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Search engine friendly sitemaps

In general, the deeper a page is on your website (i.e,. the more links that a visitor has to click to get to a particular page), the harder it is for it to get indexed by the search engines.  For instance, the following page would have difficulty getting indexed by the search engines: www.bookwebsite.com/new-books/non-fiction/biographies/America/Ben-Franklin.  Note that this imaginary page is 6 levels deep on your site:

1. www.bookwebsite.com/
2. new-books/
3. non-fiction/
4. biographies/
5. America/
6. Ben-Franklin/

Because of this problem manywebsites employ a sitemap which lists all of the pages on one’s web site. When done properly, this allows you to logically organize the material on your website while simultaneously ensuring that the search engines are able to reach (and thus process) all of the pages on your site. With that said, it is important that you create the site map properly, otherwise you may not get the full benefit that it has to offer. Here, then, are the general facts which you need to know about creating a strategically placed site map:

1. Make sure that your site map links to every other page on your website (unless you have over 100 pages, in which case break up your site map into numerous mini-site maps)
2. Link to your site map from (at least) your home page and preferably from every page on your site (thus each page on your site is only two clicks away from any other page on your site)
3. Make sure that your site map is less than 101k of HTML code (otherwise break up the site map into numerous mini-site maps).
4. If you have to break up your site map into numerous mini-site maps then you can either:
   1. Link to every mini-site map from (at least) your home page and preferably every page on your site
   2. Have a main site map which links to the mini-site maps (your web pages will link to the site map and the site map will link to the mini-site maps).

In summary, a site map (when done properly) ensures that all of your pages are only two (or perhaps three) links away from every other page.  This means that no matter what page a search engine spider enters your site on, they are only two or three clicks from every other page on your site.  However, given that for many sites Google will not explore more than 100 outgoing links for any given web page it is best to limit the number of links on a site map to only 100 links.  This means that if your site has more than 100 pages that you should create multiple mini-site maps which combined link to all of the pages on your site.  Similarly, given that it is best to limit the size of your web pages to 100k (so as to ensure that Google indexes all of the content on those pages) you should limit the size of your site map to under 101k.  This means that even if you have less than 100 links on your site map, if the size of that web page is over 100k you should still create multiple mini-site maps which combined link to all of the apgtes on your site.  Furthermore, whenever you create multiple site maps you should make sure to link to all of your site maps from at least your home page and preferably from every page on your site.  If, for whatever reason, this is not feasible then you should create a main site map which links to each of the mini-site maps and then link to that main site map from every page on your site (or at least from your home page). 

Note: a mini-site map need not necessarily be called a site-map.  It could be that your normal navigational structure for your site can function as a series of mini-site maps if designed properly.  Whether or not this is possible will depend on the nature and scope of your website.

Next tutorial:  Introduction to URLs
Previous tutorial:  Flash, Frames, and JavaScript

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This tutorial written by:
Moshe Morris
President of SEMBasics
Chief Research Analyst at Internet Marketing Initiative (www.internetmi.com)

The content on this page is based off of an article published in SearchEngineNews.com.
To learn more about Search Engine News, click here.

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The content on this page is based off of an article published in SearchEngineNews.com.
To learn more about Search Engine News, click here.

Introduction to URLs

Before learning how to optimize your URL’s (also known as Uniform Resource Locator) to boost your search engine rankings, it is important to understand the makeup and structure of a URL. A typical URL can be broken down into the following individual components: http://www.domain.com/subdirectory/filename.html. It is important to understand each and every element of this URL:

HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transport Protocol which defines the method to be used to view the resource.
Here are some of the most important facts to note about HTTP:

• HTTP is what tells us a webpage is reachable via a web-browser and that search engines can index it.
• HTTP also defines which Communication Port to use—in this case the default for http is Port 80. Different protocols typically use different ports.

WWW is the section of a domain name commonly referred to as the subdomain.
Here are some of the most important facts to note about the
Subdomain:

• Most websites use either www or else no subdomain at all.
• Many large composite websites make use of unique subdomain names to differentiate between different major sections, services, or topics within their sites. For example news.google.com.
• Subdomains can have multiple levels (technically speaking, there are few restrictions to their length or number). For example, example new.pressreleases.company.com. Or, if you watch some of your emails where people are trying to trick you into giving out your private account details (i.e., phishing schemes), you might see something likewww.citicorp.com.domain.somewhereelse.ru.
• Subdomains can and typically do translate to a separate IP address than the primary domain name.
• For non-SEO applications, a unique subdomain often is a different webserver but, nevertheless, it remains under the control of the same primary domain owner. For example, only Google can make use of uniquename.google.com because the DNS (Domain Name Server) addressing is tied to their primary domain, google.com, which is solely under Google’s control.
• Subdomain names are not case-sensitive. In other words, News.Google.com is the same as news.google.com.

DOMAIN refers to the domain name section of the URL.

Here are some of the most important facts to note about the Domain Name Section:

• The domain name section, combined with the .com, is translated by the Domain Name System into a numeric IP address which is used to connect to the actual webserver that hosts the resource.
• A domain name is also known as the hostname which refers to the name of the computer where it is hosted.
• A domain name may only be composed of letters, digits or hyphens.
• Domain names are limited in number to 63 characters in length (with limited exceptions for extensions such as .museum, in order to accomodate the length of the extension).
• Domain names are not case-sensitive—MyDomain.com is the same as mydomain.com.
• The last part of the domain name, .com, refers to the Top Level Domain or TLD, which are also not case sensitive.
• TLDs are classified by three types:
  • Generic: .com, .org, .gov, .edu, .biz, etc.
  • Country Codes: .us, .co.uk, .jp
  • Infrastructure: .arpa (the only one - for SEO purposes we can ignore this TLD)

SUBDIRECTORY – Refers to a subdirectory or what appears to be a subdirectory on the webserver.

FILENAME – Refers to the document file on the webserver.

.HTML – the filename extension that typically tells us what type of document.

• In this case, .html tells us the document is written in Hypertext Markup Language; in other words, it’s a typical webpage.

Everything in the URL beyond the TLD —i.e., subdirectory, filename, and extensions— are all case-sensitive.

• In other words, index.html is not the same as Index.Html

Next tutorial:  SEO Friendly URLs
Previous tutorial:  Search engine friendly site maps

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This tutorial written by:
Moshe Morris
President of SEMBasics
Chief Research Analyst at Internet Marketing Initiative (www.internetmi.com)

The content on this page is based off of an article published in SearchEngineNews.com.
To learn more about Search Engine News, click here.

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Using Flash
Flash animation is not easily optimized for the search engines.  It is difficult (and in some cases impossible) for the search engines to extract keywords from Flash files.  However, keywords are one of the most important ways that search engines decide the topic of your web pages.  This means that if your site relies too heavily on Flash technology it will be hard for the search engines to determine the topic of your web pages thus making it harder for your site to rank well.  Furthermore, even if your site doesn’t rely too much on Flash, in general any part of your web page which uses Flash will generally not contribute to your ranking. 

With that said, if you want to or for some reason need to use Flash, here are a couple of rules that you should follow:

1. Make sure that you have ample indexable content in addition to your Flash file.
   If only part of your page is a Flash file and the rest is regular HTML code which contains your keywords then the search engines will be able to determine the topic of your page by accessing and processing that HTML code.  But, if most of your page is one large Flash file then the search engines are going to have a hard time deciphering the topic of your page, thus hurting your ability to rank that page well in the search engines.
    
2. Use the <noembed> tag.
   If, for whatever reason, you need to create one large Flash page then you can create an HTML version of that page which you can place in the <noembed> tag (as opposed to the link to your Flash file which has to be enclosed in an <embed> tag).  Creating this HTML version of your page simultaneously gives the search engines something to process while providing an alternative version for those visitors who have not installed Flash on their computers.

Exceptions to the rule?
It is true that Google has made great strides in terms of indexing Flash pages, but even so, they still don’t process Flash pages as well as normal HTML pages.  It is also true that there are popular sites which rank well in the search engines that use heavy amounts of Flash technology on their site (such as Oprah.com).  However, these sites often times have the advantage of name recognition and significant financial backing which allows them to overcome the disadvantages of using Flash.  Most sites, though, do not have these advantages and thus are not able to easily overcome the disadvantages of over-relying on Flash animation on their site.  Finally, it is also true that there are ways to work-around these problems (as we mentioned above), but that fact doesn’t take away from the inherent difficulty in using Flash technology.  Remember, you have a limited amount of time and resources at your disposal and you need to ask yourself whether or not you want to spend those resources making up for the inherent ranking disadvantages of using Flash technology. 

The bottom line is that Flash pages are more difficult to optimize for the search engines.  It is simply harder for them to rank well.  However, harder doesn’t mean impossible.  So, if you feel that you need to have Flash animation on your site, just make sure that you follow the steps outlined above to help give your web pages a fighting chance to rank well.

How to Use Remote Javascript to Make Your Pages More Search Engine Friendly
In general, it is a good idea to limit the amount of non-indexable text that you include on your web pages.  One such example of a non-indexable text is JavaScript.  Whenever a search engine spider encounters a web page with JavaScript the spider has to pass over this script in order to find the regular HTML code that it indexes.  This is not an efficient use of the search engines spiders time and may limit the amount of indexable text that the search engine spider processes. 

As such, if your web pages do have a lot of JavaScript in them then you may want to consider using a remote file to help make it easier for the search engines to process your web pages.  Here’s all that you have to do:

1. On your web page (i.e., the .html page that you are trying to optimize) add the following script:  <script language="JavaScript" src="javascript/remotefile.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    
2. Place your JavaScript code in the remote file (i.e., remotefile.js)

Note:  Your remote file need not be called "remotefile", although the extension has to be .js.

If you have to use frames, here’s what you do…
The main rule of thumb concerning frames is don’t use it!  Frames pages are hard to link to and can present "weird" results in the search engines (such as pages that your visitors can’t navigate).  In other words, frames make it harder for you to rank well in the search engines (because it is harder for your site to get links and simultaneously decreases the value of showing up in the search engines (given that only part of your page is shown in the search engine results).  It seems a no-brainer that if at all possible you should avoid frames.

If, for whatever reason, you have to use frames then you should optimize and send the <no frames> section of the page you want indexed to the search engines and the frames content to the browser (i.e., to your actual visitors/customers).
 

Next tutorial:  Search engine friendly site maps
Previous tutorial:  SEO Friendly HTML Code

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This tutorial written by:
Moshe Morris
President of SEMBasics
Chief Research Analyst at Internet Marketing Initiative (www.internetmi.com)

The content on this page is based off of an article published in SearchEngineNews.com.
To learn more about Search Engine News, click here.

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SEO Friendly HTML Code

Using Well Formed, W3C Validated HTML Code

When creating your web site you want to make sure that your HTML code is correct and well-formed.  Broken code can hamper the search engines ability to crawl your site.  Make sure that you have closed all tags which need to be closed and that you haven’t used source code which could “confuse” the search engine spider (such as old and outdated or which is proprietary to a single browser or code which is so new that it has not yet been recognized by most search engine spiders). 

Remember, search engine spiders are only computer programs with all the limitations that that implies.  They work according to a predefined, preprogrammed set of rules.  If your web pages don’t correspond to those rules then they run the risk of not being properly indexed by the search engines (or, worse, not being indexed at all)!  This can serious damage your sites rankings or, even potentially prevent your site from ranking at all.  None of your optimization techniques will matter if the search engines don’t index your site.  Therefore, it is worthwhile to make it as easy as possible for the searche ngine spiders to process the code on your web pages.  It allows the indexing process to work as smoothly as possible, thus allowing you to spend your optimization efforts where they most needed instead of worrying about technical, programming issues.

Thankfully, there is an easy way to help ensure that your HTML code is easy to process by the search engine spider — have it comply with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards.  You can easily test your web pages with the HTML validator at http://validator.w3.org.  If your site “validates” (i.e., you don’t get any errors) you can be confident that the search engines will be able to process your web pages.

Note:  in order for your pages to validate you will have to use a valid DOCTYPE.  In addition to helping to validate your site, a valid DOCTYPE is easier for search engines spiders to parse and easier for browsers to process.  As such, it both helps your optimization efforts as well as making your site compatible with a larger number of browsers. 

You should note that it will be easier to use the W3C HTML validator if your pages have a valid DOCTYPE. Not only are standards compliant pages with valid DOCTYPES generally easier for search engine spiders to parse, but they are also easier for browsers to process. This will result in a slight performance boost for your site and in your pages being compatible across a greater number of browsers.

You can learn more about DOCTYPEs by reading this tutorial.  To access it, click here!
 

Next tutorial:  Flash, Frames, and JavaScript
Previous tutorial:  How to design a search engine friendly website

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This tutorial written by:
Moshe Morris
President of SEMBasics
Chief Research Analyst at Internet Marketing Initiative (www.internetmi.com)

The content on this page is based off of an article published in SearchEngineNews.com.
To learn more about Search Engine News,
click here.

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