(888) blog.milestoneinternet.com © Copyright 2009 Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc. SEO Deployment and Information Architecture Benu Aggarwal (408)

(888) blog.milestoneinternet.com © Copyright 2009 Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc. SEO Deployment and Information Architecture Agenda ** Rule of thumb: Every step needs to have its own checklist to follow Information Architecture of your site can be divided in three buckets Website Architecture Site Maps / Folder Structure (HTML, XML, Conceptual ) SEO friendly CMS Programming Best Practices Technical Architecture Duplicate Content Issues Domain Canonicalization 301 redirects, 404 issues Best Practices to avoid Duplicate Content Issue Page Architecture Onpage SEO elements Research, Content and Design QA and Tools (QA tools and checklist) Make SEO an integral part of all three processes

(888) blog.milestoneinternet.com © Copyright 2009 Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc. Tailoring your CMS to be SEO friendly Search Engine Friendly CMS  URL Structure  Rewrite Conditions - Apply Mod-rewrite rules so URL appears static and keyword rich to crawler. For Apache users modify your.htaccess file and for Microsoft IIIS users use ISAPI rewrite plug-in to manage your rewrites.  CMS gives user ability to change/create pages and URL’s on the fly. Dynamic URL’s changing frequently can create lot of broken 404 pages. These pages might be getting lot of traffic. CMS should dynamically 301 redirect ALL OLD URLs ITERATIONS to new urls to gain SEO benefit.  URL Structure - Session ID’s should not be used in URL. Use session ID in the body. Make sure to block entire folder in robots.  301 Redirect all uppercase url’s to lower case url ‘s to avoid duplicate content  Site Maps  Dynamic XML Site Map Generation and Submission  Automatic Update on Static Site Maps based on the addition of the page

(888) blog.milestoneinternet.com © Copyright 2009 Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc. Tailoring your CMS to be SEO friendly  On page Elements impacting your CMS to be SEO friendly  Giving user capability to edit all meta tags, image names, alts, anchor text, footer links  Set up an image naming convention and manage alts for images. Allow image alts and names to be controlled within CMS  Capability to control all headings in to H1, H2, H3 Tags.  Robots  Robots - Keep all staging and development files under robots no index. Provide link to all the sitemaps.xml from robot file Folder Structure Design website with friendly category folders Do not go deeper than 2 levels to maximize site indexing. Construct folder structure to follow your main categories. All the pages should be filed under each relevant category.

(888) blog.milestoneinternet.com © Copyright 2009 Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc. Tailoring your CMS to be SEO friendly Easy ability to edit Meta tags and images

(888) blog.milestoneinternet.com © Copyright 2009 Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc. Best SEO Programming Practices with CMS system 1. Making your codes Search Engine Friendly - Avoid use of tables, use CSS and div tags, externally reference all JavaScript files and CSS files to keep your codes clean 2. Float body content at the very top of the page right after body tag 3. For ASP.NET coders, move the view state ID at the very bottom of the page. 4. Typically, CMS systems have dynamically created dropdown pages. Use CSS menus to create dropdowns rather than Javascripts. Javascripts menu’s do not do well in search engines. 5. Use absolute links throughout. Do not load actual page content through Javascript or AJAX 6. If feeding content through flash, be sure to enable SIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) – This is a technology that allows you to replace text elements on screen with Flash equivalents. 7. Keep static sitemap page and xml in the root level similar to index page. Do not add more than 100 pages on one site map page. Consider created smaller site maps if you are working with huge site. 8. Handle error pages appropriately, serve 404 error page or redirect bad request to main category page 9. Test for XSS (Cross site scripting errors) and device level security to ensure your site is does not have any vulnerability (Mac) ?

(888) blog.milestoneinternet.com © Copyright 2009 Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc. Technical Architecture – Duplicate Content Most common reasons for Duplicate Content  Problem 1: Multiple Domains, Domain Canonicalization, Different URL for the same content  Problem 2: Pagination when Different Pages have Identical Titles and Meta Description or if you are Syndicating Content Through Data feed  Problem 3: Printer Friendly Sites, Test Sites, Session IDs, URL Rewriting Tools which you can use to detect Duplicate Content Issue Best Practices to avoid Duplicate Content Issue

(888) blog.milestoneinternet.com © Copyright 2009 Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc. Multiple Domains, Identical Homepage, Different URL for the Same Content Scenario 1: Are you facing Canonical URL problem? Having 2 versions of your site indexed. With/without Solution: Use Google webmaster to define primary URL. If you control your server than set up your IIS correctly to redirect non www version to www version. Create an htaccess file that prevents www canonicalization. Make sure your htaccess file prevents default page canonicalization Create a few simple rules that will remove duplicate URLs by 301 redirecting all variations to the shortest, most authoritative URL. Bottom-line: Be consistent: Endeavor to keep your internal linking consistent and don’t link to /page/ and /page and /page/index.htm. For Apache users modify your htaccess file and for Microsoft IIIS user use ISAPI rewrite plug-in to manage your rewrites

(888) blog.milestoneinternet.com © Copyright 2009 Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc. Problem 1: Multiple Domains, Identical Homepage Different URL for the Same Content Scenario 2: Do you have multiple entry point for the same content? Your customer can pick any data point to filter by, in any order and might land up on same content with different urls. Solution:  Always bring your customer to the same page no matter what path they take. Use proper mod-rewrite techniques. Make URL search Engine Friendly and keep one Target page. Home User action = Search Search Hotels Country - France City - Paris TARGET PAGE Country - France City - Paris Search Hotels Target page is same in either path Path1 Path 2

(888) blog.milestoneinternet.com © Copyright 2009 Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc. Problem 2: Paginating or Syndicating Content How to make your pages unique ?  Add unique content for meta, H1 tag, H2 tags.150 character descriptive snippet per product, alt tags for product images  Optimize and create unique KWP rich title tag Note: On any page a few additional words don't qualify as unique content. It may still be judged as duplicate content by the search engines. Scenario: Pagination - When different pages have identical titles and meta description or If you are freely syndicating content from large sites through feeds, and thousand other sites are also using same data feed for syndication. Solution - You need to enhance and expand the content on your site to make it unique. Write unique content for each page and become the original source of information for that subject. Do not use any data or RSS feeds to add "unique content". Always authenticate your content by using tools.

(888) blog.milestoneinternet.com © Copyright 2009 Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc. Problem 2: Duplicate Website Issues – Authenticate Content Provided by Different Sources Problem Authenticate ownership of content  Use tools to check content

(888) blog.milestoneinternet.com © Copyright 2009 Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc. Problem 3: Printer Friendly Sites, Test Sites, Boilerplate Repetition, Empty pages Minimize boilerplate repetition:  Avoid repeating same content information such as copy write, disclaimers on every page.  For instance, instead of including lengthy copyright text on the bottom of every page, include a very brief summary and then link to a page with more details. Avoid publishing stubs: Users don’t like seeing “empty” pages, so avoid placeholders when ever possible. Scenario: Printer Friendly Sites, Test Sites, Boilerplate Repetition and Empty pages Solution: Block Indexing of Printer Friendly Version of the Website or Test Sites by disallowing in robots.txt or meta tags or href. User-agent: * Disallow: /print/ Print

(888) blog.milestoneinternet.com © Copyright 2009 Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc. Best practices to avoid duplicate content problems  Disallow folders in robots.txt file that have same version of the site in different format for example print friendly sites, test sites.  Use preferred domain set up in IIS or webmaster tools. Work on your  Use 301 Redirects, IIS or webmaster tools if you have multiple domain situation  Avoid Domain Canonicalization: Always use the same links to link to any page on your site  Syndicate carefully – If you syndicate content to other websites, be sure to link back to original website on each feed  Authenticate your content. Use unique snippet content per page.  Avoid publishing stubs, boiler plate repetition – Do not repeat blocks of copyright information on every page. Do not show pages with empty data field.  Use TLD - Use top level domains to handle language specific content. Buy domain with country specific extensions - If you have German pages, use a.de domain for these pages.  Keep URL simple with out session id’s. Manage your URLs – do a mod-rewrite  Check if your site is facing any duplicate content penalty by using free tools.

(888) blog.milestoneinternet.com © Copyright 2009 Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc. Finally check if your site architecture is SEO friendly? Google Webmaster Tool     Live HTTP Headers add-on for Firefox to check if site is facing duplicate content issue.. http status code should be 200. Live HTTP Headers  SEO Book tools – Crawl Test tool and website health check tool  Check Redirects if they are search friendly  SEO Moz – Crawl Test Tools   Broken Links - Xenu's Link Sleuth and

(888) blog.milestoneinternet.com © Copyright 2009 Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc. Summary  SEO needs to be deployed in every stage - In Website Architecture, Page Architecture and Technical Architecture  Check and make sure your CMS is Search Engine Friendly  Your site should not be facing any duplicate content issue. Trouble shoot all the scenario’s..  Check and see if you are set up to succeed.. Check out few tools given.  Check duplicate content, crawl issues, site architecture issue, search engine friendly images and flash, download issues etc..

(888) blog.milestoneinternet.com © Copyright 2009 Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc. Wordpress – How to Deploy SEO?  Find a good theme & edit it carefully  Create a list of categories  Plugins are one of Word Press’s best features. SEO Title Tag, Ultimate Tag Warrior, Akismet (control Spam), Google sitemap generator, Related Post Plugin, SEO Slugs, Calendar PluginSEO Title Tag  Change the permalink options.  Avoid duplicate content issues by doing a Nofollow on archives  Provide easy way for users to subscribe to blog RSS  Use excerpts to describe what the post is about  Run most current version of wordpress  Always change default passwords

(888) blog.milestoneinternet.com © Copyright 2009 Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc. CSS Verses Tables Great for SEO Helps crawler get to content higher and easier Structural elements can be easily defined such as H1, H2, H3 Can handle dropdown menus very well with clean code and no javascript Accessibility Easy separation of content (HTML) from visual information (styles) Universal cross-browser style declarations Multi-medium support (web browsers, mobile screen readers, etc) - Ability to serve different style sheets to different mediums and devices Clean code and easy to maintain Print friendly CSS are real blessings

(888) blog.milestoneinternet.com © Copyright 2009 Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc. Thank You Benu Aggarwal President/Founder Milestone Internet Marketing (408) blog.milestoneinternet.com blog.milestoneinternet.com

(888) blog.milestoneinternet.com © Copyright 2009 Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc. Problem 4: URL Structure with Session ID and HTTP Status Codes What’s a URL (and where search engines get stuck)? Customize Permalink Structure: Use word press plug in, which can let you customize URL HTTP Status Codes  200 – Everything’s okay (make sure you don’t return this code on a “Page not Found”!)  404 – File not found  301 – File has been moved  302 – File is temporarily somewhere else  400 – Bad Request  401 – Unauthorized and 404 – Not Found Protocol Hostname Path Query Fragment