2012 International Conference on Computer Science and Service System
Study on Website Search Engine Optimization
Zhou Hui1, Qin Shigang2, Liu Jinhua3, Chen Jianli4
Hunan electrical college of technology
Xiang Tan, Hunan, P.R. China
e-mail: 274528006@qq.com
Abstract—With the rapid development of information
technology, search engine optimization (SEO) technology has
attracted more and more attentions. In order to improve their
website visit quantity, SEO techniques can make a better
ranking in the search result using the keyword selection and
deployment, high quality backlinks, rational website
constitution, and rich content, etc. This paper discusses in
detail the technical process of website search engine
optimization in terms of the search engine work principle,
factors affecting search ranking, and website search engine
optimization method.
Keywords-Search Engine, SEO, Website Ranking, Keyword
optimization, Link optimization
I. INTRODUCTION
In the internet era with information explosion, the search
engine has become the indispensable internet tools for
people. However, when using a search engine, people tends
to care only about the first few pages of search results. The
low ranked search results receive a very little probability of
attention. Therefore, it is crucial to improve website ranking
and increase website traffic flow using the search engine
optimization.
II. OVERVIEW OF THE SEARCH ENGINE
OPTIMIZATION
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to such kind
of technique that optimizes the website constitution ,
webpage code, and webpage content by learning how a
search engine grabs internet webpage and make an index, as
well as how to determine ranking in search result for a
specific keyword, and thus makes the website friendlier with
full-text search engine. Therefore, the SEO can help the
spider program of a full-text search engine find the relevant
webpage and raise the natural ranking of the website in the
search result.in order to let the target users find themselves
and eventually lift the website sale or marketing capability.
III. BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO WORK PRINCIPLE
OF THE SEARCH ENGINE
Studying search engine optimization is actually the
process of reverse reasoning of the search engine..
Therefore, learning search engine optimization must first
understand the search engines work principle. The search
engine mainly includes the following three categories: full-
text search engine, directory search engine, meta search
978-0-7695-4719-0/12 $26.00 © 2012 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/CSSS.2012.236
engine. Here is a brief introduction to the full-text search
engine work principle.
The main task of the search engine includes: the page
collection, page analysis, page sorting.
The page collection refers to the activity on internet data
collection by search engine, and then collected data are
being stored in its own database of search engine, which is
the most basic job of the search engine. The search engine
uses a URL of the webpage to find the webpage, and then
uses the spider program to grab the webpage.
Page analysis means that the search engine processes the
collected webpage with a series of analysis and processing,
mainly including the label filtration, extraction of webpage
text information, text parsing, and establishment of the
index between keyword and webpage in order to prepare for
the user’s query.
Sorting refers to a process that a ranking program calls
the index database data to calculate the correlation after
users enter keywords, and then the search result page is
generated in certain format.
IV. FACTORS AFFECTING SEARCH RANKING
Even though there are many factors affecting the search
rankings, but the major factors include the webpage
correlation, link weight, and time-based factors. The
webpage correlation is determined by the degree of keyword
matching, keyword density, keyword distribution, and
webpage tag labels. Link weights include internal link
weights and the external link weight, Of two link weights,
the external link weight has a greater impact.The external
link is mainly concerned with the link quantity,
quality,correlation, as well as the degree of repeated content,
etc. Time-based factors would mostly consider the website
and webpage age, link age, and the length of domain name
registration time.
The simplified formula of a search engine optimization
includes almost all core contents of a good SEO, and
meanwhile the formula is also sorted. SEO optimization
formula is as follow:
SEO=Clock=C1+L2+K3+O4
where  is an integral symbol, C = content, L = link, K =
keywords, O = others. SEO is a long-term "time" for
integrating process, and the content is the core part;
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 C1-rich content is the first important element ,so user’s
experience can be satisfied with the original, pseudo-
original, and reproduced order of content importance.
L2- reasonable and abundant linkage is the second
elements. Reasonable and effective internal link is the same
important as external link, but the webpage with highly
correlation and high Pr value is especially important;
K3-keyword is the third important factors including the
rational title, description, keywords, webpage keywords,
and related keywords density and rational distribution;
O4-other factors, such as domain name, website age,
server, the website architecture, layout, url, and maps, etc.
If you follow this formula to optimize, not only can the
website's ranking be improved, but also is it good to a long-
term development of the website.
V. METHOD OF WEBSITE SEARCH ENGINE
OPTIMIZATION
A. Keyword Optimization
Users mainly use keywords with search engine to find
the target website and meanwhile search engine also uses
keywords as search criteria to retrieve website. Therefore
the core keywords of a website need be determined first
when designing a website, and then the work is expanded to
generate keyword phrases and terms around those core
keywords. After the core keywords are determined, these
core keywords should be also appropriately scattered in the
webpage text.
1㧕 Keyword Selection
The keyword selection determines many aspects of
website design, such as website content planning, link
structure, external link, etc. Choosing the proper keywords
is one of the most skillful steps in SEO. The following are
the main principles of the keyword selection:
z Related Content
Keywords must be associated with the website content.
Even though many unnecessary keywords can bring in a lot
of the search hits, but if those keywords are not well content
related with the webpage and the traffic cannot be converted
into the actual use of the webpage,this traffic is actually a
burden to website because it consumes bandwidth.
z Large Quantity of Searches with Less Competition
The best keywords are those of the most frequently
searched but the least competed words. However, the
majority of keywords being searched more are also the more
competitive keywords. But those keywords with relative
more searches and less competition can still be found
through a great deal of detailed keyword study and
extension. Both of Google Keyword Tool and Baidu Index
provide data of search numbers on keywords.
z Keywords should not be too broad
If the keywords are very broad, too competitive, and
unclear in search intent, the conversion rate will be reduced.
For example, a clothing company will assume the "clothing"
as the target keywords, but thus it would make a mistake
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that the main keywords are too broad. General industry
terms definitely are the overly broad words. If such broad
words are used as main keywords, the result would be either
the website traffic cannot be increased or the conversion rate
is very low even though the website traffic is finally
increased.
z Keywords should not be too special
If the words are too special or too long, the number of
searches will be greatly reduced, even nobody searches the
website so that these words cannot be used as website
keywords.
2˅ Keyword Density
The keyword density refers to the proportion of the total
number of keywords on a webpage to other text and usually
is expressed as a percentage. In general, the search engine
would consider the higher the keyword density in a page,
the more related between the webpage and keywords. But
keep in mind it is a good idea to avoid keyword heap, i.e.,
keyword in a webpage is not arranged according to the
needs of content, but in order to curry favor with search
engines artificially pile keyword (stuffing), which has been
classified by search engine as malicious behavior
(spamming), and there was a risk of being punished. A
range of 3%-8% for keyword density is more appropriate,
which is good for the website ranking in search engines.
The principle to increase the keyword density with
disregarding keyword cheating (maliciously copy keywords
and use CSS hiding) includes the appropriate duplicating
keywords, closely following W3C standard, separating CSS
and Javascript from webpage text, and reducing the length
of the page, thereby enhancing the page overall keyword
density.
3˅ Keyword Distribution
It is also an important method to improve results of
search engine optimization if keyword is inserted into an
appropriate location of a webpage. Listed below show
several important places to put the keywords: webpage title,
Meta keywords section, Meta Description section, page
header tags (H1,-H6), and links texts of internal and external
link.and Alt attribute part of graphs
In addition, the text content must have certain keywords
occurring and some kind of "focus" on keywords in certain
places where the user will read preferentially according to
user’s reading sequence—from top to bottom and from left
to right.These places become important points to place
keywords, such as top part of page, left side of page, title,
and the section within the first 200 words of main text,
which all these places with keywords will help search
ranking.
Domain name is considered a most reliable factor by
search engine. When selecting domain names and webpage
file names of English website, the keyword can also be used
in domain names and webpage file names. For example: the
domain name with the “video” keyword has inherent
advantages to the users to search for keywords video. When
selecting the suffix choice of domain name, usually ".org",
“.net ", ".cn ", ".com.cn," etc. have a higher ranking
advantage.
B. Website Content Optimization
Search engines love unique and high-quality original
content. If the content of your website is only the webpages
copied from other websites, most likely it will not be
indexed by search engines. In addition, the website content
being continually updated is most basic condition for
survival and development of a website. The crawl cycle of a
website with search engine spiders will change with the
information update frequency of the website. If the website
content is frequently updated, then search engine spiders
will often visit this site and grab more pages.
C. Website Structure Optimization
The website should have clear navigation system. Some
webpages use frames and the navigation buttons in Java and
Flash which looks very nice and beautiful, but the search
engine cannot find them. The remedy is to make another
navigation bar using regular Html links at the bottom of the
webpage to ensure every webpage can be found through this
navigation bar. The section with plain text website
navigation system can reflect more information than the
picture format in the search engine.
The website structure should also be clear in hierarchy to
minimize the directory depth. The depth of the general
directory should be no more than four layers. The following
methods can be used to reduce the link depth: placing
important webpage and section links to the home page as
much as possible and moving the second and third tier
section title to the homepage.
Establishing a website map can help setting up crawl
index for a crawling robot, notifying webpage changes to
search engines, the degree of importance of each webpage,
and customizing update frequency, etc., which will improve
the efficiency and accuracy of the content of indexed
website.
D. Webpage Optimization
1˅ Getting Away from the Unfriendly Things to Search
Engine
Generally speaking, search engine only reads text and
ignores image, Flash, and JavaScript, so in the entire
website design, Html code and the text should take the
major part.
Most images can be used in the form of the background
image in order to ensure the nice appearance of the website
and fewer images should be directly embedded in webpage.
In this case, the text description that can be seen by search
engine should be added (e.g., embed the keyword in the
image Alt attribute, add the description text or links with
embedded keyword next to the image).
JavaScript can realize special effects on webpage, but a
lot of JavaScript will increase the crawling difficulty for a
search engine and will interrupt the search spiders to
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analyze the webpage content. As under the current condition
that the search engine is not completely suitable to JS, it is
generally not recommended to use JS in navigation and
links. If you have to use the JS, it can be moved to the
bottom of the webpage or into the JS extension file.
The search engines cannot read the contents of a frame
,so when optimizing, it better add <noframes> </ noframe>
tag to support browser to show the text if the browser does
not support frame. It is a good idea to contain text and
content rich in keywords and key phrases in <noframes>
part.
2˅ Static of Dynamic Webpage
The search engine thinks that a file generated by the
dynamic page has more variable factors and a lot of
uncertainty in content. Therefore, the static webpages have a
higher priority when indexing and ranking webpages ,so it is
better to use the static webpage in developing SEO. Url
needs to have some minor changes and remove these special
characters, such as "?", "=", "&", and "%" when using SEO.
E. Link Optimization
1˅ Incoming Links
It is essential to website ranking to have as much high-
quality external links (also known as incoming links) as
possible. Therefore, a link analysis tool can be used to
analyze the situation of how the website is linked. When the
source website links the target website, web spider can see
the target website address when checking the source website
and will quickly grab the content of the target website.
Thus, it will be more effective for a new website to receive
high quality links to other websites than submitting itself to
the search engine.
2˅ Outgoing Links
Outgoing link means link to other websites. The search
engine not only analyzes incoming links but also analyzes
outgoing links to other websites. If the content of outgoing
linked website is associated with original website, it is also
good for search engine rankings. This is also why
exchanging links need to select the website with relevant
subject. Attention is in order in making outgoing links to
controlling the quantity and quality of the outgoing links. If
the linked website has a low PR value or cheat, it will affect
the current website's ranking in search engines, so be careful
to use the outgoing links.
3˅ Internal Links
The webpages within a website should also be linked to
each other, like the "related articles" list at the end of a
regular article, which links all other articles under the same
subject in this website. In this way it will not only facilitates
the visitors, and increases traffic, but also is conducive to
search engine to index webpages and links multiple
webpages to the same internal webpage, as well as helps to
improve ranking for that internal page. From the perspective
of website optimization, complete internal links should be
established to ensure that each page will have a link to
return to home page. It is also important to check the
internal links often to prevent broken links.
F. Website Submission
Even though a website can be recognized by the
majority of web spiders through the establishment of
external links, but it is still needed to submit the Url to each
search engine, the ODP directory, and to links to other
valuable websites.
1˅ Submit to Search Engine
At the beginning of a newly established website, the
website address should be first submitted to search engines.
Even though search engine processes a new website in a
long cycle, but it is still the easiest way to be found by
search engine compared with establishing links to other
external websites.
2˅ Submit to the Open Directory Library
ODP (Open Directory Project) is a directory search
engine with the website addresses reviewed and edited by
volunteers. Before submission, it is important to ensure the
integrity of the completion of website link and the content
itself with some value. At the same time when filling in the
website introduction, the subjects are described by the
concise statement without too many adjectives.
VI. SUMMARY
The website search engine optimization is a complete
series of optimization processes. From the layout of the
website structure sections, to the specific content designs of
webpage title, keywords, domain names, links, etc., all need
to consider the performance with the search engine. In
addition, to complete a website developers need to continue
to study the characteristics of their own websites and
research effective SEO strategy, as well as constantly update
the website content to increase traffic, thereby enhance the
market competitiveness of the website.
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