SEO Definitions Domain Redirection - Web pages may have multiple URLs (as a result of using session IDs or for other reasons). If exactly the same content is available through different URLs, Google will consider it as duplicate content and penalize such websites. Domain redirection involves setting your preferred domain and informing Google about it, so the website is not penalized for duplicate content. Robots.txt - A Robots.txt file excludes search engines from crawling pages that you do not want them to. For instance, if you have a print version of a page, you may want to exclude it from crawling to avoid being penalized for duplicate content. Or you may want to save bandwidth by excluding imageheavy pages from search engine spiders. Sitemap.xml - Google recommends creating a Sitemap.xml based on the Sitemap protocol. Sitemap.xml helps make sure that search engines know about all the pages on the website, including URLs that may not be discovered by the normal crawling process. The same sitemap file can be submitted to the other search engines, such as Bing and Yahoo! Sitemap.html - Using sitemaps has many benefits such as easier navigation and better visibility on search engines. Sitemaps offer the opportunity to inform search engines immediately about any changes on your website. Of course, you cannot expect that search engines will rush right away to index your changed pages but certainly the changes will be indexed faster, compared to when you don't have a sitemap. Title Tag Compliance - A title tag is the main text that describes an online document and is displayed on the top left of the window. It is the most important on-page SEO element. Each page should have a unique keyword optimized title tag ranging between 10 and 100 characters.
SEO Definitions Location in Title - Including the city in the Title Tag is very helpful for keyword ranking and getting discovered via local searches. Unique Title - A title tag is the main text that describes an online document and is displayed on the top left of the window. It is the most important onpage SEO element. Duplicate page titles confuse users when they all are displayed in search engine result pages. Google recommends that each page of a website should have a unique Title. Meta Description Compliance - Meta description is the information that is displayed as a snippet on search engine result pages. It should range between 70-200 characters. Description tags are extremely important in gaining user click-through from search engine result pages. Headings Included - Headings are important for organizing and structuring the content on a web page. Image Optimization - Large images increase the page-load time. Apart from that, sometimes search engines cannot read images, so it is helpful to provide alternative text called "alt-tags." Images must be optimized for size and alt-tags. Frames Excluded - Frames are used to make the job of the web designer easy. However, search engines find it hard to crawl and index websites that include frames. The website risks not getting indexed if it has frames. Flash Excluded - It is not a good idea to include Flash on the website. Flash is not always helpful, as not all browsers have Flash players. Flash also increases page-load time. Flash might be attractive for the user interface but is not SEO-friendly.
SEO Definitions Text Content - Search engines need at least 200 words of text content on each page to properly index and rank that page, and more than 800 words can indicate a lack of topical focus. Backlinks - Backlinks are incoming links to the website. They enhance page ranking, so it helps to keep track of the number of backlinks. Domain Age - The age of a website increases its rankability. The older the domain name and its active presence on the search engines, the better it is. Rich Snippets - Rich snippets include additional information like reviews and ratings. These help boost the organic search result exposure of a website, thus making the website rank higher in a given category. SEF URL - "A site's URL structure should be as simple as possible. Consider organizing your content so that URLs are constructed logically and in a manner that is most intelligible to humans (when possible, readable words rather than long ID numbers). For example, if you're searching for information about aviation, a URL like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation will help you decide whether to click that link. A URL like http://www.example.com/index.php?id_sezione=360&sid=3a5ebc944f41d aa6f849f730f1, is much less appealing to users. Consider using punctuation in your URLs. The URL http://www.example.com/green-dress.html is much more useful to us than http://www.example.com/greendress.html. We recommend that you use hyphens (-) instead of underscores (_) in your URLs. Overly complex URLs, especially those containing multiple parameters, can cause problems for crawlers by creating unnecessarily high numbers of URLs that point to identical or similar content on your website. As a result, Googlebot may consume much more bandwidth than necessary, or may be unable to completely index all the content on your website."
Infrastructure Robustness Page Speed Score - This is Google Page Speed score. Internet users are impatient and hate to wait. A low speed can annoy and chase away visitors. A score of 85 and above is good and that between 70 and 85 is okay. If the score is below 70, then there is a need to identify the causes and take corrective action. There could be several reasons. The merchant may even need to think about migrating to better platforms for a faster performing website, instead of staying with the obsolete platform that is making it slow. Caching Enabled - Shows whether the site is cache-enabled or not. Cacheenabled websites respond faster. If caching is enabled, on a second visit, the user's browser will retrieve previously downloaded resources from the user's local disk rather than from the network. This contributes to enhancing user experience, by cutting down the time taken for responding to requests. Image Size Optimization - Images must be optimized for page speed. Properly formatted and compressed images can save many bytes of data and improve the website construction. File Compression - Compressing files can reduce the number of bytes sent over the network, thus saving precious bandwidth for both the merchant's website and the end user.
No Page Redirects - Multiple URLs should be avoided, because redirecting to the preferred URL adds to delay in loading the page. Prioritize Visible Content - If there is a lot of content, additional network round trips are required to render the above the fold content. Content should therefore be optimized to improve the website performance. Above-the-fold refers to the content on a web page that can be viewed without any vertical scrolling.
Infrastructure Robustness Server Response Time - Measures the time taken to load the page from your server. Google recommends that the server response time should be under 0.2 seconds. There are several technical factors that slow down the server response time. Sensitive Information Security - In order to carry out online transactions or get any sensitive information from users, a website should have the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) technology. SSL can then be enabled for specific web pages to allow sensitive information such as credit card numbers, social security numbers and login credentials to be transmitted securely. Online security can be identified with the lock icon or the green address bar. SSL-secured websites begin with https rather than http. Google Analytics -The Google Analytics Platform lets you measure user interactions with your business across various devices and environments. Gain new insights and optimize the performance of your business.