Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of web content in search engines using an understanding of search engines' processes and algorithms. Also known as "natural" or "organic" search, it is distinct from paid web advertising.
133
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16answers
13k views
What are the best ways to increase a site's position in Google?
What are the best ways to increase a site's position in Google?
30
votes
7answers
8k views
Will having multiple domains improve my seo?
Lets say I have a domain already, for example www.automobile4u.com (not mine), with a website fully running and all.
The title of my "Website" says:
<title>Used cars - buy and sell your used ...
32
votes
4answers
898 views
What are the most important things I need to do to encourage Google Sitelinks?
My website used to have sitelinks and now it doesn't. It's very possible that it's due to changing the website to a sidebar design instead of having an "interstitial" type landing page which limited ...
27
votes
7answers
2k views
How should I structure my urls for both SEO and localization?
When I set up a site in multiple languages, how should I set up my urls for search engines and usability?
Let's say my site is www.example.com, and I'm translating into French and Spanish. What is ...
14
votes
5answers
642 views
How can I increase the traffic to my site?
I don't want to do link exchanges or anything shady. I just want some legitimate ways that I can direct a little bit more traffic to my site. How do I do that?
43
votes
5answers
8k views
How bad is it to use display: none in CSS?
I've heard many times that it's bad to use display: none for SEO reasons, as it could be an attempt to push in irrelevant popular keywords. A few questions:
Is that still received wisdom?
Does it ...
37
votes
9answers
1k views
Do meta keywords have any impact on ranking algorithms?
From what I have read, Google no longer uses meta keywords in it's ranking algorithm. Is it worth the effort to maintain meta keywords?
9
votes
3answers
620 views
What is the best stucture of SEO friendly URL?
I'm working for a website to convert the website URL to an SEO friendly URL. I plan to use this:
mysite.com/category-name/pageid-123-page-name
I looked at some similarly categorized, highly ranked ...
9
votes
5answers
751 views
How to diagnose a search engine ranking drop?
EDIT: Reworded & Cleaned Up to Ease Understanding
There has been a significant drop (90%) in traffic from Google to one of my well-established sites (6+ years) in the last week. Searches show ...
4
votes
2answers
599 views
Does Google use the Meta Description Tag for Description of Page?
When you do a Google search, there is typically a snippet of sample content from the page. I seem to recall that the Meta Tags can influence this choice of descriptive sentences. Is that correct(?) ...
12
votes
1answer
3k views
Do subdomains help/hurt SEO?
If I have mysite.com, and blog.mysite.com, do search engines see those as 1 site or 2? Will using subdomains hurt SEO? I have some technical reasons why I can't use mysite.com/blog.
10
votes
3answers
2k views
Does the Google spider render JavaScript?
Does the Google spider knows how to render JavaScript, or only HTML?
5
votes
2answers
456 views
How can I get search engines to crawl my site and see a localised view of my data?
(I hope I asked the question right..)
Fake site
Our site lists products for sale.
eg : http://www.myWebSite.com/products/some-drink-we-love-to-guzzle
Each product page has been translated into a ...
15
votes
4answers
1k views
StackOverflow and Google search
How is it that questions posted to the Stack Overflow show up as #1 in Google search results just minutes after being submitted? What SEO practices are being used to generate this sort of ...
21
votes
3answers
594 views
Is it better to put hyphens in a domain name?
Both in terms of SEO and user friendliness, is it better to put hyphens in a multi-words domain name or not ?
For example, is www.stackoverflow.com better than www.stack-overflow.com ?
4
votes
1answer
184 views
Title tag different from title appearing in Google?
I'm just wondering how it is possible that IGN.com has this in its title tag:
"Video Games, Cheats, Walkthroughs, Game Trailers, Reviews, News, Previews & Videos at IGN"
while on Google its ...
49
votes
3answers
3k views
How do I rename a domain and preserve PageRank?
As part of graduating from Area51 and becoming a full fledged site we sometimes change domain names from http://topic.stackexchange.com to http://example.com. Aside from the obvious 301 redirect rules ...
18
votes
6answers
586 views
SEO: How to Separate Fact from Fiction?
I am interested in learning about SEO, as many of you may already know. I am by far not a pro, but would love to learn. I currently own a number of domains etc that I am playing around with content ...
23
votes
4answers
911 views
What are the SEO rules for HTML 5?
What are the rules of engagement with respect to SEO in HTML 5?
Examples of things we have been mulling over with no conclusion:
Are you penalised for not using <head> and <body> tags?
...
11
votes
1answer
712 views
How good is it for SEO if you have a widget that lives on other sites?
I made a widget that would ideally live on other sites. Here is an example:
http://www.comehike.com/outdoors/widget.php?type=hike&hike_id=108&width=500&height=500
I guess since the ...
8
votes
3answers
200 views
Local SEO Strategies
What are your strategies for local SEO? For example, if you had a web design company in Lincoln, Nebraska, what would you do for your website from an SEO perspective?
10
votes
4answers
4k views
Does changing web hosting server affects SEO page ranking?
I have been hosting in a server from last 2 years. I am planning to change the hosting server. Before i change the hosting server i would like to know whether it affects my page ranking or not?
5
votes
4answers
398 views
How to Remove URLs from Google Search Engine
I have used so many things like url removal request and deleted the pages etc., but still the errors are shown in my webmaster tools.
How can I remove the urls completely from Google?
97
votes
1answer
16k views
Does the order of keywords matter in a page title?
Stack Overflow has made a change to their page titles such that the most popular tag for a question appears at the start of the title. The change is being deployed across the network, so check out ...
37
votes
4answers
2k views
Are page ranks for subdomains independent?
If I have a domain name say stackexchange.com and I want to host 2 sites X and Y as subdomains of that site.
Will x.stackexchange.com help out y.stackexchange.com in page rank? Or will google treat ...
16
votes
7answers
3k views
Should I use a file extension or not?
I've always wondered about this and never found a good solution.
But this question reminded me of it.
When I have a URL on my website it can be displayed and accessed any of the following ways:
...
13
votes
3answers
1k views
How do I get Google to show links to my site hierarchy in search results?
I have recently noticed that for some websites, Google is linking to different locations in the site hierarchy instead of just the destination page URL. For instance, searching for "Malibu Rum Drink ...
10
votes
7answers
2k views
Do dedicated IP addresses improve SEO?
I've googled that and I've found many opinions on this subject, and I'm not sure, if, dedicated IP addresses actually really improve SEO? Is it that different from shared IP address (of 50-100 other ...
10
votes
4answers
720 views
ecommerce item deleted by user, 301 rediret to HOME PAGE or 404 not found?
I know this question is someway similar to this one where they reccomend using 404, but after reading this other one where they suggest to use 301 when changing site urls (in the specific case was due ...
3
votes
2answers
3k views
How to SEO a Single-Page website
I am creating a new website for a client, and I think a single page website / layout will be pretty neat. There is not that much detailed content, it is a company that imports a lot of products from ...
18
votes
4answers
3k views
How can I prevent Google mistakenly offering to translate a page?
Several of my site's pages are appearing in search results with [Translate this page] next to it. When I click that it takes me to Google Translate and translates my page "from Catalan to English".
...
17
votes
3answers
635 views
Do search engines crawl PDFs and if so are there any rules to follow when making them
The website I am working on has a few hundred PDFs in it. I don't think I have ever seen any of them come back in a search but there are linked to directly from out site. They are also full of ...
4
votes
2answers
1k views
Google doesn't seem to update the description or title of my homepage
Before we launched our website, we had set up a "coming soon" page and google picked up the title and description from its contents. So the description in the search results said, "Coming soon! Visit ...
3
votes
2answers
1k views
Is a URL with a query string better or worse for SEO then one without one?
I want to know, is there a huge difference in terms of SEO between these URLs:
mysite.com/ontario/toronto/listings
or
mysite.com/listings.php?p=ontario&c=toronto
Will one URL rank ...
3
votes
2answers
224 views
One page website - Effect on SEO
I'm considering re-designing my personal website to promote my web services in my local area.
My issue is whether to do a one page website with a scroll-to navigation system. What effect does this ...
68
votes
10answers
2k views
URLs: Should I use hyphens or underscores?
Which is better for search engines?
example.com/my_cool_page.html or example.com/my-cool-page.html
16
votes
5answers
8k views
Do we still need to avoid using frame/iframe for good SEO?
I thought frame and iframe are something bad for SEO.
Today I was doing some search and searching for "numismatica" in Google.it and the 3rd site is www.lemonete.com (ranks high also in Google.com).
...
9
votes
5answers
268 views
How do i build backlinks?
I've launch a website long ago. My website URL is : http://www.sunshinetrekking.com
There's already 80 Pages, a sitemap.xml (80 URLs),
english language / french language - url like that "/en/" "/fr/"
...
9
votes
2answers
2k views
SEO preference for WWW or HTTP:// protocol redirection? Do www websites rank better than NON-www?
After having read various articles on this site about WWW or Non-WWW website setup, here, here and here, and after having setup a correct redirection rule in .Htaccess to at least eliminate duplicate ...
23
votes
2answers
2k views
Does it make a difference if your url ends in a trailing slash or not?
Does it make any difference to SEO ratings what-so-ever if your url has a trailing slash:
http://www.domain.com/some/slug/paths/
as opposed to one that does not:
...
19
votes
3answers
5k views
Is the title attribute (not tag) important to SEO?
The title attribute is an HTML standard element available across most tags. e.g.
<li><a title="Widgets listed by household function" href="/widgets/by-function.html">by ...
15
votes
4answers
7k views
Anchor tag inside H1 or H1 inside achor tag : Which is better?
I am trying to use h1 tags on my blog for the post title and came across one problem.
Title is hyperlinked.
so
Case 1:
<h1> <a href=""> xyz </a> </h1>
case 2:
<a ...
7
votes
2answers
542 views
Does server location or TLD affects SEO
I have heard(read) SEO experts who claims that you server position will affect your SEO. In the latest example it was about an international site targeting the Russian market so:
Does the server ...
7
votes
2answers
483 views
SEO : urls : best place for the id
I would like to know what's the best location for an id in a SEO optimized URL:
http://www.site.com/id/slug-title
http://www.site.com/slug-title-id
What do you think ?
8
votes
2answers
193 views
SEO - Reducing significance of irrelevant kewords
I have some irrelevant keywords high up in my Google Webmasters Tools Keywords list. Unfortunately it's stuff that needs to be on the site. E.g. I'm getting words like log (from log-in), copyright, ...
4
votes
4answers
1k views
SEO - Changing file extension
I am going to change the file extension from ".htm" to ".php", is there any disadvantage with this action?
5
votes
3answers
429 views
Is minifying id and class names a bad SEO practice?
I am a big fan of minifying everything whenever possible. It is a sin for me to don't do this.
However, I recently read that one of the thousands tips to boost your website rank on search engines was ...
4
votes
1answer
218 views
www and non www can suffer duplicated content
Do you know if i should use canonical tag, or 301 redirection from
http://mydomain.com to http://www.mydomain.com
To avoid duplicated content penalty in case other pages link to the domain without ...
4
votes
1answer
143 views
Does Google Analytics data affect SEO?
I have several pages on my site that I did not include the Google Analytics code. Will it improve my site's Google ranking if I include the GA on all of my pages and increase the number of visits on ...
3
votes
2answers
285 views
Effect on Google rankings if my site is down?
My site has been down for the last 8 hours due to hardware problems.
Any ideas on how this will affect my Google rankings/serps ??
