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1. Define SEO
Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your website.
2. Define Pagination
Pagination is the practice of dividing a piece of content into different pages and it heavily affects User experience, Web Development and SEO. It is a commonly used navigation technique with both pros and cons.
3. How and why are unique & accurate page titles important
A title tag tells both users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is. If your document appears in a search results page, the contents of the title tag will usually appear in the first line of the results.
Words in the title are bolded if they appear in the user's search query. This can help users recognize if the page is likely to be relevant to their search
4. Why are descriptions important?
Description meta tags are important because Google might use them as snippets for your pages. Note that we say "might" because Google may choose to use a relevant section of your page's visible text if it does a good job of matching up with a user's query.
5. What is a Meta Tag?
HTML meta tags are officially page data tags that lie between the open and closing head tags in the HTML code of a document.
6. How can one improve the structure of a website?
• Use words in URLs
URLs with words that are relevant to your site's content and structure are friendlier for visitors navigating your site. Visitors remember them better and might be more willing to link to them.
• Create a simple directory structure
Use a directory structure that organizes your content well and makes it easy for visitors to know where they're at on your site. Try using your directory structure to indicate the type of content found at that URL.
• Provide one version of a URL to reach a document
To prevent users from linking to one version of a URL and others linking to a different version (this could split the reputation of that content between the URLs), focus on using and referring to one URL in the structure and internal linking of your pages. If you do find that people are accessing the same content through multiple URLs, setting up a 301 redirect from non-preferred URLs to the dominant URL is a good solution for this. You may also use canonical URL or use the rel="canonical" link element if you cannot redirect.
7. How can a webmaster Optimize Content?
Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed
8. Why should a webmaster offer quality content and services
Users who know a lot about the topic might use different keywords in their search queries than someone who is new to the topic. Google Webmaster Tools provides you with the top search queries your site appears for and the ones that led the most users to your site. Anticipating these differences in search behavior and accounting for them while writing your content (using a good mix of keyword phrases) could produce positive results.
9. What is an anchor text? How can it improve your SEO?
Anchor text is the clickable text that users will see as a result of a link, and is placed within the anchor tag <a href="..."></a>. With appropriate anchor text, users and search engines can easily understand what the linked pages contain.
10. How can a webmaster Optimize the use of images?
Images may seem like a straightforward component of your site, but you can optimize your use of them. All images can have a distinct filename and "alt" attribute, both of which you should take advantage of. The "alt" attribute allows you to specify alternative text for the image if it cannot be displayed for some reason
11. Why are heading tags important when dealing with Crawlers?
Heading tags (not to be confused with the <head> HTML tag or HTTP headers) are used to present structure on the page to users. There are six sizes of heading tags, beginning with <h1>, the most important, and ending with <h6>, the least important
12. How can you make effective use of robots.txt
A "robots.txt" file tells search engines whether they can access and therefore crawl parts of your site (1). This file, which must be named "robots.txt", is placed in the root directory of your site (2).
13. Why should you be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links?
Setting the value of the "rel" attribute of a link to "nofollow" will tell Google that certain links on your site shouldn't be followed or pass your page's reputation to the pages linked to. Nofollowing a link is adding rel="nofollow" inside of the link's anchor tag
14. How does one SEO for Mobile Phones?
As a webmaster, running a mobile site and tapping into the mobile search audience isn't easy. Mobile sites not only use a different format from normal desktop sites, but the management methods and expertise required are also quite different. This results in a variety of new challenges. While many mobile sites were designed with mobile viewing in mind, they weren’t designed to be search friendly.
15. How does one notify Google of mobile sites?
Once Googlebot-Mobile crawls your URLs, we then check for whether each URL is viewable on a mobile device. Pages we determine aren't viewable on a mobile phone won't be included in our mobile site index (although they may be included in the regular web index). This determination is based on a variety of factors, one of which is the "DTD (Doc Type Definition)" declaration. Check that your mobile-friendly URLs' DTD declaration is in an appropriate mobile format such as XHTML Mobile or Compact HTML (3). If it's in a compatible format, the page is eligible for the mobile search index.
16. How does one promote their website in the right ways
• Master making announcements via blogs and being recognized online
A blog post on your own site letting your visitor base know that you added something new is a great way to get the word out about new content or services. Other webmasters who follow your site or RSS feed could pick the story up as well. Putting effort into the offline promotion of your company or site can also be rewarding. For example, if you have a business site, make sure its URL is listed on your business cards, letterhead, posters, etc. You could also send out recurring newsletters to clients through the mail letting them know about new content on the company's website.
• Know about social media sites
Sites built around user interaction and sharing have made it easier to match interested groups of people up with relevant content.
• Reach out to those in your site's related community
Chances are, there are a number of sites that cover topic areas similar to yours. Opening up communication with these sites is usually beneficial. Hot topics in your niche or community could spark additional ideas for content or building a good community resource.
17. What are some free webmaster tools?
1. COUNTERS. This is the number one tool for page analysis. Make sure you get a good one that reports all the vital visitor information to you: visitor's computer profile (OS, screen resolution, browser, IP), time of visit, referring pages, most popular pages and so on.
2. GUESTBOOKS. Only a small percentage of visitors ever sign guestbooks. Still, it is still a useful and usually free webmaster tool. Make sure you choose a guestbook that has a "private message" option, so as to encourage more timid guests to leave feedback.
3. SEARCH ENGINES. This free webmaster tool is useful for large web sites. If yours isn't that big, you probably won't need it (your visitors should be able to find their way around easily enough). Try to find a search engine tool that can adopt your web page design and layout. Inconsistent web page design looks unprofessional.
4. FORM MAILERS. If you don't have access to your own cgi-bin (most likely if you use free web hosting), you'll want a form mailer. This is one of the really useful free webmaster tools out there. Before you make up your mind, test the service first yourself. Make several test submissions from different e-mail addresses and see how soon the posts arrive, if they do at all. (Some don't.) You don't want to lose valuable feedback.
5. POLLS, SURVEYS and QUIZZES. We are of the opinion that interactive features like quizzes and polls are a nice addition to your collection of free webmaster tools. You might want to post a different quiz every week or so and post the results to keep visitors coming back.
6. LINK and BANNER EXCHANGES. In our experience, this is not very useful. Your banners may get exposure through 3:2 ratios and so on. But if you analyze your page hits, we think you'll find that those who click your banners hardly go beyond the first page they get into. Why? Because these visitors are not looking for anything in particular, just surfing around. On the contrary, people who find your site via search engines are actually looking for something.
7. RANDOM PAGES, LINKS and IMAGES. Sometimes you'll see free webmaster tools like these. People with idle time in their hands might want to click a link just to see what it is, but for most of us, this is unnecessary. As a webmaster, you priority should be to give information as needed, when needed. Stick to those free webmaster tools that are really useful.
8. AFFILIATE PROGRAMS. This free webmaster tool works like this: You list products in your web site and if people click on that, are taken to an online store, and eventually buy the item, you get a commission. This is a cool way to make some extra money off your site. For example, if yours is an art web site, you can list your favorite books and link them to your affiliate bookstore. Note, however, that you won't get a commission on other books purchased in that store once the visitor leaves your site.
Activity 5: SEO and Pagination