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Effective SEO Through Good Code Structure
By Adriana Iordan (c) 2006

For a successful Search Engine Optimization strategy, take into
consideration that search engines look at content and also at
the structure of the markup. They emphasize the importance of
text content, page titles, keywords rich text, meta descriptions
and information architecture. A website where quality of content
and code prevails will rank higher in the major search engines.

There are many Search Engine Optimization tactics, but try to
find the best combination and don't sacrifice the usability and
performance of your website. Here is some basic information
about improving your source code from an SEO perspective:

Avoid Classical 404 Error Pages

The 404 - File Not Found - page is presented to the user by the
server as an error page. The user gets this message directly
from the server of the website he is trying to visit. This error
page is supposed to appear only when the server cannot find the
requested location and is unsure of its status.

In the vast majority of cases, the 404 error emerges for pages
that were moved or even deleted or the layout of the site or
page information changed.

Many hosting companies offer a 404 redirect page. This means
that when a user enters the URL of any page of your domain, and
that page does not exist or can no longer be found, you can
automatically redirect the user to a specified page - usually
your home page or your sitemap.

Pay special attention when you decide to delete certain pages.
Remember to redirect them to a main page of your site using the
301 (Moved Permanently) HTTP response code.

You can greatly improve the user friendliness of your website by
creating a custom 404 page.

- Present a message of apology for the inconvenience;
- Try to ease the user's way back to your site. Introduce error
  messages and include evident links to the home page, sitemap,
  and contact page;
- Offer assistance and encourage the user to continue to search
  for the information he needs on your site. You could even
  include a search box right on the error page;
- Keep the same design for the error page as for the rest of
  the website.

See: http://www.avangate.com/4040404404

But remember that the best strategy for a 404 error page is to
prevent it from coming up altogether, as many customers might be
left with the impression that the whole website does not exist
and not just the specific page they were trying to access.

Keep Away From Orphan Pages

An orphan page is a page that is not linked to another one and
thus cannot be found by spiders. To avoid having orphan pages on
your website, check regularly that all your pages are linked to
each other.

Search engines consider sites with orphan pages to be
unprofessional, and not worthy of getting a high rank. This kind
of website is under construction or is the result of a poor
design process. If your pages aren't linked properly search
engines won't index them and will consider them irrelevant for
the search.

Pay attention to the fact that some search engines don't
correctly index websites that use HTML frames. When spiders crawl
through your internal pages, they index each individual page and
display them as orphan pages in search results. Most frame
designs include a content frame and a navigation frame.

Visitors require both frames to navigate through the site.
Create a JavaScript to check if the page is loading correctly,
and load the frameset. In this way, users won't be able to open
pages outside the frame. This is a very easy way of losing
clients.

Use 301 Redirect Pages

To avoid displaying a 404 error page, set up a 301 redirect
page. The code 301 means "moved permanently" and it's the
easiest way to preserve your search engine rankings for that
page.

There are two ways of generating proper 301 redirect pages. If
your site is hosted on a Linux or Unix server create a .htaccess
file to add the redirect to your server's web root.

The .htaccess file contains specific instructions for certain
requests, including security, redirection issues and how to
handle certain errors. If it is hosted on a Windows or IIS
server then the 301 redirect can be set up in the
Administrator's section of the server software or through the
DNS (Domain Name Server) zone.

Make a habit of reviewing the log files which contain data sent
by your server. Search engine spiders often make critical
decisions based on what your server tells them through the
server's headers.

Pay attention, an improper 301 redirect can cause you big
problems, since your website might fail and users won't be able
to visit your pages. Setting up a correct "301 redirect" assures
that you'll stay high in search rankings.

Create a Sitemap

A sitemap is a web page that lists all the pages on your
website. They are intended both for users - to find easier the
information they need, and for search engines to index pages.

Your sitemap link should be right on your home page. In this way
spiders are sent directly to the place where all your content
information is gathered. Sitemaps can improve SEO, however, be
advised that they only take into consideration a limited number
of links to those pages.

To make sure that spiders check your whole site and have more
chances to get indexed, it would be a good idea to use a sitemap
generator. You can use ROR sitemaps that are readable by all
search engines.

ROR is a sitemap tool that uses XML feeds to describe your
website. ROR sitemaps allow search engines to match text search
with structured information, thus obtaining more relevance for
your site. This kind of sitemap helps search engines to better
understand your website content - products, services, images,
articles, etc. By creating a file with product names,
descriptions, prices, images, availability, affiliate programs,
and any other relevant information customers can find you easier.

Don't Overuse Dynamic Pages

Dynamic web pages include dynamic content - images, text, etc -
which change without the page being reloaded. Client-side
languages like JavaScript and ActiveX are usually used to create
these types of web pages.

Search engines don't rank dynamic pages with many parameters
well. If you choose not to turn your dynamic URLs into static
ones, at least put the most important parameters in your URLs
first and try to limit dynamic parameters to no more than
two.

Spiders can't read the text rendered as graphics. Any text that
you want the spiders to read and index should be written out as
text. At the very least, put any text that appears in graphics
into the images' ALT attribute.

A slightly better alternative is to write your text in Flash,
but remember to have a "Skip this intro..." link that takes
visitors (and spiders) to the text-rich content of your site.
Don't neglect this information if you want to optimize your
search engine strategy.

Put .CSS and JavaScript into External Files

For a search engine, improperly formatted code will have a
negative impact on your rankings. Since search engines read only
a certain amount of information on a web page, you should try to
increase the text content to HTML tag ratio.

If you have too much HTML code, the text content won't be seen
entirely. For reducing HTML code, utilize hand coding using
external .css files and Javascript.

Make Sure You Have Well Formatted [X]HTML

Try to fix as many of the HTML errors as possible. Although the
search engines don't rank websites that have standard compliant
code better they tend to "read" them easier. Use the W3 HTML
Validator to check the validity of your code.

For a successful Search Engine Optimization strategy, take into
account all of the aspects presented here. It takes time, effort
and patience to achieve a higher rank in the main search
engines. The idea is to have a long term strategy that makes
your website stay on top for an extended period of time.
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Adriana Iordan is a Web Marketing Specialist at Avangate B.V.
(http://www.avangate.com). She has in depth knowledge of internet
marketing services and website analysis applied to the software
industry and e-commerce development. Avangate is an eCommerce
platform for electronic software distribution incorporating an
easy to use and secure online payment system plus additional
marketing and sales tools.
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