Principles Of SEO

Contents
Contents ...................................................................................................................................................... 2

1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 4

2. Importance of Search Engine Optimization ....................................................................................... 5

3. Search Engines ...................................................................................................................................... 5

3.1. How Search Engines Work ........................................................................................................... 5

3.2. Differences between the Major Search Engines ....................................................................... 6

3.3. Best Search Page Tools Chart ................................................................................................... 10

4. Basic Concepts .................................................................................................................................... 11

5. Recommendation & Tips for having better on Page Optimization ............................................... 12

5.1. Title Optimization .......................................................................................................................... 12

5.2. Meta Tags Optimization............................................................................................................... 14

5.3. Improve the structure of your URLs........................................................................................... 15

5.4.Simple Navigation .......................................................................................................................... 16

5.5. XML Site Map................................................................................................................................ 18

5.6. Image Alt tags ............................................................................................................................... 19

5.7. Image Filenames .......................................................................................................................... 20

5.8. Headings ........................................................................................................................................ 22

6. Best Practices for On Page Optimization ......................................................................................... 22

7. Off Page SEO Techniques ................................................................................................................. 24

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8.SEO Tips and Tricks for Powerful Search Engine Optimization .................................................... 27

9.Common URL Problems and How to Fix Them ............................................................................... 44

10. Drupal and SEO ................................................................................................................................. 48

11.Modules that directly affect SEO ...................................................................................................... 48

12.Best Modules for SEO. ...................................................................................................................... 49

13.Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 57

14.Related Books ..................................................................................................................................... 57

15.Related Links ....................................................................................................................................... 57

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1. Introduction
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is often considered the more technical part of Web
marketing. SEO can be defined as the activity of optimizing Web pages or whole sites in order
to make them more search engine-friendly, thus getting higher positions in search results.

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 web page, but you may
not be making the most out of them.

One of the basic truths in SEO is that even if you do all the things that are necessary to do, this
does not automatically guarantee you top ratings but if you neglect basic rules, this certainly will
not go unnoticed. Also, if you set realistic goals – i.e to get into the top 30 results in Google for a
particular keyword, rather than be the number one for 10 keywords in 5 search engines, you will
feel happier and more satisfied with your results.

Although SEO helps to increase the traffic to one's site, SEO is not advertising. Of course, you
can be included in paid search results for given keywords but basically the idea behind the SEO
techniques is to get top placement because your site is relevant to a particular search term, not
because you pay.

SEO can be a 30-minute job or a permanent activity. Sometimes it is enough to do some

generic SEO in order to get high in search engines – for instance, if you are a leader for rare
keywords, then you do not have a lot to do in order to get decent placement. But in most cases,
if you really want to be at the top, you need to pay special attention to SEO and devote
significant amounts of time and effort to it. Even if you plan to do some basic SEO, it is essential
that you understand how search engines work and which items are most important in SEO.

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2. Importance of Search Engine Optimization
Search engines are the market makers of the Internet. They connect consumers with providers
at the very moment of consumer interest and enable all of us to find exactly what we want, when
we want it. They bring great efficiency to the Internet and our lives and shall exist as long as the
network of servers and computers we call the Web is around.

Positioning, one of the four Ps of marketing, is an absolutely critical component of the marketing
mix. If you are not positioned to be where your customer is when your customer is ready to buy,
you lose. Your competitor who is in that place at that time wins.

The first purpose of search engine optimization is to be positioned in the places where your
customer is. The second purpose is to be positioned well than your competitions in these
places. In the world of search engines, better means higher and higher means a much greater
probability that an individual will click on your link.

3. Search Engines

3.1. How Search Engines Work

The first basic truth you need to learn about SEO is that search engines are not humans. While
this might be obvious for everybody, the differences between how humans and search engines
view web pages aren't. Unlike humans, search engines are text-driven. Although technology
advances rapidly, search engines are far from intelligent creatures that can feel the beauty of a
cool design or enjoy the sounds and movement in movies. Instead, search engines crawl the
Web, looking at particular site items (mainly text) to get an idea what a site is about. This brief
explanation is not the most precise because as we will see next, search engines perform
several activities in order to deliver search results – crawling, indexing, processing, calculating
relevancy, and retrieving.

First, search engines crawl the Web to see what is there. This task is performed by e piece of
software, called a crawler or a spider (or Googlebot, as is the case with Google). Spiders follow
links from one page to another and index everything they find on their way. Having in mind the
number of pages on the Web (over 20 billion), it is impossible for a spider to visit a site daily just
to see if a new page has appeared or if an existing page has been modified. Sometimes

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crawlers will not visit your site for a month or two, so during this time your SEO efforts will not be
rewarded. But there is nothing you can do about it, so just keep quiet.

What you can do is to check what a crawler sees from your site. As already mentioned, crawlers
are not humans and they do not see images, Flash movies, JavaScript, frames, password-
protected pages and directories, so if you have tons of these on your site, you'd better run the
Spider Simulator below to see if these goodies are viewable by the spider. If they are not
viewable, they will not be spidered, not indexed, not processed, etc. - in a word they will be non-
existent for search engines.

3.2. Differences between the Major Search Engines

Although the basic principle of operation of all search engines is the same, the minor differences
between them lead to major changes in results relevancy. For different search engines different
factors are important. There were times, when SEO experts joked that the algorithms of Bing
are intentionally made just the opposite of those of Google. While this might have a grain of
truth, it is a matter a fact that the major search engines like different stuff and if you plan to
conquer more than one of them, you need to optimize carefully.

Google
http://www.google.com

Voted four times Most Outstanding Search Engine by Search Engine Watch readers, Google
has a well-deserved reputation as the top choice for those searching the web. The crawler-
based service provides both comprehensive coverage of the web along with great relevancy. It's
highly recommended as a first stop in your hunt for whatever you are looking for.

Google provides the option to find more than web pages, however. Using on the top of the
search box on the Google home page, you can easily seek out images from across the web,
discussions that are taking place on Usenet newsgroups, locate news information or perform
product searching. Using the More link provides access to human-compiled information from the
Open Directory (see below), catalog searching and other services.

Google is also known for the wide range of features it offers, such as cached links that let you
"resurrect" dead pages or see older versions of recently changed ones. It offers excellent spell

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checking, easy access to dictionary definitions, integration of stock quotes, street maps,
telephone numbers and more. See Google's help page for an entire rundown on some of these
features. The Google Toolbar has also won a popular following for the easy access it provides
to Google and its features directly from the Internet Explorer browser.

In addition to Google's unpaid editorial results, the company also operates its own advertising
programs. The cost-per-click AdWords program places ads on Google as well as some of
Google's partners. Similarly, Google is also a provider of unpaid editorial results to some other
search engines. For a list of major partnerships, see the Search Providers Chart.

Google was originally a Stanford University project by students Larry Page and Sergey Brin
called BackRub. By 1998, the name had been changed to Google, and the project jumped off
campus and became the private company Google. It remains privately held today.

Getting Listed: Read the Submitting To Google section of Search Engine Watch's Essentials Of
Search Engine Submission guide for more about being included in Google's editorial results and
the Google AdWords section for more about its paid listings programs.

Search Engine Watch members have access to the How Google Works section of the web site,
which provides in-depth coverage of the editorial and paid listings processes at Google. Learn
more about becoming a member on the membership information page.

Yahoo
http://www.yahoo.com

Launched in 1994, Yahoo is the web's oldest "directory," a place where human editors organize
web sites into categories. However, in October 2002, Yahoo made a giant shift to crawler-based
listings for its main results. These came from Google until February 2004. Now, Yahoo uses its
own search technology. Learn more in this recent review from our Search Day newsletter, which
also provides some updated submission details.

In addition to excellent search results, you can use tabs above the search box on the Yahoo
home page to seek images, Yellow Page listings or use Yahoo's excellent shopping search
engine. Or visit the Yahoo Search home page, where even more specialized search options are
offered.

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The Yahoo Directory still survives. You'll notice "category" links below some of the sites lists in
response to a keyword search. When offered, these will take you to a list of web sites that have
been reviewed and approved by a human editor.

It's also possible to do a pure search of just the human-compiled Yahoo Directory, which is how
the old or "classic" Yahoo used to work. To do this, search from the Yahoo Directory home
page, as opposed to the regular Yahoo.com home page. Then you'll get both directory category
links ("Related Directory Categories") and "Directory Results," which are the top web site
matches drawn from all categories of the Yahoo Directory.

Sites pay a fee to be included in the Yahoo Directory's commercial listings, though they must
meet editor approval before being accepted. Non-commercial content is accepted for free.
Yahoo's content acquisition program also offers paid inclusion, where sites can also pay to be
included in Yahoo's crawler-based results. This doesn't guarantee ranking, Yahoo promises.
The CAP programs also bring in content from non-profit organizations for free.

Like Google, Yahoo sells paid placement advertising links that appear on its own site and which
are distributed to others. Yahoo purchased Overture in October 2003.

Overture was formerly called GoTo until late 2001. More about it can be found on the Paid
Listings Search Engines page. Overture purchased AllTheWeb (see below) in March 2003 and
acquired AltaVista (see below) in April 2003. Now Yahoo owns these, gained as from its
purchase of Overture.

Technology AltaVista and AllTheWeb was combined with that of Inktomi, a crawler-based
search engine that grew out UC Berkeley and then launched as its own company in 1996, to
make the current Yahoo crawler. Yahoo purchased Inktomi in March 2003.

Getting Listed: Read the Submitting To Yahoo section of Search Engine Watch's Essentials Of
Search Engine Submission guide for more information on appearing in Yahoo's own editorial
results. Read the Overture section of Search Engine Watch's Essentials Of Search Engine
Submission guide for more information on Overture's paid listings program.

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Search Engine Watch members have access to the How Yahoo Works section of the web site,
which provides in-depth coverage of how Yahoo gathers listings. The How Overture Works
page, which provides in-depth coverage of how cost-per-click ads can be placed with Overture.

Ask
http://www.ask.com

Ask Jeeves initially gained fame in 1998 and 1999 as being the "natural language" search
engine that let you search by asking questions and responded with what seemed to be the right
answer to everything.

In reality, technology wasn't what made Ask Jeeves perform so well. Behind the scenes, the
company at one point had about 100 editors who monitored search logs. They then went out
onto the web and located what seemed to be the best sites to match the most popular queries.

In 1999, Ask acquired Direct Hit, which had developed the world's first "click popularity" search
technology. Then, in 2001, Ask acquired Teoma's unique index and search relevancy
technology. Teoma was based upon the clustering concept of subject-specific popularity.

Today, Ask depends on crawler-based technology to provide results to its users. These results
come from the Teoma algorithm, now known as ExpertRank.

Getting Listed: There is not a free way to directly add your site to the index at Ask.com at the
moment. Paid listings come from Ask Sponsored Listings.

Search Engine Watch members have access to the How Ask Works page of the web site, which
provides in-depth coverage of how Ask gathers listings.

There are many examples of the differences between search engines. For instance, for Yahoo!
and Bing, on-page keyword factors are of primary importance, while for Google links are very,
very important. Also, for Google sites are like wine – the older, the better, while Yahoo!
generally has no expressed preference towards sites and domains with tradition (i.e. older
ones). Thus you might need more time till your site gets mature to be admitted to the top in
Google, than in Yahoo!.

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3.3. Best Search Page Tools Chart

Selected Internet Search Engines

Search Engine Database Advanced/B Other search options Miscellaneous

oolean

Google Full text of web pages AND * wildcard to replace Language

google.com and other documents (default) word(s) (to * or * ) translations.
Ranks based on the web. OR No truncation. ~ searches
on popularity Plus: News (4500 (capitalized) Quotes for phrase. synonyms (~food)
(# of pages sources); Images; - to remove Stems some words (+ define: finds
linked to). Groups (Usenet posts words or to turn off). definitions
1981)-, Local (maps, phrases. Fields: intitle:, site:, Tools:
businesses), Products + to include inurl:, filetype: more. math/equivalents
(shopping), Scholar common USGovSrch calculator, maps,
(articles), Book words Similar pages - finds stocks.- more
Search, Video Search, related sites.
Blog Search, and more

Bing Full text of web pages AND No truncation. Left panel, suggests
bing.com and other documents (default) Quotes for phrase. related searches
on the web. OR For dates, type the and shows search
Type up to 150 (capitalized) name of the month history.
characters, including NOT instead of the Translates similar
spaces, in the search (capitalized) calendar number. to Google.
box. to exclude Use Instant
Plus: Images, Videos, words. Answers for easy
Shopping, News, field searching.
Maps, Travel.

Yahoo! Full text of web pages AND No truncation. Translates similar

search and other documents (default) Quotes for phrase. to Google.
search.yahoo.on the web (also OR Limit by date, Shortcuts give
com huge), Some content (capitalized) language, domain, quick access to
pay-for-position or - to remove file type, and country topics.
Ranks based from Yahoo! words or in Adv Srch. Creative Commons
on relevancy community. phrases. Fields: intitle:, inurl:, search in Adv. Srch.
(occurrence Plus: News (7000 + to include link:, site:, hostname:
of terms). sources), Images, common
Maps, People, Local,

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 Travel, Shopping, words.
Video, Audio, and
more.

Ask Good answers for Natural Lieft sidebar offers Provides links to
simple questions. Also language links to narrowed, other resources
http://www.a safe, news by age questions, broadened and
groups. not Boolean related search
sk.com
searches. results.

4. Basic Concepts
With millions of people around the globe preferring the Internet as the tool by which they get
information, SEO marketing is deemed to be one of the most useful and effective method of
promoting consumer awareness for one's products and services.
But even if consumers turn to the Internet for information, you should not expect an increase in
sales just because you have just setup a website for your business as you still have to attract
Internet users and potential consumers to visit your website.
This is why business website owners should be informed of the strategies and techniques that
will help their websites generate Internet user traffic that will help in jacking up their sales.
These strategies and techniques are collectively known as SEO marketing.
To understand SEO marketing we must first know and understand its two elements, which is
obviously SEO which stands for search engine optimization and of course, marketing.
Search engine optimization came about when search engines emerged as the only means by
which almost all of the Internet users get their information from the Internet. With search
engines as the ultimate gateway of Internet information for most users, then it is just logical that
if a website wants to attract visitors which figure prominently in the search engine rankings.

This thinking gave birth to SEO or search engine optimization which is a collective term used to
denote the strategies and tactics employed by website owners to increase their website
Ranking. These tactics include but are not limited to: effective keyword placement which
involves the use of frequently searches keywords in one's website, link optimization which

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involves the utilization of links to stimulate user-generated traffic further and the complete
overhaul of the overall design and architecture of the website.
The other component of SEO marketing is the marketing aspect itself. Marketing basically refers
to the process or the technique by which a product or service is promoted, sold or distributed.
SEO marketing can then be understood as an amalgamation of both basic principles of SEO
and marketing. In a nutshell, SEO marketing is catch-all term referring to all search engine
optimization techniques that will help for the promotion of a product or service.
SEO marketing is simply the ways and means a business website owner does to gain higher
rankings in the search engines resulting in an influx of user generated traffic which in turn will be
converted into sales and consumer awareness for the website owner's products or services.
It is imperative for any business website owner to be informed of the basic concepts of SEO
marketing particularly its two components, namely SEO and marketing as knowledge of this
online marketing strategy will aid one's business to cope with our ever changing technological
world.

5. Recommendation & Tips for having better on Page Optimization

On page optimization is one of the very first step of SEO which every webmaster should look
into. It probably won’t even take you an hour to learn and implement some of these on-page

optimization techniques. But you may ask me, why it is so important? – Well literally speaking, if
you can do proper on-page optimization for your website you can not only rank well in a search
engine but also can increase the overall readability of your website for your visitors.

5.1. Title Optimization

A site’s title tag is by far the most important website optimization element. A title tag should be

short but descriptive enough for your visitors to identify you and your business. Title tag is the
first thing that is shown & indexed by the search engines. So naturally it is given a very high
importance – out of thousands results that a searcher sees, your site’s title has to be appealing

enough for him to want to find out more information. On the other hand, your title has to be
appealing enough to the search engine in order to rank you above thousands of other similar

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Websites like yours.

Important things to include in your title:

 Your Name/ Business Name / Site Name: This is very important for breading propose. If you
feel that your customers may search you by your brand name than it’s also useful to put it

somewhere in your title.

 A user performs the query [baseball cards]. Our homepage shows up as a result, with the
title listed on the first line (notice that the query terms the user searched for appear in bold).

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5.2. Meta Tags Optimization
A site’s Meta tags may not be as important as it used to be before, however I feel that Meta
Description is something you can’t just ignore. A site’s Meta description should contain a brief
description of your website focusing on the areas and services that your business is specialized
in. This small piece of text can be considered as a selling snippet, if a searcher finds it
appealing he is likely to click and go inside your page to find out more information. But if your
Meta Description is too generic and isn’t written too well then there is a good chance that your
site will simply be ignored.

(1) The beginning of the description meta tag for our homepage, which gives a brief
overview of the site's offerings.

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 (2) A user performs the query [baseball cards]. Our homepage appears as a result, with
part of its description meta tag used as the snippet.

(3) A user performs the query [rarest baseball cards]. One of our deeper pages, with its

unique description meta tag used as the snippet, appears as a result.

5.3. Improve the structure of your URLs

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Simple-to-understand URLs will convey content information easily

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

A URL to a page on our baseball card site that a user might have a hard time with.
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.

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.

5.4.Simple Navigation

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.

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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.

Plan out your navigation based on your homepage

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.

Create a naturally flowing hierarchy

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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 (so that it takes twenty clicks)

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

5.5. XML Site Map

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

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5.6. Image Alt tags
All images can have a distinct filename and "alt" attribute, both of which you should take

advantage of. The "alt" attribute allows you to specify alternative text for the image if it cannot

be displayed for some reason

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Why use this attribute? If a user is viewing your site on a browser that doesn't support images,
or is using alternative technologies, such as a screen reader, the contents of the alt attribute
provide information about the picture.

Another reason is that if you're using an image as a link, the alt text for that image will be

treated similarly to the anchor text of a text link. However, we don't recommend using too many
images for links in your site's navigation when text links could serve the same purpose.

5.7. Image Filenames

Store files in specialized directories and manage them using common file formats.

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Instead of having image files spread out in numerous directories and subdirectories across your
domain, consider consolidating your images into a single directory (e.g.
brandonsbaseballcards.com/ images/). This simplifies the path to your images.

Use commonly supported filetypes - Most browsers support JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP image

formats. It's also a good idea to have the extension of your filename match with the filetype.

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5.8. Headings
There are six sizes of heading tags, beginning with <h1>, the most important, and ending with

<h6>, the least important

Since heading tags typically make text contained in them larger than normal text on the page,
this is a visual cue to users that this text is important and could help them understand something
about the type of content underneath the heading text. Multiple heading sizes used in order

create a hierarchical structure for your content, making it easier for users to navigate through
your document.

6. Best Practices for On Page Optimization

SEO Factors Ratings

Descriptive urls Descriptive urls separated by Good

dashes or underscores and
descriptive with dictionary
words

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Canonical URLs All pages are only accessible Good
one URL per page using a single unique domain,
path and querystring
META description All META descriptions are Good
unique, tailored to each page

Canonical domain name One domain name for web Good

page

HTTP Not found pages generate Average , it better to have page

response codes HTTP 404 response code not found 404 page
Moved pages generate HTTP
permanent redirect response
code, or no support for page
moves

Average 1.2 - 4 seconds Good

page load times

Image Alt tags have unique ALT tags Good

describing the image with
dictionary words
Images which are purely design
elements (round corners for
example) don’t require ALT
tags

Image Filenames have one dictionary word or Good

more filenames
Images which are purely design
elements (round corners for
example) don’t need

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 descriptive filenames

Page titles All pages have unique titles Good

All pages have titles

Headings All pages have a single unique Good

H1 tag. The majority also have
H2, H3 etc
Simple Navigation All pages can be accessed Good
using simple hyperlinks without
JavaScript, Flash, Java or Ajax
techniques
Syndication All content is unique to this Good
website. A small amount may
be retrieved from other sites

Sitemap A sitemap exists, covering the Good

entire website

7. Off Page SEO Techniques

1) Register your domains for 2-5 years, not 1 year

2) Avoid buying domains with multiple dashes
3) Do begin to obtain RELEVANT links from high authority pages and directories as soon
as possible for both new and old sites
4) Beware who you link out to and do not participate in link exchanges with non-related
content sites

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5) Have a plan in place to update your site regularly with new content and shuffle featured
content (e.g. homepage features) regularly. This will encourage more search engine
spider activity and faster updates of your site.
6) Do use Yahoo Site Explorer (beta) to monitor your site to see how many pages are
indexed and to analyze the links to your site (and your competition)
7) Do write unique quality articles and submit them to article directories
8) Do use press releases and submit them to places like prweb.com
9) Do not buy ROS (run of site links) if you want to rank well on Google, particularly on a
new site. (A ROS link is a link that is placed on every page of a site, like in a footer or
navigation bar)
10) Build your links and submit to directories gradually. Mix up the anchor text of your
incoming links with your top 5 or 6 keyword phrases and category keyword phrases.
11) Standard onpage SEO is enough (title tags with keywords, h1 for heading, static url,
proper internal link structure, sitemap, deep content, article content focusing on the
search tail and funnel pagerank back up to category pages).
12) Avoid search engine forums and areas where kids and beginners with no experience
spread bogus rumors.
13) Do read Matt Cutt’s blog, threadwatch.org, Pandia, Search Engine Watch, Search
Engine Land (new), and other top expert sites for additional information.
14) do invest in the right professional tools for SEO and avoid the spam *tool of the day*
15) Avoid auto-page generators at all costs. They leave footprints and are a waste of time.
16) Do have a long term SEO and content plan. Long term unique valuable content will
always beat out spam in the long run.

17) Blog about your niche topic - leading visitors to your website via external links
18) Link campaigns - asking websites (that are correspond with your niche) to
provide links
19) Link exchanges - swapping links with another website
a. One way link building
b. Two way link building
c. Three way link building

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 d. Multi-way linking
20) Market your site on other sites – Craig’s List is a well known classifieds site that
has a very high page rank. To join, simply choose the category that your site
belongs to, and post an advertisement (with a link). It doesn’t matter if no one
reads it, what matters is that search engines can find your site in an external
location.
21) Social bookmarking - perform (and even offer) this by joining up with sites like
Digg, Slashdot and Stumble Upon
22) Post or comment about your website in topic-related forums and blogs
23) PPC campaigns – participate in these campaigns to publish your website links in
blogs and websites that may be unreachable otherwise.
24) Press release submissions - include fresh, interesting information related to your
site.
25) Public relations - provide PR for your website in both good times and bad
26) RSS feeds - submit information to an RSS feed or publish your own news though
RSS syndication. Other websites pick up RSS feeds and publish news stories
(which can include a link back to your site, of course).
27) Search engine submissions for popular programs like Google, Yahoo, and MSN
28) Social networking - create your website's personality via Facebook and Twitter -
linking back to your site for reference
29) Write articles and submit them to relevant topic sites like Squidoo - linking back to
your site for reference

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8.SEO Tips and Tricks for Powerful Search Engine Optimization

Write unique content (HIGH PRIORITY)

Unique content is important too. You need to provide content that has different
information than what is on other sites and other Web pages.

Add new content all the time (HIGH PRIORITY)

Sites that have new content added on a regular basis are seen as more reliable than
sites that rarely do. This also helps you to increase the amount of relevant content on
your site, which also improves your rankings.

Create a great keyword phrase (HIGH PRIORITY)

The first thing you should do when working on search engine optimization is find a great
keyword phrase for that page. You shouldn't try to optimize your entire site to one
keyword phrase - instead focus on writing pages for specific keywords and phrases.

Choose a phrase that is popular, but not too popular (HIGH PRIORITY)

When trying to decide on a keyword phrase, you want to find one that is popular but not
extremely popular. This may seem counter-intuitive, but the reality is that extremely
popular keywords are very desirable and so very competitive. It's better to try to
optimize for keywords that you can rank higher. You'll get more pageviews from a less
popular keyword when you're on the first or second page of the search engines, than
from a super popular keyword that you only make it to page 50 of search engines.

Write an accessible site (HIGH PRIORITY)

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Accessible HTML is accessible to both search engine spiders and screen readers. The
more accessible you make your pages, the easier it will be for search engines to read
and rank your pages.
Use the keyword phrase in your title tag (HIGH PRIORITY)

The title tag is one of the most important tags on your Web page. And placing your
keyword phrase in the title tag, preferably at the beginning, is very important to get that
phrase into the search engines. Plus, that puts your keyword phrase as the link in the
search engine index.
Get a domain with your keyword phrase (HIGH PRIORITY)

Putting your keyword phrase in your domain name is a great way to optimize for that phrase.

Use the keyword phrase in your URL (HIGH PRIORITY)

Even if you can't get your keywords into your domain name, you can put them into your
URLs. Search engines read the URLs and assign value to the text they find there.

Use your keyword phrase a lot, but not too much (HIGH PRIORITY)

The ratio of your keywords to the rest of the text on your page is called the keyword
density. It's important to repeat your keywords in your document, but not too much.
Keyword density should be between 3 and 7% for your primary keyword phrase and 1-
2% for any secondary keywords or keyword phrases

Use your keyword phrase in anchor text of links (HIGH PRIORITY)

Link text is another great place to put your keyword phrase. Links stand out on most
Web pages, and so are given higher priority than surrounding text.

Ask other people for links to your page (HIGH PRIORITY)

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A great way to get inbound links is to simply ask for them. But remember that excessive
cross-linking can be viewed as spammy, so be careful about trading links or otherwise
buying links on external sites.

Try to get your keyword phrase inside incoming links (HIGH PRIORITY)

Inbound links are a great way to improve your page rank. But you can't really control
how people link to your pages. Chances are they won't use a phrase that has anything
even remotely close to your keyword phrase. Remember that they are doing you a favor
by linking to you. If it makes sense, you can ask them to change the text of the link, but
be careful, as people can be very touchy, and you might just get your link removed.

Another way to get your keyword phrase in inbound links is to provide your customers
with the link text ready-made. For example:

Please link to this page: <a

href="http://webdesign.about.com/od/seo/tp/seo_tips_and_tricks.htm">SEO Tips
and Tricks</a>
Try to get links from reputable sites (HIGH PRIORITY)

Reputable sites that link to you will increase your reputation. After all, if a reputable site
feels that your site is valuable enough to link to, that means that your page has more
value. You can tell if a site is considered reputable both by how high it appears in
search engines and it's Google PageRank. Also, .edu sites have a higher reputation
because they represent schools and universities.

Try to get links from similar sites (HIGH PRIORITY)

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Inbound links from sites similar to your own are important as well. This indicates that
your site does have content related to that topic. Plus, it indicates that your competition
finds your site valuable, and that gives your site more credibility.

Try to get links from .edu, and .gov sites (HIGH PRIORITY)

Sites that are on .edu and .gov top-level domains have a large amount of credibility
because they are very difficult to get. So if you can get the designers of those sites to
link to you, that gives your site more credibility as well.

Create as much content as you can (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Content is king. The more content you have on your site, the more there is to be
indexed and appear in search engines.
Keep your site content inside one theme (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

The theme or topic of your entire site is important as well. If you have a lot of pages all
around one basic theme, that will lend more credibility to each page that follows that
same theme.

Keep your site live as long as possible (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Older pages (at the same domain) will rank higher than newer ones.

Create an XML sitemap or Google sitemap (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Search engines love sitemaps - not necessarily for ranking, but for finding links on your
site. It's not critical that you create an XML sitemap or Google sitemap, plain HTML
sitemaps work just as well.
Use 301 redirects for permanent redirects (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

30
When you redirect your pages, you should always use a 301 http server redirect. This
tells the search engines that the redirect is permanent and that they should change their
index to use the new URL. Spammers use other types of redirects (HTTP 302
redirects and meta refresh), so they are not a good idea to use.
Use 302 redirects only for long or ugly URLs (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

HTTP 302 redirects are for temporary redirects. The only time you should use them is
for redirecting ugly URLs to more user-friendly ones. This tells the search engine that
the ugly URL should not be removed from the index, because the user-friendly URL is
just to make the URL palatable. Keep in mind that many spammers use 302 redirects to
fool search engines. So be judicious in your use of them.
Get as many inbound links as you can (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Links are important, especially from sites other than your own. These are called inbound
links. And if you get a lot of inbound links, that will help your page ranking. Remember
that 1-2 links from high-reputation sites are better than 10 links from link farms.

Put your keyword phrase in the first paragraph (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Repetition of your keyword phrase is important in your content. But it's especially
important in the first one or two paragraphs of text. And if you can repeat it once in the
first paragraph that will help up it's priority.

Put your keyword phrase at the top of the HTML (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

More than just the first paragraph, you should try to move your content towards the top
of the HTML document. And that includes your keyword phrase.
Put your keyword phrase in alternative text (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Images are a great place to put your keyword phrase - in the alternate text. This is a
way to add your keyword phrase into your document without being repetitive to your

31
readers. But be careful not to overdo it - as you don't want to appear to be keyword
stuffing. That could get your site banned.
Increase the font size of your keyword phrase (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Search engines understand that fonts that are larger than the standard font size on the
page indicate text that is more important. Use CSS or the font tag. Apply font size
changes to headline tags as well.
Format your keyword phrases to stand out (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Use <strong> and <em> where appropriate to make your keyword phrases stand out.
Search engines can read those tags, and will recognize that text that is emphasized is
often more important than the surrounding text.

Link to your page from within your site (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Links are important, and linking from one page to another on your own site is a very
easy way to get links. They aren't as important in search engine ranking as links from
external sites, but they do help. If nothing else, they help the search engine spider find
all the pages on your site.

Put up links that flow within the text (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Links that make sense within the context of the document (whether from external or
your own site) will rank higher than lists of links or other forms of artificial links. This is
because search engines value content and links that make sense within the context of
the content are more definitely related to that content than links that are inside lists.

Keep asking for inbound links (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

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The older the links are the better. If you get 100 links added all at once, it appears to the
search engines that you are buying link placement, and that can be construed as
spamming.

Get linked in DMOZ and Yahoo! (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

DMOZ and Yahoo! and other directories show that your page is related to the contentin
that section of the directory.

Periodically check your outbound links for pagerank (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Whenever you add an external link on your site, you run the risk that it changes from the
site you linked to into a link farm or "bad neighborhood". By periodically checking the
PageRank of the external sites you link to, you can remove links that have gotten bad.
This will help you make sure that your page's credibility is not reduced by who you are
linking to.

Link all major images (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

It's important to always link images because people click on images. And search
engines value content that has been linked. The key is to always include alternative
text, so that the search engine has text to rank. Any image that your customer can see
on the page should be linked.

Keep your pages up-to-date (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Pages that are regularly updated are given priority over pages that are older and
ignored. But you should do more than simply fix typos or make small changes, regular,
extensive updates are more effective than minor updates.

If you must use frames, always use the noframes tag (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

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Frames and search engines don't mix well. But if you must use frames, then you should
always include an extensive noframes version of your site. And by extensive, the best
way to get your site indexed in search engines is to completely rewrite it in your
noframes version.

If you must use Flash, always include alternative text (MEDIUM PRIORITY)

Flash and search engines don't mix well, but if you must use flash you should include
alternate text that describes exactly what the Flash element includes. And if you use
Flash for your entire site, you should always do an alternate version of the complete site
in HTML so that search engines and non-Flash browsers can view it as well.

Don't host your site with a host that allows spammers (AVOID)

This means any type of spammers, but especially search engine spammers. If you don't
know what your host's policy is towards spammers, find out. There should be something
in their terms and conditions about malicious activity. If your IP is blacklisted, you'll be
blacklisted right along with it, even if your site is completely innocent.

Don't host your site with a host that is down a lot (AVOID)

While search engines won't deliberately discriminate against a site that is down, if they
can't get to your URL because it's down, they can't index it. And if your site is down
several times when the spider tries to access it, it could be flagged as gone, and then
the spider won't come at all. Find out from your hosting provider what their uptime rates
are and what they guarantee. Less than 97-98% uptime is bad.

Don't omit alt text for images especially images inside the text (AVOID)

Images inline with your text can dress up your Web page, but if you leave off the
alternative text (alt text) search engines won't pick up the content relevance. Also keep

34
in mind that the heavier your page is with images, the less likely that search engines will
rank it highly. Text is what gets ranked in most search engines, and alt text is a poor
alternative.

Don't use images instead of text links (AVOID)

Search engine optimization is all about text, and if you use images instead of text, even
if you have good alt text, search engines will have a harder time ranking your site. This
is especially true for navigation. Search engine spiders crawl through your site by
following links, and links on images can be more difficult for them to follow or rank than
text links. Using images instead of text makes your pages slower for your customers
too. You're better off styling your text with CSS, than using images.

Don't misspell your keywords in your content (AVOID)

It can be very tempting to try to optimize your site for misspellings. And while it won't
hurt your site in the search engine rankings - especially if you decide to use the
misspelled version as your keyword phrase to optimize on. It will hurt your credibility
with your customers. For every one person who misspells the word, there are at least
two to three who know the correct spelling. And if they end up on your page for some
reason, they will just think you are unprofessional. Plus, many browsers and search
engines have spell checkers built into the forms, so the popularity of misspellings will
continue to lessen as time goes on.

Don't try to optimize for more than 2-3 keywords and phrases (AVOID)

This is called keyword dillution. If you have too many topics on a given page, it will be
hard for both search engines and your customers to determine what you're talking
about. If you have a lot to say on several topics, it's better to write multiple short pages
on each topic, than to try to cram them all into one long page.

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Don't use your keyword phrase too much (AVOID)

Keyword stuffing is the practice of repeating your keywords or keyword phrases over
and over in a page until there is nearly no other text than the keyword phrase. Check
your keyword density to determine if you have used it too much. 10% or higher is too
much.

If you are too blatant about stuffing keywords, you could get your site banned from
search engines.

Don't rely on links from domains on the same IP (AVOID)

While Google doesn't discriminate against domains that have the same IP (for example,
domains that use virtual hosts), other search engines may. So it's best to avoid trying to
increase your inbound links with links from other domains that you own. The same is
true for domains hosted on the same hosting provider (coming from the same C-level IP
address). Google doesn't penalize sites like this, but other engines might.

This is another situation where if it becomes apparent that you're doing it, you could get
all your sites banned from search engines.

Don't have more than 10 words in your URL (AVOID)

While you want to have keywords in your URL (and domain if possible), longer URLs
tend to look more spammy to both customers and search engines. However, this isn't a
serious issue, and if you need to have 11 or 15 words in your URL, it shouldn't be a
problem, as long as you aren't doing it all the time.

Don't use URL parameters if you can avoid it (AVOID)

Parameters on URLs make them long and hard for anyone to read. And search engines
can get confused by them, especially if the parameters are meant to hold customer

36
information, and not indicate a separate Web page. Also, as I mentioned elsewhere,
search engines don't always rank dynamic pages as high as static pages, and most
dynamic pages use parameters on the URL to indicate the correct page. If you must use
parameters, you might want to consider doing a URL rewrite to static URLs, at least for
your most important pages.

Don't use dynamic URLs (AVOID)

In general, spiders tend to prefer static URLs to dynamic ones. It is possible to rank high
with a dynamic URL, but it's easier if you redirect dynamic URLs to shorter, static URLs.

Don't rely on AdSense to boost your rankings (AVOID)

AdSense is a way to earn money on your website. But contrary to popular believe,
having AdSense ads won't improve your ranking in search engines, even Google. They
won't hurt your rankings either. It's perfectly fine to use them, but don't expect them to
improve your search rankings.

Don't rely on AdWords to boost your rankings (AVOID)

AdWords is a way to advertise your sites on Google. While you can pay to get high
rankings in advertising venues, having an AdWords account won't help your rankings in
natural (non-paid) search, even in Google. It won't hurt your rankings either. You can
use AdWords to get more clicks to your website, but they will appear only in paid search
locations, not in the natural search.

Try to get your site off link farms (AVOID)

You should never link to a link farm. And while search engines state that they don't
discriminate against sites that are linked to from link farms, it's a good idea to try to keep
your site off of them, if only to avoid contamination by association.

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Don't link to link farms (AVOID)

Google refers to spamming sites as "bad neighborhoods" and if you link to them, you
will end up with a lower PageRank. If you suspect that a site you want to link to is a "bad
neighborhood", check their PageRank and see if they commit any obvious SEO no nos.
If they do, or you think they might, then you shouldn't link to them.

Don't create pages of links (AVOID)

Pages of links are boring both for your customers and for search engines. Most search
engines value links that are in context and appear related to the page as a whole. Note,
however, that many social networking sites (like Digg and del.icio.us) tend to favor
pages that are lists of links, so sometimes it can be advantageous to write them
anyway, just don't expect them to rank high in search engines.

Don't link to and from the same site repeatedly (AVOID)

This is also called link spamming. At best, search engines will look at the links you have
on your page, and only count the first one or two towards optimization. And at worst,
your site might appear to be a spammer, even if you're not linking to a "bad
neighborhood" or are in a cross-linking scheme. You want to avoid looking like you are
paying for links.

Don't get into link circles (cross-linking) (AVOID)

When several sites have links set up in a circular (or more complex) pattern (site A links
to site B links to site C links to site A), it can look like you're paying for links. Don't
assume that because your average customer won't notice the pattern, the search
engine won't either. Since search engines give some priority for links, they want to
reward "honest" links, or links that are not paid for. If it looks like you might have paid for
the links (even if you haven't) your ranking could be penalized slightly.

38
Don't have broken links on your site (AVOID)

Broken links make your site look bad, and they imply that you don't manage your site
very much. Search engines want to have only the highest quality results, so they may
penalize sites with lots of broken links. Use a link checker periodically to make sure that
your links are still valid.

Don't use the meta refresh tag to redirect users (AVOID)

It can be very tempting to set up redirects on your site with the meta refresh tag, but this
can be a bad idea. Many spammers use them to try and fool search engines into
thinking that a page is about one thing, and then refreshing to something completely
different. Meta refresh also doesn't give information to the search engine about why the
redirect is occurring. It's much better to set up a permanent HTTP 301 redirect when
you need to redirect your customers to a new URL.

Don't use 302 redirects (AVOID)

A HTTP 302 server redirect is supposed to be used when a page is only temporarily
moved from one location to another on a server. Spammers use 302 redirects because
that gives them many more URLs to the same final page and thus many more ways to
get to that page.

The only time you should use a 302 redirect is if you have ugly URLs with lots of
parameters on them. The 302 redirect tells the search engine that this is not a
permanent redirect, but rather an alternate URL. For all other redirects you should use a
301 redirect instead.

Don't make constant minor changes to content (AVOID)

39
While you want search engines to see that you update your content, making minor
changes (like correcting spelling errors, or changing 10 or 20 characters) implies that
you're just trying to get the updated date changed. This looks like you're trying to fool
the search engines into thinking that you update your pages more than you actually do.

Do spend time updating your pages, but make the updates substantive.

Don't separate content artificially (AVOID)

Don't display different content based on IP, browser type or version, operating system
or whatever. This is very tempting for most Web designers, as it's a way to show you
know how to write JavaScript or another programming language. But it can look like
you're trying to trick the search engine - showing it something other than you show your
readers.

If you really must display alternate content based on some artificial measure, create
separate Web pages for each, rather than using the same URL for all the content. Or,
keep the content that is different as minimal as possible, don't build an entire new site
for each IP or browser type.

Don't violate copyright or other laws (AVOID)

Most search engines have terms of service that ban sites that break the law. Copyright
infringement is the easiest way to break the law on the Web. Don't assume that
because something was posted to the Web it is legal for you to reprint it, get permission
or link to the article instead of copying it. Search engines will ban your site if you
regularly steal content or break other laws.

Don't duplicate content on your site (AVOID)

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One trick that spammers like to use is to create one page and then post it in numerous
locations, both on one domain and on others. The idea is that if there are enough copies
of the page, it will get seen by more people. But search engines don't like duplicate
content as it's a waste of space on their servers and does not provide good information
to their customers. If a search engine suspects your site is spamming them with multiple
copies, your site could be banned.

Don't use robots.txt to ban large portions of your site (AVOID)

In general, using a robots.txt file to keep certain areas of your site off-limits to spiders
can be a good idea. But if you ban significant portions of your site (more than half),
search engine spiders may mark your site as "forbidden" in general and simply stop
spidering your site as often. And if your site is spidered less often, fewer pages will be
added to the directory and updated in rank.

Don't write bad or incorrect HTML (AVOID)

Most search engines don't deliberately discriminate against badly coded pages, but if
the spider can't read the page because the HTML is bad, then it won't get indexed.
Make sure that you validate your HTML regularly and that any issues there are don't
affect the page being viewed by a simple user-agent or screen reader.

Don't use frames (AVOID)

Frames and search engines are not a good combination. While search engines are
getting much better at reading framed websites, they still don't tend to rank as well as
non-framed sites. And even if you get decent ranking, you might not get the clicks
because the search engine doesn't know what to display as a title or description of your
page.

Don't create Flash splash pages (AVOID)

41
Search engines can't read images, and they see Flash as a giant image. Flash and
search engines don't mix well. If you don't have extensive alternative HTML that
displays when Flash is not enabled, then your site won't rank well in search engines. Be
sure to test your site with a browser with Flash disabled to find out what the search
engine sees. You might be unpleasantly surprised.

Don't write Flash-only sites (AVOID)

If you're going to use Flash on your site, you must have an HTML version that displays
when Flash is enabled. It can be tempting to put in just a single line or two of HTML as
your non-Flash alternative, after all, you've done so much work on the Flash site. But
since the search engines only see the HTML, that's what they'll rank, and you won't rank
high with just a tiny version of your site in HTML.

If you must use Flash as your site, and you want to rank well in search engines, you
need to be prepared to write your site twice - once in Flash and once in HTML.

Never redirect to another domain (AVOID OR GET BANNED)

Redirecting to another domain is not a 100% guarantee that you'll be banned from
search engines. But it is a very common spammer trick used in conjunction with
doorway pages and cloaking. If you set up a redirect that goes to a new domain, you
need to write it as a 301 HTTP redirect, not a 302 or meta refresh. This tells the search
engine that this redirect is permanent, and they should change to the new domain in
their directory.

Be Careful Redirecting to New Domains - You Could Be Banned

Since this trick is commonly used by spammers, it's a very good idea to avoid doing it.
Search engines can be very hard to get back into if your site is banned by mistake.

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Never link invisible images (AVOID OR GET BANNED)

Invisible images are images that are 1x1 pixels in size and cannot be seen by the naked
eye on a Web page. Since links are given some priority in ranking a Web page, linking
images that cannot be seen by your customers appears to be aimed only at search
engine spiders.

Don't Link Single Pixel Images - Your Site Will Be Banned

This is similar to hiding text or displaying different content to search engines than to
your customers. And don't assume that search engines can't read CSS or HTML tags
that resize full-sized images. If you do this to optimize your pages, your site will be
banned.

Never include invisible text on your pages (AVOID OR GET BANNED)

Hiding text by making it the same color as the background color may fool your
customers, but it won't fool search engines. Another variation of this is where you make
the font size so small that it's unreadable by the naked eye.

Don't Hide Text - Your Site Will Be Banned

Search engines understand CSS and font and background colors. They also recognize
that a font-size of 1px is not going to be readable. Text that is hidden from your readers
but visible to search engines is considered spam and will get your site banned.

Never create doorway pages (AVOID OR GET BANNED)

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Doorway pages are very simple HTML pages that are written to optimize heavily on one
or two keywords or keyword phrases. And they are programmed so that search engines
spiders see them, but regular readers are taken to the real site.

Don't Use Doorway Pages - Your Site Will Be Banned

Doorway pages are designed to trick search engines into thinking that the site has a
specific keyword relevance that it may or may not have and they are pages meant to be
seen only by the search engine. So, most search engines will ban sites from their
directory when they discover you use them.

Never display different content to a spider than customers (AVOID OR GET BANNED)

This is often called cloaking because it is an effort to cloak what your site delivers in
something that might be seen as more palatable to search engines. It can be very
tempting to use cloaking, but while it might give you better results at first, search
engines don't like it.

Don't Cloak Websites - Your Site Will Be Banned

Search engines want to provide a resource of information that is real, not something
that has been doctored to give artificial results. When they discover that your site is
cloaking, it will be removed from the search directory.

9.Common URL Problems and How to Fix Them

SEO can be broken down into a couple of main categories: Content, Architecture, and
Links. I think most people understand the importance of building content and getting
links, but there are a lot of larger and poorly built sites that struggle with some
fundamental problems their URL structure. This can lead to a lot of problems, including
many duplicate content issues.

44
 Here are three of the most common URL problems that I have seen on different
websites. If your site has one or more of these problems, take a look at these solutions
and get them fixed as soon as possible.

Problem #1: Non-www and www Versions of Site URLs

If your site has a non-www and www version of all your URLs, you’re going to be
splitting link value for the same content between two URLs. Rather than capturing 100%
of the link value on the page you want to rank in the search results, you could be doing
a 50/50, 60/40, or some other kind of split between the two URLs.
The Fix

There are a couple of things you need to do to fix this:

1. Decide which URL style you want to use, www or non-www.

2. Set up a 301 redirect so that any links to your non-preferred URL style will go to
the right style. This way you don’t waste link value by splitting it between two URLs.

3. Set your preferred domain in Google Webmaster Tools so your search result
listings are consistent with your style preference.

4. Make sure whenever you build links to your site that you use the preferred URL
style.

Problem #2: Duplicate Home Page URLs

This is a close cousin to Problem #1, but is especially bad because it’s your home page.
It is possible to have a lot of different URLs that all go to your home page content,
especially if you haven’t fixed your www and non-www duplication, which can result in a
lot of unnecessary duplication. For example:
 http://www.mysite.com

 http://mysite.com

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 http://www.mysite.com/index.html

 http://mysite.com/index.html

These URLs will all lead to the same content. If you have links going to all four of them
you will see a four-way split in link value. There are a lot of sites out there that have
fixed their non-www and www problems, but I can still find multiple versions of their
home page.
I’ve even come across sites with different extensions (.php, .html, .htm, etc.) that bring
up the same page as well. This leads to even more duplication and potentially wasted
link value.
The Fix

The fix here is very similar to the first one. Here are a few tips:

1. Set your main home page URL to be http://www.mysite.com. 301 redirect

everything else to this URL since it is the most basic (If your preferred URL style is non-
www, then do http://mysite.com)

2. If you have to set up different versions for tracking purposes or some other
reason, set a canonical tag to show the search engines which version you want showing
up in the search results.

3. Make sure when you build links to your home page that you link to the correct
version.

Problem #3: Dynamic URLs

This is a fun one that a lot of not-so-SEO-friendly shopping cart programs run into. Once
you start including all sorts of variables and parameters in your URLs, the opportunities
for duplicate content and wasted link value are endless.
Allow me to illustrate. All of the following URLs could lead to the same content:
 http://www.mysite.com/somepage.html?param1=abc

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 http://www.mysite.com/somepage.html?param1=abc&dest=goog

 http://www.mysite.com/somepage.html?param1=abc&dest=goog&camp=111

 http://www.mysite.com/somepage.html?param1=abc&dest=goog&camp=111&id
=423

Now what if I start rearranging the parameters? Well, they’ll still show the same content.
So, as you might imagine, this can create a lot of wasted link value.
There are other causes for the dynamic URL problem. A lot of companies use these
parameter-based URLs for statistical purposes. We just want to make sure that you
don’t shoot yourself in the foot from an SEO perspective.
This problem also happens with sites that give their affiliates a unique ID to use in their
links. You could have 100 affiliates linking to the same page, but all of the URLs will be
different because each affiliate has their own unique ID.
The Fix

1. If possible, make sure that your site is using SEO-friendly base URLs. It’s better
to have a base URL that will lead to the content rather than a URL that relies on a
parameter. For example: http://www.mysite.com/unique-product.html is much better
than http://www.mysite.com/category.php?prod=123 where some generic category page
is really the base URL.

2. Set a canonical tag that tells the search engines to use the base version of the
URL. That way you can still use parameter URLs like http://www.mysite.com/unique-
product.html?param1=123&param2=423 to get your data, but the search engines will
consider the basic version as the official one.

3. An even better way to handle this is to capture the data on the server side and
then redirect the visitor to the correct URL after you have captured your data. A lot of
affiliate networks like ShareASale and CJ do it this way, and you can to. The visit
basically goes like this: Visitor clicks on links with parameters -> Visitor goes to site,
server records parameter data and 301 redirects them to the right landing page –

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>Visitor barely notices the switch because it happens fast.This way you can get all the
data you need, make sure all of the link value goes to the right page, and your visitor
still sees what they were after.

10. Drupal and SEO

• Drupal uses modules to enhance SEO.

• Be aware that installing modules is NOT enough.

• You still need a good convention of your titles, paths to content.

• You still have to use the modules properly.

11.Modules that directly affect SEO

1) SEO Checklist

2) SEO Compliance Checker

3) Path Auto+token

4) Path Redirect

5) Global Redirect

6) Search404

7) Meta Tags + Nodewords

8) Global GEOurl

9) Html purifier

10) Page Title

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11) Menu Attributes

12) New XML Sitemap

13) Site Map

14) Token

15) Nofollow List

12.Best Modules for SEO.

Meta Tags + Nodewords

• These modules creates an interface to structure your meta information easily and on a
page-by-page basis.

• When you create a piece of content, if you have permission to edit meta tags, you’ll see a

‘Meta tags’ fieldset. Expand it and fill with Description and Keywords.

• This will create those fields for that page of content.

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• If you leave the description field empty, the node ‘teaser’ will be used for the description
(max 255 chars)

Nofollow List
• Enable this module if you wish to alter your external links on the site with the rel=‘nofollow’ in
the same way that wikipedia has it to discourage spam from those trying to use wikipedia to
game their site’s pagerank.

• Note: you will not want to use this if you are trying to help out legitimate sponsored clients,

friends of the site, or as an incentive for contributing content.

• Remember that content is king:

• Content leads to > positive user experience, community participation and great design which
lead to > interaction which leads to > chatter which leads to > linking from other sites; --authority

and credibility snowball.

Global geoURL
• Geographically-identifiable metadata such as Earth coordinates (lat, long) to identify a

location associated with a URL.

• Apparently, Google and others like it when a site has this. So use it.

• Anyone else want to talk about this??

• (crickets chirping)

Menu Attributes
• Allows granular control over navigational menu items such as:

• id (to use with jQuery)

• name

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• target

• rel (ex: nofollow)

• class

• style

• accesskey

Mollom and Spam

• Mollum is a spam fighting service like Akismet is to Wordpress.

• Mollum is a commercial service so try to do without it if possible since providing it for client

sites may (will) violate Mollom’s TOS.

• Spam is a module that allows you to (un)mark users, content, IPs as spam when they spam.

• Configure them following the help text.

• Use these on your sites.

HTML Purifier filter

• Input filters ensuring that the HTML markup from a user input textarea is ‘safe’ (has
malicious code removed), ‘tidy’, well-formed, and standards- compliant

• HTML Purifier is an HTML input filter that further optimizes HTML markup for SEO

• Navigate to Administer > Site Configuration > Input formats

• Click ‘configure’ under Operations

• You will see the option for ‘HTML Purifier’.

• If you know how to use input filters, then create a new input filter type, and enable the
‘HTML purifier’ filter and click ‘save configuration’.

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• TEST that the filter works as expected with your WYSIWYG editor.

• Warning: This filter could be lead to unexpected (read: bad) results if you don’t know how to
use it or combine it with other html filters.

SEO Checklist
• Install / enable the checklist. Navigate to the administration page for it.

• All the checklist does is make sure you’ve installed and configured SEO-related modules.

• It is not enough to blindly install modules, and some of their recommendations may be
incorrect according to threads on drupal.org.

• It may be better to rely on the knowledge of our SEO dept and work with them to find out

how to get a drupal site to behave in the same SEO friendly manner as a static site via modules.

• The rest of this presentation will outline what we already know happens.

SEO Compliance Checker

• The core compliance checker doesn’t do anything.

• Enabled submodules will check content at the time of creation for SEO compliance.

• For example it provides some validation on HTML that helps SEO such as an ‘alt’ tag in
images.

Page titles + Token

• Provides granular control over the <head> <title> element on a page

• Uses a pattern for a global default (all pages) and patterns for each content-type.

• Access it by /admin/content/page_title

• Expand the ‘Available Tokens List’ to see what’s available.

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Global Redirect
• Go to /admin/settings/globalredirect

• Read the help beneath each section. If you don’t understand something, research it or

leave it on the default setting.

• Turn ‘DeSlash’ to ‘On’

• Turn ‘Non-clean to Clean’ to ‘On’

• Turn ‘Remove Trailing Zero Argument’ to ‘Enabled for taxonomy term pages only’ or leave it
‘Disabled’

• Leave ‘Menu Access Checking’ disabled

• Turn ‘Case Sensitive URL Checking’ to ‘Enabled’

• Click the ‘Save configuration’ button.

Search404
• Instead of displaying a 404 page if the url is typed, this module splits up the URL into
keywords and tries to redirect the user to a page if it finds one.

• Go to /admin/settings/search404

• Tick the checkbox next to ‘Jump directly to the search result when there is only one result’

and ‘Jump directly to the search result when there are multiple results’

• Click ‘Save Settings’

Redirects and Aliases

• Use Redirection and Aliases to create clean, readable URLs that point to a definitive ‘best’

resource.

• Redirects tell search engines that an alias is pointing to the the same piece of content.

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• In other words, an Alias alone would be worse than a redirect if it results in duplicated
content.

• You want to ensure that there is one (1) page and multiple ‘aliases’ will redirect the user to
that one (1) page.

Redirects: Migrating from other CMS

• For existing sites you are recreating in a new Drupal site, you will have to

• 1) spider the old site for a url list report of either static pages or patterns (if migrating from
another CMS- can be messy >50k urls) and

• 2) replicate those patterns in drupal.

• If you can spot a pattern among 100+ redirected urls, you will need to have programming
write a script to generate this large volume of redirects. The script will require

• 1) the spider report and

• 2) the old database to be available beforehand.

Pathauto, Path Redirect

• Beyond content, these are the two most important SEO modules to use in Drupal because
they control path aliases and redirects.

• Pathauto is not that easy to use.

• Pathauto requires site planning

CleanURLs + Pathauto
• CleanUrls gets rid of the ?q= in the URL

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• ‘Path Auto’ allows you to set automatic patterns for how the URL to a piece of content you
are creating appears in the browser, based on the ‘content type’ of what content you are
creating.

• A clean url to content should look like this: http://www.domain.com/caffe-breve not the

drupal default : http://www.domain.com/?q=node/432

• Best practice suggests that you have some sample content before you build your site, so
that you can proactively design your content types and URL patterns.

Pathauto + Token
• The more content-pertinent, succinct the url, the better the SEO and the better the end-user-
experience is.

• A convention many drupal sites use is to identify the content-type then the title of the page.

Ex: http://domain.com/page/about-us or http://domain.com/story/fallujah

• Wordpress calls these ‘friendly urls’. You could put dates or authors into the url as well. Ex:
http://domain.com/about-us/2009-7-1/author/chrisn

Pathauto: General Settings

• For consistency’s sake, change the case of the urls to all lower case.

• The separator needs to be a dash (by default)

• Tick ‘verbose’

• Maximum number of objects to bulk update should be set to 50 - 250

• Leave all other settings alone unless you know what they do.

• Click ‘Save configuration’

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Pathauto: General Settings + Path Redirect
• If you have ‘Path Redirect’ installed, the PathAuto ‘General’ settings will have a new feature added to

the list of the ‘Update Action’(s).

• This new action is the last item on the list ‘Create a new alias. Redirect from old alias’.

• When creating a site from scratch and ‘staging’ a drupal site, make the update action ‘Create a new

alias. Delete the old alias’. This will keep the database clean of cruft / stale data.

• After a site is launched and people are using it; after search engines are indexing the site and it’s live ,

then keep the update action on ‘Create a new alias. Redirect from old alias’.

Pathauto: Path Settings

• Expand the ‘Node path’, ‘Blog path’, ‘Taxonomy term path’, ‘User path’ and ‘Forum path settings ’

fieldsets as applicable. Notice the patterns in each path.

• Within each content path settings fieldset, there is a ‘Replacement patterns’ fieldset. Expand this

fieldset to see what tokens are available to that particular content-type.

• Many of these have a default path that is ideal. Change/update the path as needed.

• If you find a text input that is blank for a path, it is likely that you added a new content type and now it

is using the ‘default path pattern’ for that content type. Update as needed.

• Under each fieldset, tick ‘Bulk generate aliases for nodes that are not aliased ’

• Click ‘Save Configuration’

• Run cron.php

Pathauto: Creating Content

• Expand the ‘URL path settings’ fieldset when creating a content.

• Notice ‘automatic alias’ is checked.

• To customize (‘override’) the automatic pathauto settings, untick this box.

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• Type in the path to this particular content.

• Note: This is very useful for something like an ‘http://domain.com/about-me’ or ‘/site-map’

page

13.Conclusion
After you have finished optimizing your new site, time comes to submit it to search engines.

Generally, with search engines you don't have to do anything special in order to get your site
included in their indices – they will come and find you. Well, it cannot be said exactly when they
will visit your site for the first time and at what intervals they will visit it later but there is hardly
anything that you can to do invite them. Sure, you can go to their Submit a Site pages in submit

the URL of your new site but by doing this do not expect that they will hop to you right away.

14.Related Books
The Art SEO- Mastering Search Engine Optimization

By Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin,Jessie C Stricchiola

15.Related Links

http://www.webconfs.com/seo-tutorial

http://www.100seotips.com/

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/beginners-guide-to-seo-best-practices-part-13/

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/beginners-guide-to-seo-best-practices-part-23/

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/beginners-guide-to-seo-best-practices-part-33/

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/drop-down-menu-30-free-scripts-to-enhance-header-navigation/

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