WWW/Internet - Portal do Software Público Brasileiro

IADIS International Conference WWW/Internet 2010recognize the necessity of improvement. Once the enterprise is aware of the potentials it needs to beinstructed how SEO best practices have to be implemented.In the following sections we discuss the development of a model to aid in the facilitation of non-ITprofessionals (in particular SME's), in gaining an understanding of the details of Search Engine Optimizationand equip them with the skills for performing these tasks. This will help improve the overall penetration oftheir Web sites. The model is constructed with feedback loops to allow for the ongoing optimization requiredin a continual changing environment. We evaluate the model by applying its techniques to three selectedcases where an optimization promises to improve a website's ranking, and therefore increase the website'straffic. Evaluating the results will show if the implemented improvements will lead to a more successful webpresence of these selected enterprises. It is equally important to find out if procedures for optimizing websitescan be reproduced, and if they can be applied the same way in the near future. These evolving technologieswill be also critically evaluated.2. BRIEF LITERATURE REVIEWWebmasters, developers, programmers and SEO experts have been learning to live with the way searchengines absorb and present the available information on Internet, but the website owner often remainsdisoriented. Usually website owners and webmasters have to work together to make an enterprise's websitevisible. Scanlan (2008) clearly demonstrates that when someone searches for products or services and yoursite does not appear on the first page of search results, than your site is considered to be invisible. This is aharsh reality as usually there are only 10 places available per page. Ghose and Yang (2008) declare that“SEO refers to the process of tailoring a website to optimize its unpaid (or ‘organic’) ranking for a given setof keywords or phrases”. Organic optimization means that no advertisement campaigns have been used. Thesuccess depends fully on the optimization of the content, site structure, and external and inbound links.Generally, non-organic optimization falls under the definition of Search Engine Marketing (SEM). SearchEngine Optimization is all about making the pages of a website visible for search engine spiders. To startwith the optimization the actual performance of the website has to be analyzed. Important factors are thenumber of indexed pages, inbound links and PageRank. The latter factor depends on the popularity and ageof the pages. Scanlan (2008) recommended that the goal of the optimization is to be at least two units aheadof the PageRank of your closest competitor. According to Brin and Page (1998) PageRank was a newapproach how the web pages were ranked.Much of Search Engine Optimization is centered on the selection of popular keywords and phrases.Usually the web page content already provides keywords which can be used for optimization. Once a list ofkeyword has been created it can be expanded by brainstorming. King (2008, p.13) recommendedbenchmarking competitor’s websites to see which keywords they use, and also to include plurals, splits,stems, synonyms and common misspellings. For the website owner or manager there are various free onlinetools available for the keyword research. King (2008) mentions that these free tools are limited compared topaid services like Wordtracker. For ambitious website operators and SEO professionals he recommendedusing Wordtracker for streamlining the process of key phrase discovery. The ultimate goal in SEO is “todiscover the primary key phrase that accurately describes the overall business, product, or service but whichstill has adequate search demand” (King 2008, p.15).Keywords which are placed in the URL and title of a web page have the highest impact on search enginespiders. Also keywords should be also included in the Meta section of the source code. Experience has shownthat keywords placed in Meta description have more value then those in the Meta keywords. The reason forthis is that in recent years many webmasters were abusing this section of the source code by keywordstuffing. Therefore search engine algorithms had to be changed to disregard such spamming attempts. Searchengines today don't put too much emphasis on the keyword Meta tag, as it is largely ignored. Thereforecritical keywords and phrases should embedded within bold tags and heading tags. Also the use of keywordsis recommended in anchor text and hyperlinks. Using these tags puts more emphasizes on the selectedkeywords and phrases, and improves the chance to be indexed by search engines.(Rognerud 2008)While, SEO is largely focused on the selection of keywords, and link building, any gains in these areascan be degraded by an unfavorable site design, and overloaded source code. A site design which is userfriendly is not always search engine robot friendly. Graphical enhanced websites using JavaScript or Flash193