Here are some tips to help you create a good site architecture and navigation scheme. These tips, when used with keyword and link best practices, will help search engines find the content on your web pages.
Navigation
1.Be consistent and consolidate information wherever possible."Help", "FAQ",and "Instructions" can be all put into one page or one category that makes it easy for users to find that type of information. Break information up inside the category if you need to. In addition, saying "Instructions for filling out such and such form", uses the keywords of what the page is about, helping search engines find the page.
2.Use breadcrumb trails. This type of navigation literally creates a trail that users can follow back to where they came from. For example: Home > Category 1> Bucket A > Bucket B > Bucket C. Breadcrumbs are used in conjunction with regular navigation. They don't replace it. They're nearly always text links, in a smaller font. Large sites should have top-of-the-page navigation pointing to the top-level pages and category navigation on the left with breadcrumb navigation on the page itself. Footer navigation should be placed at the bottom of the page.
3.The footer of web pages is also important. It's important to give your users a quick way to the home page or key pages. The footer is a good place to put text-only links that are redundant to the top-level navigation, so your user doesn't have to scroll back up to the top of the page. Supplying this added convenience also allows another chance for you to use those important keywords, and helps users who have their graphics turned off.4.Use keyword phrases within your main content links. These links may go to the exact same place as top-level navigation links but they're labeled with keywords related to the same topic. For example, a top-level navigation link may be labeled "Local Weather Forecasts", while a text link lower down on the page from inside a paragraph (pointing to the same page) might say "Weather for your Zip Code". Since users and search engines use both terms heavily, you're covering your bases by taking this extra measure.
5.Always use a sitemap. Search engines love to have a site map through which they can quickly and easily access your site's pages for indexing. When creating a site map for your websites, be sure to put it at the root level (not within any subfolders or directories), link to it from your home page, and name it site_map.html (or .htm, whichever extension you are using for your site). A table of contents is also helpful in some cases.
Simply create a list of links (similar to an outline format) that shows how the pages of your site are linked to from each upper tier page, and name these links using keyword-rich, but relevant, text links. Add a small paragraph about your organization, or about the subject matter of the page, at the top of the page. Keep the site map page simple, using no graphics (or very few if necessary, perhaps your organization's logo). Be sure to link to your site map or table of contents near the top of the homepage as it will be picked up by crawlers. And when submitting your site's pages to the major engines, be sure to submit the site map page as well as your home page.
Below is a list of best practices compiled by web managers should follow for managing their search engine:
- Choose a good search engine. Acceptable search engines include commercial search engines, search engines that operate as a web service (application service providers), search engines developed by organizations, the free search index available at no cost to federal agencies. For more information, see Choosing a Good Search Engine.
- Practice good usability. Apply the Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines about Search.
- Place a "search" box or a link to a "search" page on every page of your website. The search box or link should be entitled "Search". Usability studies demonstrate that search boxes are most effective when placed in the same position on all pages (usually within the upper third of a web page).
- Provide a long search box. Create your search box (entry field) at least 35 to 40 characters wide. This will allow users to self-detect more errors when they see what they have entered. - Provide readable search results. Results should be in an easy-to-read format that shows visitors the term they searched for and highlights the term in the title and description of each search result.
- Ensure comprehensive results. Ensure that your search engine, to the extent possible, can search all of your content that is available to the public. This includes providing access to searchable public databases. A new tool that is available to help you with this is sitemaps. You also will want to know how deeply, that is how many levels down from your entry pages, your search engine indexes content.
- Do not search restricted information. Ensure that sensitive, restricted, or classified information or information that contains personally identifiable information-such as social security numbers-is not included in any web-based file that could be retrieved using a government-owned or commercial search engine.
- Provide search help. Many people are unfamiliar or unskilled at using search technology, so provide help, hints, or tips, and include examples.
- Index content frequently. Index the content of your website at least once a month. Content that is added and updated frequently, such as press releases, should be indexed more frequently; however, content that changes infrequently, such as archived or historical documents, may be indexed less often. - Have a quick response time. Your search engine should produce results in less than three (3) seconds (on average). Monitor and log search response times to ensure that adequate hardware and software capacity is available to achieve this response time standard.
- Ensure relevant results. Routinely identify the common search terms used on your website, evaluate the relevancy of your search results for those terms, and configure your search services to provide the best ranking possible. You should conduct this review at least quarterly.
- Provide an advanced search function. Although usability research indicates that very few people use "advanced" search features, you should allow visitors to conduct more refined, focused searches to achieve more relevant results. For example, you may want to provide options for searching within certain sets of information, databases, or applications.
- Search engines prefer pages with at least 250 characters.
- Use the keywords a user will use to find your website or web pages, not the keywords you want your content to be found on. Use words on your page that resonate with your target audience and are descriptive of your site. For example, consider using the search term "car sales" rather than "vehicle auctions". Get inside the mind of the user.
- Map keywords and phrases to their implicit intent . How are the keywords related to how the visitor is trying to solve their problem? How do the keywords and phrases relate to what stage visitors are in their seeking process? What would the visitor consider a success based upon the keyword? Use these keywords to plan internal hyperlinks that provide the most relevant and persuasive content.
- On your home page, select phrases that describe the general theme of the site, but don't try to cover everything on your home page.
- For your site's internal pages, identify the most important subject of that page and pick words that are specific to that subject.
- Hint: Looking for a key phrase you want to target? Search for it in Google, MSN, and Yahoo! and see what results come up. If the results aren't relevant to your product or service, it's not a key phrase you want to target-no matter how many hits it gets!
How to Determine the Best Keywords
Look at Your Log Files. Log files can be a good way to determine what your audience is searching for and what keywords you should use to draw users to your content.
Log files:
* Capture the "exact phrase" that searchers entered.
* Give insight into the number of words searchers are using.
* Provide a rich source of keyword data.
Remember, log files only show the keywords that have brought users to our site. They don't show you the unsuccessful keywords that didn't bring users to your site.
Target Variations of Your Keywords. Be sure you target your content to address the following:
Evaluate Your Keywords. Keywords may have multiple meanings. "Accessibility" might mean "handicapped access" or "website monitoring." "Chips" may refer to the snack food or computer part.
Pay attention to keywords used alone or combined with another word. For example, "passport" by itself is likely a search for information; "passport" searched with a location is likely a search for services. Keep this in mind when choosing keywords for a page.
Where to Put Your Keywords
Major search engines emphasize text found in:
* TITLE tag
* Text in the H1 and H2 tag
* In paragraphs and general text on the site
* In STRONG tags: Keyword * In the file names of the web document: www.domain.com/keyword.html
* ALT description attributes on image tags: * Text placed in and around hypertext links
* TITLE attributes on anchor tags: * SUMMARY attributes on tables:
* Most commercial search engines don't use meta-tag content to determine relevancy, but meta-tag content can be very useful in your own site's search (enterprise search).
Google usually returns pages that use all of the words you search for. However, if some of the words in your search don't appear on the best pages we find, we'll also consider pages that don't include them. For example, when you search for recipe for a cheese souffle, we might return recipes that don't happen to include the words "for" or "a".
Very common words (often called "stopwords"), such as "the", "and", or "of", are usually dropped from searches because they typically don't convey much information compared to the other words in a search. We might also treat words as optional if they're redundant given the other words in your search. For example, in UV sun protective swimwear, requiring "UV" to appear might exclude high quality pages, so we may exclude "UV" in compiling your results.
Even when words are treated as optional, they're still taken into account in assessing how relevant a page is to your query. For example, Google shows different results for University of Pennsylvania than we do for University in Pennsylvania.
Generally, excluding common words allows us to return better search results. If one of these words is important to your search, you can precede it with a plus sign "+" to ensure that Google requires it to appear in every search result. So, for example, a search for +The Red Violin will return only results that include the word "the."
Alternate words
Google usually returns pages that use all of the words you included in your search. Sometimes, however, we'll consider other words as substitutes if we think that doing so will improve the results we show you. For example, if you search for dance marathons, Google's results might include pages that talk about a dance marathon. On the result pages, we'll highlight occurrences of both the original and alternate search terms that appear in titles and snippets.
There are several ways Google identifies alternate words:
* Stemming finds alternate forms of a word, such as singular or plural variations. * Synonyms can help someone searching for UC Berkeley law school find pages that mention Boalt law school. * Abbreviations expand search terms so that rc model airplanes might also find pages about radio control model airplanes. * Words might be combined or split so that we return pages about organic dog food when you enter organic dogfood. * Because it's often easier to type words without accents, a search for a coup d'etat might return pages that talk about a coup d'état..
Usually, the alternate words we add to your results will help your search, but we understand that in some cases you want to restrict your search to precisely the terms you enter. In that case, you can precede a word with a plus sign "+" to tell Google you're looking for that exact term. So, for example, if you search for dance +marathons, we'll only return pages that are talking about more than one.
Phrase searches
Sometimes you'll only want results that include an exact phrase. In this case, simply put quotation marks around your search terms.
"the long and winding road"
Phrase searches are particularly effective if you're searching for proper names ("George Washington"), lyrics ("the long and winding road"), or other famous phrases ("This was their finest hour").
Negative terms
If your search term has more than one meaning (bass, for example, could refer to fishing or music) you can focus your search by putting a minus sign ("-") in front of words related to the meaning you want to avoid.
For example, here's how you'd find pages about bass-heavy lakes, but not bass-heavy music:
"bass -music"
Note: when you include a negative term in your search, be sure to include a space before the minus sign.
Link development is essential to a successful SEO campaign. The main disadvantage is it takes time, whereas paid search advertising (in Google, Overture, Find What, etc.) results are nearly instantaneous.Link development's main advantage is dynamic, cumulative, and difficult to imitate. Many sites maintain search engine visibility and the resulting qualified traffic because of successful link development, not just based on the number of keywords on a page.
Some link development tactics we commonly use:
* Choose quality over quantity. Link quality carries more weight than quantity. Spend time getting the highest quality links pointing to your site. One of search engine spammers' biggest sales pitches is, "Get millions of links to your site." Don't fall for that arcane, useless pitch.
* Begin with Web directories. Yahoo Directory and Business.com are two reliable places for high-quality links. Both require annual submission fees. If their links don't positively affect your site's link development, don't renew.
* Harness online publicity. How-to tips, helpful articles, even useful press releases often garner links from other Web sites. Publicity is usually part of a company's overall marketing plan, so harnessing these resources for link development can be a simple task. * Use blogs and forums wisely. Blogs and forums can call attention to useful information on your own site.
* Use search engines to research link development. Look at competitors' sites to determine their link development strategy. It can help you with your own. What newspapers and media outlets do they use for online publicity? What Web directories link to their sites? No link popularity checker ("link:domain.com" in Google, "linkdomain:domain.com" in Yahoo) can substitute for doing the research yourself.
Redirection: Are you moving pages from one part of your site to another... or even to a different domain? Discover the cautious-yet-effective method of making the move, and the ways to ensure your users and search engines don't get lost in the shuffle.
Sitemaps: Learn about opportunities and limitations of sitemaps, an easy tool you can create to help search engines crawl your site more effectively. Find out what's truth vs. myth in how search engines find and index Web pages.
Search Engine Accessibility: Discover how to better help search engine bots and your users find, see, and understand what's on your site, and fine-tune how you facilitate your users' interactions and communications online.
Multimedia: Learn how to use Flash, video, and images on your site without totally baffling search engine bots and many of your users.
Descriptions and Annotations: Learn how title tags, meta descriptions, and image annotations can make a substantive difference in the quantity and quality of your site's traffic.
Site Security and Protection: There are some pages you do NOT want search engines indexing. Find out about different levels of protection, and also learn how to remove information that search engines have already indexed. Also, find out how to guard your site against unscrupulous Web e-mail spammers.
Site Clinics: We'll examine two or three government sites, highlighting best practices and also pitfalls to help you improve your own sites.
