SEO Basics: Foundations and Best Practices for Search Engine Optimization
Download as PPTX, PDF0 likes91 views
This document provides a comprehensive guide on SEO best practices, emphasizing the importance of user-focused design, clean URL structures, and effective content strategies. It discusses the evolution of search engines, common pitfalls such as keyword stuffing and cloaking, and technical elements like sitemaps and robots.txt files for optimizing website visibility. Key recommendations include creating high-quality content, ensuring mobile-friendliness, and maintaining proper metadata for improved search rankings.
SEO Basics: Foundations and Best Practices for Search Engine Optimization
- 1. SEO BASICS Foundations and Best Practices for Search Engine Optimization
- 2. Experience Architect for ITHAKA 10 + years of practice Design software, websites, services and multi-devices Waterfall and Agile working environments Government, Health Care, ECommerce, Higher Education Former Digital Librarian @atomaton
- 5. Data Centers
- 10. SEARCH RESULT Title The first blue line of any search result is the title of the webpage. Click the title to go to the site. <title> Title of Page | include keyword or phrase close to the beginning </title> <meta name=“description” content=“this is snippet text”> Snippet Below the URL is text that helps show how the page relates to your query. The words you search for will show in bold to make it easier for you to decide if the page has what you're looking for. URL In green, you'll see the web address of the site. http://school.edu/use-hyphens
- 11. SEO DEFINITION Achieving a high rank in the search results of a search engine organically
- 12. SEARCH EVOLUTION 1900s Crawled once a month end of month indexed 2010 introduced distributed indexing 2011 Machine learning 200 factors for signal boosting 2014 Synonym engine 2015 Mobile friendliness favored 600 updates a year
- 13. “Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, a practice commonly referred to as "cloaking.” UX
- 14. “Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links.” “Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.” IA
- 15. “Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content” Content Strategy
- 16. “Make sure that your <title> elements and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.” “Use keywords to create descriptive, human-friendly URLs. Provide one version of a URL to reach a document, using 301 redirects or the rel="canonical" attribute to address duplicate content.” HTML
- 17. “Ensure a clean, keyword rich URL structure is in place.” “Create keyword-rich content and match keywords to what users are searching for.” “Produce fresh content regularly.” Content Strategy
- 18. “Make sure content is not buried inside rich media (Adobe Flash Player, JavaScript, Ajax) and verify that rich media doesn't hide links from crawlers.” “Don’t put the text that you want indexed inside images. For example, if you want your company name or address to be indexed, make sure it is not displayed inside a company logo.” Limitations
- 19. NON-TEXT CONTENT Animations Flash files Photos/Images Video Audio Plug-in content content in rich media format is still difficult for search engines to parse. <img src="smiley.gif" alt="Smiley face">
- 20. BLOCKED CODE Errors in a website's crawling directives may lead to blocking search engines entirely. ROBOT.TXT a file at the root of your site that indicates those parts of your site you don’t want accessed by search engine crawlers. User-agent: * Disallow:
- 21. FORMS Search engines cannot see content beyond protected pages Examples login or survey barriers FORMS/FRAMES FRAMES Present structural issues for the engines in terms of organization and following. Bad for accessibility and printing
- 22. VOLUMINUS LINKS Pages with hundreds of links on them are at risk of not getting all of those links crawled and indexed. Search engines will only crawl so many links on a given page
- 23. BAD LINK STRUCTURE Bad link structure will inhibit a bot from crawling all your pages. if it is crawled, the minimally-exposed content may be deemed unimportant by the engine's index. Orphaned content Lack of Hierarchy Links not in HTML <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <urlset> <url> <loc>http://example.com/</loc> <lastmod>2006-11-18</lastmod> <changefreq>daily</changefreq> <priority>0.8</priority> </url> </urlset> XML SITEMAP
- 24. MIXED SIGNALS/JARGON MIXED MESSAGE Title of page and content of that page are not in harmony Mixed messages send confusing signals to search engines. JARGON Text that is not written in the common terms that people use to search. For example, writing about "food cooling units" when people actually search for "refrigerators."
- 25. DUPLICATE CONTENT Websites using a CMS (Content Management System) often create duplicate versions of the same page Major problem for search engines looking for completely original content. <link rel="canonical" href=“http://www.school.edu>
- 26. Link Exchanges Link Farms Paid Links Cloaking Keyword Stuffing
- 27. FARMS Fake or low-value websites are built or maintained purely as link sources to artificially inflate popularity. EXCHANGES Sites create link pages that point back and forth to one another in an attempt to inflate link popularity. LINK FARMS/EXCHANGES
- 28. Links bought from sites and pages willing to place a link in exchange for money. PAID LINKS
- 29. Serving different content to BOTS than to regular users. Pages appear in search results even though their content is actually unrelated to what users see/want Google takes cloaking very seriously. CLOAKING
- 30. Keyword stuffing is a search engine optimization (SEO) technique, in which a web page is loaded with keywords in the meta tags or in content of a web page. Keyword stuffing may lead to a website being banned or penalized in search ranking on major search engines either temporarily or permanently. Google takes stuffing very seriously. KEYWORD STUFFING
- 31. BEST PRACTICES • URL structure • Anchor Text • HTML Tags • Meta Tags • Canonical Tags • Redirects • Link Building • Mobile Friendliness
- 32. TITLE TAG Descriptive and readable for humans and bots Begin with keyword or phrase End with brand, school, or department name 75 Characters or less Unique titles for each page Do not stuff it with keywords (SPAM ALERT) <head> <title> An accurate concise description of a page's content. </title> </head>
- 33. URL Descriptive Short Include keyword Use hyphens (-) The best URLs are human-readable and without lots of parameters, numbers, and symbols. http://www.sr.ithaka.org/blog/competency-based-creducation/ Transform dynamic URLs mod_rewrite for Apache ISAPI_rewrite for Microsoft
- 34. META DESCRIPTION Use action-oriented language Provide a solution or benefit Make it specific and relevant Keep it under 160 characters Avoid keyword stuffing Primary source for the snippet of text displayed beneath a listing in the results. <meta name="Description" content=“This content will show up as the snippet” />
- 35. META KEYWORD Include for internal search engines Spammed to death, and dropped by all the major engines as an important ranking signal. <meta name=”keywords" content=“This content will show up as the snippet” />
- 36. ALT TAG <img src=“bookCVR.gif” alt=”Title Author book cover"> Provide alt text for images Web search Image search Accessibility
- 37. ANCHOR TEXT <a href="http://www.example.com">Example Anchor Text</a> SEO speak for hyperlink Search engines use this text to help determine the subject matter of the linked-to document. Link relevancy is determined by both the content of the source page and the content of the anchor text. Most basic format of a link, and it is eminently understandable to the search engines One of the strongest signals 8 words maximum Succinct and relevant to the target page Include Keyword
- 38. <a class="link-button" href="/educational- transformation/">Verb Noun Keyword</a> ANCHOR TEXT: BUTTON
- 39. META ROBOT TAG used to control search engine crawler activity on a per-page level. <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT=”NOINDEX, NOSNIPPET"> index/noindex crawled and kept in the engines' index for retrieval. follow/nofollow To crawled or not noarchive used to restrict search engines from saving a cached copy of the page. nosnippet No descriptive block of text next to the page's title and URL in the search results.
- 40. NO FOLLOW When to use it Paid Links Comments User Generated Content Search engines consider links to be votes that pass credit to other pages. <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">
- 41. DUPLICATE CONTENT To search engines, these appear as separate pages. Because the content is identical on each page, this can cause the search engines to devalue the content and its potential rankings. https://news.example.com/Information -Literacy/155672.html (syndicated post) https://blog.example.com/library/Information -Literacy/ (original post) https://blog.example.com/library/Information -Literacy/ https://blog.example.com/faculty/Information -Literacy/ Different Sections Syndication
- 42. CANONICAL TAG The canonical tag so tells search robots which page is the singular, authoritative version that should count in web results. link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/"/> Use the canonical tag within the page that contains duplicate content. The target of the canonical tag points to the master URL that you want to rank for.
- 43. 301 REDIRECTS Allows you to provide one version of a URL to reach a document A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which passes between 90- 99% of link juice (ranking power) to the redirected page https://example.com/home https://home.example.com https://www.example.com
- 44. ROBOT.TXT Robots Exclusion Standard Robots.txt is a plain-text file Placed at the root of a domain http://www.google.com/robots.tx t User-agent: * Disallow: /images/ Disallow: /search
- 45. XML SITEMAP An XML Sitemap is a file on your server with which you can help Google easily crawl & index all the pages on your site. http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol. html <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap /0.9"> <url> <loc>http://www.example.com/</loc> <lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod> <changefreq>monthly</changefreq> <priority>0.8</priority> </url> <url> <loc>http://www.example.com/catalog?item=12&am p;desc=vacation_hawaii</loc> <changefreq>weekly</changefreq> </url> </urlset>
- 46. Create great, unique, usable content Convince a professor to include in public syllabus Submit to TRUSTWORTHY directories Email bloggers about topic Comment on relevant blogs LINK BUILDING
- 47. MOBILE “Friendliness” Google recommends responsive design it’s easier to maintain and tends to have fewer implementation issues. PROS Easier /cheaper to maintain. One URL for all devices. No complicated device detection/redirection. CONS Large pages, fine for desktop, slow on mobile. Not a total mobile-centric user experience. Responsive
- 48. MOBILE “Friendliness” Google recommends that you provide them with a hint that you’re altering the content based on user agent. Send Vary HTTP header to let them know that Googlebot for smartphones should pay a visit to crawl the mobile-optimized version of the URL. Dynamic PROS One URL Mobile-centric user experience. CONS Complex technical implementation. Higher cost of maintenance.
- 49. MOBILE “Friendliness” PROS Differentiation of mobile content optimize for mobile-specific search intent Tailor a fully mobile-centric user experience CONS Higher cost of maintenance More complicated SEO requirements Prone to error Separate Mobile Site
- 50. KEYWORD CHECKLIST Keyword at the beginning of the title element Keyword appears in the URL Keyword is in the headline Keyword included in meta description Content includes keyword (2+) and related terms Images include keyword alt attributes Anchor text includes keyword point to page.
- 51. CONTENT STRATEGY CHECKLIST Unique Authentic High quality Fresh Value to visitor Audit Content to ID ROT: redundent, outdated, and trivial Establish an editorial workflow and content governance
- 52. IA CHECKLIST Navigation is easily consumed/understood by users and bots Layout of information is scannable/readable All pages are linked at least once (no orphans) Sitemaps present and up to date Search result and page content consistent
- 53. BOT CHECKLIST URL is static Content is unique to URL Content and Links are in HTML Robot.txt does not block crawler Meta robot tag allows crawling and indexing Title is 75 characters or less URL is 90 characters or less Meta description is 160 characters or less URL is included in XML sitemap
- 54. PERFORMANCE CHECKLIST Page load .5 second Content loads in under 4 seconds Renders in all browsers Mobile friendly: Optimized for all devices (Responsive)
Editor's Notes
- #2: Good Morning Thank you Kimberly and Rodger
- #4: Overview Concepts Nomenclature and strategies For You Your team hire a 3rd Party
- #5: Building a Keyword INDEX Use links to discover how pages are related to each other and in what ways. Links are votes for popularity and importance Trustworthy sites tend to link to other trusted sites. Links are a way of identifying expert documents on a given subject complex algorithms perform nuanced evaluations of sites and pages based on this information. 2 Personas 1. Bot 2.Searcher
- #9: search engines discover how pages are related to each other and in what ways. Links are votes for popularity and importance Trustworthy sites tend to link to other trusted sites. complex algorithms to perform nuanced evaluations of sites and pages based on this information. Links are a way of identifying expert documents on a given subject
- #12: Technical and creative process Goal of driving more traffic many strategies technique process and tools White hat strategies Tool I have created that will help with SEO= Content Strategy IA UI Development
- #13: MACHINE LEARNING Started with human evaluators searching for low quality content. Machine learning attempt to mimic the human evaluators Once the machine could accurately predict what the humans judged as low quality they let it loose in the “Panda” update in 2011 and changed 20% of all Google search results.
- #22: Technically crawlable Unless you're an advanced user with a good technical understanding of how search engines index and follow links in frames, it's best to stay away from them.
- #23: . This restriction is necessary to cut down on spam and conserve rankings.
- #30: LINK BAIT
- #32: Title Tags Alt Tags Meta Tags Description Keywords Robot Canonical
- #33: closer to the start of the title tag your keywords are, the more helpful they'll be for ranking, and the more likely a user will be to click them in the search results. , or as close to the beginning as possible/reasonable Exception: if you're targeting multiple keywords (or an especially long keyword phrase), and having them in the title tag is essential to ranking, it may be advisable to go longer.
- #34: easily and accurately predict the content you'd expect to find on the page minimizing length and trailing slashes Google recommend that you use Hyphens instead of underscores (_) in your URLs. Not all web applications accurately interpret separators like underscores (_), plus signs (+), or spaces (%20), so instead use the hyphen character (-) to separate words in a URL, as in the "google- fresh-factor" URL example above.
- #37: Assign images in gif, jpg, or png format "alt attributes" in HTML to give search engines a text description of the visual content. closer to the start of the title tag your keywords are, the more helpful they'll be for ranking, and the more likely a user will be to click them in the search results. , or as close to the beginning as possible/reasonable Exception: if you're targeting multiple keywords (or an especially long keyword phrase), and having them in the title tag is essential to ranking, it may be advisable to go longer.
- #38: One of the strongest signals Link relevancy is strong signal MATCH and content of link content of link Content of source page search engines discover how pages are related to each other and in what ways. Explain what users will find at the other end of the link, and include some of the key information-carrying terms in the anchor text itself to enhance scannability and search engine optimization (SEO). Don't use "click here" or other non-descriptive link text. If many sites think that a particular page is relevant for a given set of terms, that page can manage to rank well eve if the terms NEVER appear in the text itself
- #40: placed in the HEAD section of an HTML page By default, all pages are assumed to have the "follow" attribute. You can add them by hand or automatically using a CMS. Talk to your webmaster about this and your options Created by Google Yahoo and Microsoft in 2005 (and blogging platforms) to battle commenting spam
- #41: adding the rel="nofollow" attribute to the link tag tells the search engines that the site owners do not want this link to be interpreted as an endorsement of the target page. Created by Google Yahoo and Microsoft in 2005 (and blogging platforms) to battle commenting spam
- #42: Common with modern Content Management Systems. For example, you might offer a regular version of a page and a print-optimized version. Duplicate content can even appear on multiple websites. For search engines, this presents a big problem: which version of this content should they show to searchers? I
- #43: tells search engines that the page in question should be treated as though it were a copy of the URL http://moz.com/blog and that all of the link and content metrics the engines apply should flow back to that URL.
- #45: https://www.tumblr.com/robots.txt https://moz.com/robots.txt http://searchengineland.com/robots.txt http://www.google.com/robots.txt
- #46: Content Management System PRODUCE AUTOMATICALLY submit that sitemap to Google in Google Webmaster Tools. Again – best practice. Google has said very recently XML and RSS is still a very useful discovery method for them to pick out recently updated content on your site. VISIT SITEMAPS FOR ALL TAG DEFINITIONS http://www.jstor.org/sitemap.xml http://www.google.com/robots.txt
- #52: Conduct Content Inventory and Audit Establish an editorial workflow