Domain Age - You can't do anything about the age of a domain as that is a given. You should be aware that older
domains tend to get higher ratings in search engine listings, and you should never, ever, change the domain name of an
existing site unless forced to do so for very important business reasons. If you use a new domain name, you lost the
advantage of age as well as all the links and listings accumulated by the old domain name and paths. Redirection from
the old domain name is not a solution, as search engines do not like that. Choose domain names carefully, because you
are going to be stuck with that name for a long time. If you must change the domain name, keep the old domain and
content and put links to the new domain name. and contents, at least until the new domain is established in its own
right and is getting most of the visitors.
Site size and authority - If one new page is added to
Wikipedia that page will get much higher position in search
engines than the precise content would get in a tiny and new Web site. That's not fair, but that's the way it is. Since
you cannot generate thousands of quality pages over night, you will probably have a smaller number of quality pages at
your site, supported by a larger number of pages of lower quality. Even the great Wikipedia has "stub" pages that
consist of a few lines. Legitimate duplicate content such as public domain documents, quotations, brief definitions etc.
can make up a significant part of your site, especially when you are just getting started. Including professional
documents such as standards also lets people know that you know what you are doing and gives them confidence in your
work.
Link Connectivity - Every page in the site must be linked either directly or through a site map or portal page
from the main page of the site. Unlinked pages are "orphans" - neither visitors nor search engines can usually see them.
These links must be html links, rather than Javascript or php redirection. Many search engines cannot follow Javascript
or Php redirection at all, or they deprecate such links.
Site Map - Every website should have an html site map with full path html links to every every page or every
major page in the website. A full path link gives the absolute address of the page on the Web, such as
http://seo.yu-hu.com/glossary rather than just /glossary. An html link is a
link written in html code. Each link should include the relevant
anchor text for that page. Example <a title
= "Search Engine optimization glossary" href="http://seo.yu-hu.com/glossary">SEO Glossary</a>.
If the site map gets very large (more than 200 links) make a new site map that is linked from the first, or rely on
secondary links in important portal pages. Google and other searches also accept submissions from an XML site map
according to a specified standard. They may or may not use these XML maps in registering pages and the maps probably do
not count much for optimization of pages that are already listed in the search engine.
Home Page links - Every page of a Web site should link back to the main (home) page. The anchor text of that
link should be a relevant keyword that describes the site, not "home." If you link to 20,000 pages with the word "home"
then people might find your site easily in search engines if they are searching for a home.
Links to Portal Pages - Really important portal or
doorway pages should be linked from many (or sometimes all)
pages in your Web site.
Portal Page Links - The portal pages or
doorway pages (or landing pages) of your site should link to
all the other articles within a section of the site, though
those should not be the only links to those pages. The pages within the section all link back to the portal with a
descriptive anchor text title. For example, each page in the maps section of a site should link back to the maps main
page, as well as to the home page of the site, and each product page in a Web site should link to the main products
page. Portal pages, including the main page, should be content-rich pages with a lot of text that has embedded
links to other pages in the section or Website. They should have images, but the images should not be the main content
of the page. A page showing a single map and no text is not a good portal page, even if clicking on an area of the map
displays a map of that country or region. A page showing a single map with links and text for other maps is a good
portal page. The map on that page can additionally allow "drill-down" to other maps or additional information.
Link
Bait Pages - Link bait pages are pages that have links to useful utilities or reference information that people
want. Maps, software tool downloads, music downloads and the like are good link bait pages. They will attract both
visitors and links. These pages should be used as portals.
Main Page - The main page is the most important page of the site and the most important portal page. It will
usually have the highest
Google PageRank and "Link Juice." The fastest
way to get an inner page registered in a search engine is to put it on the main page because that is the page that is
crawled most frequently by search engine spiders.Embedded links - The text on
your website should link as frequently as practical to other pages at your site from within the body of the contents.
These contextual links help popularize those inner pages, especially if they are links to text in different sections.
Site Search - Every website should have a search engine to make it convenient
for people to find pages. The search box should be displayed on every page if possible. This is not important for search
engine optimization, but it will help your visitors.
Conversion Issues - If you have
an online business, your main concern is not just to get visitors to your site, but to turn the visitors into customers.
The links to purchase and checkout of products should be very visible and easy to access from the main page and other
portal or landing pages, and the content and keywords of those pages should have something to do with your product.
Conversion is a very important consideration if you are running pay for click ad campaigns. You don't want to pay
$50,000 for 500,000 visitors who don't buy a thing. Remember though, that organic SEO is a source of free visitors. You
aren't paying anything for those visitors. Putting standards documents and other useful link bait at your site will help
to make your firm into a "brand name." The students may be visiting the standards documents today at your Acme Widgets
Web site, but tomorrow they may be purchasing agents for large corporations, and when they think of Widgets, they will
think of Acme.
Directory Structure - Directory structure is usually not a major factor in search engine optimization, since
the search engine only cares about the link structure, not where the files are stored. The only concern is that a needlessly
complex structure may create long URLS. Short URLs are better than long ones.
acme.com/catalogue/products/widgets/cheap_widgets/blue_widgets.htm
is not as good as acme.com/blue_widgets.htm
because the longer URL has more "garbage" in it relative to the "blue widgets" keyword.
Other factors in Web Design for Search Engine Optimization - Anything that popularizes your
website and gets people to link to it is part of Web design for SEO, even if it doesn't involve touching a single link.
That includes for example, setting up an email distribution list where people can sign up for information about new
articles at your website. It also includes press releases or interviews or anything you do that is going to get more
visitors to your site without paid advertising.
Web Design for SEO versus Web Design
SEO design for Websites often conflicts with the desires and education of Website designers and customers. Website
designers and customers (the people who order Websites) want sites that will look nice. That's important. But fashions
in Website design often conflict with the needs of Search Engine Optimization. Customers think Javascript menus are
cool, but search engine spiders can't read them, and if the Javascript code is on the same page, it creates a lot of
junk code that search engines don't like, which degrades the positioning of the page for keywords. Customers want to
call the domain "acme.com" after the name of the company and put "Acme" in each of the links to the main page. Search
engines want to see the word "widgets" in the domain name and in the links, because that is what the company is selling
and that's how they know it. Not everyone is Apple Computers or MS Windows or IBM. Most trade name are not valuable
search words.
Customers want a huge graphic at the top of each page, while search engines "like" to see the title with the keyword as
the first thing on the page. Customers want little compact pages because that is the fashion. Search engine optimizers
want front pages with lots of links to other pages at the Web site to maximize the connectivity and visibility of those
pages. The SEO designer has to educate the customer and the Web designer (if someone else is doing the graphic design)
about these issues, and has to work around some issues like Javascript menus and flash graphics that can't be argued
away. The customer may be usually wrong, but the customer is always the one who pays the bills.
The customer is not always wrong. A page with too many links will certainly confuse visitors. It will also distribute
the "link juice" or authoritativeness derived from a page among all the links. The contribution of each link to the
authoritativeness of a target page for Google
is supposedly the Google PageRank on the originating page
divided by the number of links on that page. While this formula may not be followed exactly in practice, it is probable
that if a page links to 100 pages, each of those pages gets less authority than it would have gotten if the same page
had linked to only 10 pages.
Ami Isseroff
October 3, 2008
