Search Engine Optimization Guide for beginners – URL Structure

Continuing the series on Search Engine Optimization guide for beginners, in this article we will explain how proper URL structure can improve the site's chances of ranking higher in Google and other search engines.

By creating descriptive categories and filenames for the web pages of your website, you not only keep the site better organized and systematic, but it can also benefit you in terms of good rankings on Google for your keywords. Since the search engine bots can easily crawl your organized website, search engines will be able to glean much more information from your site. Webmaster can also create search engine friendly URLs. These URLs are not only more legible and easier to understand, but also are better for those who want to place your webpage link on their website. Long and cryptic page names may put off or scare visitors. Page names (URLs) like these can be confusing and intimidating and don't serve any purpose. Such URLS are difficult to remember. A small % of users always try to go a particular website by recalling its name. But in these scenarios, your URL may elude his/her memory. Many times these long URLs are shortened due to ignorance of a user or shortage of space like in twitter where the number of characters that can be entered is limited. In these cases, the link is broken. Sometimes, the URL itself is used as anchor text, if the URL contains relevant keywords, it will assist user and search engine bots in determining the true nature and substance of the web page. This is much better than an unintelligible URL with loads of parameters which does not help in any way in improving your rankings.

Also, in search engine search results pages, just below the webpage's title and description snippet, the URL to the webpage is provided. And if the search query matches the words in the URL, then those words appear in bold. This immediately signals to the user making the search that this page is relevant.

Webmaster should avoid URLs with unnecessary session IDs and parameters. While adding keywords to URL is a good idea, don't go overboard with it. A simple and intuitive directory structure also helps bots. Avoid deep nested subdirectories and also keep name of the directories relevant.

Search Engines are getting sophisticated with each passing days and unlike in earlier days, they can now crawl pages with any kind of URL structure – simple or complex. But it's in webmaster's interest to keep the URL as simple and relevant as possible. Few minutes and bit of care in selecting and making search engine friendly URL can help both users and search engines in long run. This can also be done using URL rewriting technique in case of dynamically generated web pages.

Adhering to above mentioned guidelines can benefit any webmaster in more than one way. User Interaction ease as well as benefits from better rankings makes these suggestions important in today's highly competitive business scenario. So be wise.

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SEO Guide for Beginners - Meta Tags

Continuing on our series on SEO for beginners, we will discuss Meta tags. Hypertext Markup Language or HTML lets author of a webpage specify more details about the document rather than the document content itself using Meta data.

The information that is in the Meta data is used by search engines like Google to update their database. Search Engines figure out that a webpage is related to some keywords and when someone searches for a particular keyword, s/he will be able to find this page in SERPs. The Meta tags are generally located near the top of the HTML document inside the Header tag.

According to W3C, “Each META element specifies a property/value pair. The name attribute identifies the property and the content attribute specifies the property's value.”

There are many types of Meta tags. But the two most crucial Meta tag for search engine indexing are the keywords and the description Meta tags. The Meta tag – “keywords” lists the keywords or key phrases that best describe the contents of the webpage in question.

In context of Google the dominant search engine, “Description” Meta tag is even more important and relevant. A webpage's “description” Meta tag provides Google and other search engines a summary of what the webpage is all about. Unlike a page's title which should ideally consist of few words, a description Meta tag can be a sentence or even short paragraph. The reason the Description Meta tag is important is because Google may decide to use it as a snippet for your pages when showing your site's listing on search results. In case, Google search engine notices that your page text content is more relevant to the user's query then Google may show that snippet from the webpage's text content. So it's advisable that webmasters and SEO consultants make the best use of this tag. A well written Meta tag can also make a difference to page rankings.

Also, when a user searches for a keyword in Google search engine, the results show description tag with keywords in bold. This immediately gives searcher clues if the result has the matching keywords and if it is relevant. A proper Meta tag may also results in higher click through and hence more traffic.

Few points should be kept I mind while creating meta tag description. Describe the page accurately in the description tag. Description Meta tag helps both search engines and user alike so it should match your site's content and title. Avoid generic or default description provided by WYSIWYG editors. Never add unrelated description, this is spamming and Search Engines may not take it lightly. Also, always create unique description Meta tags for all pages of the website.

To check if your description Meta tags conform to Google's guidelines, Google provides Webmaster Tools provides a content analysis section that analyses and points out if any description Meta tags is too short, long, or duplicated too many times across the website.

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