Navigation is very important for search engines
The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want. It can also help search engines understand what content the webmaster thi nks i s i mportant. Although Google's search results are provided at a page level, Google also likes to have a sense of what role a page plays in the bigger picture of the site.


Plan out your navigation based on your homepage
All sites have a home or "root" page, which is usually the most frequented page on the site and the starting place of navigation for many visitors. Unless your site has only a handful of pages, you should think about how visitors will go from a general page (your root page) to a page containing more specific content. Do you have enough pages around a specific topic area that it would make sense to create a page describing these related pages (e.g. root page -> related topic listing -> specific topic)? Do you have hundreds of different products that need to be classified under multiple category and subcategory pages?

Ensure more convenience for users by using ‘breadcrumb lists’
A breadcrumb is a row of internal links at the top or bottom of the page that allows visitors to quickly navigate back to a previous section or the root page (1). Many breadcrumbs have the most general page (usually the root page) as the first, left-most link and list the more specific sections out to the right.

(1) Breadcrumb links appearing on a deeper article page on our site.

Allow for the possibility of a part of the URL being removed
Consider what happens when a user removes part of your URL - Some users might navigate your site in odd ways, and you should anticipate this. For example, instead of using the breadcrumb links on the page, a user might drop off a part of the URL in the hopes of finding more general content. He or she might be visiting http:// www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/2010/upcoming-baseballcard-shows.htm, but then enter http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/2010/ into the browser's address bar, believing that this will show all news from 2010 (2). Is your site prepared to show content in this situation or will it give the user a 404 ("page not found" error)? What about moving up a directory level to http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/news/?

(2) Users may go to an upper directory by removing the last part of the URL.


Prepare two sitemaps: one for users, one for search engines
A site map (lower-case) is a simple page on your site that displays the structure of your website, and usually consists of a hierarchical listing of the pages on your site. Visitors may visit this page if they are having problems finding pages on your site. While search engines will also visit this page, getting good crawl coverage of the pages on your site, it's mainly aimed at human visitors.

An XML Sitemap (upper-case) file, which you can submit through Google's Webmaster Tools, makes it easier for Google to discover the pages on your site. Using a Sitemap file is also one way (though not guaranteed) to tell Google which version of a URL you'd prefer as the canonical one (e.g. http://brandonsbaseballcards.com/ or http:// www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/; more on what's a preferred domain). Google helped create the open source Sitemap Generator Script to help you create a Sitemap file for your site. To learn more about Sitemaps, the Webmaster Help Center provides a useful guide to Sitemap files.

Create a naturally flowing hierarchy
Make it as easy as possible for users to go from general content to the more specific content they want on your site. Add navigation pages when it makes sense and effectively work these into your internal link structure.
Avoid:

• creating complex webs of navigation links, e.g. linking every page on your site to every other page 

• going overboard with slicing and dicing your content (so that it takes twenty clicks)

Use mostly text for navigation
Controlling most of the navigation from page to page on your site through text links makes it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your site. Many users also prefer this over other approaches, especially on some devices that might not handle Flash or JavaScript.
Avoid:

• having a navigation based entirely on drop-down menus, images, or animations                                      - many, but not all, search engines can discover such links on a site, but if a user can reach allpages on a site via normal text links, this will improve the accessibility of your site; more on how Google deals with non-text files

Put an HTML site map page on your site, and use an XML Sitemap file
A simple site map page with links to all of the pages or the most important pages (if you have hundreds or thousands) on your site can be useful. Creating an XML Sitemap file for your site helps ensure that search engines discover the pages on your site.
Avoid:

• letting your HTML site map page become out of date with broken links 

• creating an HTML site map that simply lists pages without organizing them, for example by subject

Have a useful 404 page
Users will occasionally come to a page that doesn't exist on your site, either by following a broken link or typing in the wrong URL. Having a custom 404 page that kindly guides users back to a working page on your site can greatly improve a user's experience. Your 404 page should probably have a link back to your root page and could also provide links to popular or related content on your site. Google provides a 404 widget that you can embed in your 404 page to automatically populate it with many useful features. You can also use Google Webmaster Tools to find the sources of URLs causing "not found" errors.
Avoid:

• allowing your 404 pages to be indexed in search engines (make sure that your webserver is configured to give a 404 HTTP status code when non-existent pages are requested) 

• providing only a vague message like "Not found", "404", or no 404 page at all 

• using a design for your 404 pages that isn't consistent with the rest of your site

Simple-to-understand URLs will convey content information easily 
Creating descriptive categories and filenames for the documents on your website can not only help you keep your site better organized, but it could also lead to better crawling of your documents by search engines. Also, it can create easier, "friendlier" URLs for those that want to link to your content. Visitors may be intimidated by extremely long and cryptic URLs that contain few recognizable words.

URLs like (1) can be confusing and unfriendly. Users would have a hard time reciting the URL from memory or creating a link to it. Also, users may believe that a portion of the URL is unnecessary, especially if the URL shows many unrecognizable parameters. They might leave off a part, breaking the link.

(1) A URL to a page on our baseball card site that a user might have a hard time with.

Some users might link to your page using the URL of that page as the anchor text. If your URL contains relevant words, this provides users and search engines with more information about the page than an ID or oddly named parameter would (2)

(2) The highlighted words above could inform a user or search engine what the target page is about before following the link.

URLs are displayed in search results
Lastly, remember that the URL to a document is displayed as part of a search result in Google, below the document's title and snippet. Like the title and snippet, words in the URL on the search result appear in bold if they appear in the user's query (3). To the right i s another exampl e showi ng a URL on our domai n for a page containing an article about the rarest baseball cards. The words in the URL might appeal to a search user more than an ID number like "www. brandonsbaseballcards.com/article/102125/" would..

(3) A user performs the query [baseball cards]. Our homepage appears as a result, with the URL listed under the title and snippet.

Google is good at crawling all types of URL structures, even if they're quite complex, but spending the time to make your URLs as simple as possi bl e for both users and search engi nes can hel p.  Some webmasters try to achieve this by rewriting their dynamic URLs to static ones; while Google is fine with this, we'd like to note that this is an advanced procedure and if done incorrectly, could cause crawling issues with your site. To learn even more about good URL structure, we recommend this Webmaster Help Center page on creating Google-friendly URLs.

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.
Avoid:

• using lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs 

• choosing generic page names like "page1.html" 

• using excessive keywords like"baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseballcards.htm"

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.
Avoid:

• having deep nesting of subdirectories like ".../dir1/dir2/dir2/dir4/dir5/dir6/page.html" 

• using directory names that have no relation to the content in them

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.
Avoid:

• having pages from subdomains and the root directory access the same content    - e.g. "domain.com/page.htm" and "sub.domain.com/page.htm" 

• using odd capitalization of URLs                                                                                                         - many users expect lower-case URLs and remember them better

Summaries can be defined for each page
A page's description meta tag gives Google and other search engines a summary of what the page is about (1). Whereas a page's title may be a few words or a phrase, a page's description meta tag mi ght be a sentence or two or a short paragraph.  Googl e Webmaster Tools provides a handy content analysis section that'll tell you about any description meta tags that are either too short, long, or duplicated too many times (the same information is also shown for <title> tags). Like the <title> tag, the description meta tag is placed within the <head> tag of your HTML document.

(1) The beginning of the description meta tag for our homepage, which gives a brief overview of the site's offerings.
(2) A user performs the query [baseball cards]. Our homepage appears as a result, with part of its description meta tag used as the snippet.
(3) A user performs the query [rarest baseball cards]. One of our deeper pages, with its unique description meta tag used as the snippet, appears as a result.

<html> <head> <title>Brandon's Baseball Cards - Buy Cards, Baseball News, Card Prices</title> <meta name="description=" content="Brandon's Baseball Cards provides a large selection of vintage and modern baseball cards for sale. We also offer daily baseball news and events in"> </head> <body>

What are the merits of description meta tags?
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 i f i t does a good j ob of matchi ng up wi th a user' s query. Alternatively, Google might use your site's description in the Open Directory Project if your site is listed there (learn how to prevent search engines from displaying ODP data). Adding description meta tags to each of your pages is always a good practice in case Google cannot find a good selection of text to use in the snippet. The Webmaster Central Blog has an informative post on improving snippets with better description meta tags.

Words in the snippet are bolded when they appear in the user's query (2). This gives the user clues about whether the content on the page matches with what he or she is looking for. (3) is another example, this time showing a snippet from a description meta tag on a deeper page (whi ch i deal l y has i ts own uni que descri pti on meta tag) containing an article.

Accurately summarize the page's content
Write a description that would both inform and interest users if they saw your description meta tag as a snippet in a search result.
Avoid:

• writing a description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page

• using generic descriptions like "This is a web page" or "Page about baseball cards"

• filling the description with only keywords 

• copying and pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta tag

Use unique descriptions for each page
Having a different description meta tag for each page helps both users and Google, especially in searches where users may bring up multiple pages on your domain (e.g. searches using the site: operator). If your site has thousands or even millions of pages, hand-crafting description meta tags probably isn't feasible. In this case, you could automatically generate description meta tags based on each page's content.
Avoid:

•  using a single description meta tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages

Indicate page titles by using title tags
A title tag tells both users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is. The <title> tag should be placed within the <head> tag of the HTML document (1). Ideally, you should create a unique title for each page on your site.
Indicate page titles by using title tags

<html>
<head>
<title>Brandon's Baseball Cards - Buy Cards, Baseball News, Card Prices</title> <meta name="description=" content="Brandon's Baseball Cards provides a large selection of vintage and modern baseball cards for sale. We also offer daily baseball news and events in">
</head>
<body>

(1) The title of the homepage for our baseball card site, which lists the business name and three main focus areas.

Page title contents are displayed in search results
If your document appears in a search results page, the contents othe title tag will usually appear in the first line of the results (iyou're unfamiliar with the different parts of a Google search resultyou might want to check out the anatomy of a search result video by Google engineer Matt Cutts, and this helpful diagram of a Google search results page). 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 (2).

(2) A user performs the query [baseball cards]. Our homepage shows up as a result, with the title listed on the first line (notice that the query terms the user searched for appear in bold).

The title for your homepage can list the name of your websitebusiness and could include other bits of important information like the physical location of the business or maybe a few of its main focuses or offerings (3).

Accurately describe the page's content
Choose a title that effectively communicates the topic of the page's content.
Avoid:

• choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page

• using default or vague titles like "Untitled" or "New Page 1"

Create unique title tags for each page
Each of your pages should ideally have a unique title tag, which helps Google know how the page is distinct from the others on your site.
Avoid:

•  using a single title tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages

Use brief, but descriptive titles
Titles can be both short and informative. If the title is too long, Google will show only a portion of it in the search result.
Avoid:

• using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users  stuffing unneeded keywords in your title tags

 This document first began as an effort to help teams within Google, but we thought it'd be just as useful to webmasters that are new to the topic of search engine optimization and wish to improve their sites' interaction with both users and search engines. Although this guide won't tell you any secrets that'll automatically rank your site first for queries in Google (sorry!), following the best practices outlined below will make it easier for search engines to crawl, index and understand your content.

Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your site's user experience and performance in organic search results. You're likely already familiar with many of the topics in this guide, because they're essential ingredients for any web page, but you may not be making the most out of them.


Even though this guide's title contains the words "search engine", we'd like to say that you should base your optimization decisions first and foremost on what's best for the visitors of your site. They're the main consumers of your content and are using search engines to find your work. Focusing too hard on specific tweaks to gain ranking in the organic results of search engines may not deliver the desired results. Search engine optimization is about putting your site's best foot forward when it comes to visibility in search engines, but your ultimate consumers are your users, not search engines.

Your site may be smaller or larger than our example site and offer vastly different content, but the optimization topics we discuss below should apply to sites of all sizes and types. We hope our guide gives you some fresh ideas on how to improve your website, and we'd love to hear your questions, feedback, and success stories in the Google Webmaster Help Forum.

Cyberslacking can be a real drag on companies. The solution for many firms seems to be to simply block the websites on which they believe their employees will waste the most time. Studies have shown social media to be a major time sink, as well online games and personal email.

A study from DNS-resolution service OpenDNS, "2010 Report on Web Content Filtering and Phishing" details just what sites companies were most likely to block last year, be it social networking websites or sites that have a reputation for fostering procrastination.

Take a look at the list below to see if your favorite sites are among the most blocked by companies.

10. eBay.com -- 1.6 Percent
9. Meebo.com -- 1.6 Percent
8. Ad.Yieldmanager.com -- 1.8 Percent
7. Orkut.com -- 2.1 Percent
6. Hotmail.com -- 2.1 Percent
5. Twitter.com -- 4.2 Percent
4. Ad.Doubleclick.net -- 5.7 Percent
3. YouTube.com -- 11.9 Percent
2. MySpace.com -- 13 Percent
1. Facebook.com -- 23 Percent

Recommended reading:
* Productivity time lost on Facebook and other social media networks costing Britain up to 14 billion pounds

How to get top rankings in Google, you can be on page one for the right targets, targets that are relevant to what you want to do with your web.

There are no SEO silver bullets. Stop looking for them and get to work. If you don't know what the work that you need to do is, go read my better search engine rankings primer written in plain language.

Google has become the most powerful search engine on the internet. My opinion why this is is that Google delivers the most relevant search results. By relevant, I mean that if you were searching for any of those phrases bulleted above and found this page, you found a web page very close to what you were looking for? Relevance creates conversions to inquiries and sales! Relevance is GOOD. It's conversions that matter, not hits!

Let me clarify that last statement a little: first you have to have rankings, then you have to have clicks, then you need conversions. So, hits do matter, but only if your content is creating inquiries and sales? That's the way I see it.

In January 2010, in the USA market Google received 66.3% of all searches, Yahoo 14.5%, Microsoft Bing 10.9%, AOL Search 2.5% and Ask.com 1.9%. The total number of searches in January 2010 was 10,272,099,000.

The process I use to get my clients top rankings on Google and the other major search engines is basically as follows, and I am going to link you off to pages in my web that provide more details about each of these subjects. You can also read this page about my SEO Project Management

Perform a Google (and other search engines) structural compliance analysis. This is something very few SEO folks do. Why? Perhaps they don't know? Google provides recommendations to webmasters in their Webmaster Guidelines, which is public information. Google also has new patents that indicate what is important to them in ranking web pages. I also use up to the minute search engine research and know what works with Google's algorithm and what doesn't. I am not talking about anything sneaky or unethical - black hat bad guy tactics will not work for long - I don't do them. I am talking about what Google says they like and want. You do want Google to be happy, don't you?

Want to see an example of the kind of similar information for beginners? Check out my Free SEO Help files, request a copy of my free help files and sign up for your Free SEO Tip of the Day at the top left in the navigation on this page. John Alexander is a great SEO teacher and good friend.

Go to Google and search for free SEO help files and see where my page is ranked? What I do works for me?

Understand your marketing plan. You need to understand your marketing plan and I need to understand what you want your web to do for you if you want me to help you. You do have a plan, right? Complete my SEO Questionnaire so that I can also understand your priorities and your market. This information gets me all set up to help you get top rankings on Google. It is a good marketing exercise for you.

Do search phrase research. We can determine through search phrase research exactly what people are searching for relative to what you are doing with your web. Read more about Keyword Services. I am in the top four out of about 285 million competitors last time I checked.

The complexity of the way people search is increasing. The long tail is getting longer; 1- and 2-word search queries are on the decline, while 4- and 5-word queries are rising, while 3-word queries are down slightly. Four-word queries are up 12% since 2007, and five-word queries are up 16%."

Write keyword rich page copy. A web page works best with Google when it has enough text properly written about ONE SUBJECT. What Google's algorithm is trying to determine when it analyzes your web pages is: what is this page about? If you have a mixed message, the algorithm can't tell what the page is about, and you get no rankings.

Read more about Web Copywriting Basics. Also read my home page copywriting tips. Creating pages that work with Google may require some rearrangement of your content by creating new pages. Many webs have good content but the way it is arranged in the web creates mixed messages. Sound familiar? Not uncommon.

Get some links in to your web from authoritative sources. Web pages with Google PageRank's of 4 and above will get you in Google's index with a positive start. For a few hundred dollars you can list your web in paid directories that Google respects and indexes every day. This is the fastest way to be found, much better than submitting directly to Google. The cost to do the best dozen is about $900.

Keep adding content. Google treats webs with more than 100 pages of good content differently from smaller webs. 100 pages sounds like a lot? Not really. Let's discuss all of the ways you can easily add content. Some are free. Read some great ideas for adding content to your website.

Start a Link Building Program When you have done everything you can do to create the best quality content, links in to your website from other websites will be the greatest determining factor for your Google rankings.

Is your web in Google trouble or the supplemental index? We make an appeal to the Google Team telling them that we have cleaned up your act, that you will be a good boy or girl from now on, and that you want to be reinstated in their index. If you made an honest mistake or if you tried to be tricky and got caught, and you will get caught, Google will give you a break one time. Don't do it again.

Write a search engine optimized press release. This will bring large volume traffic to you web in a matter of days instead of weeks or months. I work with a pro in California, a professional writer with a journalism background. Your release will be on the first page of Google, typically in 5-7 days. Cost is about $600. If you are not on Google page one you don't pay the whole fee until you are.

Use Google Sitemaps Using an XML sitemap in your web, in addition to a regular sitemap, is a great way to see what Google sees when indexing your web. The Sitemaps Beta has now been incorporated into your free Google account under Webmaster Tools.


There are a number of XML generators online. I have tested 20 of them, none of which worked correctly for websites with more than 30 pages.

An excellent tool you can download and run from your desktop is GSiteCrawler: Google Sitemap Generator for Windows Be sure to download the latest update.

GSiteCrawler is a better solution for webs with lots of content and for webs where your images are important for image search. GSiteCrawler will index everything including all pages in all directories and your images. It uses 6 simultaneous crawlers to capture your content. Making a sitemap for a web with 2600 pages took me about an hour and a half.

GSiteCrawler also generates the Yahoo Site Explorer urllist.txt file. Read more here in my Sitemaps How to for Google and Yahoo!

Open your free Google account, then request a verification code to show you have the right to monitor the web. The best bet is to add the verification file as a named html page in your website. Google will tell you what to name the file. Add the file to your website same directory as your home page. Do the same with Yahoo Site Explorer.

Then, use GSiteCrawler to crawl your website, put the sitemap in your website online, go back to Google, tell Google the name of the file and they will check it out and approve it.

Takes me about 10 minutes, but I have done a bunch of them. Google will tell you if they find any indexing errors, missing pages, broken links, etc. When you add new pages to your web, go make another sitemap and resubmit it. Other engines are using XML maps, too. This makes Google's job easier, and is a leg up for you on your competitors for get top rankings in Google.