Chris Connelly, E-Commerce Web Developer
September 20, 2007
Search engines organically (naturally) find links and documents on two premises: Popularity & Relevance. The more popular a site/page is, and the more keyword-relevant it is to the topic, the more likely it will appear higher in the results. Also, if the site is updated regularly, having fresh content of some kind, the search engine recognizes it as "active" and in-turn will place it higher in the results.
These companies go to these search engines and broker space for words among their "sponsored terms" results. Highly search words cost significantly more per click than less searched words because that means there is a higher audience to see the advertiser. However, this does not always mean a higher ROI.
These companies work with the company to get into sites, key to the demographic.
Conclusion:
These companies have the same access to search engine ad services as the average consumer does. The difference between the average consumer and them is convenience. People pay these companies to not hassle with it.
Individual plans are needed per site. There are some commonalities in SEO that can be applied to all of our sites but if we are to truly expand beyond our current limitations with our sites individual plans must be set in place for each.
Competitive search terms: Utilizing competitor's search terms that they have to bring up our listing is an intelligent strategy in delivering more traffic to our site. In Spark's case using the term "Out and About" to bring up our listing as well will help us shift more traffic our way.
Promotion on social networks: These are the sites that are getting the most overall traffic out of the 18-49 age demographic. The cost of these campaigns varies but it is a good choice for a niche, Spark, to target Delaware users of these networks.
Search Engine Optimiziation is the active practice of optimizing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines. Organic SEO is natural results (the usual set of results in Google or other search engines). The best way to get a higher rank organically is: Well-written content; Good, clean HTML code; Useful, relevant TITLE tags; Useful, relevant DESCRIPTION tags; Relevant, appropriate links from other web sites. Frequently adding new content also is a way for search engines to pick up on the site more often, thus ranking it higher. However, that is not an issue for Delaware Online properties.
Viral content creation & promotion: As representatives from each of the major engines have acknowledged publicly, viral content creation and promotion is viewed as a legitimate and preferred tactic for link acquisition. We need to create viral content, unique, original and worth-while that the masses will want to come to our site to see, that they can only get on our site. The popularity of a given document increases with every other document that references it. Subsequently search engines rank it higher due to a higher link value, improving our stats and thus our PageRanking in the major search engines.
Keyword rich content (or Relevance): Documents that contain keywords in the Title, Header or Subheaders of the documents are MORE relevant to search engine queries for those specific terms or phrases in them. In better English, if we want users searching “Delaware Kids” to find our Delaware Mom’s site, then we must include that phrase in a relevant document’s title, header or subheader to make it a relevant document in the search.
Recommendation: Unique page titles under the main site’s name. More headers and subheaders in our documents/articles.
More static less dynamic: Though it is significantly more appealing to the web developer and user, static pages (html, htm) are more appealing to the browser than dynamic (php, jsp, asp, pages with &,=,? in the urls) pages because they are more accessible to the spider.
Recommendation: Generating static copies of the pages at the same time as creating dynamic versions. Google advises: "If you create static copies, don't forget to add your dynamic pages to your robots.txt file to prevent us from treating them as duplicates."
Site linking: Linking other sites to our sites through regular links or affiliate/link exchange programs increase our "link value", page views, and brand awareness.
In addition: If a site from outside of this country links to us it greatly increases our link value because it shows a “global” presence.
In graph linking: Search engines give greater weight to links that are embedded in paragraphs because it is able to read the corresponding information around the link, which adds to its relevance.
Site map: Site maps (less than 100 links) are helpful to human and non-human visitors.
Google-bombing: The more sites that have a phrase hyperlinked, the more Google attaches that term with the site it links to. See this article for a better understanding.
Metatag Descriptions: Think of metatag descriptions as the one sentence sales pitch. A good sales pitch entices the user for more, a bad one and the user mentally categorizes the site as useless. Users see metatags when the site comes up in search results. Its a preview of your site before the user decides its what they're looking for.
Overuse of: Flash, Java, frames and DHTML hinders a spider's ability to crawl through the site. Use of Paid link programs (software and webware) that submit sites to Google and other search engines. Once the search engine identifies the submission as a paid query, they depreciate the link value, thus having a negative effect. In some instances sites have been banned from Google for using these services.