In our previous post on SharePoint for Public-facing Websites (part 3) we explained that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the discipline of optimizing your site and your content to ensure that search engines list your site as the top results for particular searches. SEO drives users to your site.
Here are seven high-level steps to ensuring your SharePoint public-facing website is ready for the Internet search engines.
SEO Step 1: Search Terms
Make a list of the search terms you want people to find your website with. Start with the broadest terms and then get more specific. These should be terms which describe the overall theme of the site.
SEO Step 2: Competition
Identify and research your competition. Your competitors include any site which ranks in the first ten slots using the above search terms. Now that you have identified your competition, it’s time to research. Determine the keyword density of the page which is ranked well.
Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page. You do not want to publish a page with a keyword density much greater than the site which is ranked number one. You want your pages keyword density to pretty much mimic it. How long have they been around? What exactly do they offer and why do people go to their site? Basically, you are sizing them up to see what you are up against. Document these findings for each search term in your list.
SEO Step 3: Analysis
Analyze your website. For each search term, identify which page is most suited or relevant. Determine its keyword density, and add or subtract content accordingly. Again, you want to have about the same keyword density as the page ranked number one. Always tailor your content for users, not search engines. Once your page is ranked within the top positions, you can almost forget about keyword density and focus on fresh theme, relevant content.
SEO Step 4: Confirmation
Ensure your website is being crawled. This can be determined by searching for your domain name. If it’s not automatically being crawled by a particular search engine, manually submit your site. Do not pay a so-called “SEO” company (online or otherwise) to submit your site to “thousands of internet search engines.” Use some good old common sense on this one – how many search engines really matter? Hint: you care about the ones you have actually heard of, which is likely something less than “thousands.”
SEO Step 5: Site Map
A SiteMap is a way to describe the Pages of your Site to a search engine. It also provides the mechanism for letting search engines know when your Pages have been added, removed or modified. A SiteMap file is an XML formatted file containing an entry for each Page of your Site. Each entry contains the date/time the Page was last modified.
There is a unified “SiteMaps protocol” used by the big three internet search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo!). This means one SiteMap file can be used by all three major internet search engines.
Create a sitemap.xml file, register it with the major search engines, and keep it up to date. Keeping the sitemap.xml file up to date can be a daunting task with even the smallest of websites. For this reason, it is recommended that you automate this process. You want your sitemap.xml file to be updated every time a page is published/approved as well as moved, removed or otherwise modified.
SEO Step 6: Links
Secure quality in-bound links to your site. These links should come from sites that are theme relevant and ranked better than your website pages. Do not participate in “link exchange programs”, or other shady short-cuts. Pick up the phone and make some calls after figuring out what you can offer in return. You want the in-bound link to originate from text describing the page on your website it is linking to, which should be the relevant search term. More quality in-bound links equal higher rankings.
SEO Step 7: Monitoring
Keep watching your rankings and continue adding fresh content. Continue trying to secure quality in-bound links to relevant pages. Do not get frustrated and try to cut corners, you will undoubtedly regret it, especially if your website gets blacklisted. Mostly, continue tailoring your content for your intended audiences. Proper SharePoint WCM site SEO is handled at the page level, not the site level. In other words, let your content authors do their jobs and ensure they understand the rules.