The Importance of Semantic Coding
Semantic HTML is the use of HTML markup to reinforce the semantics, or meaning, of the information in webpages rather than merely to define its presentation or look. Semantic HTML is processed by regular web browsers as well as by many other user agents. CSS is used to suggest its presentation to human users. With SEO, semantic markup is important because search engines and companies such as Google look for valid html code and content rich pages when crawling web pages.
The Title Tag
The Title tag is contained within the Head tag at the start/top of your web page. Your page title should contain the keyword you are targeting if you can help it. Recommended syntax for a title tag is "Keyword, Category | Website Title". For example, say we have a Winery named XYZ, then this title tag might be "Pinot Noir Wines From XYZ Winery."
The Heading Tags
Heading tags should be used as headings, not to make a text string larger/bigger.
- h1 is most important, typically a page or section title
- h2 is second most important
- h3 is third most important
- h4 is fourth most important and so on..
Alt Text With Images
Hopefully you have selected appropriate imagery to use on your page about Pinot Noir. Perhaps you have an image of grape vines (Pinot of course); you should always fill in your alt text. Alt text is required for handicapped access, semantic coding standards, and, if you use a keyword in the alt text it supports good SEO. For example, your alt text on your image of grape vines might be alt="Pinot Noir grapes ripening in the sun."
Hyperlinks and Keywords in Anchor Text
It is a good idea to use keywords in the links on your page. You might have a link to learn more about Pinot Noir at XYZ Winery. The same is true with hyperlinks which you have instructed bots not to follow by using the rel="nofollow" attribute.
For more information on semantic HTML please see Semantic HTML on Wikipedia.
Search Engine Indexing Limits
- Page File Size: No more than 150 Kilobytes (Before images, CSS, and other attachements
- Amount of Links: No more than 100 unique links per page
- Title Tag: No more than 70 characters
- Meta Description: No more than 155 characters
- Parameters in URL: No more than 2; good example: http://www.mysite.com/brands.php?nike, bad example: http://www.mysite.com/brands.php?object=1&type=2&kind=3&arg=xhd
- Depth of URL: No more than 4; good example: http://www.mysite.com/people/danny/
301 Redirects (for Apache
To condense the four default home pages (http://www.mysite.com, http://mysite.com, http://www.mysite.com/index.html, http://mysite.com/index.html) into one homepage, use 301 redirects to correct for erroneous incoming links and make all internal links point to your domain using the syntax "http://www.mysite.com/." Always include the trailing "/" on folders.
For more information on 301 redirects, please see 301 Redirects on Wikipedia.
Robots Metatag
| meta name="ROBOT NAME" content="ARGUEMENTS" ROBOT NAME can be either "robots" for all robots or the user-agent of a specific robot. |
||
| Argument | Search Engine | Result of Use |
| noindex | Google, Yahoo, Live, Ask | Page not indexed |
| nofollow | Google, Yahoo, Live, Ask | All links on page become No Followed |
| noarchive | Google, Yahoo, Live, Ask | Page not cached |
| noodp | Google, Yahoo, Live | Stops Description and Title tag overwrite by DMOZ (only for homepage) |
| noydir | Yahoo | Stops description and title tag overwrite by Yahoo Directory |
| nosnippet | Stops Google from generating description based on On-page text | |
Sitemap Syntax
Google introduced Google Sitemaps so web developers can publish lists of links from across their sites. The basic premise is that some sites have a large number of dynamic pages that are only available through the use of forms and user entries. The Sitemap files contains URLs to these pages so that web crawlers can find them. Bing, Google, Yahoo and Ask now jointly support the Sitemaps protocol.
Since Bing, Yahoo, Ask, and Google use the same protocol, having a Sitemap lets the four biggest search engines have the updated page information. Sitemaps do not guarantee all links will be crawled, and being crawled does not guarantee indexing. However, a Sitemap is still the best insurance for getting a search engine to learn about your entire site.[3] Google Webmaster Tools allow a website owner to upload a sitemap that Google will crawl, or he can accomplish the same thing with the robots.txt file.
XML Sitemaps have replaced the older method of "submitting to search engines" by filling out a form on the search engine's submission page. Now web developers submit a Sitemap directly, or wait for search engines to find it.¹
More information on XML sitemaps can be found at Wikipedia on XML Sitemaps.
¹From Wikipedia
