JTC372 - Search engines
Search engines
· Google, Bing, Yahoo, Duck Duck Go
· Pages visited by “crawler”
· Crawler browses the web and stores results for analysis
How Google works
· Proprietary
· Changes all the time in response to gaming
· Page Rank
· Links to your site from other sites
· Incoming links from pages with high page rank help your page rank more.
· www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php
Some other factors
· Use of keywords in various page elements (will discuss further)
· Image factors
· Age, when registered
· Age of content, how often updated
· Uniqueness of content
· Quality, validity of code
· HTML to content ratio
· Page speed
· Possibly Social Media signals (Pinterest pins, Facebook likes, Tweets w/link, etc.)
· Mobile friendliness (mobile searches only)
· Check mobile friendliness (https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly)
· More: http://backlinko.com/google-ranking-factors
Google Search history personalization
· Sometimes Google results are customized
· Apparently enabled by default
· Search history (based on signed in account, Web History on)
· Search history (not signed in, based on cookie in browser)
· Geographical location (based on IP address)
Display of results
· Page title
· May be excerpt in context under that
· Or, could be your meta content tag
· Example of both - midwinterbluegrass.com and lodging page
· Or, could be Open Directory Project description
Other search engines
o Bing - less than 10%
o Yahoo - ? - Same as bing?
o My sites - 90% google
o Duck Duck Go - Privacy concerns
Expanded listings (Sitelinks)
· Automated
· Can't be managed, but links can be demoted
·
· Another example "skylark", "skylark lounge", "skylark lounge denver" "skylark lounge denver colorado"
· Possible factors
o High ranking for keywords
o High traffic
o High click through rates
o Unique titles/meta description
o Note abbreviated title display
Google Business Listing
Image alt text guidelines
· Properties bar for images
· English words!
· Repeat text in images
· Short, relevant, meaningful
· Use keywords
· No alt text for purely decorative images
Strategies
· Write good content, keep it fresh
· Need incoming links
· Good content brings incoming links
· Social media brings incoming links, may be a ranking signal (not clear)
· May take a long time
· Short, Unique and relevant page titles
o Document title | Section name | Site or company name
o Or Site or company name | Section name | Document title
o Google limit 64 characters
o Omit articles in favor of separators. Make all words count
· Use headings appropriately (text in headings)
· No text as images
· Alt text on all images (per guidelines)
· Keywords in titles, headers and alt text may get extra emphasis
· Keywords in filenames, separated by dashes—URL is displayed in Google results
· Text where possible (no Flash, java, etc.)
· CSS layout may help—closer to beginning of document—less HTML
· Make your pages lean and fast
· Skip for now - Sitemap - tell Google about pages on your site it might not otherwise discover, or more info, like how family friendly something is
· Skip for now - Structured markup?
Writing Copy
· Select primary and secondary keywords
· Make sure that primary keywords (1 or 2) are in page title, h1, early in content (first 100 words)
· Make sure secondary keywords are in copy
· Use keywords in links where possible
· Generally, what works for google is good for search results in other search engines
Meta tags:
· Meta keywords tag generally not considered any more
· Meta content tag may be considered for google search results
· Meta noindex prevents google from including page in its index