Get the Details Right for SEO - 5. Optimize HTML Comment Tags/ Bad URLs/ External File Names/ PDF Documents/ Hyphen vs. Underscore
(Page 2 of 4 )
It seems like a small thing, and even overkill to some, but I have participated in some testing on these suggestions and in all instances positive results were seen.
Google mentions looking at html comment tags in their Adsense Help Center. Does this mean that their algo also looks at html comments? Maybe, maybe not. But it can't hurt. (Only add one keyword phrase though, and use it in a sentence and not as the first word).
Bad URLs are the page address that shows up in your browser bar at the top when you land on a page. The search engine robots don't like certain characters like ampersands or question marks, so it's better to utilize a "mod rewrite" which converts long strings of characters generated by different programming techniques into plain URL addresses. So this -- http://www.mycompany.php/=?*%"$£"/230/aff_id=233544 becomes http://www.mycompany.com/my-keywords.
There are some debates about the weight that keywords in your URLs do or do not carry in search rankings. I know they do for some (not Google), so I'm continuing to use them. Depending on what type of server you use, this may be very easy or very time consuming, but it is extremely important.
Rewriting external file names is taking your external CSS or JavaScript files and using your keyword/keyword phrases within their actual file name. As I believe meta tags (keywords and descriptions) are still in use to a point, I believe things like the file names and html comment tags are as well.
Last, but not least, create PDF versions of your pages that are already ranking well, or have had content written for optimization purposes. In other words, I have pages that have what I feel is the perfect SEO formula, with on and off-page optimization. I take these pages and get the trial version of Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional. This will allow you to automatically create PDF versions of your pages, and add a few other optimization elements (which you can find a little later in my SEO Checklist). Be sure to name the files with your keywords. Take these PDF files and put them in a subdirectory off of your root, and in the same directory. Add a your-keywords-here.xml sitemap, separate from your site xml map. Submit it separately to Google for a crawl. Be sure to add this file to your robots.txt file.
I also use Multimedia Pdf EBooks to create customer-facing PDF docs that are also SEO friendly. If you have a store front I highly recommend this.
Up until recently Google recommended using dashes instead of underscores in your URLs, not just the main one that you buy, buy also the internal pages that you name. As I mentioned above, a mod rewrite will accomplish this for you. Google's Matt Cutts verifies this here in a 2005 post from his blog. Vanessa Fox, also of Google, revisits the issue here just last year, of course that is then and this is now. Here Matt states that Google now treats underscores as word separators.
As of this writing, on August 14th, Matt still says dashes are better, but within the next 30 days Google says there is no difference.
A few more tips on URLs:
The number of slashes in your URL (i.e. the number of directories deep your page is) isn't a factor in your Google rankings. Although it doesn't matter for Google, it is rumored to matter for Yahoo and MSN (Live Search).
The file extension in your URL won't affect your rankings. So it's inconsequential whether you use .php, .html, .htm, .asp, .aspx, .jsp etc. The one extension you should avoid for your Web documents? .exe.
Google treats URLs with a query string the same as static URLs. Caveat: as long as there are no more than two or three parameters in the URL, that is! Put another way, you won't take a hit in your Google rankings if you have a question mark in your URL; just don't have more than two or three equals signs in the URL.
Next: 6. Test and Retest Your Site Navigation and Usability with Real People >>
More Search Optimization Articles
More By GaryTheScubaGuy
