What is a Search Engine?

WHAT IS A SEARCH ENGINE?It is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored in a computer system

Evolution of Search Engine- A Timeline -

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995

LookSmart (active) - Competed with Yahoo but became a pay-per-click provider later on.

Yahoo (active) - Began as a collection of webpages (directory), then evolved into a search engine.

Daum (active) - Popular web portal in South Korea.

Excite (active) - Major "dotcom" portals in 1990s.

AltaVista (inactive) - 1st to provide natural language queries, had search tips & allowed users to add/remove an URL within 24hrs of publication.

Lycos (active)- Featured qord matching & word proximity.

WebCrawler (still alive)- 1st search engine to provide full text searches. Now, it is a metaresearch engine that blends top search results from Google, Yahoo etc.

Jumpstation (inactive) - 1st WWW resource-discovery tool to combine the three essential features of a web search engine (crawling, indexing, and searching).

AliWeb (retired in 1994)- Allowed user to submit pages they wanted along with a description.

W3catalog (retired in 1996) - Mirrorred web pages reformatting contents into individual entries.

Vlib (retired in 1994) - A virtual library of web servers in collaboration between Time Berners - Lee & CERN.

Jughead - Veronica (retired in 1994). Searched files by their names in the Gopher listings.

ARCHIE- 1st search engine (retired in 1995). Was created by Alan Emtage, Bill Heelan and J. Peter Deutsch, computer science students at McGill University in Montreal.

Evolution of Search Engine- A Timeline -

1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

A9 (active) - Amazon search engine

Yahoo Search (active) was relaunched with its own search engine.

Info.com (active) - Metasearch engine which provided pay-per-click results. Partnered with White/Yellow Pages.

Baidu (active)- China's giant search engine.

Vivisimo (active) - Awarded the contract to power the search portion of Firstgov.gov (now USA.gov)

AlltheWeb (Yahoo) - Presented a sleek interface w/ some advantages like direct FTP search

MSN was launched.

Google - adopted the idea of selling search terms

Yandex (active)- Holds the largest search market share in Russia

AskJeeves.com (ask.com) - Natural search engine that uses human editors to match search queries.

Inktomi/Hotbot - Hotbot was the internet search engine of the Wired Magazine & was incorporated into Inktomi.

BackRub (later became Google) - search engine which utilized backlinks for search. Uses PageRank technology becoming the most important search engine in the world.

Evolution of Search Engine- A Timeline -

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

OpenDrive (active) - Cloud file search from Google

Yandex (active) - Launched global (English) search.

Cuil (inactive) - Search engine that organized web pages by content & displayed relatively long entries along with thumbnail pictures.

Bing (active) - Current web search engine from Microsoft. Provides video, search suggestions & other features.

Powerset (inactive, redirects to Bing) - Microsoft owned company.

Sproose (inactive) - Consumer engine that re-arranges ranks due to users' votes for websites

wikiseek (inactive) - Indexed Wikipedia and linked-to Wikipedia pages. WikiSeek was funded by SearchMe.

LiveSearch (active as Bing) - Microsoft announces launch of Live Search product.

ChaCha (active) - A question-answering service with human-guided help.

Snap (inactive) - This search engine showed volumes, revenues and advertisers but proved to be too complicated for average users.

SearchMe (inactive) - A visual search engine that organized results as snapshots of web pages.

It operates in the following order:

Web crawlingIndexingSearching

How SE works?

Web CrawlingA Web crawler is an Internet bot that systematically browses the World Wide Web, typically for the purpose of Web indexing.

A Web crawler may also be called a Web spider, an ant, an automatic indexer, or a Web scutter.

Web Crawling

Penalize websites of low quality and those with

low-quality content.It was first introduced in

24thFebruary, 2011 as Farmer Update in USA.

Bring down websites that violate Google’s

Webmaster Guidelines and use

black-hat SEO techniques

PANDA & PENGUIN: Google’s Algorithm Updates

: collects, parses, and stores data (keywords or keyphrases) to facilitate fast and accurate information retrieval.

Indexing

: is the activity of obtaining information resources relevant to an information needed from a collection of information resources.

Searching

SERP Search Engine Results Page

You have a website, but are you SEARCHABLE?

Search Engine Optimization

SEO or Search engine optimization is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or unpaid

(organic) search results.

PAID Search result

} Organic Search results

Purpose of SEO

1. Brand awareness-A web site having a high ranking means more people see the name of the company and become familiar with the company and its products.

2. Targeted Traffic- Search engine optimization brings paying customers to your door step as they enter your websites by using relevant keywords/phrases into the search engines.

3. Long term cost benefit -Once you have achieved a good ranking for a specific keyword, you will not pay for the traffic it generates. Although it has a higher entry cost, long term, its very cost effective.

4. Brand credibility -There is a higher level of brand trust when a visitor finds you organically. They are more likely to bookmark your site, spend more time reading your site and return as a customer.

5. Your competitors -Keeping ahead of your competition in the organic search results can help boost the perceived position of your company in your marketplace.

OptimizationOn- Page SEO

Title TagsThe title tag tells search engines what the page is about and that the page on your website is relevant for that keyword or keyword phrase. Title tags should be unique for every page. 

In search results, search engines will highlight your keyword phrases if a user has searched for those terms. This increases visibility and click-through rate.

Example of Title tag in SERP

Best Practices:• Your title tag should be written like this: Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword | Brand

Name• Use a dash in between your keyword phrases and a pipe at the end before your brand name• Avoid duplicate title tags• Keep title tags at 66 characters or less in length, including spaces

Meta descriptionsMeta descriptions should include a compelling description on which a user would want to click on. Much like title tags, the SERPs will highlight keywords that the user searched for, increasing the likelihood of the user clicking through to your website.

Example of Title tag in SERP

Best Practices:

• Write compelling meta descriptions• 150 to 160 characters is the recommended length• Avoid duplicate meta descriptions• Do not use quotes or any non-alpha characters (Google, cuts them out of the meta description)

Content with Targeted Keyword PhrasesWith the latest Google Panda updates, it is extremely important that your content is unique and relevant.

If you have multiple pages with the same content (or if you have your content on other people’s websites), you will run the risk of getting penalized by Google and your search rankings will suffer.

Best Practices:• Create content that is extremely relevant for that keyword phrase• Use your keyword phrase 4 times within your content• Use multiple variations of that keyword phrase – singular and plural versions,

abbreviations, acronyms (SEO vs. search engine optimization) and synonyms• Include links from other pages within your website that point back to this page• Create unique content for every medium (press releases, blogs, guest blog posts,

etc…).

Example of Web Content with highlighted keywords

Website’s Meta data

Header Tags and Keyword Phrases A header tag, also known as an H1 tag, is much like the subject line of your web page. You should only use your keyword phrase once in the H1 tag.

This should be included on a page to which you are trying to drive unique traffic to. You can also use H2 tags (second header) if there are multiple sections.

Best Practices:

• Use your keyword phrase once in your H1 tag• Use H1 tags on pages you are trying to drive unique traffic to (SEO page)• Use H2 tags if there are multiple sections

header tag

Example of an H1 tag being optimized for ‘nfc reader’:

Internal Page Linking with Anchor Text Internal linking refers to a link on a page that points to another page on the same website. Internal linking is important because it helps strengthen those keywords internally for those pages, it allows users (and search engine robots) to navigate through the website, and it tells the search engines that the page is relevant for that keyword phrase.

Example of how to use anchor text in your internal links:

Best Practices:

• When linking to another page on the same site from within content, select good anchor text (keywords) to use in the actual link and do this often.

Image ALT Tags and Filenames/Image OptimizationAn alt tag is essentially the name of an image. All images should use appropriate alt tags. Not only are alt tags good for search engines; they are also good for accessibility.

Example of image in a website with an alt tag.

Best Practices:• Name all of your images in a way that describes what they are• Use dashes between the words, rather than underscores ( purple-hat.jpg rather than

purple_hat.jpg)• Do not use non-alpha characters in your image or file names (so no %, &, $, etc…)

How to Optimize Images

Find the right images

Use the most relevant and high- quality

image.

Make sure the image

matches the content of your page.

Use keyword(s) in the file name

Update your image’s alt attributes tag:

Use descriptive text.<img

src="/img/contactless_acr122_big.png" alt="ACR122U USB NFC Reader"

border="0">

Don't scale the image via HTML

Making an image smaller or bigger by using height

and width different from

the image size is bad for website

performance (and image

quality).

Create separate files for different

image sizes instead.

Make Content Easy to Read This is not a huge factor in search engine rankings, but will help your users easily scan your content and find the keywords they are looking for.

You should use bolding and bullet points to set apart words in the text, and this further tells the engines what is important on the page.

Best practices:

• Paragraphs should be roughly three sentences long. Extremely long sentences will lose the users’ attention

• Use bullet points and bolding to break up large blocks of content. Users tend to scan content looking for keywords

• Do not overuse bullets and bolding

Meta KeywordsKeywords or key phrases are the search terms someone types into a search engine, when they are looking for certain information.

Why do KEYWORDS matter?People are constantly using keywords whether they are in search of a specific product or just browsing to conduct personal research.

XML Sitemapsis an xml page on your website that incorporates a list of links in every single page on your site.

It can also detail the hierarchy of pages on your site.

Note: Without a quality sitemap, pages that are buried more than a couple of clicks from the home page will take longer to get indexed and in some instances, Google (and other search engines) may not index them at all.

Sitemap content/code:

Robots.txtA Robots.txt file complements your XML sitemap by providing search engine crawlers with instructions on how to read and index your website.

Robots.txt tells search engines which pages to index and which to skip, so that private information stays protected.

Inside ACS’ robots.txt file…

Not indexed by Google

Example:

SEO Friendly URL

SEO-friendly URLs are purely structural URLs that do not contain a query string: [e.g., www.example.com/?p=578544]

but use keyword-rich naming conventions instead: [e.g., www.example.com/products/smartcardreader]

OptimizationOff- Page SEO

Off-page SEO is all about building online authority – trust and reputation – for your website.

It has been defined by the quantity, quality, and relevance of links to your website that establish your SEO authority and ultimately influence your search results ranking.

Link BuildingIs the practice of building inbound links to help give your website authority.

WHY SEARCH ENGINES CARE ABOUT LINKS?

The number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page.

Search engines’ major ranking factors that is put into consideration :

SERP ranking

Search Engine Signals

The Wrong Way to Build Links

• Spamming• Buying a massive number of links• Publishing low-quality article• Over-using one article

Social Mediais a new platform presenting an opportunity to connect and have real conversations with your audience.

Social media signals are search engines’ signals as

natural ranking factors.

a. BookmarkingA social bookmarking service is a centralized online service which

enables users to add, annotate, edit, and share bookmarks of web documents.

b. SharingSharing represents the extent to which users exchange, distribute, and

receive content.

c. PRPress Releases boost exposure online and is usually recognized and

indexed by all major search engines.

Press release is a good tool for reputation management and search engines’ ranking factor.

c. InteractionVisitors spend the most time on websites where they can voice and share their

opinions. If you can engage with visitors to your site, they will hang around for longer. And the longer they hang around, the better exposed they are to your brand.

Example of ACS’ social media account enhancing customer engagement by interaction:

c. BloggingContent marketing, article writing or blogging is critical to your online visibility.

It generates search engine traffic by providing inbound links and can get you leads for your business.

Example of ACS’ blog with inbound links to acs.com.hk:

c. Visual ContentInformation graphics or infographics are visual representations of information,

data or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly.

Example of a top ranking infographic from visual.ly with inbound link to the author’s blog:

SEO Metrics

1) PageRank

Is a scoring system that Google uses to determine the importance of a web page.

PageRank is scored on a logarithmic scale between 1 and 10.

PR checkers

Browser plugin from SEOquake

Online PR checker

twitter.comaddthis.com

leru.orgunesco.org

miibeian.gov.cnhhs.gov

google.comipod.com

facebook.comyoutube.com

yahoo.combaidu.com

Example of High Ranking Websites

2) Alexa Ranking

This is a ranking system set by alexa.com (a subsidiary of amazon.com) that basically audits and makes public the frequency of visits on various Web sites.

The global traffic rank is a measure of how a website is doing relative to all other sites on the web over the past 3 months.

The rank is calculated using a combination of the estimated average daily unique visitors to the site and the estimated number of pageviews.

The site with the highest combination of unique visitors and pageviews is ranked #1.

Example Alexa Traffic Rank:

3) SERP Ranking

The rank where your website appears on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

1st page is usually every website’s target as it gets 75-95% click- through rate.

RelevancyAuthority

Quality

Key Drivers of Good SEO to Note

Sources:Wikipedia.comAdvancedhtml.co.uk/robots-sitemaps.htmHtmlbasictutor.casearchengineland.comseo-creare.co.ukHubspot.comw3schools.comgoogleblog.blogspot.comalexa.commanagewp.com/the-importance-of-social-media

FIN

Thanks!