Internal Navigation Structure – Site Architecture

Your website’s internal navigation structure can be thought as your website’s skeletal structure. Depending on the level or stage of life your website is at, your website architecture will typically follow most of these navigational rules.

Strategy & Technical SEO Points for Beginning a New or Current Website

A website’s home page amended by the webpage, creates your full webpage’s URL address. This address is the unique identifier in how a page is rendered. In addition, a search bot will view this URL as a unique page. It’s highly important you plan your URL formatting before launching your website.

URLs

• Ensure all URLs consist of lowercase

• Ensure there is no possible way through IIS re-write rules your URL can resolve with the same content from adding extra characters in the location where variables are written into the URL.

• Develop your site’s structure with a relative path vs. an absolute path. For a search crawler, finding http://www.website.com and http://website.com is not efficient and could cause issues in correctly assigning a valid search weight to the intended webpage. Also, create a 301 redirect for all non-www request to point to the WWW version of the site.

• Do not build your URLs by conjoining variables on a template page on a page by page basis. Store complete URLs in a database to reference your navigation. You want to ensure your URLs never change. You may also build a behind the scenes 301 redirect rule in the event you need to change a URL. However, it’s best never to change a URL.

Navigation

Navigation for your website starts with understanding the purpose of the website and key points of business. Websites overtime will become larger and require more attention as they progress. However, let’s not bite more than we can chew. Let’s say you want to start a small business for selling your services.

First, you need to identify all the points of the services you are selling. Write them out in a word document. This information can be broad or specific. Next, start organizing all of your selling points listing anything specific under your broad points. The information you have identified will be the most prominent part of your website navigation. Depending how much information you organized, you need enough categories to fill the header navigation of your site. CSS drop-down menus are often the best approach when your content becomes popular.

It’s typically best to start small in your navigation if no one has heard of your company, you want to course them to what you want them to read.

Parameters and Facets

Parameters and facets are typically a killer in wasting a search bots resources and creating duplicate content in their index. The best rule of thumb is to design your website by utilizing the <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"> when a facet or parameter exists.

Now, this does not mean you should use this tag for every page or dynamic section. You need to identify your complete list of facets and parameters and understand what they are doing. Are they sorting, filtering, tracking variable, etc… In addition, a facet or parameter can create qualified content if the page is optimized correctly. Therefore, you would want this page indexed.

You can manage your parameter setting in Google’s webmaster tools. You can also search Google to validate no pages are in the index by using the following format:

Site:yourcompany.com/ “?facetname=”

Search crawlers and indexing

Google search bot (crawler) will index your site from finding any link on your webpage to another webpage. It is highly important all pages are linkable from beginning with your homepage to the deepest directory level of your website. You do not want to create situations where Google thinks you have doorway pages. A doorway page is perceived as a page for the sole purpose of generating traffic and is not part of your internal navigation structure.

If you have a catalog of products, you want to make sure your sections don’t overwhelm a crawler too many times in locating the same pages over and over again. Your website is set with a specific crawl setting that involves the frequency of visits and the amount of time a crawler will spend in each session of your website. Using <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"> rules correctly can efficiently raise the number of pages Google will set in their index.

As a tip, you should actively check for 404 and server errors in Google webmaster tools to identify any potential issues.

Finally, session ids are another killer of wasting Google’s resources and creating a vast amount of duplicate content. You never want to develop your website where a search bot comes in and is given a session id in the URL. Develop a list of search engine IPs and create a rule to not to include session ids.

Summary

These topics are merely examples of what a strong technical SEO should be monitoring and taking action against. Your navigation reflects the user experience whether or not they are directed in finding the important pieces of content that you want them to read. In addition, a strong technical implementation needs to be set in place in order to be allowed to receive your appropriate amount of search traffic. You can get traffic if your foundation is built upon quicksand.

The Importance of the Title tag with Google SEO

The Title tag is the most important element in determining relevance for a web page. You want to make sure you are as specific as possible when naming your page. If your page is about “Blue Widgets”, your page should not be titled just “Widgets”. Now, depending on the size of your website and resources available, it may not be practical to address every single web page title right away.

You need to focus on your users. What are your most popular web pages? This type of thinking can generate a list of pages to focus on. Viewing your top pages in Google Analytics is one way of viewing this information. In addition, if a lot of web pages on your site are dynamically generated, you may want to implement a logical re-visioning in code by setting rule-sets in how to trim them down.

The best part about optimizing for title tags with dynamic pages comes with all the glorious rules you can set forth. Here are some examples in scenarios in what you can do to optimize.

• Set the maximum character count to 70. This included any data entry or tool set point for the field.

• Set the maximum character count in the database of the pertaining field.

• When selling products, ensure you list the Brand of the product first, then list the products description or model number keywords.

• Set a variable in your implementation to ensure the Title tag can not be dynamically changes unless there is some form of validation from the user (boolean value).

• If a user somehow manages to enter in more than 70 characters, have the developer check the string and remove the ending characters of the title. This will ensure you have no incomplete pieces of text that takes away from the weight of keywords in the title.

• You may also include the brand at the end of the page. The title can appear as Blue Widgets – Your Website Name without the .com. However, never sacrifice listing the brand name if your title is within the 70 character limit. You should have a developer dynamically count the length of your website name and only include it, if all full characters can fit in the title while including your website's name. Listing your website's name is important to build recognition in the search listing. A user is more likely to click a link with Ebay in the title vs. some unknown website.

If you have a smaller website, you should use Google's keyword tool to best populate the title of your page. You should consider the volume of searches and the level of competition of the keyword phrase. Another tactic when developing your title tag is to ensure it is a little unique vs. any heading tags in place (h1, h2, etc..). This gives a slight boost in uniqueness of the page.

As a final note, the closer the keyword phrase is to the beginning of the title tag, the stronger the weighting will be. You never want to list your company site first for any unique page. The exception to this rule can be your home page if you are concentrating on building brand identity.

Understanding the Meta Description Tag with Google Search

The Meta description tag is primarily used to improve your click-thru rate in Google search results. With the proper formatting and query performed by the user, you can trigger this information in the search results. This meta tag incredibly strong when your descriptive information represents the intent of the Google user performing a query. Google will decide the relevance of the query and description inside the meta tag to determine what to display for the user. Let's take a look at Google query exercise:

1. Go to Google.com

2. Search for PC Headsets

3. Scan for the Newegg.com result and notice the information below the hyperlink. The Description should read “Sound Cards and Speakers at Newegg.com. We offer the best prices, fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg.”

4. Next, click the result

5. Next, Right click on the web page and view source

6. Ctlr + F and search for <meta name=”description”

7. You should see <meta name="description" content="Sound Cards and Speakers at Newegg.com.&#160; We offer the best prices, fast shipping and top-rated customer service.&#160; Once you know, you Newegg.">

It is important to understand that the meta description does not directly affect the ranking of your content. It only aids in the click-thrus to your content. Now, overtime, if the click-thru rate increases, your rank could go up as a result, but the mere fact of optimizing the meta description with your keywords has no direct affect on your query rank.

Reference for proper implementation

1. Ensure you encase the meta description tag inside the <head> tag.
2. <meta name="description" content="Your Content Here to Describe the Webpage">

Not Provided vs. Not Set in Google Analytics

What is the difference between Not Provided and Not Set under the keywords section in Google Analytics?

Answer:

Not Provided occurs when a user is browsing on an encrypted URL at Google.com. If you are logged in to your Google+ account, you will automatically be on https://. This means the more users that use Google+, the more you will not be able to see what keywords brought them to your website.

Not Set is simply a referral or direct visit with no keywords that are allowed to be passed. Sometimes a user can search from their browser and end up on the site and this may propagate (Not Set).

Tip:

You can click (not provided) and view the landing pages as a secondary dimension to at least figure out what pages are being viewed the most. You could also compare this to the known organic keyword traffic and attribute a estimated percentage in distribution to each known organic keyword.

Click to Enlarge - You could also do unique page views for increased accuracy to attribute to other relateed keywords for each individual content page.