SEO and Friendly URLs

Remember the days where the links were structured like so:

http://www.somedomain.com?pageID=12

This made it difficult for Google and other Search engines to properly find and title their search results.

So you saw URLSs turning into this:
http://www.somedomain.com/article/this-is-much-better

NOW, when the SEO algorithms and magic gears and a little bit of pixie dusts runs, then the pages are much easier to find and store for future searches.

This is simply applying a friendly URL instead of the ugly "pageID=12".

Sitecore and WordPress offers that as a part of the package when it comes to Friendly URLs.  Every time a new piece of content is created, it turns the title of the content into a the URL (replacing the URL with dashes).  All the more reason to gravitate to one of these WCM systems.

Try it, you will see your SEO results shoot through the roof!

Enjoy!

Rules In SEO

If you want to build a successful business on the Internet, you can spend as much money as you can afford on a Google AdWords campaign and other forms of advertising. However, it has been proven in the Search Engine Marketing industry that at least 40% of the time, your clients will find you through Google and other search engines.

This fact alone makes it very important for any serious Internet business owner to learn the basics of Search Engine Optimization. If you can’t do it yourself, at least you can’t be left in the dark on the methodologies if you decide to hire an SEO specialist.

And just what are these SEO basics?

Website Design and Navigation

These are the most important aspects of SEO. A website that succeeds with both search engines and website visitors are those that are easily navigated and are designed in simple HTML. When these two elements are combined, they make up for a good visitor experience and easy crawling by the search engine spiders.

Some of the things to avoid in website design are dynamic page and URLs, frames, flash elements, Java script, and image maps for web page interlinking or sitemap generation.

Keyword research

SEO is based on the premise that an unknown number of Internet users are searching for a host of things on Google by typing in search terms called keywords. If you want to know the popular keywords that is appropriate to the business your website represents, research exhaustively on keywords.

In deciding what keywords to use, there is one rule: “the more specific the better”. If you own a dating site, for example, “true love” or “soul mate” might be too broad. Run the keywords on Overture and Wordtracker. You might find keywords that are more appropriate to your site like “True love for marriage”, perhaps?

Keyword Density and Relevance

Search engines, specifically Google, determine what websites go to the top of your search based on relevance. This is determined in part by keyword density, or how many instances a keyword appears in the web page’s content.

Write your content according to density. Do not spam, though. Aside from sounding gibberish, spam content also gets flagged by search engines and websites containing them are removed from the index.

Relevance and Inbound Links

Search engines also consider inbound links to your site (specifically, their number and quality) to determine your website’s relevance to a keyword.

Make time to find the sites related to your website. Also make sure that the hyperlink to your site found on the other website has your keywords in them.

Don’t scoop and link though. Google once penalized websites that linked with 200 to 300 other sites per month.

An Opportunity On Each Page

On each page on your website there is actually an opportunity for you to rank for a different keyword each time. Notice how two different pages by the same website are generated for the same keyword. Go ahead and assign different keywords to each. Write and optimize accordingly.

The Importance of a Sitemap

A sitemap is often considered redundant in the process of building a website, and that is indeed the fact if you made a sitemap for the sake of having one. By highlighting the importance of having a well constructed sitemap, you will be able to tailor your own sitemap to suit your own needs.

1) Navigation purposes

A sitemap literally acts as a map of your site. If your visitors browses your site and gets lost between the thousands of pages on your site, they can always refer to your sitemap to see where they are, and navigate through your pages with the utmost ease.

2) Conveying your site's theme

When your visitors load up your sitemap, they will get the gist of your site within a very short amount of time. There is no need to get the "big picture" of your site by reading through each page, and by doing that you will be saving your visitors' time.

3) Site optimization purposes

When you create a sitemap, you are actually creating a single page which contains links to every single page on your site. Imagine what happens when search engine robots hit this page -- they will follow the links on the sitemap and naturally every single page of your site gets indexed by search engines! It is also for this purpose that a link to the sitemap has to be placed prominently on the front page of your website.

4) Organization and relevance

A sitemap enables you to have a complete bird's eye view of your site structure, and whenever you need to add new content or new sections, you will be able to take the existing hierarchy into consideration just by glancing at the sitemap. As a result, you will have a perfectly organized site with everything sorted according to their relevance.

From the above reasons, it is most important to implement a sitemap for website projects with a considerable size. Through this way, you will be able to keep your website easily accessible and neatly organized for everyone.