Difference between revisions of "Learn/Get-Ready-for-Search-Engines"

Latest revision as of 15:36, 9 October 2012

By [[User:|]] on

Understand the ins and outs of search engines

Let's face it - creating a website for your business is a lot easier than getting it to rank well in search results. And good rankings are what you need to get more visitors to your site.

To get your site into search results, you need to make sure that search engines can "see" your site, and that they regard it as ready for human visitors. Search engines are eager to discover and index new - and newly expanded or redesigned - websites, but there's a caveat: sometimes new web pages are ready and useful, and sometimes they're still under construction or in transition. Web pages that aren't quite done yet wouldn't be helpful to people who find them in search results, so search engines try to avoid including them.
Below you'll find a list of mistakes that can indicate to search engines that your site isn't ready (even if YOU think it is!), and that are, unfortunately, easy to make. We'll show you how to avoid or fix these problems so you don't hurt your rankings in search results.

1. Slow load time for your web pages

Matt Cutts, head of the webspam team at Google, announced in 2010 that page load time - also called site speed - was now one of the factors affecting a site's ranking in Google's search results.

Luckily there's a great Firefox plug-in called YSlow that can help you identify and fix problems with your page load times. For more tools and ways to improve your site's page load time, read 6 Easy Ways to Improve Your Site Speed.

2. Sitemap problems

“	"We have a quality threshold on our sitemaps. When you build a site map for us, we want it to be clean. When you put a URL into our site map, what I don't want to see in there is any URL that's a 404, 302, 301, anything at all. I want the end state URL only."	”
—March 2011 interview with Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz and Duane Forrestor from Bing

It's very common for webmasters to create a sitemap, submit it, and then forget about it. Months later, pages have been renamed, deleted, new pages have been added - and your sitemap no longer accurately reflects what's on your website.

Don't include in your sitemap:

Any pages that return a 404 error
A page that immediately redirects to another page via a 301 redirect
Pages that search engines can find when they crawl your site, but that aren't included in your sitemap

If a search engine sees many pages with the characteristics listed above, it makes your sitemap appear to be out of date, and perhaps not trustworthy. Use a tool like Xenu Link Sleuth to crawl your site and generate your XML sitemap file for you.

3. Broken links on your site

Use Xenu Link Sleuth to crawl your website the same way search engine robots do. It will report any broken internal links - that is, links between pages of your site that don't work. Broken links tell search engines your site isn't well maintained, and isn't of good quality. Furthermore, search engines discover web pages by following links from other web pages. If search engine robots find too many broken links on your site, they'll just stop crawling it and go somewhere else.

Remember, you might not even see some of the 404 errors on your website. For example, a missing image file will generate a 404 error, and you may not even realize it. Xenu will catch these errors for you, so you can do something about them.

4. Broken pages that return a 500 error

It's the website equivalent to a Windows application crashing, and it's definitely a bad experience for a human visitor. A 500 error also sends a negative signal to the search engines.

5. Not canonicalizing your subdomains

Make sure that your website can be reached whether or not people type "www." before your domain name. I've seen a number of sites that return nothing at all for the non-www version. People should get the exact same website whether they type www or not. Additionally, you should choose which is your preferred version - called the canonical URL for your site - and use a 301 redirect from the non-canonical to the canonical version. For more information, read Multiple Subdomains: Classic SEO Mistake.

6. The anti-social website

With the sharp increase in social network activity, search engines now look to links and mentions in social networks to help them decide which web pages are important to people. Social signals are now an important part of search engines' ranking algorithms. This means you really need to make sure people share your site on Facebook and tweet about it in Twitter. If no one at all is mentioning your site in either of those places, you're not getting the visibility boost that others - perhaps your competitors - are getting.

7. The site coma

Has anything changed on your website over the past three months? Six months? The past year? The search engines are well aware of whether you've got new pages or updated content - or not. Just watch what happens to your crawl frequency in Google Webmaster Tools if you don't stir things up now and then!

A simple solution to this problem - and to No. 6 as well - is to add a blog to your site, and then publish snippets from your blog on your company Facebook page. You can use the Facebook app RSS Graffiti to automatically publish blog snippets.

Think it might be too hard to generate fresh blog content on a regular basis? Think again. It's not necessary for YOU to have news, new products, or new services to talk about. You can just blog about industry news items you discover, writing a couple of sentences of synopsis and linking out to articles that cover the news in more depth. Not only will you be generating new content, you'll probably make some new friends around the Web who will appreciate your links. They may even take the time to find something interesting on your site and link to it.

8. Not paying attention

You can find great webmaster tools at both Google and Bing that will help you understand what these search engines "see" in your website, and how to improve your site and its ranking in search results. I've solved many problems for clients and gotten them back in the search results very quickly simply by resubmitting their sitemaps via Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Bing Webmaster Tools after fixing their site problems.

@@ Line 2: / Line 2: @@
 | Writer = Michael_R_Cottam
 | Name = Michael Cottam
-| Header = Don't%20Block%Search%20Engine%20Crawlers
+| Header = Get%20Ready%for%20Search%20Engines
 | Subhead = Subhead
-| Bitly = http://bit.ly/NotSure
+| Bitly = http://bit.ly/SEOReady
-| Date = April __, 2011
+| Date = April 26, 2011
 }}
+==Understand the ins and outs of search engines==
+----
+<big>Let's face it - creating a website for your business is a lot easier than getting it to rank well in search results. And good rankings are what you need to get more visitors to your site.</big>
-The internet is [http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/ growing] at an astonishing rate -- both in terms of the number of websites, and the number of new pages on existing sites.  Many websites undergo redesigns, too.
+{{SiteReportMedRecAd}}To get your site into search results, you need to make sure that search engines can "see" your site, and that they regard it as ready for human visitors. Search engines are eager to discover and [[Learn/Get-Your-Website-Indexed|index]] new - and newly expanded or redesigned - websites, but there's a caveat: sometimes new web pages are ready and useful, and sometimes they're still under construction or in transition. Web pages that aren't quite done yet wouldn't be helpful to people who find them in search results, so search engines try to avoid including them.
+<br />
+Below you'll find a list of mistakes that can indicate to search engines that your site isn't ready (even if YOU think it is!), and that are, unfortunately, easy to make.  We'll show you how to avoid or fix these problems so you don't hurt your rankings in search results.
-The search engines are eager to discover and [[Learn/Get-Your-Website-Indexed|index]] these new and newly-redesigned websites, but there's a caveat: sometimes new pages are hot news, and sometimes they're still under construction or in transition.  These "not quite done yet" sites  wouldn't be helpful in search results, so search engines want to avoid including them.
+'''1. Slow load time for your web pages'''
+: Matt Cutts, head of the webspam team at Google,  [http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/site-speed/ announced] in 2010 that page load time - also called site speed - was now one of the factors affecting a site's ranking in Google's search results.
-<big>What we're going to show you today is a list of mistakes you can easily make on your website that can indicate to search engines that your site isn't ready.  We'll show you how to avoid or fix these problems so you don't hurt your rankings across the board.</big>
+: Luckily there's a great Firefox plug-in called [http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/ YSlow] that can help you identify and fix problems with your page load times. For more tools and ways to improve your site's page load time, read [[Learn/6-Easy-Ways-to-Improve-Your-Site-Speed-for-SEO|6 Easy Ways to Improve Your Site Speed]].
-'''#1 Slow load time for your web pages.'''
+'''2. Sitemap problems'''{{PullQuote|right|"We have a quality threshold on our sitemaps. When you build a site map for us, we want it to be clean. When you put a URL into our site map, what I don't want to see in there is any URL that's a 404, 302, 301, anything at all. I want the end state URL only."|March 2011 interview with Rand Fishkin of [[SEOmoz.com|SEOmoz]] and Duane Forrestor from [[Bing.com|Bing]]}}
-:Roughly a year ago, Matt Cutts from Google [http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/site-speed/ announced] that page load times (or site speed) were now one of the factors affecting ranking.
+: It's very common for webmasters to create a sitemap, submit it, and then forget about it.  Months later, pages have been renamed, deleted, new pages have been added - and your sitemap no longer accurately reflects what's on your website.
-:Luckily there's a great Firefox plug-in called [http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/ YSlow] that can help you identify and fix problems with your page load times. For more tools and ways to improve your page's load time, read [[Learn/6-Easy-Ways-to-Improve-Your-Site-Speed-for-SEO|6 Easy Ways to Improve Your Site Speed]].
-'''#2 Sitemap problems:'''
+: Don't include in your [[Glossary/Sitemap|sitemap]]:
-{{PullQuote|right|"We have a quality threshold on our sitemaps. When you build a site map for us, we want it to be clean. When you put a URL into our site map, what I don't want to see in there is any URL that's a 404, 302, 301, anything at all. I want the end state URL only."|March 2011 interview with Rand Fishkin of [[SEOmoz.com|SEOmoz]] and Duane Forrestor from [[Bing.com|Bing]]}}
+:* Any pages that return a [[Glossary/404-error|404 error]]
-:Don't include pages in your [[Glossary/Sitemap|sitemap]] that:
+:* A page that immediately redirects to another page via a [[Glossary/301-redirect|301 redirect]]
-:* Return [[Glossary/404-error|404s]]
+:* Pages that search engines can find when they crawl your site, but that aren't included in your sitemap
-:* Get redirected via [[Glossary/301-redirect|301]] when they're requested
-:* Search engines can find when they crawl your site, but aren't in your sitemap
+: If a search engine sees many pages with the characteristics listed above, it makes your sitemap appear to be out of date, and perhaps not trustworthy. Use a tool like [http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html Xenu Link Sleuth] to crawl your site and generate your [[Learn/Creating-an-XML-Sitemap|XML sitemap file]] for you.
-:If there's a lot of these, it makes it appear that your sitemap is out of date and perhaps not trustworthy. Use a tool like [http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html Xenu Link Sleuth] to crawl your site and generate your [[Learn/Creating-an-XML-Sitemap|sitemap XML file]] for you.
-'''#3 Broken links on your site.'''
+'''3. Broken links on your site'''
-:Again, use Xenu Link sleuth to crawl your website like the bots do, and it'll report any broken internal links.  And remember, you might not even see some of your 404's--for instance, if a javascript include file '''''(huh?)''''' is no longer used and no longer exists, your page might run fine, BUT the crawler will try to fetch that file and get a 404.  Same is true for images--a missing image file will generate a 404.  Xenu will catch these.
+: Use [http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html Xenu Link Sleuth] to crawl your website the same way search engine robots do. It will report any broken internal links - that is, links between pages of your site that don't work. Broken links tell search engines your site isn't well maintained, and isn't of good quality. Furthermore, search engines discover web pages by following links from other web pages. If search engine robots find too many broken links on your site, they'll just stop crawling it and go somewhere else.
-'''#4 Broken pages, i.e. pages that return an HTTP 500 error.'''
+:Remember, you might not even see some of the [[Glossary/404-error|404 errors]] on your website. For example, a missing image file will generate a 404 error, and you may not even realize it.  Xenu will catch these errors for you, so you can do something about them.
+'''4. Broken pages that return a [[Glossary/500-error|500 error]]'''
 :It's the website equivalent to a Windows application crashing, and it's definitely a bad experience for a human visitor. A 500 error also sends a negative signal to the search engines.
-'''#5 Not canonicalizing your subdomains.'''
+'''5. Not canonicalizing your subdomains'''
-:Make sure that your domain can be accessed both [[Learn/Don't-Lose-People-Who-Don't-Type-WWW|with and without a leading "www."]].  I've seen a number of sites lately that return nothing at all for non-www version.  Users should be able to type your domain name with or without the www, and be served the exact same content.  Additionally, you should choose which of those subdomains (i.e. with or without the www) is your preferred version, and 301 redirect the other.  For more information, read [[Learn/Multiple_Subdomains:_Classic_SEO_Mistake|Multiple Subdomains: Classic SEO Mistake]].
+:Make sure that your website can be reached [[Learn/Don't-Lose-People-Who-Don't-Type-WWW|whether or not people type "www."]] before your domain name.  I've seen a number of sites that return nothing at all for the non-www version. People should get the exact same website whether they type www or not.  Additionally, you should choose which is your preferred version - called the [[Glossary/Canonical-URL|canonical URL]] for your site - and use a [[Glossary/301-redirect|301 redirect]] from the non-canonical to the canonical version.  For more information, read [[Learn/Multiple_Subdomains:_Classic_SEO_Mistake|Multiple Subdomains: Classic SEO Mistake]].
-'''#6 The anti-social website:'''
+'''6. The anti-social website'''
-:In today's world, the search engines look to social signals as part of their ranking algorithms.  This means getting your site shared on Facebook and tweeted about in Twitter.  If no one at all is mentioning you in either of those places, it looks like your site is no longer relevant.
+:With the sharp increase in social network activity, search engines now look to links and mentions in social networks to help them decide which web pages are important to people. Social signals are now an important part of search engines' ranking algorithms. This means you really need to make sure people share your site on Facebook and tweet about it in Twitter. If no one at all is mentioning your site in either of those places, you're not getting the visibility boost that others - perhaps your competitors - are getting.
-'''#7 The Site Coma:'''
+'''7. The site coma'''
-:Has anything changed on your website in the past 3 months?  6 months?  The past year?  The search engines are well aware of whether or not you've got new pages or updated content.  Just watch your crawl rates in [http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ Google Webmaster Tools] if you don't stir things up for a while!
+:Has anything changed on your website over the past three months?  Six months?  The past year?  The search engines are well aware of whether you've got new pages or updated content - or not.  Just watch what happens to your crawl frequency in [http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ Google Webmaster Tools] if you don't stir things up now and then!
-:A simple solution to this problem and #6 is to [[Learn/Business-Blog-101|add a blog]] to your site, and then auto-publish snippets from your blog onto your [[Learn/Getting-Started-With-Facebook-For-Your-Business|company Facebook page]] using the Facebook app RSS Graffiti '''(link?)'''.  And for blog content, it's not even necessary for YOU to have news, new products, or new services to talk about--just blog about industry-related news items you discover, writing a couple of sentences of synopsis and linking out to articles covering the news in more depth.
+:A simple solution to this problem - and to No. 6 as well - is to [[Learn/Business-Blog-101|add a blog]] to your site, and then publish snippets from your blog on your [[Learn/Getting-Started-With-Facebook-For-Your-Business|company Facebook page]]. You can use [http://apps.facebook.com/rssgraffiti/ the Facebook app RSS Graffiti] to automatically publish blog snippets.
-'''#8 Not paying attention:'''
-:Google and Bing have great webmaster tools available for helping you understand what they're seeing in your website in terms of links and content issues.  They have some great information that can help you improve your site and rankings.  I've solved many problems for clients and gotten them back in the search results very quickly simply by resubmitting their sitemaps via [http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ Google Webmaster Tools] and [http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters/ Bing Bing Webmaster Tools] after fixing the problems.
+:Think it might be too hard to generate fresh blog content on a regular basis? Think again. It's not necessary for YOU to have news, new products, or new services to talk about. You can just blog about industry news items you discover, writing a couple of sentences of synopsis and linking out to articles that cover the news in more depth. Not only will you be generating new content, you'll probably make some new friends around the Web who will appreciate your links. They may even take the time to find something interesting on your site and link to it.
+'''8. Not paying attention'''
+:You can find great webmaster tools at both [http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ Google] and [http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters/ Bing] that will help you understand what these search engines "see" in your website, and how to improve your site and its ranking in search results. I've solved many problems for clients and gotten them back in the search results very quickly simply by resubmitting their sitemaps via [http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ Google Webmaster Tools] and [http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters/ Bing Bing Webmaster Tools] after fixing their site problems.
 {{LearnBottomBio
 | Writer = Michael_R_Cottam
@@ Line 50: / Line 58: @@
 | Image = Image:MichaelCottam.jpg
 | AuthorWebsite = MichaelCottam.com
-| ShortBio = Michael is an independent SEO consultant in Portland, Oregon, and an associate at [[SEOmoz.com|SEOmoz]] in Seattle, Washington.  Michael co-founded TheBigDay honeymoon travel and registry company in 2001, and was responsible for the website and SEO for that company. He's on the board of [[SEMpdx.org|SEMpdx]] and manages sponsorships for SEMpdx events, including the annual  [[SearchFest.org| SearchFest conference]].
+| ShortBio = Michael is an independent SEO consultant in Portland, Oregon, and an associate at [[SEOmoz.com|SEOmoz]] in Seattle, Washington.  He recently created the lead-generation website [[VisualItineraries.com|Visual Itineraries]] for travel agents, and co-founded TheBigDay honeymoon travel and registry company in 2001, and was responsible for the website and SEO for that company. He's on the board of [[SEMpdx.org|SEMpdx]] and manages sponsorships for SEMpdx events, including the annual  [[SearchFest.org| SearchFest conference]].
 }}