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DotNetNuke Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Features
For those who may not be familiar with DNN®,DotNetNuke®is an open source project and the most widely adopted Web Content Management Platform for building web sites and web applications on Microsoft .NET. DotNetNuke® provides a number of features that make many basic yet essential SEO tasks a breeze. In this post I will highlight a few of those features, show where they are, how to use them and provide a basic understanding of the SEO importance of each.Page SettingsLet’s start with an individual web page. Every web page you create in DNN® has its own page settings. Within the Page Settings you will find a number of essential on-page SEO settings relating to the specific web page.Page Name:Here you can enter the name of the web page in the Page Name text box, which is what will be used in the URL. From an SEO perspective this gives you the ability to incorporate yourrelevant keywordsinto your web page name. For example, if you were trying to rank for ‘DotNetNuke SEO’ you can use those keywords in your page name as opposed to something more general like ‘SEO Tutorials’. Search Engines place value in finding relevant keywords present in the URL of a page. As a result, your page name will be indexed aswww.mydomain.com/DotNetNukeSEO.aspxmaking it more relevant for the search phrase ‘DotNetNuke SEO’ to the search engines and users.Page Title:The Page Title is another very important aspect of on-page SEO. This represents the title tag found in the head section of a web page. Simply enter your page title in the Page Title text box. The search engines use the title of a web page in their ranking factors to help determine what a page is about. It is very important to use an appropriate and effective page title,ideally using your keywords.In addition, it is the page title that is displayed as thelinked textwhen returned in a search engine result page (SERP). From a user perspective it is the first thing that is generally seen in their search results. For example, if you are trying to rank well for ‘DotNetNuke SEO’ and you name your page ‘SEO Tutorials > My Company Name’, you are not providing the user or the search engine with a page title as optimized as it can be for the phrase ‘DotNetNuke SEO’. Depending on the competition for that search phrase your page is less likely to be returned in the first few items of the search engine result page (SERP), and if it were, the user isn’t provided with targeted link text related to ‘DotNetNuke SEO’ and may just skip over the item. A better page title would be ‘DotNetNuke SEO Tutorials by My Company Name’. The search phrase ‘DotNetNuke SEO’ is used first in the title so the search engines and the user clearly knows what the page is about. In addition the search engines will bold the keywords found in the title matching the search phrase. So your title will be ‘DotNetNuke SEO Tutorials by My Company Name’ thus bringing more attention to the actual search term.Best practice dictates that youshould not have blank or duplicate page titlesand the title should be roughly70 characters. Though more can be used and will be seen by the search engines, most of the search engines display only 70 characters. Personally I would rather have my entire page title displayed in the search results rather than the first 70 characters followed by … But again, that’s just my preference and not always feasible. You can add more or less, but be mindful of the SEO aspects when choosing a title for your page.DescriptionThe Page Description represents the META description tag found in the head section of the web page. Simply enter your page description in the Description text box. Generally speaking a best practice approach is to keep your page descriptions to around160 characters. Again, this is largely due to the number of characters the search engines usually display on their result pages.Though it has been documented that META descriptions are not relevant to search engine rankings-- at least in Google, Bing and Yahoo-- they are very important in describing the web page to the user. The description is displayed right under your page title. It is best to treat your page description as a short, yet compelling advertisement with appropriate use of your keywords. Creating your page descriptions this way tends to draw a much higher click-through rate. In addition, the search engines bold the keywords used in the description , just like they do in the page title when they match the search queries. Studies show that descriptions that display bold keywords have higher click through rates than those that do not. Consider the following example. If you were searching for ‘DotNetNuke SEO’, which result is more enticing?SEOTutorials > IMI Software, Inc.OurSEOtutorials include a number of articles on various topics to help you learn many web related topics including search engine optimization andDotNetNuke.DotNetNuke SEOFeatures by IMI Software, Inc.Award winningDotNetNukeWeb Development Company providingDotNetNukeSEOtutorials and tips to help you maximizeDotNetNukeon-pageSEO.Another quick tip is to not use quotes in your descriptions if it can be avoided. The search engines use quotes as a delimiter and tend to truncate the description. And like the page title it is important toavoid blank page descriptions and be sure they are unique for each pageon your site.KeywordsUnder Page Details you will also find the Keywords textbox. This relates to the META keywords tag found in the head section of a web page. As with the page description, the META keywords tag is not relevant to search engine rankings. They also do not provide any real value to the end user. However, it has been said to provide value to your competition, providing them an easy means to identify which keywords are important to your website. If you choose to add keywords, just add a comma separated list in the Keywords textbox.Page Settings → Advanced SettingsAfter Basic Settings you will find Advanced Settings. Here you will also find some very important on-page SEO settings specific to the web page. Though a bit advanced, these should not be ignored.Page Header Tags:This setting is an advanced concept which warrants its location under Advanced Settings, but it is a very useful and often necessary attribute of SEO. The Page Header Tags setting allows you to add any META tags that you would like rendered in the head section of the page. One common use for Page Header Tags is the ability to add acanonical url. This resolves an often overlooked yet critical problem ofduplicate contentthat many web owners face, sometimes without even knowing it. Duplicate content is often created when you have multiple URLS accessing the same web page. Simply put, the search engines don't like that and may actually penalize a website for this. Consider the following. The page on your site is named Home. You can possibly access this page using a number of different urls such as:mydomain.comwww.mydomain.commydomain.com/home.aspxwww.mydomain.com/home.aspxmydomain.com/default.aspxwww.mydomain.com/default.aspxThe problem here is that in the eyes of the search engines these different urls are treated as unique, indexable pages. When these pages are found the search engine identifies them as duplicate content and may penalize you for the infraction. So, how is this resolved? One quick and easy way is to add the canonical URL to the head section of the web page. Acanonical URLinforms the search engine that no matter how many other urls it finds with the same content, they are all just copies and this is the one to include in your index. So for example, let’s say you only wanted www.mydomain.com indexed as your home page. In the Page Header Tags add the following:<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.mydomain.com" />Users can still access your home page using any of the aforementioned URLs, but the search engines only want 1 to include in their index. This META tag informs the search engines which page that is.There are other uses for the Page Header Tags section as well. For example, you can add references to external javascript or jQuery libraries or css files. Another great use is to provide an alternate link to a document. This is agreat way to add the link to an RSS of a blog. Consider the following on you main blog page:<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Our Company Blog" href="http://www.mydomain.com/blog/Rss.aspx" />RecentlyFacebookintroduced theOpen Graph protocol. The Open Graph Protocol enables you to integrate your Web pages into the social graph. You can read more about it here. Facebook provides Open Graph META tags that you can include on a web page to add Facebook specific META information about the page being shared. Using these tags in conjunction with the new Facebook Like button gives each like, or share, maximum exposure within Facebook. With over 600 million users, it is something to explore.One thing to keep in mind here is that as of DNN® 5.6.2 thisPage Header Tagsfield is limited to500 characters. The most important thing to be aware of relating to this is that if you enter more than 500 characters the characters over 500 are truncated. The result of the truncation can cause improperly formatted META tags and as a result, the web page will likely not function correctly.Site Map PriorityI am going to talk a bit more about Site Maps later in this post but I want to point out the Site Map Priority text box under Other Settings. The priority of a web page in theXML Site Mapidentifies to the search engines the importance of a web page within a web site. You can enter a number 0.0 – 1.0. For example, your home page would likely be a 1 but your Contact Us page with nothing more than an email contact form could be a .1 or even a 0.0, since it is not a very important of a page in the context of your entire web site.301 Redirects301 Redirects are another imperative SEO component that cannot be overlooked. DotNetNuke® provides a very easy and efficient way to handle 301 redirects. A redirect is a way to send both users and search engines to a different web page than the one they originally requested. A 301 redirect informs the search engines that the originally requested page has been permanently moved.How do you implement this in DotNetNuke®? Under Other Settings you will see a setting for Link URL. You can select from 4 different options:None:No redirection will take place. This is the default setting.URL:Enter the destination URL you would like this page to be redirected to.Page:Select the Page Name from the drop down list you would like to redirect to.File:Select the File Name from the drop down list (or you can upload a new file to the web server) you would like to redirect to.One last step is to check the box located right under the Link URL setting named Permanently Redirect. That is all there is to it.When and why would you do implement a 301 Redirect?Consider the following. You may have a web page on your site that you no longer want to display, or perhaps you may want to change the page name. To properly handle this scenario it isnot the best idea to simply delete the page or just rename it. Unless you explicitly blocked the page from being indexed by the search engines via a robot.txt file, it is likely that the page exists in the indexes of the various search engines. There may also be internal and external links that point to this page. When a user or a search engine tries to access the page that you deleted or renamed, they will receive a 404 File Not Found error.A much more efficient way of handling this is to issue a 301 redirect.Remember, search engines love efficiency. When a search engine or a user tries to access the page, it is simply redirected to the new page. Eventually the search engines will remove the old page from its index. And most importantly, a 301 redirect passes most of theranking power, or ‘link juice’ to the new URL so any external links pointing to that page are still counted toward your overall page rank.Admin Site SettingsNow we head over to Admin Site Settings. There you will find a couple of site specific SEO settings and services.XML Site MapFound under Admin → Site Settings → Basic Settings → Site Details is a section titled Marketing. The first thing I want to mention is the Site Map URL. DotNetNuke® provides an internal XML site map provider. XML Site Maps are important for SEO because they enable a search engine to effectively and efficiently learn the structure of your website to increase the coverage of the web pages. There is not really anything for you to do with the site map unless you are using DNN® 5.3 or above.DotNetNuke® version 5.3.0 introduced some more control over the xml site map configuration. You can access these settings under Admin → Search Engine Sitemap. Here you can set the site map to use a default priority for all pages or use the ones you set at the page level (remember Site Map Priority under Page Settings?). You can set the cache time for when the site map refreshes. You can also choose to include or exclude hidden pages in the site map as well as exclude pages under a certain priority level.You will also find some convenience tools in the Marketing section enabling you to directly submit your site to the three major search engines for indexing. Simply select the search engine in the drop down list and click Submit. You are also provided a convenient way of submitting your site map to Google Webmaster tools as well as an easy way of verifying your site. When you sign up for a Google Webmaster Tools account you are asked to verify your site. One way of doing this is to download an html file with an authentication code, then uploading it to the root of your website. Rather than going through the extra steps of downloading and uploading you can simply copy the file name and enter it into the Verification textbox and click Create. The file will be created for you in the root of the website. You will then be able to verify with Google Webmaster Tools. These tools are duplicated in the Search Engine Sitemap page for DNN 5.3+.Google AnalyticsThough not directly related to SEO, analytics play an important part in your overall SEO and Internet Marketing efforts. When it comes to analytics, Google provides a very powerful and free service to measure site usage. DotNetNuke® provides a convenient way to add the necessary Google Analytics scripts to your web pages. Under the Admin Menu you will find Google Analytics. There you can add the Tracking ID that Google provides when you set up your account. If you add a value in the field, the Google Analytics script will be added to your web pages. If it is left blank, no script will be added. If you use some of the more advanced features of GA you will find some limitations here.Host SettingsNow we are going to look at some other SEO settings of DotNetNuke® that impact the entire DotNetNuke® installation rather than just a specific site or individual pages. Remember, DotNetNuke® supports multiple portals so any changes in the host settings affect every portal in use within the DNN® installation.Friendly URL SettingsUnder Host Settings → Advanced Settings you will find a section titled Friendly URL Settings. In most cases you do not have to do anything here. DotNetNuke® provides a very efficient URL rewriter so your web pages are rewritten in a friendly, human readable form. Advanced users can add their own url rewriting rules by clicking Add New Rule if needed. Why are friendly URLs important? Simply put, SEO.Consider the following:Bad:www.mydomain.com/default.aspx?tabid=99Better:www.mydomain.com/home/tabid/99/default.aspxBest:www.mydomain.com/home.aspxThe first URL contains a querystring parameter identifying the internal tab id of the web page. You do not even know what the actual title of the page is by looking at the URL. Not only is this bad from the user perspective but it is well known that search engines do not always crawl dynamic pages as well as they do static pages.The second is better since the dynamic query string has been removed. But it still is a little long and includes information not relevant to the content. You still have the tab id in there, though formatted a little better. The page name is not clear. Is it home.aspx or default.aspx? It simply isn’t as clear and descriptive as it can be.The third is ideal; no query strings, no additional information, the page name is clear and it’s easily read and deciphered, by both search engines and humans.Performance SettingsThough not directly related to SEO, the performance of a web page does come into play when a search engine visits a web page and it is considered when determining if a site is well optimized. So I am including this as an important part of on-page SEO.DotNetNuke® provides a section under Advanced Settings titled Performance Settings. Here you will find the Caching and Compression settings. Depending on the type of website and the frequency that you are updating your content you can set a level of caching and type of compression to use for the site (or DNN® installation to be more specific). What this does is cache each web page for a duration of time (generally hours based on your selection) so that when a user visits the page the page can load from the cache rather than make a call to the database to retrieve the settings and content to render on the users browser. Compression compresses the data on the web server prior to sending to the client so that the size of the web page is smaller resulting in better use of bandwidth and a faster transmission rate, resulting in faster load times.Common settings in this section would be selecting Memory for the Module Cache Provider, Cache Setting to Heavy, and Compression Setting to GZip Compression. Authenticated Cachability can be left as Public and generally leave the Use Whitespace Filter unchecked. Advanced users can add specific compression rules to apply in the Excluded Paths setting under Compression Settings.DISCLAIMER:Please understand that these are advanced settings. These are just recommendations from mour own experiences based on settings we’ve used on IMI Software client sites. Depending on your site, your hosting provider and the modules in use in your DotNetNuke® Portal, these settings may not be ideal. You should always backup your site and database before making any changes to advanced settings like this. I have heard of sites crashing after modifying these settings3rd Party ModulesDotNetNuke has a very extensive ecosystem with many 3rd party modules available. Some of those modules extend the capabilities discussed in this article. There are advanced URL Rewriting modules. Some are available at no charge and some available for purchase. These provide much greater and more granular control over your URLs. There are modules available that provide more control of your XML Site Map. You can also find modules that provide advanced and very powerful caching and compression functionality. There are modules that enable more control over the Google Analytics scripts on your pages as well. Go to Snowcovered.com and search using some of these keywords. You will find a number of possibilities.ConclusionSEO is quite a large and dynamic topic. The search engines are constantly changing their algorithms and webmasters are always trying to find new and efficient ways to optimize their sites for better placement in the SERPs for their targeted keywords. This post is not meant to provide an all inclusive list of on-page search engine optimization items, but rather a guide on how to implement some of them using features provided by DotNetNuke$reg;. Feel free to leave comments and share any SEO tips and tricks that you use, DotNetNuke® related or not.About IMI Software, Inc.IMI Software, Inc. is aLong Island Web Design and Software Development Company. We specialize inwebsite design and development,DotNetNuke® web development,search engine optimization,social media integration, and internet marketing. We also specialize in the development ofrental property management software.*THE OPINIONS PROVIDED IN THIS POST ARE PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE ADVICE PROVIDED OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE ARTICLE.
A Great Tip on What to Blog About for New Bloggers
When meeting with new clients we always stress the many SEO benefits of blogging. Oftentimes the question then arises "What do I write about?" We understand that not everybody is or wants to be a content writer, publisher or editor. But the benefits that blogging provides far outweigh the common reasons not to blog, such as 'I don't have enough time' or 'I don't know what to write about'. If you want to increase traffic to your site then blogging should be a top priority. By routinely adding fresh, compelling content to your website you are giving search engines a reason to continually visit your site. They want to index your content, it's what they thrive on. By providing rich content you are also increasing your chances of your website being found under a broader range of search topics. This also provides a valid reason for other websites to link back to your website, a very important SEO component. I could go on and on about the many SEO benefits of blogging and social media integration, and will in future SEO and blogging specific posts, but this post is simply about providing a blogging tip. Whenever we provide tips that we picked up elsewhere we like to give credit where credit is due. We picked this tip up fromHubSpot. So here it is. A great resource for blog posts are answers that you have provided to questions asked by your clients. Keep in mind that a blog post doesn't have to be long or contain a tremendous amount of information. A simple paragraph or 2 can be enough. The key is to write something interesting that individuals can gain benefit from. The answers you provide to client questions are a great source of information. Each one of the answers you give could be turned in to a short blog post. This post is a perfect example. It's only a couple of paragraphs and was derived from a common question that we receive from many of our clients. No matter what business you are in, your clients ask questions. Start to keep track of these questions and the answers you provide and start providing those answers in short blog posts. It's a great source of information.About IMI SoftwareIMI Software, Inc. is aLong Island Web Designand Software Development Company. We specialize in web design and development, DotNetNuke® solutions, web content management systems, search engine optimization, social media integration, and internet marketing services to small, medium and large businesses, Not-For-Profits and Corporations throughout New York, Queens and Long Island.