SEO GUIDELINE Here I have mentioned some SEO guideline which helps us to promote website and increase the online sales and these guidelines belongs to Programming as well as Designing Team. Follow these guidelines whenever we start working on new project. Website Title & Meta Tag: As per the search engine point of view, all website should have unique title and description for each and every page. We can add title and description for each page independently. SEO Friendly URL: All internal URLs should contain keyword itself, it is also push up the keyword in search engine and help to archive good ranking. Visitors can clearly communicate through the URL on which they are going to land. For example: one page of acemerchantprocessing.com which belongs to credit card processing service and URL is www.acemerchantprocessing.com/ccprocessing.html It should be like www.acemerchantprocessing.com/credit-card-processing.html For dynamic URL we have to do URL rewriting and make all URL SEO friendly. Avoid Dynamic Content: Dynamically generated page URL's are much harder for some search engines to index. When choosing a database driven Online Shop or Content Management System (CMS) try to pick one which creates static HTML pages like content.htm, content.html, content.asp, content.php or similar, rather than dynamic URLs like the one below: http://mysite.com/?product=21 Incidentally, if your online shop creates dynamic pages, it is still possible to use Mod re-write on an Apache web server to convert these pages to search engine friendly URL's. Navigation: Correct employment of primary navigation, it can be one of the most powerful way to orientate users on our website. Primary Navigation: It should be very simple to navigate the visitors around the website. Primary navigation should not be creating using java script because search engine cannot crawl. The use of JavaScript navigation systems can cause problems by preventing search engine spiders from fully indexing (crawling) the content of your website. Secondary Navigation: It is should be always on left side of the webpage, it should contain all product or service related pages, not any other page.
CONFIDENTIAL
November 11, 2009
Footer Navigation: It is very require because visitors can easily land the particular page what they actually want rather than other pages. User your footer links to help search engines navigate through your site, replicating your main navigation and linking to the most important pages on your site. Use Breadcrumb Navigation: Consider using breadcrumbs as a secondary navigation aid. It makes it easier for users to move around your site. Be sure the text on your breadcrumb links describes accurately the content of the corresponding page. Avoid Frames: Frames create website accessibility and usability problems. Because of frames it’s hard to archive high search engine ranking, compared to a non Frames web site design, even with proper use of the <NOFRAMES> tag for alternative content. Consistency & Alignment: Make a website with consistent and proper alignment. Use same font type and size for all website content (except title/heading). Use same and proper alignment in whole website that will create visitor’s stability and interest to stay around the website. Loading Times: A Fast loading website is the first step to a successful online presence. Website average loading should be 4k per second on 56 modem. To improve your load time:
Use fewer and faster redirects. Don't use interstitial pages. Compress the size of your page. Avoid Nested Tables Remove Excess "Whitespace" Reduce Image File Size
Sitemaps: Create html sitemap for website which will contain all the URLs of website, and use keyword in sitemap rather than URL name. Alt & Image Tag: All pages of the website should have unique alt tag and image name so try to make a website that we can add alt and image tag individually. All image names should have a meaningful name as per that page relevancy. Many times we are using image name such as 001.jpg, table.jpg etc, don’t do like this, give proper name for image which related to that particular webpage. For example, any software development webpage, the image name should be softwaredeveloment.jpg or software-solution.jpg etc.
CONFIDENTIAL
November 11, 2009
Redirection: Avoid a Google penalty by using a 301 re-direct if you intend redirecting visitors to another web site domain. Never use automated Meta Refresh redirects or JavaScript to redirect traffic as Google may incorrectly determine that you are using doorway pages and ban your domain. W3C Validation: Website must be W3C validate because if website has completed W3C validation it means website is totally error free, and search engine will give more priority for crawling, page rank as well as ranking. Browser Capability: You need to test website among the different web browsers because visitors may use any browser. Websites that are designed using basic HTML may not be as elaborate as those created using more advanced languages, but at least they load and display properly. Check for Broken Links and Images: If webpage has links pointing to content that doesn’t exist, it will probably never be found. It’s also a fact that search engines penalize sites with many broken links. Limit Your Use of Images: Use text rather than image if possible. Overloading a web page with images may slow down the loading time and can cause problems with the page displaying correctly in certain browsers, and when it comes to website promotion, content matter is more than images. Conversation Page: Normally inquiry form of website is called conversation page. It should contain only require filed such as name, email, country, description etc, don’t include more filed because generally people are not interested to fill up big inquiry form so try to make simple and short. Every internal page of website should contain inquiry form. Conversion Optimization: Call to action part should visible easily from any fold of page. Almost all internal pages containing a “form” to submit inquiries which is available in “last / second last” fold of pages.
CONFIDENTIAL
November 11, 2009