Search Optimization for EdWebs Pages

 

"Search optimization" means improving how often and how high up in the list your site is returned from search pages such as Google.   A good summary of search optimization can be found at http://www.seologic.com/guide/ and http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769  Some first steps are outlined below.

Optimize Your Content for Search Crawlers

• Use titles, keywords, and description fields. Description and Keywords are in the "Page Properties" section of Contribute. Titles are derived from your pages first Header Level 1 (usually at the top of a page.)
• Use alt tags for all images.  Google indexes the text of alt tags, but cannot index the images themselves.
• Use good headings with header styling tags around them.
• Make sure important pages in your site are linked to from all pages in your site. Within EdWebs, you can accomplish this by making sure your menu have links to all important pages.
• Make sure common phrases someone might search for are included in your main pages and in your header level 1 tags. For example, if you think people would search for "teacher certification", "teacher training" or "teacher education" to get to your content, make sure these phrases are in your site, even if your department uses different phrasing for the same concepts. Avoid phrases that only have meaning locally such as "public engagement", "academic outreach" or "teleport." Such phrases may only confuse users anyway.

Submit Your Site to Directories and Other Sites

Find the appropriate locations within the following directories and list your web site.  Some example categories are listed.  A good way to find categories for your site is to search the given directory by relevant keywords.  You should also encourage other relevant web sites to link to yours. More directory links to your site will help your search optimization as well as help those browsing directories find your content.

• Open Directory/Dmoz Submission (www.dmoz.org)
  • http://www.dmoz.org/Reference/Education/Colleges_and_Universities/North_America/United_States/Illinois/University_of_Illinois/Urbana-Champaign/College_of_Education/
• Yahoo Directory. 
  • http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/U_S__States/Illinois/Cities/Urbana/Education/College_and_University/Public/University_of_Illinois_at_Urbana_Champaign/Departments_and_Programs/College_of_Education/
  • http://dir.yahoo.com/Education/Distance_Learning/Courses_Online/
  • http://dir.yahoo.com/Education/Higher_Education/Graduate_Education/By_Subject/
• Other Directories (http://www.seologic.com/all-search-engines/directories.php)

Sites Outside of EdWebs

For sites not using the EdWebs templates, a number of other issues are involved in search optimization.  Email webmaster@mail.ed.uiuc.edu and request a review of your site for search optimization. 

Here are some common steps:

• Make sure your dynamic content is available through URLs.  A web crawler won't fill out forms to get to content.
• Make sure you have a robots.txt file at the root of your site.
• Try to keep as much of your content as possible within the same hostname.  The hostname will get better search rankings.
• Avoid javascript generated content or popups.  The content will generally not be indexed by search engines.