FAQ: Search Engine Optimization

**chrisranjana** · Aug 23, 2004 02:22

Another excellent thread at sitepoint. Kudos !

**gm1234** · Aug 23, 2004 22:09

Nice info stymiee.

**Pug** · Aug 23, 2004 22:41

Can you recommend a good links program?

**jtresidder** · Aug 25, 2004 13:03

Originally Posted by stymiee

How should I handle external links? (Because I don't want to send PR out of my website)

Outbound links are a balancing act. You need to decide how much PR is worth to you (as compared to your users' experience at your site) and then decide what is the best way to acheive your maximum PR without sacrificing a satisfactory user experience.

One thing you could do is use a robots.txt file to prevent search engines from crawling pages with outbound links. Then no PR is lost because the search engines aren't even crawling those pages. But keep in mind that any internal links on those pages won't be counted either. This is common to do with a directory.

Another thing you may want to try is to use a script that redirects users to external sites (example: http://www.domain.com/outboundlinks.php?id=linkidhere) and then put outboundlinks.php into your robot.txt file. Then the search engines won't follow the links because they can't access the script that does the redirect. Why would you want to do this? Becasue search engines do follow redirect scripts so the PR is being sent out of your site anyway.

I feel it's worth a mention that PR isn't directly reduced by outgoing links*, it's reduced because your own internal links have to share the page's PR with the outgoing links. This waters down the effect of your internal linking, which can be a big part of your site's PR.

There's a good explanation at http://pr.efactory.de/e-outbound-links.shtml (in fact, the whole site is a good reference as to the effects of your site's structure on PR). I'm thinking of doing a quick reference guide of these effects for my more questioning clients.

*it's a misconception I've seen a fair bit 'in the field'.

**lumenation** · Aug 25, 2004 13:14

That is great - you have a lot of useful information and while I am no expert, it looks accurate. Thanks.

**oalhajjar** · Aug 29, 2004 23:28

Such a great post... this primer has helped me find answers to the most basic of questions and issues I had about SEO. Lots of sound advice, THANKS!

**omnicity** · Aug 30, 2004 07:22

Does anyone have an opinion on when you should submit a new site. I am working on a pet project that will inevitably take a long time to complete, but will be useful from the outset.
Is it better to get the site noticed early, (when it is small) or later when it is more useful?

**fatnewt** · Aug 30, 2004 09:20

I'd start it out when it's first useful -- when it's small, but it looks complete. Under construction pages are a big no, so wait until your site has enough content to be self-sufficient. Don't add links to the content that's not there yet.

A great site is never really complete -- you should always have some new content planned.

**Webnauts** · Sep 1, 2004 16:19

Excellent work Stymiee! Thank you very much!

**M.Zeb Khan** · Sep 3, 2004 23:45

a big mistake you made...

you have linked "Search engine friendly" text to http://www.sitepoint.com/article/485<br%20/> instead of http://www.sitepoint.com/article/485

please make that fine

**theanomaly** · Sep 12, 2004 15:29

Nice thread stymiee, I'm sure people will find this very useful.

**poornam** · Sep 15, 2004 23:19

great post. I was looking for this information everywhere and this is one place I have found it all together.

Another bunch of good SEO tools can be found at http://www.lilengine.com/tools/

**stymiee** · Oct 3, 2004 20:29

Added the following today. What do you think?

What would be a good SEO strategy?

Before you launch your site, you should have done the following:
- Optimized your <title> tags on each page to contain 1 - 3 keywords
- Used appropriate markup where necessary (<h1>, <em>, etc.)
- Used keywords liberally yet appropriately throughout each page
- Designed the navigational structure of the site to channel PR to main pages (especially the homepage)
- Used Search Engine Friendly URLs (if necessary)
- Created a complete website with plenty of quality content
- Used keywords in your domain and url (http://www.keyword1.com/keyword2/keyword3.html)

Immediately after launching your site you should do the following:
- Submit your site, by hand, to all major search engines
- Submit your site to all free directories (dmoz, yahoo (if applicable), etc..)
- Begin a link building campaign (attempting to get keywords in the reciprocal link anchor text)

Finally, as part of an ongoing strategy:
- Continually update your website will quality content
- Continually seek free and reciprocal links preferably from sites in your genre

**ellora** · Oct 14, 2004 03:27

Great Information. Thank you.

But what is search engine friendly url?

**vinyl-junkie** · Oct 14, 2004 04:24

Originally Posted by ellora

But what is search engine friendly url?

Search engines tend to be cautious about indexing URLs which involve GET variables, like

http://www.example.com?id=123&page=4

To make this a search engine friendly URL, you might change the URL like so:

http://www.example.com/123/4

The PHP Anthology 1 has an excellent discussion of this topic. Besides making search engine friendly URLs, another advantage of doing this is that you can tell in your server logs just which pages your visitors are looking at. Without doing this, all you know is that they visited

http://www.example.com

Hope this helps.

**ellora** · Oct 15, 2004 03:16

That did help. Thanks, vinyl-junkie. May I have a link to php anthology 1?

**vinyl-junkie** · Oct 15, 2004 04:14

There is no link to an article, if that's what you're looking for. PHP Anthology is actually two PHP books that SitePoint has published. You can read all about them here.

**ellora** · Oct 15, 2004 08:09

vinyl-junkie, I think now I am in your location

Thanks for the link.

**Expressweb** · Oct 18, 2004 21:33

Very nice information .. Even from Basics to ultimite seo explaination .........

Even reosurce URL is one of added advantages ususally not disclose by senior seo members

thanks

**Expressweb** · Oct 18, 2004 21:34

Very nice information .. Even from Basics to ultimite seo explaination .........

Even resource URL is one of added advantage ususally not disclose by senior seo members

thanks

**Expressweb** · Oct 18, 2004 21:36

Very nice information .. Even from Basics to ultimite seo explaination .........

Even resource URL is one of added advantage which ususally not disclose by senior seo members

thanks

**Blueveil** · Oct 20, 2004 00:12

I'm trying to improve the ranking of one of my ecommerce site; what is the best way to raise your PR ? linking, google ads? What would be the best way to improve ecommerce sales? Raise PR, ads? links?

**icky_bu** · Oct 22, 2004 09:15

Originally Posted by Blueveil

I'm trying to improve the ranking of one of my ecommerce site; what is the best way to raise your PR ? linking, google ads? What would be the best way to improve ecommerce sales? Raise PR, ads? links?

Hrm... did you read ALL the posts before you submitted this reply?
Actually, just the first post that Stymie wrote would be enough for you to keep yourself entertained for the next couple of weeks

**akayeo** · Oct 31, 2004 07:43

This is exactly what I was looking for!

**j0n** · Nov 20, 2004 10:45

Very nice thread, i'm sure this will help alot of people. Thank you.

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