SEO Basics

Best Practices

Improving Site Structure

Accurately summarize the page's content
Write a description that would both inform and interest users if they saw your description meta tag as
a snippet in a search result.

Avoid:
writing a description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page
using generic descriptions like "This is a web page" or "Page about baseball cards"
filling the description with only keywords
copying and pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta tag

Optimizing Content
Use unique descriptions for each page
Having a different description meta tag for each page helps both users and Google, especially in
searches where users may bring up multiple pages on your domain (e.g. searches using the site:
operator). If your site has thousands or even millions of pages, hand-crafting description meta tags
probably isn't feasible. In this case, you could automatically generate description meta tags based on
each page's content.

Avoid:
using a single description meta tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages

Dealing with Crawlers

Use description meta tags to
provide both search engines
and users with a summary of
what your page is about!
SEO for Mobile Phones
Promotions and Analysis

Links

Content analysis section Improving snippets with better description meta tags
h
 ttp://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/new-content-analysis-and- h
 ttp://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/improve-snippets-with-
sitemap.html meta-description.html
Prevent search engines from displaying ODP data site: operator
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35264 http://www.brianwhite.org/2007/04/27/google-site-operator-an-ode-to-thee/


 Improving Site Structure

Improve the structure of your URLs

Simple-to-understand URLs will convey

content information easily (1) A URL to a page on our baseball card site that a user might have a hard time
with.

Creating descriptive categories and filenames for the documents on

your website can not only help you keep your site better organized,
but it could also lead to better crawling of your documents by
search engines. Also, it can create easier, "friendlier" URLs for those
that want to link to your content. Visitors may be intimidated by
extremely long and cryptic URLs that contain few recognizable words. (2) The highlighted words above could inform a user or search engine what the
target page is about before following the link.

URLs like (1) can be confusing and unfriendly. Users would have a
hard time reciting the URL from memory or creating a link to it. Also,
users may believe that a portion of the URL is unnecessary, especially
if the URL shows many unrecognizable parameters. They might leave
off a part, breaking the link.

Some users might link to your page using the URL of that page as the
anchor text. If your URL contains relevant words, this provides
users and search engines with more information about the page
than an ID or oddly named parameter would (2).

URLs are displayed in search results

Lastly, remember that the URL to a document is displayed as

part of a search result in Google, below the document's title and
snippet. Like the title and snippet, words in the URL on the search
result appear in bold if they appear in the user's query (3). To the right
is another example showing a URL on our domain for a page
containing an article about the rarest baseball cards. The words in the
URL might appeal to a search user more than an ID number like "www.
brandonsbaseballcards.com/article/102125/" would. (3) A user performs the query [baseball cards]. Our homepage appears as a result,
with the URL listed under the title and snippet.

Google is good at crawling all types of URL structures, even if they're

quite complex, but spending the time to make your URLs as simple as
possible for both users and search engines can help. Some
webmasters try to achieve this by rewriting their dynamic URLs to
static ones; while Google is fine with this, we'd like to note that this is
an advanced procedure and if done incorrectly, could cause crawling
issues with your site. To learn even more about good URL structure,
we recommend this Webmaster Help Center page on creating
Google-friendly URLs.

Glossary
Crawl 301 redirect
Exploration of websites by search engine software (bots) in order to index their An HTTP status code (see page 12). Forces a site visitor to automatically jump to a
content. specified URL.
Parameter Subdomain
Data provided in the URL to specify a site's behavior. A type of domain used to identify a category that is smaller than a regular domain (see
ID (session ID) page 6).
Data provided for the identification and/or behavior management of a user who is Root directory
currently accessing a system or network communications. Directory at the top of the tree structure of a site. It is sometimes called "root".


 Choose a URL that will be

SEO Basics
easy for users and search
engines to understand!

Best Practices

Improving Site Structure

Use words in URLs
URLs with words that are relevant to your site's content and structure are friendlier for visitors
navigating your site. Visitors remember them better and might be more willing to link to them.

Avoid:
using lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs
choosing generic page names like "page1.html"
using excessive keywords like"baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseballcards.htm"

Optimizing Content
Create a simple directory structure
Use a directory structure that organizes your content well and makes it easy for visitors to know where
they're at on your site. Try using your directory structure to indicate the type of content found at that
URL.

Avoid:
having deep nesting of subdirectories like ".../dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/page.html"
using directory names that have no relation to the content in them

Provide one version of a URL to

Dealing with Crawlers

reach a document
To prevent users from linking to one version of a URL and others linking to a different version (this
could split the reputation of that content between the URLs), focus on using and referring to one URL
in the structure and internal linking of your pages. If you do find that people are accessing the same
content through multiple URLs, setting up a 301 redirect from non-preferred URLs to the dominant
URL is a good solution for this. You may also use canonical URL or use the rel="canonical" link element
if you cannot redirect.

Avoid:
having pages from subdomains and the root directory access the same content
SEO for Mobile Phones

- e.g. "domain.com/page.htm" and "sub.domain.com/page.htm"

using odd capitalization of URLs
- many users expect lower-case URLs and remember them better
Promotions and Analysis

Links

Dynamic URLs 301 redirect

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40349 http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=93633
Creating Google-friendly URLs rel="canonical"
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=76329 http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394


 Improving Site Structure

Make your site easier to navigate

Navigation is very important for search (root)

engines
about
The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors
quickly find the content they want. It can also help search engines articles
understand what content the webmaster thinks is important.
Although Google's search results are provided at a page level, Google news
also likes to have a sense of what role a page plays in the bigger
picture of the site. 2008

Plan out your navigation based on your 2009

homepage
2010

All sites have a home or "root" page, which is usually the most price-guides
frequented page on the site and the starting place of navigation for
many visitors. Unless your site has only a handful of pages, you 1900-1949
should think about how visitors will go from a general page
(your root page) to a page containing more specific content. Do 1950-1999
you have enough pages around a specific topic area that it would
make sense to create a page describing these related pages (e.g. root
2000-present
page -> related topic listing -> specific topic)? Do you have hundreds
of different products that need to be classified under multiple The directory structure
shop for our small website on
category and subcategory pages? baseball cards.

Ensure more convenience for users by

using ‘breadcrumb lists’
(1) Breadcrumb links appearing on a deeper article page on our site.

A breadcrumb is a row of internal links at the top or bottom of the

page that allows visitors to quickly navigate back to a previous
section or the root page (1). Many breadcrumbs have the most
general page (usually the root page) as the first, left-most link and list
the more specific sections out to the right.

Glossary
404 ("page not found" error) XML Sitemap
An HTTP status code (see page 12). It means that the server could not find the web A list of the pages on a particular website. By creating and sending this list, you are
page requested by the browser. able to notify Google of all pages on a website, including any URLs that may have been
undetected by Google's regular crawling process.

10
 SEO Basics
Allow for the possibility of a part of the
URL being removed

Improving Site Structure

(2) Users may go to an upper directory by removing the last part of the URL.

Consider what happens when a user removes part of your URL -

Some users might navigate your site in odd ways, and you should
anticipate this. For example, instead of using the breadcrumb links
on the page, a user might drop off a part of the URL in the hopes
of finding more general content. He or she might be visiting http://
www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/2010/upcoming-baseball-
card-shows.htm, but
then enter http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/2010/ into
the browser's address bar, believing that this will show all news from
2010 (2). Is your site prepared to show content in this situation or will

Optimizing Content
it give the user a 404 ("page not found" error)? What about moving up
a directory level to http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/?

Prepare two sitemaps: one for users, one

for search engines

A site map (lower-case) is a simple page on your site that displays the
structure of your website, and usually consists of a hierarchical listing
of the pages on your site. Visitors may visit this page if they are <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
having problems finding pages on your site. While search engines

Dealing with Crawlers

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
will also visit this page, getting good crawl coverage of the pages on <url>
your site, it's mainly aimed at human visitors. <loc>http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/</loc>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
An XML Sitemap (upper-case) file, which you can submit through
</url>
Google's Webmaster Tools, makes it easier for Google to discover
<url>
the pages on your site. Using a Sitemap file is also one way (though
<loc>http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/</loc>
not guaranteed) to tell Google which version of a URL you'd prefer as </url>
the canonical one (e.g. http://brandonsbaseballcards.com/ or http:// <url>
www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/; more on what's a preferred <loc>http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/2008/</loc>
domain). Google helped create the open source Sitemap Generator </url>
SEO for Mobile Phones

Script to help you create a Sitemap file for your site. To learn more <url>
about Sitemaps, the Webmaster Help Center provides a useful guide <loc>http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/2009/</loc>
to Sitemap files. </url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/2010/</loc>
</url>
</urlset>

Examples of an HTML site map and an XML Sitemap. An HTML site map can help
users easily find content that they are looking for, and an XML Sitemap can help
search engines find pages on your site.
Promotions and Analysis

Links

Webmaster Tools Sitemap Generator Script

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ http://code.google.com/p/googlesitemapgenerator/
What's a preferred domain Guide to Sitemap files
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=44231 http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=156184

11
 Improving Site Structure

Make your site easier to navigate

Best Practices

Create a naturally flowing hierarchy

Make it as easy as possible for users to go from general content to the more specific content they
want on your site. Add navigation pages when it makes sense and effectively work these into your
internal link structure.

Avoid:
creating complex webs of navigation links, e.g. linking every page on your site to every other page
going overboard with slicing and dicing your content (so that it takes twenty clicks)

Use mostly text for navigation

Controlling most of the navigation from page to page on your site through text links makes it easier for
search engines to crawl and understand your site. Many users also prefer this over other approaches,
especially on some devices that might not handle Flash or JavaScript.

Avoid:
having a navigation based entirely on drop-down menus, images, or animations
- many, but not all, search engines can discover such links on a site, but if a user can reach all
pages on a site via normal text links, this will improve the accessibility of your site; more on how
Google deals with non-text files

For navigation, the focus

should be on simplicity
and ease of use!

Glossary
Flash User experience
Web technology or software developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated. It is able to The experience gained by a user through using products, services, etc. Emphasis is
create web content that combines sound, video and animation. placed on providing an experience truly sought after by the user, such as "enjoyment,"
JavaScript A type of programming language. It can add dynamic features to web "convenience" and "comfort."
pages and is used by many web services. HTTP status code
Drop-down menu A system in which one chooses content from a menu. When one A code that expresses the meanings of responses from the server when computers
clicks on the menu, the list of choices are displayed in a list in a drawn out manner. are conveying information to each other. The code is allotted as three numerical digits,
Accessibility The ability for users and search engines to access and comprehend with a different meaning depending on the number used.
content.
12