Friday, August 30, 2013

Elements of an Optimized Page


Uniquely Valuable
Ø Page  provides authentic, obvious value beyond self-promotion of the host site/author
Ø Content quality stands apart from the crowd by a significant margin
Ø Text, images, & multimedia are remarkable
Ø Page would be described by 80%+ of visitors as useful, high quality, & unique
Ø Searchers who visit would be unlikely to go "back" from the page to choose a different result

Provides Phenomenal UX
o   Content and navigation elements are easily consumed/ understood by users
o   Design is aesthetically polished, high quality, and fit authentically with the brand
o   Page layout makes scanning easy & important content elements obvious
o   Page renders fast (<0.5 secs to first response; <4 secs to primary content loaded)
o   A minimal number of browser requests are required to fully load the page
o   Page is browser & device responsive (or specifically optimized to each as appropriate)

Keyword-Targeted
§  Page targets a single searcher intent(and associated keyword phrases)
§  Primary Keyword phrase is the first words of the title element
§  Primary keyword phrase appears in page URL
§  Content is logical & comprehensive, employing related terms/phrases
§  Keyword phrases are highlighted with bold/italic/sizing/etc as appropriate
§  Primary keywords are used prominently in the page headline
§  Primary keyword is found in the body content 2X+
§  Secondary keywords appear in headline(s)/title/body as appropriate
§  Images on the page employ descriptive, keyword-rich alt attributes
§  Descriptive anchor text is used in links pointing to the page


Built to be Shared through Social Networks
v URL is descriptive and makes the page's topic obvious
v Includes sharing options to the optimal social networks for the page's audience
v Page has inherent sharing value (i.e. those who share it will be praised by their audiences, and additional amplification is likely)
v As appropriate, employ tags for Facebook Open Graph, Twitter Cards, etc

Multi-Device Ready
·        Renders in every (popular) browser properly
·        Optimized to render legibly & elegantly on every screen size
·        Employs the same URL when requested/loaded on every device

Authorship, Meta Data, Schema & Rich Snippets
ü Page content is associated with the author/publisher in the markup via Google+ rel="author" or rel="publisher" attribution
ü As appropriate to the content/topic/vertical, page includes schema.org micro data markup options
ü As appropriate to the content/topic/vertical, page includes Google's rich snippets markup options
ü Employs primary & secondary keywords in the meta description
ü Meta description inspires interest & click-through from SERPs/social
ü Generally avoids meta keywords (unless used for internal search)
ü As appropriate to country/language, page employs hreflang

Crawler/Bot Accessible
Ø URL is static (contains no dynamic parameters)
Ø Content is unique to this URL (all duplicates canonicalize to it)
Ø Content loads in page's HTML (not via post-load JS/AJAX/iFrames/etc)
Ø No more than 4 clicks are required from any page on the site to reach the URL
Ø Redirects from other/older versions use 301s or rel=canonical (not 302s)
Ø Redirects from other/older versions come direct (no redirect chains)
Ø If the page is temporarily unviable, status code 503 is returned by the server
Ø As appropriate, page is include din an RSS feed; RSS URL is canonicalized/ redirects to original
Ø Meta robots tag allows crawling & indexing
Ø Robots.txt file does not block crawler access
Ø Host server does not restrict search crawler IPs
Ø Key page elements are character length limited:
o   Title <75 characters
o   URL <90 characters
o   Meta Description <160 characters

Ø URL is included in site's XML Sitemaps file


Wednesday, August 7, 2013

URLs with or without www

URLs with or without www

Introduction

When you write a URL for your website, it can be written with or without "www," like this:
  • http://www.iibsonline.com
  • http://iibsonline.com
Should you include "www" with your URL?

The same and not the same

With most websites, the URLs with and without "www" in them will point to the same site. However, you can specify each URL (with and without "www") to point to a different IP address by modifying your DNS A record.

Choose www or no www

Some search engines see the above two URLs as two different URLs. Each URL can have a different PageRank, and by using both, you're diluting the PR for each URL.

For PR and SEO purposes, it's preferable to choose one version or the other to use. There are reasons for each choice. Which one you choose depends mostly on personal preference.

Reasons to include www

  • It helps identify a URL as a web address, especially if the domain extension is other than a .com one.
  • Many people will type it in anyway.
  • For some people, URLs look more visually appealing with them.

Reasons not to include www

It makes the URL longer, especially if the URL is for a subdomain.
It's unnecessary.
For some people, URLs look cleaner without them.

How to redirect from one to the other using .htaccess

If your site is on an Apache server, you can choose to have only the version with or without "www" appear. One will direct to the other.

Add one of the following to your .htaccess file after replacing "example.com" with your domain. The "RewriteEngine on" first line activates mod_rewrite.

To redirect to the URL with www

RewriteEngine On

rewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com [NC]

rewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

To redirect to the URL without www

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}  ^www.(.+)$ [NC]

RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://%1/$1 [L,R=301]