Exploration of Search Engine Optimization Technology Applied in
Internet Marketing
1
Li-Hsing HO,
2Meng-Huang LU,
3Chin-Pei LEE,
4Tien-Fu PENG
1, First AuthorCollege of Management, Chung Hua University, [email protected] *2,Corresponding Author
College of Management, Chung Hua University, [email protected]
3Wuchi Elementary School, [email protected] 4
College of Management, Chung Hua University, [email protected]
doi : 10.4156/aiss.vol3.issue7.47Abstract
As the Internet becomes the important media of international communication in the world, the internet marketing competition pattern is also gradually changing as a consequence. The exploration aims at designing an easy-to-use set of Information Publishing System and Standard Operational Procedure by the application of Search Engine Optimization Technology, so that we shall be able to achieve the goal that we can automatically add web content with the minimum of man power and material resources, to increase the website’s Indexed Pages accessed through search engines, and advance the rank of total web pages surfed via main search engines such as Google and Yahoo etc.
Taking our self-built experimental website www.CityTour.tw as an example in the study, the website began to optimize the search engines continuously, since the final completion of the building of the website with the name of WhyPark formally on August 20th, 2008. It was not until September 28th, 2008 that when we typed in the keyword “HsinChu Citytour”, we got the search result that the number of total web pages ranked the first by a Google search, while the second by a Yahoo one respectively.
In this research we suggest that an independent website should be used by the city government, and that an English travel information website for foreign tourists (www.iHsinChu.tw for example) should be set up with the help of Search Engine Optimization Technology to ensure every wet page to be found via almost every search engine, upgrading the opportunities to be clicked by foreign visitors. In the study we are trying to set up a website as quickly as we can so as to promote the competitive power of the city with the minimum of money and man power by WhyPark.com and with Search Engine Optimization Technology.
Keywords
: Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing1. Introduction
Along with the science and technology innovation, the Internet becomes the important media of international communication in the world; the internet marketing competition pattern is also gradually changing as a consequence. Many cities carry out internet marketing actively, to transform the image of the city and enhance its attraction, hoping to improve the urban competitiveness in the global competition. Meanwhile, international marketing through the Internet may attract more and more tourists, investors, capital, and varieties of international activities.
As for consumers seeking information behavior on the Internet, cruising data, published in April, 2007, shows that along with the application and popularization of Internet, net friends become more and more reliable on getting information on the web. Surfing the Internet has become an essential part of life. It is estimated that about 84.14 percent of the net friends choose web search engines to hunt for the information [3].
On July 21st, 2008, English version of HsinChu City Government website en.hccg.gov.tw was visited 3,120 times through Google search, while 1,968 times through Yahoo search. According to the statistics by the web information company Alexa, the HsinChu City Government website ranked the 236,128th in the number of having been clicked in July of 2008 in the world (Taipei City Government website, No. 24,841), among all the visitors, 94.8 percent came from Taiwan, 0.5 percent from Hong Kong, 0.2 percent from Singapore, and 4.4 percent from the other regions. Every visitor looked through 3.4 pages on the average. There were still another 28 percent of the visitors only taking a glance of the
host site of hccg.gov.tw, one percent of them having a quick glimpse of English Version of en.hccg.gov.tw website [14]. This website should still have much ascending space to attract foreign visitors.Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is known for its toolbar and website. Once installed, the toolbar collects data on browsing behavior which is transmitted to the website where it is stored and analyzed and is the basis for the company's web traffic reporting [20].
Therefore, taking our self-built experimental website as an example in the study, by using Search Engine Optimization Technology, we have designed an easy-to-use set of Information Publishing System and Standard Operational Procedure, so that we shall be able to achieve the goal that we can automatically add web content with the minimum of man power and material resources, to advance the web information company Alexa, and to increase the website’s Indexed Pages accessed through search engines, and the page rank of total web pages surfed by Google searches, and Inbound Links outside the website. Through the exploration we expect to promote the international image in the world by means of the most economic and efficient internet marketing.
2. Literature Reviews
2.1. Search Engine Marketing
Search engine has become a necessity for people to surf the web[4]. It is a simple user interface is designed. Any user simply fills in several fields and the system makes the decision about what to find, where to search and how to look at. The threshold of search is lowered. Accessing information and retrieving knowledge is easier[7].
SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is a internet marketing model aiming at promoting the ranking of websites in the search engine's search results page which can make a web site introduce into more web users and website traffic [9]. The search engine marketing has two forms, including SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click Advertising).
Search engine marketing is the market leader of search engine providers in most Western countries, usually clearly ahead of Yahoo and Microsoft [8]. Search engines have become the main tool consumers use to locate information [13].
The display of the unsponsored (organic) search results is free of charge, whereas advertisers pay for each click on their ads that appear among the sponsored (paid) search results [1]. Basically two streams of research on search engine marketing exist. One stream deals with the optimal design of keyword auctions and possible improvements [2] or examines bidding behavior in keyword auctions [5]. Other studies analyze the effect of click fraud on the search engine provider’s revenue [17].
2.2. Search Engine Optimization
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to the use of technology for specific customized websites, making your site obtain better search rankings in search engine results pages [11]. Search engines are used to collect information on Internet and provide users with search results for the information searched. Its operations can be divided into the following steps [19]:Data Crawling, Data Indexing, Data Scoring, User Browsing Statistics and User Search Statistics. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is not a single technology, but many technology portfolio which can ascend website ranking and is search engine acceptable.
The various search engine optimization techniques are s
ubmit to the website directory of Dmoz, submit URL to search engines, submit site map files to search engines, publishing articles with keywords hyperlink in popular forum, web ping and HTML title and Meta Optimization.2.3. Pay Per Click Advertising
PPC (Pay Per Click Advertising) is a search engine advertising service. Web sites can pay the fee through the bidding to obtain advertising space on the top or right of search results page. There may be many websites for bidding the same keyword advertising, so if the site's ad is clicked, the higher a
price is , the better advertising position the site will obtain [10]. When web users click on the ads, the site must pay the cost of bid to the search engine.
2.4. Page Ranking
Search engine gains the data of websites via Robots, and stores into database after calculation with the Algorithm. When the users input keywords to inquire, the Search engine will use integration technology to evaluate the order of each website on Results Page which is supposed to be , namely a web page ranking. Generally speaking, web page ranking will influence the number of people who can see our web page, and can also affect benefits of the site itself, of course.
2.5. Open Directory Project
Open Directory Project usually refers to the world's most important open directory sites DMOZ. Org, and many search engines trust the directory. A website will login its web site, brief headline and a narrative 25 to 30 words in DMOZ.Org [12]. Once it is collected, it will also be collected by many search engines at the same time and therefore submit to DMOZ. Org has become one of the most important approaches to Search Engine Optimization.
2.6. Search Engine Robots
Search engine robots is a kind of software that will automatically browse the websites through which search engines can search, record and store content of each website. In general, all search engines have their own developed searching robots. They grab data constantly and store in the database by using these robots to visit the URL of each network [16].
2.7. Site Map
Site Map refers to listing all the web sites to compose the Site Map in the form of XML, HTML, CFM and TXT format files [18]. Although the search engine has its own software robots responsible for collecting site materials, occasionally they do omit something. So it is necessary to establish a list of all of the pages of the Site Map files, and then commit the URL of Site Map file to search engine [6] to make a search engine understand this website completely, which is also an important job of Search Engine Optimization.
3. Research method
The self-built experimental website of HsinChu City Tour: Travel Guide in Taiwan (CityTour.tw) is taken as an example in this study. Since the system was built completely on August 20, 2008 by normally constructing website with WhyPark.com, the search engine optimization work has started constantly. The study allows each page of the website to be indexed by the search engine, and enhances the chance to be found and clicked by foreign visitors.
3.1. WhyPark Automatic Building Service
WhyPark.com provides content sites automatic building service, and only needing one-time fee payment, you can have an independent Domain Name content site. WhyPark.com background has rich article content database which are continuously updated. As long as web site operators simply input the specified keywords in the background, WhyPark.com will select articles suitable to appear on site according to these key words and automatically updates. In addition, it also provides web site operators the function of building their own web contents, which is an easily used automatical building system of content sites [15].
3.2. Automatically submit to many foreign search engines
The foreign website of Freepgs.com (http://www.freepgs.com/ledbetter/submitware/) offers a service of being automatically indexed by many foreign search engines for free. Only if the website and the email address of the registrant are imported, the website can be automatically indexed by 145 foreign search engines such as Alexa.
Because this service is offered for free, the website may not be successfully indexed by each search engine. It is found through the actual submit to this study that www.CityTour.tw is successfully indexed by 41 search engines. Although the success ratio of submission is only 28%, it is still a good method of enhancing the website exposure rate.
3.3. Submit to the website directory of Dmoz
DMOZ.org, also known as The Open Directory Project or ODP, is a globally leading artificial editing website directory, the website directory of DMOZ is also indexed by many of the major search engines. Accordingly, so long as our site is indexed in the DMOZ directory, it will soon be indexed by the major search engines, and their website rankings will be appropriately increased. These major search engines that refer to the website directory of DMOZ are Google, AllTheWeb, AOL Search, Hotbot, Lycos, Altavista and Inktomi and so on.
Therefore the website in this case is registered in the appropriate directory (as is shown in the chart below), but because all the websites submitted to DMOZ have to be approved by the voluntary editors, it usually takes a long time. Presently, www.CotyuTour.tw is still waiting for the approval and reply by editors of the Travel Guides category.
DMOZ Travel Guides Category
Top > Regional > Asia > Taiwan > Travel and Tourism > Travel Guides
3.4. Manually submit to Google, MSN, Yahoo and other search engines
After the website has submit to many search engines and the open website directory of DMOZ, we particularly log the website to the three globally major search engines of Google, MSN and Yahoo (refer with: Table. 1) in the manual manner to ensure the complete index of www.CityTour.tw.
Table 1. Search Engine Submit URL
Search Engine Submit URL
Google http://www.google.com.tw/addurl/ MSN http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx Yahoo http://tw.info.search.yahoo.com/free/submit
3.5. Publishing articles with keywords in the DomainClub forum
Because many net friends publish articles and comments in large well-known forums per day, the search robots of search engines usually visit the forums and websites to search for the latest contents on a daily basis. Accordingly, the opportunity to comment on such forums is used to add the linkage of keywords in the individual signature file fields so that the file can be quickly found and indexed by search engines.
In this case, comments are published on the major forum website of DomainClub.org, and the hyperlink of ”Hsinchu CityTour” to www.CityTour.tw is added in the signature file to facilitate the scraping by the search engine.
3.6. Submission of the SiteMap to Google WebMaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer
Site Map refers to listing all the page lists in the website into a Site Map file in XML and submitting the website of this Site Map file to search engines [11] so that the search engine can have a complete understanding of this site. In this case, the site map of www.CityTour.tw is automatically created at http://www.citytour.tw/google-sitemap.cfm with WhyPark, and this file is submitted to Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer.
3.7. Constant increase of www.CityTour.tw webpages
In the internal assessment of search engine, the website with regular increase of webpage contents always gets a good ranking position. Although the content website creation service of WhyPark.com will automatically add pages to www.CityTour.tw, WhyPark also provides the webpages newly added by the Website operators themselves so that the website contents are more distinctive and abundant.
Our frequently manually adding pages can greatly help the website ranking. So inquiry is conducted in this study with the keyword of hsinchu in the two search engines of Google and Yahoo, the descriptions, website names and websites of the first 30 websites in the search result are manually added to the pages of www.CityTour.tw to enhance the page content of this website.
3.8. Web Ping
In this case, the free WEB PING service of 42 websites offered by the website of Ping.in (http://ping.in/) is applied, and after the submission in the search engine WEB PING is conducted for the search engine when the website contents is updated from time to time, or when website notice message is increased, in order to inform the search engine websites of updated contents and allow it to collect and grab.
Search engines like the websites whose contents are often added or updated. So if WEB PING is conducted for a long time, the search engines are notified once the contents are updated, the frequency of its reading the website will increase, and more pages will be indexed by the search engines of course. This is very helpful for the website by increasing the retrieve speed and numbers of web pages by the search engines.
3.9. HTML title and Meta-Description Tag
In the HTML codes of the webpage, the title tag is the page title that is seen when the website is visited. It will be displayed in the search result pages of the search engine, so the most important keywords must be placed in the first place of the page header; Title tag is one of the most important factors of search engine optimization.
Although when general Internet users browse the websites, they will not necessarily pay special attention to the page header at the top left of the browser, this is the firstly collected tag content for the search engine robots when they visit the website.
In the HTML codes of the webpage, Meta-Description tag is also a volume label dedicated to collecting and introducing the website description for robots, and it will not appear in the webpage content when the general Internet users browse the website. Although the search engine will not index only according to the Meta-Description volume tag, but it still has some reference value for search engines.
Title tag contents
<title>HsinChu CityTour : Travel Guide in Taiwan</title> Meta-Description tag contents
4. Result
4.1. Ranking
As of September 28, search was conducted in the English websites of Google and Yahoo with “HsinChu Citytour” as the keyword, the experimental website of www.CityTour.tw in this study ranked “first” or “second” in the search result pages; and it ranked the “third” through the search in the Chinese websites of Google and Yahoo, which is also a very good ranking result. The website ranking results in each website are separately listed in the following.
On September 28, 2008, www.CityTour.tw ranked the first place in the search result page through the search on Google English website with “HsinChu CityTour” as keyword with Internet Explorer7.0 browser (refer with: Fig. 1).
On September 28, 2008, www.CityTour.tw ranked the first and second places in the search result page through the search on Yahoo English website with “HsinChu CityTour” as keyword with Internet Explorer7.0 browser (refer with: Fig. 2).
Figure 1. Goolge Search Result Page (English) Figure 2. Yahoo Search Result Page (English)
On September 28, 2008, www.CityTour.tw ranked the third place in the search result page through the search on Google Taiwan website with “HsinChu CityTour” as keyword with Internet Explorer7.0 browser (refer with: Fig. 3).On September 28, 2008, www.CityTour.tw ranked the third and fourth places in the search result page through the search on Yahoo Taiwan website with “HsinChu CityTour” as keyword with Internet Explorer7.0 browser (refer with: Fig. 4).
Figure 3. Goolge Search Result Page (Taiwan) Figure 4. Yahoo Search Result Page (Taiwan)
4.2. The External Links of the website
In addition, 26 links were included in the 822 webpage links of www.CityTour.tw that were submitted to the Google WebMaster; and 105 links were included in the 822 webpage links of
www.CityTour.tw that were submitted to the Yahoo Site Explorer, and this quantity was growing. The quantities of external links of each site are separately listed in detail in the following.
It was shown through submission at the admin backstage of Google Webmaster Tools on October 5, 2008 that the latest website submission of website was on September 28, 2008, and the websites of 822 pages were submitted. As of October 3, 2008, Google has included 26 webpage data of www.CityTour.tw in 5 days, there were no error pages, and more pages will continue to be included (refer with: Fig. 5).
It was shown through submission at the admin backstage of Yahoo Site Explorer on October 5, 2008 that Yahoo has included 105 page data of www.CityTour.tw, and the total link quantities including internal and external links were 825 (refer with: Fig. 6).
Figure 5. Google Webmaster Tools Figure 6. Yahoo Site Explorer
5. Conclusion and suggestion
In this study, an simple information release system of internet marketing and standard operating procedure is designed with the search engine optimization techniques and in the manners such as automatically submit to many foreign search engines, submit the website to the website directory of Dmoz, manually submit to Google, MSN, Yahoo and other search engines, publishing articles with keywords in large forum websites, submission of the SiteMap to Google WebMaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer, constant increase of www.CityTour.tw webpages, constant implementation of Web Ping, strengthening the HTML title and the keywords of Meta-Description volume label of the original webpage file to improve the ranking and the external links of the website.
Therefore, this study suggests that the city government establish a tour information website in English especially for foreign tourists (for example: www.iHsinChu.tw) with an independent website. This website and the English website of Hsinchu City Government en.hccg.gov.tw mutually acts as the hyperlink, and each page of the website can be indexed by search engines through the search engine optimization techniques, so that the opportunity to be found and clicked by foreign visitors is enhanced.
In this way, it is different from a complete, scaled website system with complete information whose establishment generally cost much more manpower, time and money. In this study, a website with rich contents can be quickly established with the website construction system of WhyPark.com and the search engine optimization technique in the manner of relatively lower related cost such as manpower. This can be served as reference for the related future planners.
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