At first glance, I don’t know how successful this will initially be; not only because of the strict approval process, but because of the World Wide Web norm. From an SEO standpoint, I typically advise the use of www before your domain name due to that being the norm. For a while, I think that will be the case here as well.  URL’s ending in .com will still hold their value, especially since the new naming ability will be even more customized. With a price tag in the hundreds of thousands, this is meant for large businesses so it narrows the scope of who can actually obtain a unique extension domain.

How will this .com overhaul impact SEO?  We will anxiously be waiting for 2012 when the new naming system is set to launch. Will anything after the “dot” be treated as part of your root domain and the “dot” as a separator? Will the extension be treated as a category for the Search Engine’s Index? Will the extension be treated as a brand?

We are anxious to hear what Search Engines have to say about the new domain extensions.

As we discussed in Part 1 of this series, PageRank is passed from one page to another by way of a link. It’s part of a multifaceted content- and popularity-based contest. The more links pointing to your page and more specifically, including a keyword relevant to your page, the higher you will rank for said keyword.  For example, if a large number of Web sites out there linked to ‘www.riseinteractive.com’ using the anchor text ‘hot sauce’, we could rank for that term, even though we don’t mention hot sauce anywhere on our site. Given enough links using that anchor text, we could even appear at the top of the natural search listings for that term. The most popular example of this relates to the keyword ‘miserable failure’ in 2003, which returned the President’s White House bio as the first result. In this instance, opponents banded together in a link building campaign using that keyword.

A Little Background

This type of PageRank flow also occurs within the internal pages of a website, which leads us to today’s discussion. Imagine you operate an e-commerce site with thousands of product pages along with a smaller number of general pages. Historically, you could use several strategies to restrict PageRank flow (such as the nofollow attribute) to prevent passing link ‘juice’ along to non-important pages within your website. By conserving PageRank within the important pages, you could (historically) inflate your rankings for those pages deemed critical to your SEO program.

In a blog back in July 2009, Matt Cutts discussed PageRank sculpting and recent changes in the Google algorithm that must be considered. Under the old paradigm, PageRank flowed out of a page through normal links (with a decay factor) while a NoFollow link would simply act as a cork and prevent the flow of PageRank. Under the new process (implemented in mid-2008 but only announced in mid-2009), a NoFollow link does prevent the destination page from obtaining PageRank but does not prevent it from “leaking” from your page. This change effectively reduces the amount of PageRank you can distribute to specific pages on your site through sculpting.

If PageRank Sculpting is Out, What Do I Do?

One thing many SEOs fail to realize is that PageRank sculpting is simply a very specific method of siloing content, a method dating back to 2005. Siloing is still an effective strategy based on maintaining a categorically-based link (and usually directory) structure. For example, if a page on your site discusses Golden Widgets, all outbound links from that page should only be to pages that also discuss Golden Widgets. The only exception would be a link back to the Widgets page that contains links to Golden Widget, Silver Widgets, Copper Widgets, etc. PageRank sculpting was a popular method for improving organic search rankings, but changes over the last couple of years has severely impacted its effectiveness. However, keyword relevance, site structure and quality content will always help your natural search listings head in the right direction.

Do you still sculpt your PageRank? Do you still find it effective? Let us know!

1. URL Structure: URLs are an excellent way to leverage keywords for SEO. URLs should be structured properly with targeted key phrases. It would make sense to ensure that these URLs are in alignment with your keyword strategy to make sure the right words are being optimized. There should also be no more than 2 parameters, and no more than 3 folders (or directories) in the URL. Another thing we take into consideration is the use of dashes (or hyphens) as word separators instead of grouping words or using underscores. Google prefers “keyword1-keyword2” and treats them as separate words, which can improve your visibility.

-          Bad Examples:

• http://www.mysite.com/brands.php?object=1&type=2&kind=3&node=5&arg=6
• http://www.mysite.com/people/places/things/noun/car/dannyboy

-          Good Examples:

• http://www.mysite.com/brands.php?nike
• http://www.mysite.com/people/danny-boy/

2. Site Map: Ideally, the website should include a site map that is also in alignment with one or two key phrases per page chosen for the keyword strategy based on relevance, current rank, probability of success and traffic. The links on the site map should be current, and regularly updated. To ensure that the crawlers reach all of your pages you want each page no more than two clicks away from the home page. Making sure all of your pages are on the sitemap makes this possible.
3. Title Tags: Title tags are the words written in the upper left corner of the frame at the top of the browser. This is a critical area for SEO, in that keywords can be used to optimize each page and greater optimize presence in searches. Like URLs, these would be derived from your keyword strategy and would follow a consistent approach site-wide. Title Tags should be written to include one or two key phrases as well as the site brand. It should also be noted that staying within 70 characters ensures that the full title appears in Google searches. A useful tool to quickly check the amount of characters you have is: http://www.wordcountertool.com/

-          Bad Example: Yoursite.com – keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, keyword4

-          Good Example: Key phrase1 | YourSite.com

4. Site Code: If your site contains excessive code then the search engine crawlers could timeout before they read through everything on the page.  This can be avoided by using a style sheet file for CSS and java script include files to reduce the code. The reduction in code would allow the search engines to read and index the site quicker and ensure that they do not timeout before crawling it in its entirety.

Flash is useful and appealing from a visual design perspective, but it is much tougher for the search engines to index. Using optimized text descriptors on the flash code is necessary so that the search engines can index the message being presented. It is also recommended that text copy is included on the site with Flash to allow for the message being communicated to be indexed.

If a customer clicks a broken link or misspells the URL to a page on your site they will be redirected to a 404 page indicating that the page does not exist. Your site should have a custom 404 page that drives the user back to your sitemap so they can find what they were originally looking for. Otherwise they will see a default page that has no useful information, and because they have left your site your bounce rate will increase too. You can check what your error page looks like by typing in random text after your main URL (www.yoursite.com/xyz123). Bruce Clay’s blog also has more useful tips on improving your 404 page.

URL canonicalization is the process of choosing the best URL when there are several options. To a search engine, “www.yoursite.com” and “yoursite.com” are different URLs. This means your traffic can be divided between both sites, and this can hurt your rankings. To find out if this is going to cause problems for you, type in your URL with and without the “www” in the address bar. If the “www” does not appear automatically before “yoursite.com” that means multiple versions of your site are accessible by potential customers and search engines. You should code the site to always redirect to either www.yoursite.com or “yoursite.com,” whichever you prefer.  You can read more about canonicalization in one of our earlier posts if you want to learn more about this topic.

5. Content: The content of a page should have copy that can be optimized for specific keywords that naturally blends in. Typically 1 to 2 keywords per page is ideal, and those words should be consistent with the page title and URL (when appropriate). When we’re conducting an audit, we’re going to look to see if your keywords appear in the body of copy multiple times. For a more tips on writing good copy for SEO you can see: http://www.dailywritingtips.com/how-to-write-an-seo-article-part-1/

6. Back Links: These are links that are directed to your page from anywhere else on the Web. Having more links is almost always a good thing, but it is not the only thing that matters. Search engines also look at the quality of the website that is linking back to yours. If Microsoft or Apple has a link to your site it will matter a lot more than if your neighbor’s personal website links to you. You can find out how many back links you have by doing the following:

1. Go to www.yahoo.com

2.    In the search field type in: “linkdomain:yoursite.com –sitedomain:yoursite.com”

3.    Under the Yahoo! logo on the left side you will see “### results for….” This is the number of back links you have.

4.    Next you can check your competitors’ back links the same way and compare. Even though quantity isn’t the only thing that is important, it will give you a good idea of where you stand.

To begin with, be sure that all tags are properly closed and source code that may be confusing to the search engine spiders isn’t used. Spiders will typically be thrown off by old or outdated code or code that is proprietary to a single browser as well as code that is too new to be recognized by most spiders.

Remember, spiders are computer programs that abide by all the limitations of a predefined and pre-programmed set of rules. Most abide by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an organization that strives to set specifications and guidelines to help the Web run to its fullest potential. If your Web pages do not also work within those rules, they run the risk of being improperly indexed by the search engines—or not being indexed at all—causing serious damage to your site’s rankings and SEO results. No SEO efforts will matter if your site is not indexed. It is also helpful to visit Google Webmaster Guidelines which will give insight on how to help Google correctly find, index and rank your site.

As you can see, taking the time to ensure search engine spiders can easily process your site’s code is well worth the effort. It allows the indexing process to work as smoothly as possible, thus allowing you to spend your optimization efforts where they are most needed instead of worrying about technical, programming issues. For those who may not be wizards at writing code, you can test your Web pages with the HTML validator at http://validator.w3.org.

Note:  in order for your pages to validate, use a valid DOCTYPE which allows spiders to easily parse and browsers to easily process your site.  As such, it both helps your optimization efforts as well as making your site compatible with a larger number of browsers, resulting in a slight performance boost for your site and reassurance that your pages are compatible across a greater number of browsers.

1. HTTP (Hyper Text Transport Protocol)

Definition:  An application-level protocol for collaborative information systems in which resources from the site can be viewed.

Key HTTP facts:

- Ensures that webpages can be indexed by search engines and allows us to see if a webpage can be reached in a web-browser.

- Determines which Communication Port to use. This is important because different protocols typically use different ports.

2. WWW (World Wide Web)

Definition: A system of internet servers that carry documents formatted in HTML (see below) that provides links to audio, video and graphic files and is accessed through the internet. WWW is a part of the domain name which is commonly known as the subdomain.

Key subdomain facts:

- Typically, websites contain either “www” or have no subdomain at all.

- Web sites with many pages, typically from larger companies, often use atypical subdomain names to differentiate between different major sections, topics within their sites or services. For example:  msnbc.msn.com.

- There can be multiple levels within subdomains. For example, assets.espn.go.com. There are often few restrictions to their length, but some scheme links may often be much longer.

- Typically, subdomains can, convert to a separate IP address than the primary domain name.

-A different subdomain is often a distinct webserver for non-SEO applications. Nevertheless, it continues to be under the control of the same primary domain owner. For example, CNN is the only site that can make use of uniquename.cnn.com because the Domain Name Server (DNS) addressing is tied to their primary domain, cnn.com, which is solely under CNN’s control.

- Subdomain names are not case-sensitive. For example, Msnbc.Msn.com is the same as msnbc.msn.com.

3. DOMAIN

Definition: Commonly referred to as Domain name, this is used to identify the host the host, or owner, of a specific website.

Key Domain Name facts

- The Domain Name System (DNS) translates the domain name section, along with the .com, into a numeric IP address. This is used to attach to the actual webserver that hosts the resource.

- The hostname is what the domain name is often referred to as. This is simply the name of the computer where it is hosted.

- A domain name may only be compiled of hyphens, digits or letters.

- Domain names can only be 63 characters in length, with few exceptions for extensions such as “.weather”, in order to accommodate the length of the extension.

- Like subdomains, domain names are not case-sensitive.

- “.com” is the last element of the domain name, referring to the Top Level Domain, or TLD, which is also not case sensitive.

- There are three different ways in which TLD’s can be classified:

- Generic: .com, .org, .gov, .edu, .biz, etc.

- Country Codes: .ca, .ru, .jp

- Infrastructure: .arpa (for SEO purposes we can ignore this TLD)

4. SUBDIRECTORY

Definition: A “file” in an organizational unit called a directory. For example, www.espn.com/basketball, in which “basketball” would be the subdirectory.

5. FILENAME

Definition: The name a computer attaches to a document to identify it

6. .HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)

Definition: An extension of the filename that tells us the programming language used to code the page. Simply put, .html tells us that it’s a normal webpage.

Note: While we have pointed out which URL aspects are not case-sensitive, everything that was covered beyond the TLD, such as subdirectory, filename, and extension, are all case-sensitive. This means that content.html is not the same as Content.Html.

What is URL canonicalization?

Though this concept can be a bit tricky to understand (and pronounce! “ca-non-ick-cull-eye-zay-shun”), it solves a fundamental problem that prevents Web sites from working at the optimum level. Typically, buckets of relevant content on a site will appear on multiple pages within that site, or sometimes even on multiple Web sites altogether. For example:

example.com

www.example.com

http://www.example.com

www.example.com/index.html

http://www.example.com/index.html

This is particularly relevant to SEO with regard to which information is returned for a particular search. In order to provide the best experience for the searcher, search engines attempt to limit the number of returns by means of eliminating redundancies within the returned results. If a search engine is not clear on which page to use, or sees the information as separate pages, it splits up the link juice among all of the pages, versus returning one, more powerful page/result.

So what?

What is exciting here is that we are now able to present a singular version of content, ensuring it receives the highest possible rankings based on domain strength, trust, relevance, etc. This prevents multiple pages from having to compete with each other and creates one strong source.

As discussed in our most recent post, SEO is one of the best ways to drive qualified traffic to your site. SEO is a low-cost, highly measurable means of lead-generation, and, to maximize campaign results, it is critical that it is as optimized as possible.  URL canonicalization presents yet another opportunity to leverage your website to its fullest potential.

How to resolve canonicalization issues

It is important to address various ways to avoid canonicalization issues. SEOBook.com provides a list of various tactics and we’ve highlighted a few of those to help you quickly identify areas you can improve:

Consistent link planning – Choose a linking norm, and stick to it. Maintaining consistent linking conventions (i.e. always link to www.example.com instead of also linking to www.example.com/index) will keep search results strong. This also applies to using either relative or absolute linkage, instead of using both. Remember, consistency is key!

Employ a 301 Redirect – Keep searchers informed of domain changes and maintain user-friendly search results. This tool automatically redirects pages that have been moved to a new location.

Beware of https:// vs. http:// versions of a site – Searches will sometimes return both pages, thereby diluting the search results.

Keep it original – When duplicating or cross-promoting content on a site, be sure to link to the original files on the site.

Make Google work for you – Google Webmaster Tools allows you to declare which version of a URL it should use (www.example.com vs. example.com/index).

website check tool – Helps identify a number of possible architecture problems, including canonicalization issues, on your site. Download tool at http://training.seobook.com/website-health-check.

Please note that some of the material covered in this section is rather technical, however, we will try our best to keep this tutorial as non-technical as possible.

Using Well Formed, W3C Validated HTML Code
The first step towards creating your search engine friendly website is to make sure that your HTML code is correct and well-formed.  To do this, make sure that you have closed all tags which need to be closed and that you haven’t used a source code which could confuse the search engine spider. Examples of this would be old and outdated codes or codes that are so new they have not yet been recognized by most search engine spiders.

Use of Flash Technology, JavaScript & Frames
Flash, JavaScript and/or Frames pages are possible to optimize, however, it is significantly more difficult to do so.  Therefore, if you want to design a search engine friendly website it is simply best to avoid using these technologies if possible.  In the event that you feel you have to use them, or you are optimizing a site which is already built around these technologies, then it is important to know what to do.  We will address the workarounds for these technologies in a future tutorial.

Proper use of URLs
As mentioned in the first step, it is important not to utilize codes that will confuse the search engine spiders. With that said, when designing a search engine friendly site, you also want to make sure that you use URLs that the search engine spiders can easily follow. The spiders find and process web pages by following links from one site to another. This means that if your website’s URLs make it difficult for the search engine spider to download and/or process the pages found on your website it is possible that your web pages may never get crawled.  A page that is not crawled is also a page that has zero chance of appearing in the search engine results.  Simply put, if you don’t use a search engine friendly URL all of your optimization efforts may be worthless given that the search engines won’t even know the pages exist.  Despite this, it is also important to note that the right URL may actually help your rankings in the search engine.  Developing SEO friendly URLs will be discussed in a future tutorial.

Website and Directory Structure
In this step, it is important to know that the search engines may have a more difficult time indexing your website the deeper a page may be on it (e.g. the more links that a visitor has to click to get to a particular page, the harder it is for search engines to find). Therefore, unless your site happens to be exceptionally popular with a lot of incoming links, you can assume that the search engines are not going to crawl that deep into your site. Due to this problem, many sites employ a sitemap which lists all of the pages on one’s website. When done properly, this allows you to coherently organize the material on your website while simultaneously ensuring that the search engines are able to reach (and thus crawl or process) all of the pages on your site.

Limiting the size of your web pages
There is a general rule of how large a page each of the major search engines will index.  This amount varies from search engine to search engine, and even from site to site (more popular sites have a larger limit than less popular sites).  Therefore, in general, it is best to limit the size of your pages to 100k or less (this does not include picture size, which does not effect how much text gets indexed).  This limit (i.e., 100k) is based upon the fact that this may still be Google’s limit.  Even if there have been some indications that Google may have raised that limit, it is best to be safe rather than sorry.  In addition, it is easier to optimize pages with less content and when you split up your larger pages into more detailed pages you provide the search engines with more opportunities to find and fully index your web pages for relevant keywords.

Proper use of Robots.txt file
A Robots.txt file is used to tell search engine spiders which pages not to index. Upfront this may not seem like something you may want to use, but the advantage of using a Robots.txt is that it focuses the search engines on indexing your “important” customer-development, product, and/or sales pages. Remember that the search engine spiders function with limited time and resources when indexing sites, so therefore it would be best to use that time wisely. For example, there is no need for the search engines to index your privacy policy page.  Additional pages that should not be indexed by the search engines include image directories or otherwise sensitive company data, such as company passwords.

There are your six important steps to help you create a search engine friendly website.  While some of this content may be too technical, just concentrate on comprehending the basics and make sure that your programmer understands what it is that he or she is suppose to do.  It is not crucial that you know all of the details mentioned in this blog, however, it is extremely important that your programmer/developer (or whoever it is that is building your site) does understand the information described above, as it can help fully optimize your site if done properly, or hurt it if done wrong.

Stay tuned for more detailed explanations of how to address the issues mentioned above to be posted in the near future.

The answer to the first question is simple enough: Ads. Search engines make money by showing ads along side their search results. For instance, imagine that you did a search on Google for free cell phones. You would arrive at a page that looks like this:

On the left hand side of the screen there are what are known as the organic search results. These are the websites which Google thinks are the most relevant site for the term free cell phone (note: everything which we are about to say about Google also applies to the other major search engines: Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com). Furthermore, Google does not take money for showing these results. They are displayed based on Google’s algorithm (a mathematical formula which Google uses to determine how to rank sites for any given search term). On the right hand side of the page are different results which also appear for the term free cell phone. These are ads, or more exactly Google AdWords ads, and the owner of that ad pays Google every time someone clicks on their ad (the amount varies according to various factors).

What is worth noting is that the most significant factor driving Google’s business plan revolves around people clicking on these ads. As such, the more people who use Google’s search engine, the more money Google will make (as more people will see Google’s ads with a certain percentage of those people clicking on them). Thus Google has a vested interested in providing the highest quality search engine that they possibly can (as do the other major search engines), for that is what drives people to their site. And the key ingredient to a quality search engine is relevance! After all, people are only interested in a search engine insomuch as it helps them find the results that they are looking for. And since that is what Google’s customers want, that is what Google wants. And since that is what Google wants, that is also what we want.

Here comes the answer to our second question. When we say that Google ranks the search results according to relevancy what we really mean is that Google has developed various criteria and methods for determining what is the most relevant site for any given search. What this means for us is that if we can discern what those criteria and/or methods are (Google doesn’t reveal them) then we can build our site accordingly for the terms that we want to rank well for. Put simply, Google sets the ranking rules. If we want to rank well then we best learn what those rules are and follow them. This, in a nutshell, is all that search engine optimization is about.

As simple as that may sound it’s actually a bit harder to do in real life. Particularly since the search engines are constantly trying to improve the results that they return. What that means is that the criteria and methods that the search engines use to rank sites are constantly changing. So not only is it important to know how it is that the search engines rank sites today, but it is equally important to get as clear a sense as possible as to how they plan to rank sites tomorrow. That way you can always be prepared (or at least try to be prepared) for whatever changes come tomorrow. Thus ensuring that your high rankings are as stable as can be.

Our first order, therefore, when it comes to optimizing our sites for the search engines is to understand as best as possible the criteria and methods that the search engines use to determine their search results. As such, that is the topic of the next tutorial.