Enhanced User Experience Through Search Engine Optimization

Mudit Mittal & Chaitr Hiremath

November 28, 2008

Where are my keys?

Search Engine

User Content

users search to browse

70% site traffic comes through search

engine

Source: Worldwide Search by Region, 2007

search engine

Crawls the World Wide Web

Creates an index of the pages found

Enables search by keywords

Which of the following would be the best choice of URL structure (for both search engines and humans)?

www.wildlifeonline.com/563

www.wildlifeonline.com/animals/crocodile

www.wildlifeonline.com/O0665?id=563&cat=227

www.wildlifeonline.com/category/277/article/crocodile

take your guess…

www.wildlifeonline.com/animals/crocodile

SEO is the process of making a site and its content highly

relevant for both search engines and searchers

The process focuses on creating reachable content and

getting right users to right content

search engine optimization

Understand needs of search engine, and make search

engine understand what is to be delivered

Make the search engine believe that the site is genuine,

and provide relevant & quality content

two aspects

current scenario

Insights Launch

Create

Develop OptimizeDesign

Web development life cycle

suggested model

Insights Launch

Create

Optimize

DevelopDesign

Optimize

DevelopDesign

UX

On-Page Optimizatio

n

On-Site Optimizatio

n

Off-Site Optimizatio

n

On-Page Optimization

Areas(Designers)

content is king

Fresh, Unique and Quality

content on each page

Use text for important content

links are queen

Source: yahoo.com

Love text links

Make navigation easy

Mix phrases & words

Linkbaiting is good

optimize website title

Using ‘|’ symbol = More keyword phrases in page title

Keep it under 66 characters and relevant to content of

the page

image rocks, but be cautious

They attract user attention

Surround with alternate text

Nomenclature for filenames

is fundamental

On-Site Optimization

Areas(Developers)

light pages reward heavy

Follow W3C standards

Avoid table deeper than 3

levels

< 150kb without image

Test with Lynx browser

know your tags

They define content

Focus one tag at a time

Evolve tags with time

ordering of meta tags

1. robots – permit spiders to crawl

2. content-type – tells spider of the type of page

3. title – most important tag

4. description – keep it under 150 characters and

not repeat keywords more than 3 times

5. keywords – upto maximum of 800 characters

Off-Site Optimization

Areas(Optimization Analysts)

analysis is key

Learn to read web logs

Know your

competition

get keywords right

Think words that user thinks

Analytics helps

Prefer phrases over single

words

give link love, get link love

Have more and more relevant sites link to yours,

think quality not quantity

Backlinks determine popularity

robots can help

Include robots.txt

Sitemap is essential

update – go online

SEO landscape changes

every 6-12 months

Today’s techniques won’t work tomorrow

key areas

page structure

robots.txt, sitemap.xmlquality contentkeyword research

simple text links

back links

updated techniques

tags – titles & headers

images &image text

networking

web analytic & research

thank you