Search engine optimization (SEO) is a way to help you and other Ernst & Young practitioners quickly and easily find the content you need using search.
Imagine that you are submitting a successful proposal document that Ernst & Young presented to an automotive client for internal audit work, which you consider to be a good example. Put yourself into the shoes of the person who will be searching for an internal audit proposal for automotive. Which of the following documents is most likely to come back in a search for “internal audit proposal
automotive”?
A. Title: 2012 Internal Audit Proposal Automotive Sweden
Summary/Abstract: This internal audit proposal was presented to a Swedish automotive client, and includes information on our global capabilities, credentials related to the automotive services industry, Ernst & Young's differentiators, the methodology, and the overview of knowledge and training.
B. Title: Proposal to serve Company A Summary/Abstract: Internal audit proposal
C. Title: 120903 2004 Internal Audit Plan
Summary/Abstract: This was used to win work at Company A.
D. Title: Proposal
Summary/Abstract: Examples can be found in the CKR --> LINK.
1. Optimize core content
This relates to the main content fields in all of our content repositories, namely the title/headline, abstract/summary and body/attachment,which are the three most important items in terms of search performance.
► First, identify a list of keywords describing the key content of the
document that has to be added to the knowledge system, and rank these
keywords. If you save documents in the knowledge system on behalf of a stakeholder, please ask the stakeholder to provide this information.
The main goal of this step is to identify a list of search terms that should return this document as a result.
► Second, create an appropriate title. The title should be descriptive and contain the most important keyword(s) from the list of keywords created in the previous step.
Example: Your defined keywords are: proposal, CCaSS, Americas,
technology, advisory. Possible good title: Americas Advisory proposal regarding CCaSS in technology January 2012.
► Next, write an abstract (summary). If you work with a stakeholder, ask this person to create the abstract. The abstract should summarize the content of the document. Include the most important keywords you determined earlier.
Note: If you have a good abstract that matches the document content, it is likely to show up in the search results. A good abstract will also influence the relevance of a document, determining how high in the result list it appears.
Example of the title, abstract and attachment/bodyfields in a CKR
Note: You should make sure to use spaces to separate words in the file attachment title, rather than leaving out the spaces or using hyphens or underscores. The attachment should be called “2011 Company Proposal” NOT “2011CompanyProposal” or
“2011_Company_Proposal” or “2011-Company-Proposal.” If you don't use spaces, the search engine sees it all as one word, and it will not help influence the relevance.
Answer: Option A would be the most likely to come back in a search for
“internal audit proposal automotive.”
The document properties are a powerful tool for helping to increase the relevance of a particular document. Many templates within Ernst & Young are frequently reused, but often the document properties are never updated.
Open document properties in any Microsoft document:
► Select the Office button in the upper left corner.
► Go to Prepare in the left column.
► Click Properties in the right section. There are three fields you need to complete/check:
► Author: This field should contain the name of the person who authored the document.
► Title: Enter the title of the document.
► Keywords: Enter any keywords that a user might use to search for this document. Insert the keywords you have created earlier
in step 1 to optimize the core content.Examples might include the type of document (proposal, risk matrix, training), the engagement or project name, or any other keyword that someone might search.
You may complete the other fields, but rules for these fields have not yet been defined.
3. Verify, define and change document properties of your attachment
Check the document properties and metadata, if possible. This is especially important for all Microsoft Office files and PDFs:
► Ensure that the author’s name matches the source of the material.
► Correct the title field, if needed, based on the keyword list from step 1.
► Add each of the desired keywords and phrases to the keywords field.
► Save the document as a single attachment. Don’t combine multiple attachments in a
single zip file.
► For PDFs, if the information is incorrect, have the person who created the PDF recreate it with correctly edited properties.
Don’t use titles such as “Proposal PowerPoint” or
abstracts containing no relevant information about the document.
Do use titles such as “Americas CCaSS Proposals …
fees sanitized.pptx” accompanied with a descriptive
abstract stating the context of the document. Ideally, the most important keyword(s) from the keyword list should be mentioned in the attachment title.
Note: Always consider if you download the file to your desktop and come across it a month later, would you immediately know what it is about?
Attachments play a surprisingly strong role in improving the search results because the search engine goes through the attachments to pull up the most relevant results. Make sure the attachment title is descriptive and catches/summarizes the subject matter.
2. Optimize the attachment
Note: You should clear out any values in the Notes section of a PowerPoint presentation that may not be relevant, such as
content that might have been relevant to the original version of the presentation but is no longer valid in the current version, or instructions or boilerplate text.
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