Leveraging Organization’s Web Ranking:

Strategic and Techniques

Surasak SanguanpongDepartment of Computer Engineering,

Faculty of Engineering, Kasetsart UniversitySurasak.S@ku.ac.thSTOU Seminar, 11 Sep 2018

Topics

PART 1: Understanding Web Visibility & Ranking

PART 2: The WEBOMETRICS

PART 3: How to Get Better Ranking

PART 1Understanding Web Visibility and Ranking

How many websites are there in the world?

Internet Live Stats

There are

1,911,101,911websites in the World as of 06:38 9/11/2018

http://www.internetlivestats.com/watch/websites/

How many pages are in Google's web index in 2017?

Google Reports

The Google Search index contains hundreds of billions of web pages and is

well over 100,000 Terabytes in size.

Modified form https://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/search/howsearchworks/crawling-indexing/

The Deep and Dark Web

https://hackercombat.com/the-best-10-deep-web-search-engines-of-2017/

The Hyperlinks• Speaker’s Research on

Thai WWW Connectivity (2007)• 1,086,846 HTML • 6,763 Web Servers• 18,663,331 Links

Q: How to ensure that people find our Websites?

A: Visibility of Websiteis a need

Website Visibility

• How visible a web site appears based on the search engines and keywords selected

Visibility of 100%: 1st page on the major search engines results

Visibility of 0%: not found on the major search engines 1st page

Top Search Engines

Top 10 Truehits Ranking Rank URL

1 www.mahidol.ac.th2 www.ku.ac.th3 www.lib.ru.ac.th4 www.muic.mahidol.ac.th5 www.stou.ac.th6 www.rmutt.ac.th7 www.lib.ku.ac.th8 www.li.mahidol.ac.th9 edltv.dlf.ac.th

10 www.grad.psu.ac.th

Aug 5, 2018 Stat

Measurements: Unique Visitor &Pageviews

Alexa Top 500 Thailand

Showing Education Sector

Measurements: Unique Visitors and Pageviews

Web Myths

• It’s a facebook/Instagram age!

•Why making web, no one sees!

Web Reaility

30% Won’t consider a business without a website

46% A website is the biggest determinant of whether they trust a company

63% Use websites to find or engage with businesses

30%

46%

63%

https://searchengineland.com/5-reasons-websites-still-matter-local-search-2017-275080

PART 2The WEBOMETRICS

University Ranking

Study of Quantitative Metrics

The Webometrics

Universities ranking system based on quality&quantity of Web contents

Own by Cybermetrics Lab, a unit of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC),

First Edition: 2004

Since 2008, publishing two times (January & July) per year

Objectives of the Ranking Web

The Ranking Web is built frominformation published in the so-calledPublic Web

Answer

Promote the Open Access initiativesspecially among the universities fromall over the world

Objective

1 1

The Ranking Web publishes world,continental and country classificationsfor more than 20 000 universities

Answer

Provide rank information for everyuniversity, including those from thedeveloping countries

Objective

2 2

The Ranking Web does not acceptpaid publicity and it is not linked to anyfor-profit or non-academic organization

Answer

Publish a fully independent andtransparent ranking, guided by ethicaland academic principles

Objective

3 3

Webometrics Page• North America• Latin• Europe• Asia• Africa• Arab• Ocenia

World RankingTop 5 @July 2018

TH RankingTop 5 @July 2018

STOU Rank

ACTIVITY50%

Ranking MethodologyVISIBILITY

50%

PRESENCE: 5%Web pages

OPENNESS: 10%Open publications

EXCELLENCE: 35%Publications

IMPACT: 50%Links

Composite Indicator (2018)

Summary of Sources

50% Impact

35% Excellence

10% Openness

5% Presence

Google: Presence

Scimago: Excellence

PART 3How to get better Ranking

Understanding SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Process of affecting the online visibility of a website in a search engine's unpaid results

Often referred to as "natural", "organic", or "earned" results

Why 1st Page is important?

https://chitika.com/2013/06/07/the-value-of-google-result-positioning-2/

SEO test• Trying keyword

• Go to incognito mode

Inclusion TestHow many pages are being indexed?

Tips 1: Maximize on Page QualityIMPROVING PRESENCE

Key Factors

On PageQuality Crawlability

Valuable & Informative

ContentContent

Freshness

A website with brilliant content can do great with or without SEO. A website with bad content will not survive with or without SEO. A website with good content can become even better with SEO!

On Page SEO Techniques• Content quality comes first!• Page titles and meta descriptions• Headings and content formatting• Images and other multimedia

elements• Internal links• External links

W3C Validator

Google Lighthouse Auditor• Accessibility• Page loading speed

Website Infrastructure• Responsive Design for Mobile friendliness

• HTTPS

• Web Robot friendly (with robots.txt)

Responsive Design for Mobile • Goto https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

• Tips: https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/website-software

Ensuring HTTPS• Check

Indexability: robots.txt• “You don’t want your server to be overwhelmed by Google’s

crawler or to waste crawl budget crawling unimportant or similar pages on your site.”

• By using your robots.txt the right way, you can tell search engine bots to spend their crawl budgets wisely

Things Consider Harmful• Poor Page Components:

• Flash• Frame• Splash pages• Images only page• Drop down Menu• Error • Bad Javascript

• Fool Search Engines with:• Keyword Stuffing• Cloaking (different page for SE than user)

• Hidden Text• Doorway Pages• Redirect Pages• Duplicate Content• Link Farms

Don’t Use Black Hat Trickshttps://www.semrush.com/blog/semrush-study-on-site-seo-issues/

Tips 2: Promotion OFF PageIMPROVING VISIBILITY

Quality and Quantity of Inbound Links • Social Media Presence

• Blogging

• PR news in International activity and collaborations

Backlink Analysishttp://www.seoreviewtools.com/valuable-Backlinks-checker/

TIPS 3: More Academic PublicationsIMPROVING TRANSPARENCY AND EXELLENCE

Academic Publications• Promote Academic

Publication

• Individual Google Scholar Membership

• Publication on impact journal

Strategic & Tactics

Key Strategics

• Involving EVERYBODY• Faculty members, librarians, post-graduate students as web

producers

• Encourage and supporting of personal and group web pages • Structure of the university, organization, activities, • knowledge and technological information• Web hosting services• All under stou.ac.th domain

Tactics 1: Increasing Contents Quantity

•More number of HTML pages • Including Rich files

.pdf, .doc, .docx, .ps, .eps, .ppt .ppts

Tactics 2: Promotion of Qualitative Contents

• Research results in Publishers and OPEN ACCESS

• Research publications: The most prestigious mission, the key for achieving World-class status

• All the academic papers, scientific monographs, thesis and dissertations, conference proceedings under institutional Open Access repository

Tactics 3: Promotion of International Contents

• English: “lingua franca” of scholarly communication

• Balance both English and Local Language

Tactics 4: Empowering IT Services

•Qualitative of Services is a key!• Availability• Reliability• Speed• Wireless Coverage

Cybernatics Comments on Thai Web• Thailand is the second country in the regional ranking (after

Singapore), but without any university in top500 of the Excellence indicator

• Performance in the Openness is better but only for a limited number of universities

• Personal pages are very few and with rustic basic interfaces, providing a below expectations amount of information

• Impact measured through link visibility is mostly local, probably due to the lack of contents in international languages