ASSIGNMENT #31

IS.3053: WEB SITE DESIGN & MANAGEMENT

Dennis Hankins

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

“Imagine you were the librarian for every book in the world” is how this film on search engines started

off. It is how search engines view themselves, and I suppose it is a true representation. If I ever have a

question about anything I go to my phone or computer and ask, expecting the search engine to send me

on the right trail with many choices to explore. One of the first things that hit me was when the speaker

said that every search engine collects “information about every page on the web so they can help people

find what they’re looking for.” I was thinking “How is that possible!” at the time, but for my search last

night I was glad they did. I had searched for my own Weebly website when I first started it and it was

nowhere close to the front of the search engine I used. Last night I searched for it using the same words

and it was first. Google at work, right! Next in the video was the reason why search engines need to do

this; “every search engine has . . . an algorithm for turning all that information into useful search results.”

This algorithm, known as a recipe, is important to anyone with a website, as it was for me last night. In

constructing a website we would like to know what would give our website a higher ranking so knowing

the “ingredients” in that recipe are indispensable. Using that recipe in a website is known as Search Engine

Optimization (SEO).

The rest of the video goes into detail the ingredients of SEO. The first thing a search engine looks for

when a query comes in, to narrow a search, is the title of the page. They are searching in the code because

page titles often summarize the page. Search engines also look at links between websites which can be

good or bad. Usually if a site has a link from another it means the site with the link is recommending the

other site. On the other hand if a website has too many recommendations the search engine might deem

the site is trying to fool them with bogus links. Search engines also care about the reputation of the

websites. Websites with “with a consistent record of fresh, engaging content and growing number of

quality links may be considered rising stars and do well in search rankings.”
 If one digs into the website the video is on, a person can find a wealth of knowledge to insure their

website is using SEO to the best of their benefit beginning with the links to Chapters 1-9. But the first

thing a reader’s sight is brought to after opening the website is “The Periodic Table of SEO Success

Factors.” It is a play on the chemical periodic table we all hated in high school. The table is split into three

groups:

 On-the-page SEO—almost entirely within the publisher’s control.

 Off-the-page SEO—those the publisher can’t control. The search engines learned this

long ago; they couldn’t control what the publisher tried to get them to believe.

 Violations—tactics meant to deceive or manipulate a search engine.

All three factors are important, but “having several favorable ones increases the odds” of

high placement by a search engine.

The best way to close this essay is with the last bit of advice the video gives. To enhance a websites

position through SEO is “making sure your website has great content that’s supported by the ingredients

that search engines need for their recipes.” Great advice for the budding webmaster.