Difference between revisions of "Making your site Search Engine Friendly"

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==Why Create a Search Engine Friendly Site?== <!--T:1-->
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In order to add your pages to its database, a search engine (such as Google) will send out so-called crawlers, spiders or bots to harvest the text on your site. These bots cannot harvest things that are created by Javascript, or 'see' images (though they do check alt tags) and they don't play well with Flash files if at all.</translate>
  
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==Why Create a Search Engine Friendly Site?==
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<translate><!--T:3-->
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In order to add your pages to its database, a search engine (such as Google) will send out so-called crawlers, spiders or bots to harvest the text on your site. These bots cannot harvest things that are created by Javascript, or 'see' images (though they do check alt tags) and the don't play well with Flash files if at all. While all these things may make the site look better, they do little to nothing in terms of search engine optimisation (SEO).
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While all these things may make the site look better, they do little to nothing in terms of search engine optimisation (SEO) without adding descriptive information about those resources which are visible to a search engine (but not necessarily visible to your site visitors).</translate>
  
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==Keywords==
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<translate><!--T:4-->
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{{review|section}}
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It is important that your website can be found by people who are looking for its content, therefore you must serve content to search engine 'bots' in a way that they can interpret, analyse and identify how relevant it is to the search query.</translate>
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    Normal  0              false  false  false      EN-US  X-NONE  X-NONE                                                    MicrosoftInternetExplorer4
 
  
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There are two major parts to understanding keywords: one is the meta tag and the other is density. If you are starting a brand new site you will need to do a little planning for both SEO and simple Joomla structure. Keywords are the focus of your content. You should come up with a list of no more than 25 keywords that describe your site's message. Once you have your list of keywords, keep them in focus as you write content and create Joomla sections, categories, and articles. Use these keywords through your site to improve SEO.
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For this to happen, you need to bring to the attention of the 'bots' important information about the page using various techniques detailed below - almost like a 'signpost' telling the 'bot' what the page contains. It will then compare what you tell it the page is about, with what it finds by itself, and run various algorithms to check if the page is in fact relevant. It also runs other checks to make sure that you are not trying to cheat the system using 'black hat' or 'grey hat' tactics to make your page rank higher.</translate>
  
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The meta keyword tag found in the head of most Web documents has little effect for Google, Bing and many of the other larger search engines. Yahoo still uses the meta tag as part of the algorithm, as well as some of the meta crawlers. Search engines all read the text in the tag; they just do not apply the information to their ranking algorithms. I have always found that placing the keyword meta tag helps me write better keyword rich content. If your page has a keyword tag, you must make sure that word is on the same page in the content.
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It is also possible to add contextual information to your website which helps the 'bot' to understand the context of the information it is indexing, ultimately resulting in more appropriate search results pages when people are searching for topics.</translate>
  
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Density is the number of times a word is placed in the readable content of a page. If you have ten readable words and one word is a keyword the density of 10%. If you have 100 words and one of them is a keyword you now have a density of 1%. Keep your density between 3.5 and 7 percent. Look for an online density analyzer to get an estimated density of a keyword. 
 
  
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Make sure to use keywords in your titles or aliases, links, and content. DO NOT STUFF keywords. Content that does not make sense and is full of keywords for the sole purpose of raising the keyword density to a high level will cause your site to be penalized in the search engines. It is very difficult to write an article that someone will enjoy reading or find usable and increase the density over 7 percent.
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{{Template:Box-header-sq | title=<translate><!--T:7-->
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Key SEO Concepts</translate>
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|noedit=yes <!--remove edit link from content boxes -->
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|border=sienna          <!-- This is the color of the borders around Box Sections -->
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|titleforeground=#000000    <!-- This is the color of the Box Section Title Bar text -->
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|titlebackground=wheat <!-- This is the color of the Box Section Title Bar -->
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|background=cornsilk    <!-- This is the color of the Box Section background -->
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|foreground=black      <!-- This is the color of the Box Section text -->
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}}
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;[[S:MyLanguage/Search_Engine_Friendly_URLs|<translate><!--T:9--> About Search Engine Friendly URLs</translate>]]
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;[[S:MyLanguage/Enabling_Search_Engine_Friendly_(SEF)_URLs|<translate><!--T:10--> Enabling SEF URLs</translate>]]
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;[[S:MyLanguage/Using_A_Sitemap|<translate><!--T:11--> Using a Sitemap</translate>]]
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;[[S:MyLanguage/Using_The_Title_Tag|<translate><!--T:12--> Using the Title Tag</translate>]]
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;[[S:MyLanguage/Using_The_Meta_Description|<translate><!--T:13--> Using the Meta Description</translate>]]
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;[[S:MyLanguage/Using_Keywords|<translate><!--T:14--> Using Keywords</translate>]]
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;[[S:MyLanguage/Semantic_HTML_Markup|<translate><!--T:15--> Using Semantic HTML Markup</translate>]]
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;[[S:MyLanguage/Linking_To_Other_Sites|<translate><!--T:16--> Linking to other sites and link building</translate>]]
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;[[S:MyLanguage/Important_SEO_Points_To_Remember|<translate><!--T:17--> Important points to remember</translate>]]
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</div>
  
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This section has a keyword density on the term “keyword” of 1.79% and on the term “keywords” of 2.05%. The combined density is approximately 3.8%. You can see how deliberate you would have to be to stuff a site greater than 7%.
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<translate>
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'''To Add Meta Keywords to Your Site:'''
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<!--T:8-->
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[[Category:Search Engine Optimisation]]
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* Add the 25 keywords to your Global Configuration > Site > Global Site Meta Keywords.
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</translate>
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* Add specific meta keywords to articles using the metadata information. Make sure the keywords listed here are in the content of the article also.
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</noinclude>
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* Adding the data does not harm your rankings in search engines, and will help you in Yahoo, and meta crawlers. Never add more than 25 words in the meta data. Separate words and phrases with a comma. Do not repeat keywords.
 
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==Use Semantic HTML==
 
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Use semantic HTML - only one H1 per page for the most important header.
 
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==Use Links in Your Content==
 
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Have good links inline in the text (articles) and avoid the use of things like 'click here' as the text that displays for a link. You want to try and have something that conveys the gist of the content of the page that the link points to.
 
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==Have a Structured or Planned Navigation==
 
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Having a good navigation system is hugely beneficial for allowing bots to effectively crawl your site. (Joomla goes a long way in doing this for you when used correctly.)
 
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== Have a Sitemap ==
 
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{{review}}
 
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A sitemap is essentially a table of contents for your site. This serves two purposes:
 
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# It provides a place where visitors can go to easily get to any content on your site, even if it isn't necessarily easy to access by other navigation aids on the site.
 
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# It provides a centralized store of links to the content on your site that can be easily indexed by search engines.
 
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At the very least, a sitemap should link to the main sections and pages within your site, but the more detailed you can make it, the better.
 
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== Things to Remember ==
 
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{{stub|section}}
 
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* Anything that requires a login will not be 'seen' by a search engine.
 
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* This article only just starts to scrape the surface.
 
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* Frequent maintenance and updates are a big part of SEO.
 
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* SEO is only the start - it might help people find your site through search engines but you've got to work out how to get them to stay or come back or use your site.
 
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[[Category:Search Engine Optimization]]
 

Latest revision as of 06:07, 2 May 2022

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Why Create a Search Engine Friendly Site?

In order to add your pages to its database, a search engine (such as Google) will send out so-called crawlers, spiders or bots to harvest the text on your site. These bots cannot harvest things that are created by Javascript, or 'see' images (though they do check alt tags) and they don't play well with Flash files if at all.

While all these things may make the site look better, they do little to nothing in terms of search engine optimisation (SEO) without adding descriptive information about those resources which are visible to a search engine (but not necessarily visible to your site visitors).

It is important that your website can be found by people who are looking for its content, therefore you must serve content to search engine 'bots' in a way that they can interpret, analyse and identify how relevant it is to the search query.

For this to happen, you need to bring to the attention of the 'bots' important information about the page using various techniques detailed below - almost like a 'signpost' telling the 'bot' what the page contains. It will then compare what you tell it the page is about, with what it finds by itself, and run various algorithms to check if the page is in fact relevant. It also runs other checks to make sure that you are not trying to cheat the system using 'black hat' or 'grey hat' tactics to make your page rank higher.

It is also possible to add contextual information to your website which helps the 'bot' to understand the context of the information it is indexing, ultimately resulting in more appropriate search results pages when people are searching for topics.


 

Key SEO Concepts

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