A.
Why SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and RANK:
a. SEO (Search
Engine Optimization) is the process of optimizing a website in order for it to
rank better in Google and other search engines.
b. The tool of
choice to solving our unanswered questions, finding a product or service is
done through the help of an internet search engine like Google. Nearly 250
million searches are performed per day on Google alone. This number is trending
upwards since the introduction of 3G or higher wireless networks, providing
fast mobile web browsing with the smart phones and laptop with wireless sticks.
c. One thing you
can do to help is by creating URLs that contain useful information. Google will
usually rank a site higher with a URL like
http://www.xyzwebsite.com/product/abcd compared to
http://www.xyzwebsite.com/productdetails.aspx?prod=abcd. In addition to
being ranked higher by search engines, it is a lot easier for humans to
remember as well.
B. This is the action plan to implement SEO:
a.
Create a SEO friendly “Slug” to optimize the URL
b.
Add keywords and <meta> properties to all our pages
c.
Specify a canonical URL for all content
d.
Use schema.org or RDFa micro formats to optimize display of search results
e.
Create a robots.txt
f.
Create a sitemap.xml
g.
Use Google Webmaster Tools to check the results
C. Plans to improve SEO:
1. Missing Title Tags ⇒ The title is missing in the head section of the page
Search engines use the title of a page to
help decide what the page is about, so an easy way to
improve your SEO is to make sure all of
your important pages have unique and descriptive titles. Unique, descriptive
titles on each of your important pages will increase the likelihood that search
engines will show your pages in search results.
Additionally, search engines often
display a page's title in search results. If your titles are missing, search
engines will either guess at the text to show or worse not show a title at all.
If your important pages have titles that are clear and descriptive, people will
be better able to understand what your site is about and will be more likely to
click on your links instead of the other links shown.
2. Multiple Title Tags ⇒ The page contains multiple titles
Search engines use the title of a page to
help decide what the page is about, so an easy way to
improve your SEO is to make sure all of
your important pages have unique and descriptive titles. Unique, descriptive
titles on each of your important pages will increase the likelihood that search
engines will show your pages in search results.
Additionally, search engines often
display a page's title in search results. If your titles are clear and
descriptive, people will be better able to understand what your site is about
and will be more likely to click on your links instead of the other links
shown.
3. Long Title Tags ⇒ The title is too short or too long
Search engines displays page titles in
search results, but if your page title is too long it will be truncated.
Unique, descriptive titles on each of your important pages will increase the
likelihood that search engines will show your pages in search results.
4. Duplicate Title Tags ⇒ There are duplicate title in your website
Search engines use the title of a page to
help decide what the page is about, so an easy way to
improve your SEO is to make sure all of
your important pages have unique and descriptive titles. Unique, descriptive
titles on each of your important pages will increase the likelihood that search
engines will show your pages in search results.
Additionally, search engines often
display a page's title in search results. If your titles are clear and
descriptive, people will be better able to understand what your site is about
and will be more likely to click on your links instead of the other links
shown.
<title>This is the page
title</title>
5. The <h1> tag is missing.
The <h1> tag is an indicator to
Bingbot and web visitors of what the body copy's primary theme or topic
is. The <h1> tag reinforces the
core keyword(s) found in the title,
description, and the body copy. We recommend that the <h1> tag includes
keywords that reflect the contents of the page and that it is not longer than
approximately 150 characters in length.
Add a header to the page by using a
<h1> tag and place it within the <body> of the page source.
Example: <h1>A precise and descriptive headline for the page</h1>.
6. There are multiple <h1> tags on the page.
Remove redundant <h1> tags from the
page source, so that only one <h1> tag exists.
7. The description is missing in the head section of the page.
Search engines may use the description
provided in the <description> tag. A well-written description that pertains to the content of the page and
that is relevant to the searcher's intent can help you increase traffic since
it can help improve the click-through rate of your page in search.
Add a description to the <head>
section of the page source: <meta name="description"
content="Descriptive, keyword-rich text that talks about the page content
goes here.">.
8. Duplicate Meta Descriptions ⇒ There are multiple descriptions on the page
Duplicate meta descriptions for multiple
URLs on your website can reduce traffic from search engines. Because meta
descriptions are often used in the context snippets that appear in search
results, duplicate or vague descriptions in your HTML headers may lead to low
click-throughs to your site. This may, in turn, diminish your ranking in search
results.
Search engines may use the meta
descriptions in the HTML headers of your pages to better index
search results. Because duplicate meta
descriptions can lead to improper indexing of your site's pages, it is
important to differentiate between the content of each unique URL by accurately
describing the page content in the meta description.
9. The description is too long or too short
Search engine crawlers only show the
first 150-160 characters of the description in the search results page, so if a
description is too long, searchers may not see all of the text. If a
description is too short, the search engines may add text found elsewhere on
the page. Note that search engines may show a different description from the
one you have authored if they feel it may be more relevant to a user's search. Change the description in the <meta
description> tag in the page source to be between 25 and 160 characters in
length.
10. The <img> tag does not have an ALT attribute defined
As a general rule, search engines do not
interpret the content of image files. The text provided in the <img alt>
attribute enables the site owner to provide relevant information to the search
engine and to the end user. Alt text is helpful to end users if they have
images disabled or if the image does not properly load. In addition, the Alt
text is utilized by screen readers. Make sure that your Alt text is descriptive
and accurately reflects what the image represents and supports the content on
the page.
Use the <img alt> attribute to
write descriptive content for the image: <img source="pic.gif"
alt="Accurate and descriptive keyword text that represents the
image."</img>.
11. Hostname
Many websites allow for users to visit
them through both http://domain.com and http://www.domain.com.
Most search engines treat these as
separate hosts, so it is important to have one redirect to the other or you
risk splitting your Page Rank across the two versions of your site.
12. Reachability
A well structured, well linked site makes
it easy for your visitors and for search engine crawlers to find what they are
looking for. Deeply nested pages or, worse, those with no links at all may be evaluated
as unimportant by search engines.
13. Redirects
Redirecting too many of your sites pages
to other pages wastes crawler resources and may result in a smaller number of
pages being crawled.
14. Anchor Text
Search engines use anchor text to help decide
what the page linked to is about. So every link on your site should have
descriptive, keyword rich anchor text that describes the destination page.
15. Broken Links
A broken link on your website undermines
the user experience, wastes the resources of search engine crawlers, and can
affect your placement in search engines.
16. Dead End Pages
Dead end pages — pages with no links on
them — require a visitor to click the back button in order to stay on your
website. You should make it as easy as possible for visitors to stay on your
site.
17. Page Not Found
A good 'Page Not Found' error page lets
your visitors know that the page does not exist, navigates them back into your
site, and helps them find what they were looking for. A good error page also
lets search engine crawlers know that the page does not exist so they can avoid
indexing it's content and potentially sending traffic to a non-existent page.
It is very important that the 'Page Not Found' error page returns a '404' error
so that search engine crawlers can recognize it as an error page. The error
code and html displayed when a non-existent page is requested can be configured
in your web server
18. Long URLs
Most search engines display URLs in
search results. If an URL is too long, people doing searches will see a
truncated version and you might miss an opportunity to get them to click. In
addition, shorter URLs are easier for users to share on social services such as
Twitter and Facebook.
19. Duplicate Content
Duplicate content across different URLs
on your website leads to poor placement in search results.
Search engine crawlers follow links,
capture content, and attempt to index all known URLs on your site. When
multiple URLs serve the same page, search engines waste resources collecting
and processing identical content. They may also penalize placement of your
pages in search results. Common types of duplicate pages are printable or
text-only versions of the main page, or redirects to login pages intended for
your site's visitors that also return a "You must log in" page to
crawlers.
20. Too Many Links
Putting too many links on a given page
may negatively impact how search engines assess the quality of the page, and
can make your site harder to navigate.
21. Server Errors
Server errors indicate major problems
with the content of your site.
22. Robots.txt
A robots.txt file can be used to restrict
access by crawlers to your entire website or to areas of your website. Properly
used, the robots.txt file prevents search engines from indexing contact forms,
duplicate content, and other pages of your site that shouldn't be indexed.
However, a mis-configured robots.txt file can prevent search engines from
indexing valuable content. If you are not familiar with ways to use a robots.txt
file to your advantage, you can find information about this tool on Wikipedia
or The Web Robots Pages.
23. Session IDs
Search engine crawlers may have trouble
understanding session ID parameters in URLs. As a result, sites which use
session ID URL parameters may suffer from a lower ranking in search results.
24. On-Site Links
Search engines include the link structure
of your site among their criteria for determining
which pages on your site are most
important.
25. Low Word Count
Pages with little or no text content
often receive poor placement in search results.
26. Image Descriptions
Including descriptions for the images on
your pages can assist search engines with indexing your site's non-text
content.
27. The page is missing meta language information
The Meta Language information is used as
a hint to help us understand the intended language and country/region the page
content applies to. This can help if your site is not hosted in the
country/region. Use the “content-language” meta tag to embed the culture code
in the <head> section of your page. For example, <meta
http-equiv="content-language" content="en-gb"> indicates
that the page is in English and intended for the the United Kingdom.
Alternatively, you can use <html lang="en-gb"> or <title
lang="en-gb">.
Use <meta
http-equiv="content-language" content="ll-cc"> tag in
the <head> section of your page, where "ll-cc" stands for the
culture code of the language and country/region the content applies to.
Alternatively use the lang="ll-cc" attribute on either the
<html> or the <title> tag .
28. Evaluated size of HTML is estimated to be over 125 KB and risks not being fully cached.
Search engines may not fully acquire the
content on a page if the page is contains a lot of code. Extraneous code can
push the content down in the page source making it harder for a search engine
crawler to get to. A soft limit of 125
KB is used for guidance to ensure all content & links are available in the
page source to be cached by the crawler. This basically means if the page size
is too big, a search engine may not be able to get all of the content or may
end up not fully caching it.
Ensure that the page source does not
contain large amounts of CSS or code at the top of the page. Consider moving
code and styles into separate files.
