SEO Basics for ASP.NET

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• SEO Basics for ASP.NET

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As ASP.NET the SEO is Popular topic and ASP.net
is growing its popularity also as platform for
public systems. Therefore SEO is going to be more
essential topic also for ASP.NET developers. The
world of SEO is always in rapid change last year
Google published number of updates to it's search
engine algorithms? Although the field is changing
fast there are some key points that has been
fundamental and unchanged this far. Let's see how
you can make your sites more SEO friendly with
the help of ASP.NET Development.
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Presenter Notes
Microsoft ASP.NET The Benefits Features

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1. Page titles
2. Use meaningful URLs
3. Tell about the structure of your content
4. Test your site on extreme conditions
5. Test your AJAX site in terms of SEO
6. The End - The Point

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Microsoft ASP.NET The Benefits Features

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Page Titles
One of the most important things are page titles
(between tags). When somebody is searching
something then these titles are shown as links in
search results. One of the common mistakes is
using same title for all pages. Imagine how
worthless are the following search results for
user. TheVeryBigCorporation Some fragments from
page that may not be useful for
user. TheVeryBigCorporation Some other fragments
from page as description. TheVeryBigCorporation A
lmost no content, let's show what we have. Date
Modified 01/19/2008 Titles by Marc and Lewis
Custom services. TheVeryBigCorporation Some
fragments from page that may not be useful for
user. TheVeryBigCorporation Some fragments from
page that may not be useful for user.
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Microsoft ASP.NET The Benefits Features

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When using page titles carefully you give
searchers a reason to visit your site - if your
site offers something they are looking for. They
can easily see from results if this page may
offer something they are interested in. Adding
title to your pages is not something complex. If
you built CMS then you have titles anyway
inserted for each page. If you built product
catalog then use product names as page titles. If
you think further you discover that you have more
data already there in your databases you can use
in page titles.
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Presenter Notes
Microsoft ASP.NET The Benefits Features

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Use meaningful URLs
"Nice" URLs is the other important point. Instead
of using long URLs that contain many query
parameters, you should use URLs that are
formatted as URLs of static pages. Some experts
say that it is enough, I don't agree - it is not
enough. Look at the following two
URLs. somesite.com/index.php?opcontentactview
id100.html somesite.com/content/view/100.html F
irst one looks like some alian language. The
other one is better at one point - it is shown
correctly by almost every mail client in this
world (except the buggy ones of course). But for
visitor this URL doesn't have any value. Visitor
may get some idea that he or she is looking at
content and then there is hundred. What is this
hundred stand for? Dunno.
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Microsoft ASP.NET The Benefits Features

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Now let's go one step further and let's use
meaningful URLs instead of nice ones. Meaningful
URL is nice URL that has some meaning for
visitor. I mean if I give you meaningful URL you
can figure out what you may find on page behind
this URL. Here is the meaningful version of
previous URL. somesite.com/printers/laserjet-1200
.html Now you have URL that tells you what you
can find when you follow it. In this case it
hopefully opens the page that introduces HP
LaserJet 1200. You can use components like
UrlRewriting. UrlRewrite for nice URLs. Also be
noticed that IIS7 has URL mapping support that
provides you with mod_rewrite-like features
(mod_rewrite is very popular Apache HTTP Server
module).
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Presenter Notes
Microsoft ASP.NET The Benefits Features

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Tell about the structure of your content
Every page has some structure. Title, maybe
teaser, paragraphs, headings and so on. Maybe
some citations and quotes and why not some
important points you want to emphasize. Most of
robots are not very strong on analyzing CSS. To
make your page semantically correct follow these
steps. 1. Use headings to divide longer stories
to parts that make sense to readers. You can use
tags by example. These tags are made for this. 2.
If you need to emphasize some sentence of your
text, put it between , or tags. 3. Use for
citations, for quotes and so on. Let robots know
what parts your pages contains. This way you
also make your pages easier to read to your
visitors. I am sure they are happy if you provide
correctly structured content that is easy to
read. You can make your users life easy - use
WYSIWYG editors like FCKEditor, so your users can
create structured content by theirselves. FCK has
also support for ASP.NET and offers ASP.NET
control you can use on your pages for free.
Integrating these editors to your site is nothing
complex.
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Presenter Notes
Microsoft ASP.NET The Benefits Features

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Test your site on extreme conditions
What happens when your site is slow and requests
often timeout? Well, some of these requests are
made by robots and if they continuously cannot
connect your site they will dsrop it form their
indeces. Make sure your site responds acceptably
fast to requests also under heavy load. As a
visitors we don't like slow sites. We want pages
to open fast and when page is opening every
second is like decade for us. You can use tools
to make automatic stress tests to your site. Just
record your paths, configure flood and run the
tests. When you use performance counters you may
find out almost all weak parts of your site
before it goes to production.
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Presenter Notes
Microsoft ASP.NET The Benefits Features

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Test your AJAX site in terms of SEO
When using AJAX in your site then you are usually
in hard trouble - search engine spiders will see
only few parts your site because they doesn't run
JavaScript. Yes, they can analyze it but they
doesn't run it. So, most content of AJAX
intensive sites is invisible for robots and it
will never get indexed. To make your AJAX site
search engine friendly try to avoid initial
content loading over JavaScript. At least for
these parts of your page that you want to be
indexed. Also you have to make it easy to robots
to navigate through your site. If you want to
see how robots will see your AJAX site then use a
simple trick. Turn off JavaScript support from
your browser and try to visit your AJAX site. Now
you will see what really gets indexed when robots
are indexing your site. Each of previous six
point - mentions visitors and how things are
getting better for them. Exactly - better to
visitors.
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Presenter Notes
Microsoft ASP.NET The Benefits Features

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The End - The Point
The fundamental point of SEO is not technically
optimize your sites for robots and indexing
algorithms. Search engines are developed
differently - they try to find more and more
accurately how well page fits for humans
needs. Each of previous six point - if you
noticed - mentions visitors and how things are
getting better for them. Exactly - better to
visitors, not robots.
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Presenter Notes
Microsoft ASP.NET The Benefits Features

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Created by SEO Company info_at_silvertouch.com Tha
nk You
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