URLs and SEO: Various Strategies for URL File Names Quite a long time ago we discussed best practices for URL structure – that old post needs both an update and more details to discuss. So I decided to start a new post summarizing and discussing various strategies for URL file naming. 1. URL is undoubtedly one of the most important aspects that affect both SEO and usability. It affects: Rankings (placing keywords in the file path is one of the most effective ways to make the keywords more prominent);Click-through: a “clear”, “readable” URL can be another reinforcement signal for the user to click it;Usability: a good “obvious” URL helps the user understand what the page is about even before entering the page. 2. There is no doubt that keywords in the URL matter (so far they even matter a lot). 3. While Google has become much smarter when it comes to identifying separate words in the file path, a dash is still considered the best choice: 4. Usability: Very few people manually type a URL in the address bar. 5. 6. 7.
Robots exclusion standard The Robot Exclusion Standard, also known as the Robots Exclusion Protocol or robots.txt protocol, is a convention to advising cooperating web crawlers and other web robots about accessing all or part of a website which is otherwise publicly viewable. Robots are often used by search engines to categorize and archive web sites, or by webmasters to proofread source code. The standard is different from, but can be used in conjunction with, Sitemaps, a robot inclusion standard for websites. History[edit] The standard was proposed by Martijn Koster,[1][2] when working for Nexor[3] in February, 1994[4] on the www-talk mailing list, the main communication channel for WWW-related activities at the time. It quickly became a de facto standard that present and future web crawlers were expected to follow; most complied, including those operated by search engines such as WebCrawler, Lycos and AltaVista. About the standard[edit] A robots.txt file covers one origin. Disadvantages[edit] Alternatives[edit]
On Page SEO Guidelines and Tips | Azure Web Design On Page SEO is the process of optimizing your HTML pages for the search engines’ perusal. It is by no means an exact science, but Google and all the other search engines have published guidelines for us to follow to better rankings. Server and File Settings Make sure that there is only one version of your site – 301 redirect all non www. HTML Title and Head Use targeted keyword in the <title> but keep in mind what visitors would see. Your Content Use only one <h1>tag per page.Use alt tags in images, links, etc. Linking Implement “rel=nofollow” links to unimportant pages within your site.
The Web Robots Pages In a nutshell Web site owners use the /robots.txt file to give instructions about their site to web robots; this is called The Robots Exclusion Protocol. It works likes this: a robot wants to vists a Web site URL, say Before it does so, it firsts checks for and finds: User-agent: * Disallow: / The "User-agent: *" means this section applies to all robots. There are two important considerations when using /robots.txt: robots can ignore your /robots.txt. So don't try to use /robots.txt to hide information. See also: The details The /robots.txt is a de-facto standard, and is not owned by any standards body. In addition there are external resources: The /robots.txt standard is not actively developed. The rest of this page gives an overview of how to use /robots.txt on your server, with some simple recipes. How to create a /robots.txt file Where to put it The short answer: in the top-level directory of your web server.
Perfecting Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization (Last Updated: October 24, 2014 by Rand) How do I build the perfectly optimized page? This is a challenging question for many in the SEO and web marketing fields. There are hundreds of "best practices" lists for where to place keywords and how to do "on-page optimization," but as search engines have evolved and as other sources of traffic — social networks, referring links, email, blogs, etc. — have become more important and interconnected, the very nature of what's "optimal" is up for debate. My perspective is certainly not gospel, but it's informed by years of experience, testing, failure, and learning alongside a lot of metrics from Moz's phenomenal data science team. A) Have the best opportunity to rank highly in Google and Bing B) Earn traffic from social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, etc. larger version In the old days of SEO, "on-page optimization" referred merely to keyword placement. Uniquely valuable Provides phenomenal UX Crawler/bot accessible
Using a robots.txt file Using a robots.txt file Posted by Vanessa Fox A couple of weeks ago, we launched a robots.txt analysis tool. This tool gives you information about how Googlebot interprets your robots.txt file. You can read more about the robots.txt Robots Exclusion Standard, but we thought we'd answer some common questions here. What is a robots.txt file? A robots.txt file provides restrictions to search engine robots (known as "bots") that crawl the web. Does my site need a robots.txt file? Only if your site includes content that you don't want search engines to index. Where should the robots.txt file be located? The robots.txt file must reside in the root of the domain. How do I create a robots.txt file? You can create this file in any text editor. What should the syntax of my robots.txt file be? The simplest robots.txt file uses two rules: User-Agent: the robot the following rule applies toDisallow: the pages you want to block These two lines are considered a single entry in the file. User-Agent User-Agent: *
Basics - Webmaster Tools Help Crawling Crawling is the process by which Googlebot discovers new and updated pages to be added to the Google index. We use a huge set of computers to fetch (or "crawl") billions of pages on the web. Google's crawl process begins with a list of web page URLs, generated from previous crawl processes, and augmented with Sitemap data provided by webmasters. How does Google find a page? Google uses many techniques to find a page, including: Following links from other sites or pages Reading sitemaps How does Google know which pages not to crawl? Pages blocked in robots.txt won't be crawled, but still might be indexed if linked to by another page. Improve your crawling Use these techniques to help Google discover the right pages on your site: Submit a sitemap. Indexing Googlebot processes each of the pages it crawls in order to compile a massive index of all the words it sees and their location on each page. Note that Google doesn't index pages with a noindex directive (header or tag).
Block or remove pages using a robots.txt file - Webmaster Tools Help A robots.txt file is a file at the root of your site that indicates those parts of your site you don’t want accessed by search engine crawlers. The file uses the Robots Exclusion Standard, which is a protocol with a small set of commands that can be used to indicate access to your site by section and by specific kinds of web crawlers (such as mobile crawlers vs desktop crawlers). What is robots.txt used for? Non-image files For non-image files (that is, web pages) robots.txt should only be used to control crawling traffic, typically because you don't want your server to be overwhelmed by Google's crawler or to waste crawl budget crawling unimportant or similar pages on your site. You should not use robots.txt as a means to hide your web pages from Google Search results. Image files robots.txt does prevent image files from appearing in Google search results. Resource files Understand the limitations of robots.txt