Best practices for SEO, Dynamic site Optimization, Flash site Optimization, URL Rewriting, Server side Redirects, file, Page Rank

SEO – ADVANCED

Agenda

� Best practices for SEO

� Dynamic site Optimization

� Flash site Optimization

� URL Rewriting� URL Rewriting

� Server side Redirects

� Robots.txt file

� Page Rank

Best practices

Best practices for SEO

� Skeleton of website should essentially be in HTML

� On-page optimization features� Relevant Title

� Meta tags – keywords and description (obsolete now)

� Content on page – header and bold tags

� Keyword density� Keyword density

� Layout of page

� Graphical elements should have relevant file names and Alt text

� Content should be static

� Content of website can be interspersed with RIA elements

� All RIA elements should have alternative content to be readable by search engines

� Link popularity of the website

Checklist for SEO

Parameters Importance

Skeleton of website should essentially be in HTML ��������������������

Relevant Title ��������������������

Meta tags – keywords and description ����

Content on page ��������������������Content on page

Header and bold tags ����������������

Keyword density ����������������

Layout of page ��������

Graphical elements should have relevant file names and Alt

text������������

Content should be static ������������

Content of website can be interspersed with RIA elements ������������

All RIA elements should have alternative content to be

readable by search engines��������������������

Link popularity of the website ��������������������

How to optimize a dynamic site

How to optimize dynamic website

What are Dynamic website?

� Dynamic websites are websites whose pages are generated on the fly. Unlike static pages (primarily .htm/.html pages), dynamic pages are generated when an user triggers an action through that particular page.

What are the problems that search engines face in indexing Dynamic URLs?

Search engines often consider a dynamic URL as an infinite set of links � Search engines often consider a dynamic URL as an infinite set of links

� Since dynamic URLs find maximum application in online shopping carts, there is a possibility of incorporating a session id to a particular page. As session ids of that particular page change, the search engine spider needs to index an infinite number of copies of the same page, which is a tough task for the Search engines

� Indexing the same dynamic page might overload the servers of the search engines and therefore prevent the search engines to present with the most relevant information in the fastest possible time

How to optimize dynamic website

What are the options available to make a search engine spider index Dynamic URLs?

� Use of softwares - Exception Digital Enterprise Solutions (http://www.xde.net) offers a software which can change the dynamic URLs to static ones. Named XQASP, it will remove the "?" in the Query String and replace it with "/", thereby allowing the search engine spiders to index the dynamic contentdynamic content

� Use of CGI/Perl scripts - One of the easiest ways to get your dynamic sites indexed by search engines is using CGI/Perl scripts. Path_Info or Script_Name is a variable in a dynamic application that contains the complete URL address (including the query string information)

� Re-configuring web servers : Apache Server - Apache has a rewrite module (mod_rewrite) that enables to turn URLs containing query strings into URLs that search engines can index. This module however, is not pre-installed with Apache software by default, but can be provided by web hosting company for installation on demand

How to optimize dynamic website

The other options to make a dynamic site more search engine friendly are:

� Well defined site map – the site map will have links to all pages in the website and submitting it to the search engine will provide links to all pages of the website

� Mix of pages – wherever possible a site if created with a mix of static pages with and dynamic elements on it, it would help the search engine to pages with and dynamic elements on it, it would help the search engine to probably pick up some relevant information

� Scaled down versions in HTML – in some cases a smaller version of the website is created in HTML with the most important pages of the site which are then indexed and links to other pages provided from them.

� Information / doorway pages – these are specially tailor made pages which are search engine friendly and have all search features that will help to index the site, this will have outward links to the site pages but will not have links coming in to the page from the other pages of the site

How to optimize a flash site

How to optimize flash site

What is a flash site?

� Flash is a technology which enables animation and interactivity to a website thus making it appealing and also providing a great experience

What is the problem that flash files face with search enginesWhat is the problem that flash files face with search engines

� Since a typical flash file is designed in a Adobe / Macromedia flash software it does not have a source code which can be viewed by the search engines

� Since search engines are only capable of reading HTML code they are unable to understand the content within a flash file and is hence unable to index the flash content

Flash optimization

How to optimize a entire flash website of the flash content on a website?

� NOEMBED tag – one of the best methods to optimize Flash pages is to use the NOEMBED tag, the same way the NOFRAMES tag is used to index the sites built on frames. It's between the <noembed> and </noembed> tags that text content must be inserted

� SWFOBject - Another Flash SEO method is the use of a CSS element, .div (which � SWFOBject - Another Flash SEO method is the use of a CSS element, .div (which incorporates search engine accessible content), associated with a JavaScript function called SWFObject. This will allow detecting when browsers can display and view Flash. Search engine spiders that cannot handle Flash will choose to view the primary content, which contains links, headings, text, etc. in this case, Flash will not create any problems

� Flash SDK Tool – the Flash Search Engine SDK tool called swf2html functions, which will extract the text from the Flash file and transfer it into a simple HTML document. This will provide the spider view of the page and can be further optimized

How to optimize flash websites

Some other options available to index a flash website are:

� Smaller flash files – sites instead of having a complete site in one flash file can have it constructed within multiple flash files which are stitched together through a HTML framework which will provide multiple accesses to the search engines. The same can be applied for pages, instead of having entire pages in flash, embedding flash elements in pages is a better option for optimizing the site

� Two versions of the site – an alternate used by many sites is to have two versions of the same site one rendered in flash and the other a simple HTML Two versions of the site – an alternate used by many sites is to have two versions of the same site one rendered in flash and the other a simple HTML version which is indexed in the search engines

� Scaled down versions in HTML – in some cases a smaller version of the website is created in HTML with the most important pages of the site which are then indexed and links to other pages provided from them.

� Information / doorway pages – these are specially tailor made pages which are search engine friendly and have all search features that will help to index the site, this will have outward links to the site pages but will not have links coming in to the page from the other pages of the site

Single flash file

Multiple flash files

No of pages indexed

URL rewriting / URL handling

URL Rewriting

� The biggest challenge with dynamic sites is that URL has special characters and is not understood by search engines

� To make it search engine friendly we need to make them static

� Rewrite dynamic urls with static urls

� Session handling in background

� URL rewriting is the process of intercepting an incoming Web request and redirecting the request to a different resource. When performing URL rewriting, typically the URL being requested is checked and, based on its value, the request is redirected to a different URL

� Dynamic URL rewriting can be done in various methods as discussed in optimizing of dynamic sites

URL Handling

� What is SEO URL TOOLS ?

� This is a quite simple PHP class that fulfills most of the Search Engine Optimization URL needs. Programmer may easily include this library and start developing site that fully supports pretty url's

� When using SEO URL TOOLS it is not necessary to create links in documents manually. It just requires to define contents of the URL and then let this library to create the actual URL. Means to define URL's are simple and straightforward, and what is more important, it is an uniform way to create any URL on the site. All URLs will follow the same syntax rules and site would provide everything required to know as to which document to load and what parameters are sent to that document

Server Side Redirects

What is server side redirect?

� A server side redirect is a method of URL redirection using an HTTP status code (eg. 301 Moved Permanently) issued by a web server in response to a request for a particular URL. The result is to redirect user's web browser to another result is to redirect user's web browser to another web page with a different URL.

Scenarios for redirect

� Redirecting people away from a discontinued server

� Load balancing

� Redirecting to error pages if a discontinued URL is used

� Link use tracking, as done at the AltaVista search engine� Link use tracking, as done at the AltaVista search engine

� Spamdexing

� Ensuring old links and bookmarks still work when a page is renamed

� Allowing users to use an abbreviated URL in place of a longer (perhaps less memorable) one

Solutions for Redirect

� For the redirect to be search engine friendly it should essentially throw up only 301 or 302 redirects which are:

� 301 Permanent Redirect

� Generally used to tell spider that page/ domain has been permanently redirected to a new page / domain

� Very search engine friendly as it transfers the link popularity and Page Rank to Very search engine friendly as it transfers the link popularity and Page Rank to the new page / domain

� 302 Temporary Redirect

� Generally used for temporary redirect of pages

� Not search engine friendly as they don’t transfer link popularity and PR to the redirected page

� Both redirects to be set at the server side for maximum benefit. Solution to be identified on a case-to-case basis

Methods for redirecting

� .htaccess file

� The hypertext access file is a server side setting file on the apache server which set directives that enable redirecting of pages / sites

� Meta Refresh

� Is a tag which can be used to redirect a page to a new page � Is a tag which can be used to redirect a page to a new page within a specified time duration. The syntax for the same is:

�<meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="X;URL=yourpage.html">

�Where X is the time duration and yourpage.html the specified page for redirection

� Server side programming

� Where JavaScript or any program logic for redirection is written in the configuration files and configuration class definitions

Robots.txt

Robots.txt

� This file hold all instructions to provide or deny access to spiders there are various combinations:� Allow / deny access to all spiders / bots to the entire site

� User-Agent: *

� Disallow : /*

� Allow/ deny access to all spiders / bots to specific sections� User-Agent: *� User-Agent: *

� Disallow : /file or directory name

� Allow/ deny access to specific spider / bot to specific sections� User-Agent: /bot name

� Disallow : /file or directory name

� Allow/ deny access to specific spider / bot to entire site� User-Agent: /bot name

� Disallow : /*

� The Robots.txt file is to be stored in the root folder of the site

Page Rank

Page Rank

� Page Rank is a Rank awarded by Google� It is a measure of quality, importance and popularity of a page on the web

� It is mainly dependent on the no of back links the website receivesreceives

� Page Rank is awarded on a scale of 10 where 0 is bad, 5 is good … 10 is the best

Page Rank Algorithm

Follows the Random Surfer model

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

where:

� PR(A) is the PageRank of page A,

� PR(Ti) is the PageRank of pages Ti which link to page A,

� C(Ti) is the number of outbound links on page Ti and

� d is a damping factor which can be set between 0 and 1.

Parameters that influence PR

� The effect of inbound links

� The effect of outbound links

� The number of pages on site

� The Yahoo bonus� The Yahoo bonus

� Visibility of a link

� Position of a link within a document

� Distance between web pages

� Importance of a linking page

� Up-to-dateness of a linking page

Parameters that influence ranking

� Page specific factors – relevance of content and other factors such as title tag, URL etc

� Anchor text of inbound links – the text which links the website in question to other websites

� PageRank � PageRank

Google computes an IR score out of page specific factors and the anchor text of inbound links of a page, which is weighted by position and accentuation of the search term within the document. This way the relevance of a document for a query is determined. The IR-score is then combined with PageRank as an indicator for the general importance of the page

Thank YouThank You

Question & Answers

1. Only HTML website will get indexed on search engines

a) True ; b) false

2. XDE.net software helps in optimizing dynamic sites

a) True ; b) false

3. CGI / Perl scripting have negative effect on dynamic sites

a) True ; b) false

4. NOFRAMES is to frame based sites as is to Flash based sitesNOFRAMES is to frame based sites as is to Flash based sites

5. SWFObject / Flash SDK Tool are tools used to make flash sites search engine friendly

a) True ; b) false

6. 302 is the more preferred redirect format compared to 301

a) True ; b) false

7. PR of a page influences it SERP positions

a) True ; b) false

8. Robots.txt files can help provide select bots access / disallow access to pages / sections of the website

a) True ; b) false

Training Evaluation

� Does the presentation meet the training objective?

� Relevance of the course content

� Presentation flow structure

� Clarity on the information content� Clarity on the information content

� Usage of Diagrams

Rating on a scale of 1 to 5

1–Very poor, 2–poor, 3–average, 4–Good, 5–Excellent