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.
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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?
97
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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 ...
69
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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
50
votes
12answers
710 views
SEO: Where do I start? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
What are the best ways to increase your site's position in Google?
I am primarily a software developer however I tend to delve in some web development from time to ...
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 ...
45
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 ...
40
votes
4answers
4k views
How do I transition to SSL without affecting PageRank?
Here at Stack Exchange we're working on moving all traffic to SSL. The reason we're not doing logged-in-users only is that one side of the login divide would suffer a redirect from google every time. ...
38
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 ...
37
votes
9answers
2k 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?
36
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7answers
5k views
Why should we use tags like p, span, hx tags when we can use CSS instead?
Why should we use tags like p, span, hx tags when we can use CSS instead? Is it important from an SEO point of view?
32
votes
4answers
925 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 ...
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 ...
29
votes
6answers
2k views
How long should my Html Page Title Really be?
How long should my text within my <title></title> tags really be? I know Google cuts it off at some point but when?
When I used IIS7's SEO Toolkit 1.0 I get error stating my title ...
27
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7answers
3k 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 ...
25
votes
4answers
1k views
Does registering a domain for 10+ years help search rank?
I've heard that registering a domain name for a very long time, say 5 to 10+ years, can help with your search rank.
This seems at least plausible to me, since a fly-by-night, massive domain name farm ...
24
votes
2answers
427 views
Why, on StackExchange sites, is the post title on the question page a link to itself?
It may look like a question for meta.stackoverflow.com, but I'd like to know if this decision has something to do with SEO or if this improve the user experience somehow.
It's a link to the same page ...
24
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5answers
3k views
How important is responsive web design?
I've heard a variety of opinions regarding the pros and cons of using responsive web design recently and was wondering whether it was necessary for small businesses that target small geographical ...
23
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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:
...
23
votes
2answers
483 views
How to use rel='canonical' properly
I have 3 URLS that serve the same data:
www.example.com/product/foo
www.example.com/product/foo?id=1
www.example.com?product=foo
For Google's sake I want the URL www.example.com/product/foo to be ...
23
votes
4answers
928 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?
...
22
votes
6answers
625 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 ...
21
votes
6answers
997 views
How to avoid “click here” links
I know that I should try to avoid links that have the text "click here". But how do I avoid that? What are good alternatives to
You can find more information about certain topic over here.
...
21
votes
3answers
612 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 ?
21
votes
5answers
510 views
Why is it preferable to use paths with slashes instead of query-string variables in a web page URL?
Why is it preferable to use paths with slashes instead of query-string variables in a web page URL?
20
votes
9answers
999 views
What's the importance of the “title” tag?
Talking with some other people recently, it came up an interesting topic. The core question at hand is:
What's the real importance and weight of the <title> tag in a web site?
For ...
20
votes
8answers
4k views
H1 vs H2 vs Other for website title/logo and SEO
It is a common practice for front-end developers to put the website title or logo in H1 tag and the title in H2. But most of the time the title of the page/article is more important because it carries ...
20
votes
4answers
3k views
Is using only https bad in a SEO perspective?
I would like to set up a new business site. I plan to direct www.example.com to example.com and only use that domain. My plan is also to only use https and not http. Does this affect the SEO for the ...
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 ...
18
votes
3answers
2k views
Using rel=canonical with syndication
I work at a site which allows syndication of content (via API's and data dumps). We are finding that a number of sites which republish our content are appearing higher in Google search results, even ...
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
12answers
2k views
SEO + international sites? country.domain.com or domain.country?
is it better to have seperate country specific domains (which costs more money) or subdomains which define the country, for better SEO?
eg.
stackoverflow.com
stackoverflow.com.au
...
17
votes
4answers
8k 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 ...
17
votes
3answers
683 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 ...
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:
...
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).
...
16
votes
8answers
397 views
SEO Tips and Tricks for web developers [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
What are the best ways to increase your site's position in Google?
I know most of the Users of Stackoverflow would have knowledge about Search Engine ...
16
votes
5answers
599 views
Why don't websites have a “description” meta tag in the head section?
I expected to see something like this in the <head> section of stackoverflow.com, for example:
<meta name="description" content="A language-independent collaboratively
edited question and ...
16
votes
1answer
210 views
How do I prevent Google from serving a cached version of my site?
From what I understand I can tell Google to remove pages from their archive if I add the header:
<meta name="ROBOTS" contents="NOARCHIVE" />
But won't this also remove the page from search ...
15
votes
13answers
3k views
How do I get images containing text to be indexed by search engines?
I am building a small portfolio website for a friend, and being in advertising and all, she hates the standard fonts and wants everything written in a custom font.
As CSS font-embedding is not really ...
15
votes
4answers
3k views
Overuse of H1 was bad, but now, with HTML5?
we know that the overuse of H1 will penalize sites (over-optimization penalty)
this was a proven fact, but now, in HTML 5 is allowed to use multiple H1 in the same page (inside nested sections).
SO ...
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 ...
15
votes
10answers
5k views
Are HTML tables bad for SEO?
A lot of designers discourage the use of tables but I have a layout where I'll use more div structure to achieve something made simple with a table..
Are tables bad for search engines?
edit: I will ...
14
votes
4answers
799 views
Google indexed site's address by accident. What do I do now?
I was making a site for a friend of mine and he wanted to be able to see my progress as I worked on the site, so I decided to put the site on a server on my computer and enable access by a domain name ...
14
votes
5answers
671 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?
14
votes
3answers
692 views
Many Stack Overflow users' pages have no Google PageRank and they are not indexed, why?
If you go to my user page on Stack Overflow and you check it with the Google Toolbar, you can see it has no PageRank at all (this does happen for almost any user page, even people with much higher ...
13
votes
10answers
5k views
SEO regarding using multiple <h1> tag?
Is is true <h1> tag should not have more than 1 on every page for SEO?
Every pages on the header, it includes and <h1> tag. Website Name which show an image from logo class, like this:
...
13
votes
5answers
211 views
Other than Google, how do I decide which search engines to optimize for?
Google has extensive tools for webmasters, and good SEO seems to be directed at Google first and foremost. But what other search engines should I be worrying about?
I could look at my logs, but then, ...
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 ...
13
votes
4answers
4k views
Should my Title tag be the same as my H1 tag?
I have read that I should make the contents of my <title> and <h1> tags the same.
Is that the case or is does Google look at the content of those 2 tags separately?
13
votes
6answers
250 views
Should I encourage clients to update content for SEO reasons?
Assume a website has quality content, let's say it's about a topic that does not change: a company whose services and staff stay the same, and they have no news to speak of. The content is accurate, ...
