seo tips for website developers & designers

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10 SEO Tips Web Developers & Designers Should Know Daniel Bianchini Senior SEO Consultant @danielbianchini

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Daniel Bianchini presents to OxonDigital

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Page 1: SEO Tips for Website Developers & Designers

10 SEO Tips Web Developers & Designers Should Know

Daniel BianchiniSenior SEO Consultant

@danielbianchini

Page 2: SEO Tips for Website Developers & Designers

Site Architecture

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Page 3: SEO Tips for Website Developers & Designers

Site Architecture

Keep website as flat as possible.

Keep ALL content within a maximum of 4 clicks from the homepage.

Ensure cross linking between pages.

Benefits

Improved indexing

Improved Page & Domain Authority (PageRank)

Improves long tail keywords and phrases.

3http://twitter.com/danielbianchini

Page 4: SEO Tips for Website Developers & Designers

URLs, Files & Folder Naming Conventions

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Page 5: SEO Tips for Website Developers & Designers

URL Structure

URLs

Keyword rich.

Static.

Remove file extension.

Hyphen not underscore.

Lowercase.

URL length.

Bad URL: www.example.com/index.php?category=2&page=tents&sortBy=price

Good URL: www.example.com/camping/tents/

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Page 6: SEO Tips for Website Developers & Designers

Files, Image & Folder Naming Conventions

Files & Folders

Keyword Rich.

Relevant.

Concise.

Images

Descriptive filenames.

Keyword rich filenames.

JPEG or PNG.

Well optimised Images can help improve visibility within the Image Search results.

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Page 7: SEO Tips for Website Developers & Designers

Semantic HTML

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Page 8: SEO Tips for Website Developers & Designers

Using W3C compliant code is not an SEO must have, but validated code makes crawling the site easier. HTML tags & attributes you should have.

<title> - Essential.

<Meta Description> - CTR, limited SEO benefit.

<h1> - 1 Per Page, primary keywords.

<h2> - Secondary keywords.

<a title=“”> <img alt=“”> - Descriptive & keyword rich.

Use CSS for Layout.

Remove ALL CSS & JS to minimise number of external files.

Semantic HTML

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Page 9: SEO Tips for Website Developers & Designers

Duplicate Content

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Page 10: SEO Tips for Website Developers & Designers

URL Parameters

www.example.com/jackets.html?colour=red

Printer friendly pages

www.example.com/print/jackets.html

Session IDs

www.example.com/jackets.html?sid=123

Solutions

– 301 redirects.

– Rel=“canonical”.

– Parameter handling in GWT.

Duplicate Content Issues

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Page 11: SEO Tips for Website Developers & Designers

Canonical Issues

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Decide on www. Vs non-www; make sure one is 301 redirected to the other:

oxondigital.co.uk www.oxondigital.co.uk

www.oxondigital.co.uk oxondigital.co.uk

Canonicalise URLs by removing file extension.

www.oxondigital.co.uk/index.html --> www.oxondigital.co.uk

www.oxondigital.co.uk/events.html --> www.oxondigital.co.uk/events

Link to canonicalised URL throughout the website.

http://twitter.com/danielbianchini

Page 12: SEO Tips for Website Developers & Designers

Rel=“canonical”

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/jackets/" />

<meta name=“robots” content=“index, nofollow”>

– Index page, don’t follow the links.

<meta name=“robots” content=“noindex, follow”>

– Don’t index the page, follow the links.

– To remove duplicate content but allow the search engine to follow the links.

<meta name=“robots” content=“noindex, nofollow”>

– Don’t index, don’t follow links.

– Used for print pages.

Meta Directives

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Page 13: SEO Tips for Website Developers & Designers

HTTP Status Code

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Page 14: SEO Tips for Website Developers & Designers

301 Redirects - permanent redirect.

Use for everything – expired pages, deleted content, canonicalised URLs, etc.

90% SEO benefit passed.

302 Redirects - temporary redirect.

No SEO benefit passed.

404 Page – error page.

Always use 404 pages for errors & not standard website pages.

Do not automatically 302 redirect an error page to homepage.

Customise the 404 page to make it user friendly.

HTTP Status

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Page 15: SEO Tips for Website Developers & Designers

Sitemaps

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Page 16: SEO Tips for Website Developers & Designers

Sitemaps

Benefits

Helps improve site indexation & speed of indexing.

Webmaster controls the pages in the sitemap.

XML Sitemap

50,000 URLs.

Use sitemap Index for large websites.

HTML Sitemap

100 links per page.

– +100 links split by category – e.g. ecommerce.

Link from every page to help speed up indexation.

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Page 17: SEO Tips for Website Developers & Designers

Content

Do not embed content in images.

Do not make core pages image based.

Provide room for HTML text on every page.

– Minimum of 350 words per page.

Allow ability to create landing pages.

Provide UGC ability.

– Customer Reviews.

– Forums.

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Page 18: SEO Tips for Website Developers & Designers

Daniel Bianchinihttp://www.oxondigital.co.uk

http://twitter.com/danielbianchinihttp://twitter.com/oxondigital

Thank You

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Page 19: SEO Tips for Website Developers & Designers

HTML & H Tags - http://www.demonslounge.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/matrix_17.jpg

Site Architecture - http://christine.americasfoundation.net/construction/West%20Elevation%20Colegio%20La%20Esperanza%20High%20School.jpg

File & Folder Names - http://drdeclutterblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/pile-of-folders-proj-1.JPG

Duplicate Content - http://www.flickr.com/photos/emilley/3796489073/

Content - http://brogdencastle.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/king_john-11.jpg

Image Credits

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