SEO Basics

Best Practices

Improving Site Structure

Put an HTML site map page on your site, and
use an XML Sitemap file
A simple site map page with links to all of the pages or the most important pages (if you have
hundreds or thousands) on your site can be useful. Creating an XML Sitemap file for your site helps
ensure that search engines discover the pages on your site.

Avoid:
letting your HTML site map page become out of date with broken links
creating an HTML site map that simply lists pages without organizing them, for example by subject

Optimizing Content
Have a useful 404 page
Users will occasionally come to a page that doesn't exist on your site, either by following a broken link
or typing in the wrong URL. Having a custom 404 page that kindly guides users back to a working
page on your site can greatly improve a user's experience. Your 404 page should probably have a link
back to your root page and could also provide links to popular or related content on your site. Google
provides a 404 widget that you can embed in your 404 page to automatically populate it with many
useful features. You can also use Google Webmaster Tools to find the sources of URLs causing "not
found" errors.

Dealing with Crawlers

Avoid:
allowing your 404 pages to be indexed in search engines (make sure that your webserver is
configured to give a 404 HTTP status code when non-existent pages are requested)
providing only a vague message like "Not found", "404", or no 404 page at all
using a design for your 404 pages that isn't consistent with the rest of your site

SEO for Mobile Phones

Promotions and Analysis

Links

How Google deals with non-text files Sources of URLs causing "not found" errors
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=72746 http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/10/webmaster-tools-shows-
Custom 404 page crawl-error.html
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=93641 404 HTTP status code
404 widget http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html
h
 ttp://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/08/make-your-404-pages-more-
useful.html

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 Optimizing Content

Offer quality content and services

Interesting sites will increase their

recognition on their own
Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence
your website more than any of the other factors discussed here
(1) A blogger finds a piece of your content, likes it, and then references it in a blog
(1). Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to post.
direct other users to it. This could be through blog posts, social media
services, email, forums, or other means.
Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site's
reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without
quality content.

Anticipate differences in users'

understanding of your topic and offer
unique, exclusive content
Think about the words that a user might search for to find a piece of
your content. Users who know a lot about the topic might use
different keywords in their search queries than someone who is new
to the topic. For example, a long-time baseball fan might search for
[nlcs], an acronym for the National League Championship Series,
while a new fan might use a more general query like [baseball
playoffs]. Anticipating these differences in search behavior and
accounting for them while writing your content (using a good
mix of keyword phrases) could produce positive results. Google
AdWords provides a handy Keyword Tool that helps you discover new
keyword variations and see the approximate search volume for each
keyword (2). Also, Google Webmaster Tools provides you with the top
search queries your site appears for and the ones that led the most
users to your site.

Consider creating a new, useful service that no other site offers. You
could also write an original piece of research, break an exciting
news story, or leverage your unique user base. Other sites may
(2) The Google AdWords Keyword Tool can help you find relevant keywords on your
lack the resources or expertise to do these things. site and the volume of those keywords.

Glossary
Social media service Google AdWords
A community-type web service that promotes and supports forging connections An advertising service which places relevant advertisements on search results pages
among fellow users. and other content. When a user searches for keywords using Google, AdWords
advertisements related to those keywords are displayed on the right, top and/or
bottom of the search results pages alongside the organic search results.

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 SEO Basics
Improving content and
services should be a
priority, regardless of the
type of website!

Best Practices

Improving Site Structure

Write easy-to-read text
Users enjoy content that is well written and easy to follow.

Avoid:
writing sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes
embedding text in images for textual content
- users may want to copy and paste the text and search engines can't read it

Stay organized around the topic

Optimizing Content
It's always beneficial to organize your content so that visitors have a good sense of where one content
topic begins and another ends. Breaking your content up into logical chunks or divisions helps users
find the content they want faster.

Avoid:
dumping large amounts of text on varying topics onto a page without paragraph, subheading, or
layout separation

Create fresh, unique content

Dealing with Crawlers

New content will not only keep your existing visitor base coming back, but also bring in new visitors.

Avoid:
rehashing (or even copying) existing content that will bring little extra value to users
having duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your site
- more on duplicate content

Create content primarily for your users, not

search engines SEO for Mobile Phones

Designing your site around your visitors' needs while making sure your site is easily accessible to
search engines usually produces positive results.

Avoid:
i nserting numerous unnecessary keywords aimed at search engines but are annoying or
nonsensical to users
having blocks of text like "frequent misspellings used to reach this page" that add little value for
users
deceptively hiding text from users, but displaying it to search engines
Promotions and Analysis

Links

Keyword Tool Duplicate content

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66359
Top search queries Hiding text from users
http://www.google.com/webmasters/edu/quickstartguide/sub1guide5.html http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66353

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 Optimizing Content

Write better anchor text

Suitable anchor text makes it easy to <a href="http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/articles/ten-rarest-baseball-

convey the contents linked cards.htm">Top Ten Rarest Baseball Cards</a>

This anchor text accurately describes the content on one of our article pages.
Anchor text is the clickable text that users will see as a result of a link,
and is placed within the anchor tag <a href="..."></a>.

This text tells users and Google something about the page
you're linking to. Links on your page maybe internal—pointing to
other pages on your site—or external—leading to content on other
sites. In either of these cases, the better your anchor text is, the easier
it is for users to navigate and for Google to understand what the page
you're linking to is about.

Website

Baseball card's product page

Baseball card Baseball card Baseball card

Toppage News Product list

The linked page

is about baseball
cards.

Googlebot User
With appropriate anchor text, users and search engines can easily understand what
the linked pages contain.

Glossary
CSS Text style
Abbreviation for Cascading Style Sheets; a language for defining the design and layout Formatting, such as the font, size and color of the text.
of a web page.

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 Both users and search

SEO Basics
engines like anchor text
that is easy to
understand!

Best Practices

Improving Site Structure

Choose descriptive text
The anchor text you use for a link should provide at least a basic idea of what the page linked to is
about.

Avoid:
writing generic anchor text like "page", "article", or "click here"
using text that is off-topic or has no relation to the content of the page linked to
using the page's URL as the anchor text in most cases
- although there are certainly legitimate uses of this, such as promoting or referencing a new
website's address

Optimizing Content
Write concise text
Aim for short but descriptive text-usually a few words or a short phrase.

Avoid:
writing long anchor text, such as a lengthy sentence or short paragraph of text

Format links so they're easy to spot

Dealing with Crawlers

Make it easy for users to distinguish between regular text and the anchor text of your links. Your
content becomes less useful if users miss the links or accidentally click them.

Avoid:
using CSS or text styling that make links look just like regular text

Think about anchor text for internal links too

You may usually think about linking in terms of pointing to outside websites, but paying more attention
to the anchor text used for internal links can help users and Google navigate your site better.
SEO for Mobile Phones

Avoid:
using excessively keyword-filled or lengthy anchor text just for search engines
creating unnecessary links that don't help with the user's navigation of the site
Promotions and Analysis

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 Optimizing Content

Optimize your use of images

Image-related information can be

provided for by using the "alt" attribute
Images may seem like a straightforward component of your site, but
you can optimize your use of them. 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 (1).

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
(1) Our image wasn't displayed to the user for some reason, but at least the alt text
for that image will be treated similarly to the anchor text of a text link. was.
However, we don't recommend using too many images for links in
your site's navigation when text links could serve the same purpose.
Lastly, optimizing your image filenames and alt text makes it easier
for image search projects like Google Image Search to better
understand your images.

Store files in specialized directories and (root)

manage them using common file formats images

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

news (2) It is easier to find

Use commonly supported filetypes - Most browsers support JPEG,
the paths to images if
GIF, PNG, and BMP image formats. It's also a good idea to have the they are stored in one
2006
extension of your filename match with the filetype. directory.

Glossary
Screen reader ASCII language
Software for speaking on-screen information or outputting to a Braille display. Abbreviation for American Standard Code for Information Exchange. A character
encoding centered on the English alphabet.

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