 60 Do the pages have anything for search engines to read? 61 Getting Your Site Indexed 63 Chapter 3: Making Your Site Useful and Telling People about It 66 The Secret but Essential Rule of Web Success 67 The evolving "secret" 68 The real secret is 68 A bias for content 69 Making Your Site Work Well 70 Limit the use of multimedia 70 Use text, not graphics 71 Use ALT text 72 Don't be too clever 72 Don't be cute 72 Avoid frames 73 Make it easy to move around 73 Provide different ways to find things 74 Use long link text 74 Don't keep restructuring 75 Spell check and edit 75 Chapter 4: Picking Powerful Keywords 76 Understanding the Importance of Keywords 77 Thinking like Your Prey 78 Starting Your Keyword Analysis 79 Identifying the obvious keywords 79 Looking at your Web site's access logs 79 Examining competitors' keyword tags 80 Brainstorming with colleagues 80 Looking closely at your list 80 Using a keyword tool 83 Using Wordtracker 85 Creating a Wordtracker project 87 Adding keywords to your initial project list 89 Cleaning up the list 92 Exporting the list 93 Competitive analysis 93 More ways to find keywords 96 Choosing Your Keywords 96 Removing ambiguous terms 96 Picking keyword combinations 98 Part II: Building Search-Engine-Friendly Sites 100 Chapter 5: Creating Pages That Search Engines Love 102 Preparing Your Site 102 Finding a hosting company 103 Picking a domain name 103 Understanding What a Search Engine Sees 105 Understanding Keyword Concepts 107 Pick one or two phrases per page 108 Check for keyword prominence 108 Watch your keyword density 109 Place keywords throughout your site 109 Creating Your Web Pages 110 Filenames 110 Directory structure 110 The TITLE tags 111 The DESCRIPTION meta tag 112 The KEYWORDS meta tag 114 Other meta tags 115 Image ALT Text 116 Flush the Flash animation 117 Don't embed text in images 118 Adding body text 118 Creating headers: CSS vs tags 120 Text formatting 121 Creating links 122 Using other company and product names 123 Preparing for local search 124 Creating navigation structures that search engines can read 126 Blocking searchbots 126 Chapter 6: Avoiding Things That Search Engines Hate 128 Dealing with Frames 128 The HTML Nitty-Gritty of Frames 130 Providing search engines with the necessary information 132 Providing a navigation path 133 Opening pages in a frameset 135 Handling iframes 136 Fixing Invisible Navigation Systems 137 Looking at the source code 137 Turning off scripting and Java 139 Fixing the problem 140 Reducing the Clutter in Your Web Pages 142 Use external JavaScripts 143 Use document.write to remove problem code 143 Use external CSS files 144 Move image maps to the bottom of the page 145 Don't copy and paste from MS Word 145 Managing Dynamic Web Pages 145 Finding out if your dynamic site is scaring off search engines 147 Fixing your dynamic Web page problem 148 Using Session IDs in URLs 149 Examining Cookie-Based Navigation 151 Fixing Bits and Pieces 154 Forwarded pages 155 Image maps 155 Special characters 156 Chapter 7: Dirty Deeds - Facing the Consequences 158 Understanding the Basic Principles of Tricking the Search Engines 159 Should you or shouldn't you? 159 How are tricks done? 160 Do these tricks work? 161 Concrete Shoes, Cyanide, TNT - An Arsenal for Dirty Deeds 162 Keyword stacking and stuffing 162 Hiding (and shrinking) keywords 162 Hiding links 164 Using unrelated keywords 165 Duplicating pages and sites 165 Page swapping and page jacking 165 Doorway and Information Pages 166 Using Redirects and Cloaking 167 Understanding redirects 168 Examining cloaking 169 The Ultimate Penalty 170 Chapter 8: Bulking Up Your Site - Complete with Content 172 Three Methods for Creating Content 173 Writing Your Own Stuff 174 Summaries of online articles 174 Reviews of Web sites 175 Product reviews 175 Convincing Someone Else to Write It 175 Using OPC - Other People's Content 176 Understanding Copyright - It's Not Yours! 177 Hunting for Other People's Content 179 Remember the keywords! 179 Product information 180 Web sites and e-mail newsletters 180 Government sources 182 Content syndication sites 183 Traditional syndication services 186 RSS syndication feeds 187 Open content and copyleft 189 Search pages 190 Press releases 190 Q&A areas 191 Message boards 192 Blogs 192 Part III: Adding Your Site to the Indexes and Directories 194 Chapter 9: Getting Your Pages into the Search Engines 196 Why Won't They Index My Pages? 196 Linking Your Site for Inclusion 197 Submitting Directly to the Major Systems 198 Are you sure it won't do any harm? 198 Submitting for free 199 Using Paid Inclusion 200 Deciding whether to use paid inclusion 201 The paid-inclusion systems 202 Using trusted feeds 203 Submitting to the Secondary Systems 203 Using Registration Services and Software Programs 205 Chapter 10: Submitting to the Directories 208 Understanding Search Directories (Vs Search Engines) 208 Why Are Directories So Significant? 211 Submitting to the Search Directories 211 Submitting to Yahoo! Directory 212 Submitting to the Open Directory Project 214 Submitting to Second-Tier Directories 216 Finding second-tier directories 216 Don't pay! Maybe 217 Chapter 11: Buried Treasure - More Great Places to Submit Your Site 218 Keeping a Landscape Log 218 Finding the Specialized Directories 219 More ways to find directories 222 Local directories 223 Why bother with directories? 224 Getting the link 224 Working with the Yellow Pages 226 Getting into the Yellow Pages 228 Part IV: After You've Submitted 232 Chapter 12: Using Link Popularity to Boost Your Position 234 Why Search Engines Like Links 235 Understanding Page Value and PageRank 236 PageRank - one part of the equation 237 The PageRank algorithm 238 Huge sites = greater PageRank 240 Measuring PageRank 241 Leaking PageRank 244 Page relevance 244 Hubs and Neighborhoods 246 Avoiding Links with No Value 247 Identifying links that aren't links 248 Some links are more valuable than others 249 Inserting Keywords into Links 250 A Few Basic Rules about Links 251 Chapter 13: Finding Sites to Link to Yours 254 Controlling Your Links 254 Generating Links, Step-by-Step 256 Register with search directories 258 Ask friends and family 258 Ask employees 258 Contact association sites 259 Contact manufacturers' Web sites 259 Contact companies you do business with 259 Ask to be a featured client 260 Submit to announcement sites and newsletters 260 Send out press releases 261 Promote something on your site 262 Find sites linking to your competition 262 Ask other sites for links 264 Make reciprocal link requests 264 Respond to reciprocal link requests 269 Search for keyword add url 269 Use link-building software and services 269 Contact e-mail newsletters 271 Create a blog 271 Mention your site in discussion groups 272 Pursue offline PR 272 Give away content 273 Apply for online awards 273 Advertise 273 Use a service or buy links 274 Just wait 275 Fuggetaboutit 275 Got Content? Syndicate It! 275 Four ways to syndicate 277 Getting the most out of syndication 278 Getting the word out 279 Syndicating utilities 281 Using RSS 281 Who's Going to Do All This Work?! 282 How Links Build Links 283 Chapter 14: Using the Shopping Directories and Retailers 286 Finding the Shopping Directories 286 Google Catalogs 288 Froogle 290 Yahoo! Shopping 291 Shopping.com 294 PriceGrabber and PrecioMania 295 BizRate 295 NexTag 296 Price Watch 297 PriceSCAN 298 More Shopping Services 298 Third-Party Merchant Sites 299 Creating Data Files 300 The data you need 301 Formatting guidelines 302 Creating your spreadsheet 303 Getting those product URLs 304 Creating individual sheets 305 Creating and uploading your data files 308 Chapter 15: Pay Per Click - Overture, Google AdWords, and More 310 Defining PPC 310 The two types of ads 314 Pros and cons 315 The three PPC tiers 316 Where do these ads go? 317 It may not work! 318 Valuing Your Clicks 319 The value of the action 319 Your online conversion rate 320 Figuring the click price 321 Different clicks = different values 321 They Won't Take My Ad! 322 Automating the Task 324 Part V: The Part of Tens 326 Chapter 16: Ten-Plus Ways to Keep Up-to-Date and Track Down the Details 328 Let Me Help Some More 328 Current Wisdom 329 The Search Engines Themselves 329 Google's Webmaster Pages 329 Inktomi's FAQs 330 AlltheWeb's FAQs 330 AltaVista's FAQ 330 MSN's SEO Tips 330 Teoma/Ask Jeeves' FAQ 331 Search Engine Watch 331 Google's Newsgroups 331 WebMaster World 332 Pandia 332 IHelpYouServices.com 332 HighRankings.com 332 The Yahoo! Search Engine Optimization Resources Category 333 The Open Directory Project Search Categories 333 Chapter 17: Ten Myths and Mistakes 334 Myth: It's All about Meta Tags and Submissions 334 Myth: Web Designers and Developers Understand Search Engines 335 Myth: Multiple Submissions Improve Your Search Position 335 Mistake: You Don't Know Your Keywords 336 Mistake: Too Many Pages with Database Parameters and Session IDs 336 Mistake: Building the Site and Then Bringing in the SEO Expert 336 Myth: $25 Can Get Your Site a #1 Position 337 Myth: Bad Links to Your Site Will Hurt Its Position 337 Mistake: Your Pages Are "Empty" 338 Myth: Pay per Click Is Where It's At 338 Chapter 18: Ten-Plus Useful Tools for Search Engine Optimization 340 Checking Your Site Rank 340 Checking for Broken Links 342 Google Toolbar 343 Google Zeitgeist 344 Alexa Toolbar 345 Finding Links 346 Seeing What the Search Engines See 347 Finding Your Keyword Density 348 Analyzing Your Site's Traffic 349 More Tools 350 Don't Forget the Search Engines 350 Part VI: Appendix 352 Appendix: Staying Out of Copyright Jail 354 If It's Really Old, You Can Use It 354 If the Guvmint Created It, You Can Use It 356 If It's "Donated," You Can Use It 356 It's Only Fair - Fair Use Explained 357 Index 358 Team DDU 1 "If we build it, they will come." Unfortunately, in the field of Web sites, that's an unfulfilled dream. Having a Web site does not automatically guarantee having traffic, even if you register the site with appropriate search engines. Whether you're an e-tailer who wants customers, a business that wants clients, or an organization that wants to get your message out, Search Engine Optimization For Dummies explains the rules of the game with information on: Spiders--not the yucky kind, but the software that grabs Web pages, and then,,reads and indexes the information Search indexes or engines, search directories, non-spidered indexes, and pay-per-click systems The eight search systems you really need to impress and how to get your pages into them Keywords and how to choose them strategically and use them often Submitting to the directories, including the biggies (Yahoo! Directory and the Open Director Project) and second-tier directories Using shopping directories for e-commerce sites, complete with a list of nine popular ones and CPCs (cost per click) for various types of merchandise on various sites Written by Peter Kent, e-commerce consultant, popular speaker, and critically-acclaimed author, Search Engine Optimization For Dummies helps you build a search engine- friendly site (or fix an existing site) and build traffic, showing you how to: Use effective Web site structure and text, including filenames, directory structure, title tags, descriptive meta tags, keyword meta tags, and an HTML navigation system, Avoid things search engines avoid, such as frames, invisible navigation systems, including those created with Java applets, Java Scripts and Macromedia Flash, cluttered sites overloaded with HTML unrelated to content, and more Bulk up your site with content--original or recycled Use specialized search systems to attract valuable, highly targeted traffic Use link popularity to boost your position and your PageRank Complete with a tear-out cheat sheet and information about Web sites you may want to hit for even more information, Search Engine Optimization For Dummies will help you make the Web site hit list. A Web site‛ s position in search results will affect the number of times it is visited; this book shows Web site designers, owners, and Search Engine Optimizers (SEOs) how to build sites that rank high in the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Inktomi, Alta Vista, Overture) and generate high traffic This is the first book to cover the entire spectrum of search engine optimization, including important though often-ignored search systems, such as specialty directories and Yellow Pages Covers creating search engine- friendly sites and pages; registering sites with standard search engines, directories, shopping directories, and retailers; using registration software and services; understanding tools used to monitor site traffic; advertising on search engines; and developing links to boost ranks Introduces the reader to the nature of search engines, explains the different types, and shows which ones are the most important Includes a jump-start chapter with simple tricks for quickly boosting a site‛ s ranking Companion Web site includes articles and links to important news and registration sites"