When it comes to SEO you need to keep saying to yourself Everything is Important. Every little designing element, every inconspicuous looking SEO aspect, every SEO strategy and everything else related even in the most flimsy ways to SEO, is important.
When it comes to SEO, the devil is in the details and it is these details that matter that can make or break SEO efforts.
In the previous post we discussed 5 essentials; unique content, canonicalization issues, protocol, hidden content, and avoiding black hat techniques. Lets take a look at some other essentials that need to be considered when building a website.
Broken Links
A broken link is a link that doesnt work anymore. A website shouldnt have a single broken link. Sounds logic, doesnt it? But the surprising fact is that you will find plenty of broken links on websites that are under the watch of experienced webmasters.
When a user clicks on a broken link, they see a 404 error page crop up in front of them. The problem with these broken links is that they dont make for a very impressive user experience. The Google search engine algorithm doesnt like websites that do not provide a good user experience.
The first thing that you must do is avoid any broken link on your website. Use a 301 to redirect broken inbound links. This redirect tells the search engine that the page has moved to another location. This transfers SEO properties of your page with the broken link/s to the new page.
Page Load Time
Speed does matter. Google measures page speed by evaluating the pages response to Googlebot and also measuring it through its toolbar.
Improving the speed at which your websites page loads can definitely improve your ranking but its important not to overestimate the impact of this ranking factor. Its just one of the more than 200 ranking factors used by Google.
So, speed is essential but not at the cost of quality. Above all, Google values quality as all its recent updates have shown. Get rid of useless ads and non-essentials that clutter the websites design -- but not at the cost of relevance.
Javascript In SEO
JavaScript is often an integral part of website development but its use shouldnt hamper your SEO efforts.
The first thing you must ensure is that your navigational links are not built using JavaScript only. Make it a point that both your navigational links and content are HTML based.
When using JavaScript create a separate JavaScript file and call this file wherever required; as a Googlebot crawls this file separately, it leads to faster page load time.
There are times when you just cant avoid using JavaScript in HTML. In such a case, try putting it at the bottom of the code and not at the beginning.
Avoid Doorway Pages
One of the golden rules of SEO is that you shouldnt try to be sneaky. Doorway pages are used by some smart webmasters to sneak into the topmost search engine rankings. But, Google is smarter than you think.
So what are doorway pages? Well, they are pages of very poor quality that are only built for SEO purposes. Typically, each doorway page targets a specific keyword or phrase. Desist from using such practices as Google frowns upon them and its disapproval is not limited to just frowning upon it. Your site can be removed from the search results for such transgressions. It is like the worst nightmare of webmasters coming true.
Great information.
Quick question: I have been exclusively using wordpress. And I noticed it adds a lot of code and they seem to load up slowly. Is that what you mean by load up time?
thanks
sean
Google is getting smarter everyday. When you make a site, have to always have in mind that you can’t lie to google. If you managed to lie, then it is temporary and soon get ban..