Configure mobile sites so that they can be indexed accurately:

It seems the world is going mobile, with many people using mobile phones on a daily basis, and a large user base searching on Google’s mobile search page. However, as a webmaster, running a mobile site and tapping into the mobile search audience isn't easy. Mobile sites not only use a different format from normal desktop sites, but the management methods and expertise required are also quite different. This results in a variety of new challenges. While many mobile sites were designed with mobile viewing in mind, they weren’t designed to be search friendly.


Here are troubleshooting tips to help ensure that your site is properly crawled and indexed:

If your web site doesn't show up in the results of a Google mobile search even using the site: operator, it may be that your site has one or both of the following issues:

1. Googlebot may not be able to find your site
Googlebot must crawl your site before it can be included in our search index. If you just created the site, we may not yet be aware of it. If that's the case, create a Mobile Sitemap and submit it to Google to inform us of the site’s existence. A Mobile Sitemap can be submitted using Google Webmaster Tools, just like a standard Sitemap.


2. Googlebot may not be able to access your site
Some mobile sites refuse access to anything but mobile phones, making it impossible for Googlebot to access the site, and therefore making the site unsearchable. Our crawler for mobile sites is "Googlebot-Mobile". If you'd like your site crawled, please allow any User-agent including "Googlebot-Mobile" to access your site (). You should also be aware that Google may change its User-agent information at any time without notice, so we don't recommend checking whether the User-agent exactly matches "Googlebot-Mobile" (the current User-agent). Instead, check whether the User-agent header contains the string "Googlebot-Mobile". You can also use DNS Lookups to verify Googlebot.


Verify that Google can recognize your mobile URLs

Once Googlebot-Mobile crawls your URLs, we then check for whether each URL is viewable on a mobile device. Pages we determine aren't viewable on a mobile phone won't be included in our mobile site index (although they may be included in the regular web index). This determination is based on a variety of factors, one of which is the "DTD (Doc Type Definition)" declaration. Check that your mobile-friendly URLs' DTD declaration is in an appropriate mobile format such as XHTML Mobile or Compact HTML (). If it's in a compatible format, the page is eligible for the mobile search index.

1. Title Tags
Your title tags can be anything that you want them to be, because it is what is going to show at the vary top of the page.Something you'll want to consider though is to make sure you are including some keywords to help with optimization. And, will interest your shopper in clicking on the items in question.

2. Meta Descriptions
Meta tag description is a statement of what the site is all about. When crafting one, think of the snippet from the search engine that you want to be seen, as most search engines pick up what you have stated in your meta description tag as your site description.

3. Alt Tags
Alt attributes are a way to describe images to search spiders simply because search spiders cannot see them. It is not only an opportunity to add more content (with keywords) to your site, but it also helps your images to be searchable on Google. For best results, all images should also have distinct filenames.

4. Sitemap.xml
Make sure all your web pages are on the sitemap, unless you have private pages that you don't want to be indexed, they can be excluded with a robots.txt file,The best way to do a site map is with this free sitemap generator - www.xml-sitemaps.com - you can do one for yahoo or google and also one in html - all automatically.


5. Robots.txt
Robots.txt is a text (not html) file you put on your site to tell search robots which pages you would like them not to visit. Robots.txt is by no means mandatory for search engines but generally search engines obey what they are asked not to do.

Custom 404 Error Page, Tips for Custom 404 Page, Handling 404 Error Page

Custom 404 Error Page
A 404 page means, when visitors visit our website and they reach to non-existent page on your site (because they've clicked on a broken link, the page has been deleted, or they've mistyped a URL). A 404 page indicate that webpage is not found or exit.
It is better to create a custom 404 web page. A good custom 404 page will help visitors to find the information they're looking for, as well as providing helpful links and encouraging them to explore your site further. We can customize 404 pages in any way by using standard HTML.
Tips for creating an effective 404 Error page:

• Create the 404 page same as the remaining exit page, including internal linking or navigation.
• Consider adding links to your most popular articles or posts, as well as a link to your site's home page.
• Think about providing a way for users to report a broken link.
• Avoid custom 404 page being index by search engines and Google search results, make sure that your web server returns an actual 404 HTTP status code when a missing page is requested.
• Use the Enhance 404 tool in Webmaster Tools to embed a search box on your custom 404 page and provide users with useful information to help them find the information they need.

Site Navigational Structure, Internal Navaigation Structure

Navigation structure of a website is important for visitors to navigate from one to other pages quickly. Navigation structure is also help search engines understand what content the webmaster thinks is important.
All sites have a home page, which is the main page of the website and visitors start entering from home to another page of the website.
Before starting the internal linking, we have to think that how visitors will navigate from home page to other pages. If we have different categories that need to be classified under multiple category and subcategory categories then better to have a sitemap page on your site that displays the structure of your website in a single page.
Sitemap page help visitors to visit the internal pages from a single page and this is good from seo point of view because search engines will also visit this page and easily crawl the pages on your site.
A Sitemap.xml file, which you can submit through Google's Webmaster Tools, makes
Easier for Google to crawl the web pages on your site.
Tips for Creating Site Navigation

• Try to make as simple as possible for visitors to navigate from home page to more specific inner page they want on your site. Add navigation pages in all pages relevant to content and category.
• Use mostly text for navigation from page to page on your site through text links makes it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your site.
• Use "breadcrumb" navigation - 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.
• Create a HTML sitemap page and use an XML Sitemap file.
• Have a useful 404 page

Avoid for Creating Site Navigation:

• Having a navigation based entirely on drop-down menus, images, or Animations.
• Linking each and every page to every other webpage.
• Going overboard with slicing and dicing your content.

HTML Heading Tag, Heading Tag Optimization, Heading Tag Tips, H1 Tag

Head Tag <h1>

Head Tag <h2>

Head Tag <h3>

Head Tag <h4>

Head Tag <h5>

Head Tag <h6>

Tips for Optimizing the Header Tag <h1> to <h6>:

• Header tags should contain your target keywords along with any other descriptive text relevant to the content of the page.
• Search engines give more importance to Header tags to what a web page is all about.
• The Google ranking algorithm things that if you're using a <h1> tag, then the text in between this header tag must be more important than the content on the rest of the page.
• Use your most target keyword phrases in heading tags on your webpage.
• By default, H1 tags aren't formatting, so when we are using a CSS style to override the default

• Use those keywords which are used in Title and Meta tags like description tag and keyword tag. Search engine preferred those keywords which are used in heading tags.
• Use at least 2-4 heading tags such as <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4> on each page of your website.
• User those target keyword in header tag which describe the content of the webpage.
• Add highly relevant keywords in <h1> tag, as it is weighted most than other heading tags.
• Analyze the relevancy of your keywords and place most important keyword in <h1> tag, less important to <h2>, further less important to <h3> and ultimately least important keywords to <h6>.

The past several months have afforded several high-profile examples of how search engine optimization, or SEO, should not be done. Last fall it was DecorMyEyes and the case of the abusive business proprietor, and just recently it was JCPenney and the case of the short-lived black hat success.
Such stories are by no means the only ones out there, of course--they've just drawn more publicity than most. Either way, examples like these are a rich source of instruction for the rest of us and a good reminder that in SEO--as in so many aspects of life--there's a right way to do things, and there are wrong ones.
Want to improve your company's search rankings? Then make sure you don't try to play any of these dirty SEO tricks.
1. Cloaking Your Content
The No. 1 top offending SEO technique, according to both SEO software firm SEOmoz and Google's own guidelines, is to design your Website so that search engines see one thing while human visitors see another. This is commonly called "cloaking," and it's generally considered the dirtiest trick there is.
Car maker BMW kindly provided a vivid illustration of this technique a few years back, as well as what happens to those who try it. Specifically, it was discovered that BMW's German Website was using what are called "doorway pages," or text-heavy pages sprinkled with select keywords, to attract the attention of Google's indexing system. The particular search term it focused on was "used cars."

So, when users searching for "used cars" found the BMW site at the top of Google's rankings, they were naturally tempted to click on it. What happened then, however, was that a JavaScript redirect would send them directly to BMW's main page, on which used vehicles featured minimally if at all.
BMW's reward for its cloaking efforts? Google unceremoniously kicked the BMW site out of its index, as Google engineer Matt Cutts explained in a blog post from 2006.

2. Acquiring Links from Brokers, Sellers or Exchanges
The second worst dirty trick, according to SEOmoz, as well as one apparently employed by both DecorMyEyes and JCPenney, is to pay a link broker or participate in other link schemes so as to get numerous links to your site from all across the Web.
The reason this trick is tempting is that Google's page ranking system factors in the number of links pointing to a page when it tries to evaluate that page's importance. It's also tempting because it can work well--at least in the short term, as JCPenney recently demonstrated.
Why shouldn't you use it? Well, mostly because it's in direct violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines, and it can get you severely punished, as JCPenney learned. If you participate in a link exchange program--whereby you link to a spam site in exchange for their links to you--the outbound links you install are also another factor that will negatively affect your rankings.
3. Duplicating Content
If a Website operator offers the same content on multiple pages, subdomains, or domains, it can result in extra traffic and higher rankings--or at least, so the thinking goes. Unfortunately, it's another violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines, and it can get you kicked out of its index.
Other instances in which content sometimes gets duplicated include affiliate programs that offer little or no original content, auto-generated content that's packed with keywords but makes little sense to human visitors, and content "scraped" from legitimate sites and then modified minimally.
Not only will such techniques get you punished by Google, but they'll also turn away human visitors. Note that when content is duplicated legitimately, such as for printer-friendly versions of articles, there are ways to alert Google so it doesn't misunderstand.
4. Keyword Stuffing
The keywords used on any Web page are a major factor in that page's ranking, but it's a bad idea to use them indiscriminately or deceptively. That includes using too many of the keywords you're hoping to optimize on--thereby exceeding any kind of naturally plausible keyword density--and it also includes packing keywords in hidden text, different-color fonts and tiny type.
Once again, Google engineer Matt Cutts offered some additional explanation in a 2007 blog post, along with an illustration: Alex Chiu, whose Web page featuring "immortality devices" was at the time stuffed with irrelevant keywords. Guess what? Chiu didn't show up in Google's index. (Since then, it appears to be back, presumably because the keyword stuffing has been corrected.)
A useful test, as Google points out in its guidelines, is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
5. Banking on Negative Reviews
Although it was disputed by at least one SEO expert, the owner of the DecorMyEyes site believed that the more negative reviews and comments his site got--and there were many, thanks to his atrocious customer service--the better the site's rankings, primarily as a function of all the extra links and traffic. For a time, too, his strategy worked pretty well, for whatever reason.
In response to the case, however, Google says it has since tweaked its algorithms, though it didn't explain specifically how. My assumption is that the overall sentiment of a site's reviews are now a factor. So, lest anyone be tempted, this is not a sustainable strategy, nor a smart one.
6. Automatic Queries
If you're like most Website owners, you wonder how your pages rank on various keywords at any given moment in time. Lo and behold, there are even tools that will perform automatic queries for you, to find out the truth from Google itself.
The only problem is, Google doesn't like that at all. Tools such as WebPosition Gold, it asserts, "consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service." Better avoid them.
There are other dirty SEO tricks out there, to be sure, but these are some of the worst ones. If you handle your company's SEO yourself, make sure you don't stray into these dangerous waters. If someone else handles SEO for you, manage them carefully so none of these slip by.