Offer quality content and services

Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other
factors discussed here. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other
users to it. This could be through blog posts, social media services, email, forums, or other means.
Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site's reputation with both users and Google,
and it rarely comes without quality content.

While the content you create could be on any topic imaginable, here are some recommended best
practices:

Good practices for content

• Write easy-to-read text - Users enjoy content that is well written and easy to follow.

Avoid:

• writing sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes

• embedding text in images for textual content (users may want to copy and paste the text and search engines can't read it)

• Stay organized around the topic - It's always beneficial to organize your content so that visitors have a good sense of where one content topic begins and another ends. Breaking your content up into logical chunks or divisions helps users find the content they want faster.

Avoid:

• dumping large amounts of text on varying topics onto a page without paragraph, subheading, or layout separation

• Use relevant language - Think about the words that a user might search for to find a piece of your content. Users who know a lot about the topic might use different keywords in their search queries than someone who is new to the topic. For example, a long-time baseball fan might search for [nlcs], an acronym for the National League Championship Series, while a new fan might use a more general query like [baseball playoffs]. Anticipating these differences in search behavior and accounting for them while writing your content (using a

good mix of keyword phrases) could produce positive results. Google AdWords provides a handy Keyword Tool that helps you discover new keyword variations and see the approximate search volume for each keyword. Also, Google Webmaster Tools provides you with the top search queries your site appears for and the ones that led the most users to your site.

• Create fresh, unique content - New content will not only keep your existing visitor base coming back, but also bring in new visitors.

Avoid:

• rehashing (or even copying) existing content that will bring little extra value to users

• having duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your site (more on duplicate content)

• Offer exclusive content or services - Consider creating a new, useful service that no other site offers. You could also write an original piece of research, break an exciting news story, or leverage your unique user base. Other sites may lack the resources or expertise to do these things.

• Create content primarily for your users, not search engines - Designing your site around your visitors' needs while making sure your site is easily accessible to search engines usually produces positive results.

Avoid:

• inserting numerous unnecessary keywords aimed at search engines but are annoying or nonsensical to users

• having blocks of text like "frequent misspellings used to reach this page" that add little value for users

• deceptively hiding text from users, but displaying it to search engines

Make your site easier to navigate

The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want. It can also help search engines understand what content the webmaster thinks is important. Although Google's search results are provided at a page level, Google also likes to have a sense of what role a page plays in the bigger picture of the site. All sites have a home or "root" page, which is usually the most frequented page on the site and the starting place of navigation for many visitors. Unless your site has only a handful of pages, you should think about how visitors will go from a general page (your root page) to a page containing more specific content. Do 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 page -> related topic listing -> specific topic)? Do you have hundreds of different products that need to be classified under multiple category and subcategory pages?

/

/about/

/articles/

/news/

         /2010/

         /2011/

         /2012/

/practice-guides/

         /1900-1949/

         /1950-1999/

         /2000-present/

/shop/

         /modern/

                    /autographs/

                    /rookie-cards/

                    /star-cards/

         /vintage/

                   /autographs/

                   /hall-of-farmer-cards/

A sitemap (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 having problems finding pages on your site. While search engines will also visit this page, getting good crawl coverage of the pages on your site, it's mainly aimed at human visitors.

An XML Sitemap (upper-case) file, which you can submit through Google's Webmaster Tools, makes it easier for Google to discover the pages on your site. Using a Sitemap file is also one way (though not guaranteed) to tell Google which version of a URL you'd prefer as the canonical one (e.g. http://brandonsbaseballcards.com/ or http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/; more on what's a preferred domain). Google helped create the open source Sitemap Generator script to help you create a Sitemap file for your site. To learn more about Sitemaps, the Webmaster Help Center provides a useful guide to Sitemap files.

Good practices for site navigation

• 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 (it takes twenty clicks to get to deep content)

• 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)

• Use "breadcrumb" navigation - 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. 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.

Put an HTML sitemap page on your site, and use an XML Sitemap file - A simple sitemap page with links to all of the pages or the most important pages (if you have hundreds or thousands) on your site can be useful. Creating an XML Sitemap file for your site helps ensure that search engines discover the pages on your site.

Avoid:

• letting your HTML sitemap page become out of date with broken links

• creating an HTML sitemap that simply lists pages without organizing them, for example by subject

• 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/2008/upcoming-baseball-card-shows.htm, but

then enter http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/2008/ into the browser's address

bar, believing that this will show all news from 2008. Is your site prepared to show content in

this situation or will it give the user a 404 ("page not found" error)? What about moving up a

directory level to http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/?

• Have a useful 404 page - Users will occasionally come to a page that doesn't exist on your site, either by following a broken link or typing in the wrong URL. Having a custom 404 page that kindly guides users back to a working page on your site can greatly improve a user's experience. Your 404 page should probably have a link back to your root page and could also provide links to popular or related content on your site. Google provides a 404 widget that you can embed in your 404 page to automatically populate it with many useful features. You can also use Google Webmaster Tools to find the sources of URLs causing "not found" errors.

Avoid:

• allowing your 404 pages to be indexed in search engines (make sure that your webserver is configured to give a 404 HTTP status code when non-existent pages are requested)

• providing only a vague message like "Not found", "404", or no 404 page at all

• using a design for your 404 pages that isn't consistent with the rest of your site

How to Create unique, accurate page titles

A title tag tells both users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is. The <title> tag
should be placed within the <head> tag of the HTML document. Ideally, you should create a unique
title for each page on your site.

If your document appears in a search results page, the contents of the title tag will usually appear in
the first line of the results  Words in the title are bolded if they appear in the user's search query. This can help users recognize if the page is likely to be relevant to their search.

 The title for your homepage can list the name of your website/business and could include other bits of
important information like the physical location of the business or maybe a few of its main focuses or
offerings.

Titles for deeper pages on your site should accurately describe the focus of that particular page and
also might include your site or business name.

Good practices for page title tags

Accurately describe the page's content - Choose a title that effectively communicates the

topic of the page's content.

Avoid:

• choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page

• using default or vague titles like "Untitled" or "New Page 1"

• Create unique title tags for each page - Each of your pages should ideally have a unique

title tag, which helps Google know how the page is distinct from the others on your site.

Avoid:

• using a single title tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages

• Use brief, but descriptive titles - Titles can be both short and informative. If the title is too

long, Google will show only a portion of it in the search result.

Avoid:

• using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users

• stuffing unneeded keywords in your title tags

Make use of the "description" meta tag

A page's description meta tag gives Google and other search engines a summary of what the page is about. Whereas a page's title may be a few words or a phrase, a page's description meta tag might be a sentence or two or a short paragraph. Google Webmaster Tools provides a handy content analysis section that'll tell you about any description meta tags that are either too short, long, or duplicated too many times (the same information is also shown for <title> tags). Like the <title> tag, the description meta tag is placed within the <head> tag of your HTML document.

Description meta tags are important because Google might use them as snippets for your pages.

Note that we say "might" because Google may choose to use a relevant section of your page's visible text if it does a good job of matching up with a user's query. Alternatively, Google might use your site's description in the Open Directory Project if your site is listed there (learn how to prevent search engines from displaying ODP data). Adding description meta tags to each of your pages is always a good practice in case Google cannot find a good selection of text to use in the snippet. The Webmaster Central Blog has an informative post on improving snippets with better description meta tags. Snippets appear under a page's title and above a page's URL in a search result.

Words in the snippet are bolded when they appear in the user's query. This gives the user clues about whether the content on the page matches with what he or she is looking for. Below is another example, this time showing a snippet from a description meta tag on a deeper page (which ideally has its own unique description meta tag) containing an article.

Good practices for description meta tags

• 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 webpage" or "Page about baseball

cards"

• filling the description with only keywords

• copy and pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta

tag

• 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

Improve the structure of your URLs

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.

http://www.useofseo.blogspot.in/folder1/1089257/x1/00000023a.htm

URLs like these 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.

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.

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.

Good practices for URL 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"

• Create a simple directory structure - Use a directory structure that organizes your content

well and is 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 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.

Avoid:

• having pages from subdomains and the root directory (e.g. "domain.com/

page.htm" and "sub.domain.com/page.htm") access the same content

• mixing www. and non-www. versions of URLs in your internal linking structure

• using odd capitalization of URLs (many users expect lower-case URLs and

remember them better)

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your site's user experience and performance in organic search results. You're likely already familiar with many of the topics in this guide, because they're essential ingredients for any webpage, but you may not be making the most out of them.

you should base your optimization decisions first and foremost on what's best for the visitors of your site. They're the main consumers of your content and are using search engines to find your work. Focusing too hard on specific tweaks to gain ranking in the organic results of search engines may not deliver the desired results. Search engine optimization is about putting your site's best foot forward when it comes to visibility in search engines.

Understanding Search Engine Results

In the search marketing field, the pages the engines return to fulfill a query are referred to as search engine results pages (SERPs). Each engine returns results in a slightly different format and will include vertical search results (specific content targeted to a query based on certain triggers in the query, which we’ll  illustrate shortly).

Understanding the Layout of Search Results Pages

Each unique section represents a snippet of information provided by the engines. Here are the definitions of what each piece is meant to provide:

Vertical navigation

Each engine offers the option to search different verticals, such as images, news, video, or maps. Following these links will result in a query with a more limited index. for example, you might be able to see news items about stuffed animals or videos featuring stuffed animals.

Horizontal navigation

The search engines also offer other types of navigation elements. For example, in below figure you can see that Google offers the option to limit the date range of the content returned in the search results.

Search query box

All of the engines show the query you’ve performed and allow you to edit that query or enter a new query from the search results page. Next to the search query box, the engines also offer links to the advanced search page, the features of which we’ll discuss later in the book.

Results information

This section provides a small amount of meta information about the results that you’re viewing, including an estimate of the number of pages relevant to that particular query (these numbers can be, and frequently are, wildly inaccurate and should be used only as a rough comparative measure).

PPC (a.k.a. paid search) advertising

Companies purchase text ads from either Google AdWords or Microsoft adCenter. The results are ordered by a variety of factors, including relevance (for which click-through rate, use of searched keywords in the ad, and relevance of the landing page are factors in Google) and bid amount (the ads require a maximum bid, which is then compared against other advertisers’ bids).

Natural/organic/algorithmic results

These results are pulled from the search engines’ primary indexes of the Web and ranked in order of relevance and popularity according to their complex algorithms. This area of the results is the primary focus of this section of the book.

Query refinement suggestions

Query refinements are offered by Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. The goal of these links is to let users search with a more specific and possibly more relevant query that will satisfy their intent. In March 2009, Google enhanced the refinements by implementing Orion Technology, based on technology Google acquired in 2006. The goal of this enhancement is to provide a wider array of refinement choices. For example, a search on principles of physics may display refinements for the Big Bang, angular momentum, quantum physics, and special relativity.

Shopping search results

All three search engines do this as well. Shopping results incorporate offers from merchants into the results so that searchers that are looking to buy something can do so quite easily.

Figure  shows the SERPs in Google for the query stuffed animals.

The various sections outlined in the Google search results are as follows:

1. Horizontal navigation (see top left)

2. Search query box

3. Results information

4. PPC advertising

5. Vertical navigation

6. Query refinement suggestions

7. Natural/organic/algorithmic results

Even though Yahoo! no longer does its own crawl of the Web or provides its own search results

information (it sources them from Bing), it does format the output uniquely. Figure shows

Yahoo!’s results for the same query.

The sections in the Yahoo! results are as follows:

1. Horizontal navigation

2. Search query box

3. Results information

4. Query refinement suggestions

5. Vertical navigation

6. PPC advertising

7. Natural/organic/algorithmic results

Figure shows the layout of the results from Microsoft’s Bing for the query stuffed animals.

The sections in Bing’s search results are as follows:

1. Horizontal navigation

2. Search query box

3. Results information

4. Query refinement suggestions

5. Vertical navigation

6. PPC advertising

7. Natural/organic/algorithmic results

8. Shopping search results

Be aware that the SERPs are always changing as the engines test new formats and layouts.

Thus, the images in Figure 1 through Figure 3 may be accurate for only a few weeks or

months, until Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft shift to new formats.