SEO

Search Engine Optimisation – SEO

SEO aims to detect flaws in relation to the e-discovery nature of the content with the aim to improve a high search engine ranking.

This policy category contains 10 policies.

• Require Keywords Meta Tag
• Identify Large Titles
• Require Breadcrumb
• Identify Large Descriptions
• Detect Robots Meta Tag
• Detect Common Words Not In Description Meta Tag
• Identify Links Without title Attribute
• Detect Poor Images Folder Structure
• Identify Image Based Navigation
• Detect Common Words Not In Meta Keywords Tag

Require Keywords Meta Tag

Aims to highlight documents that do not use the meta tag 'keywords' or documents that contain an empty value for the keywords.

Websites failing to use this meta tag will suffer when the spiders of a search engine attempt to rank the document, pushing it further down the results page and thus less likely to be accessed by new users.

Documents that do not make use of this meta tag will generate a policy exception.

Identify Large Titles

Identifies documents with a title element that has a value larger than 70 characters. Titles larger than 70 characters affect search engine rankings, reducing these titles to become more 'searchable' names will increase tarffic to the site.

Any title found that is larger than 70 characters will create a policy exception.

Require Breadcrumb

Ensures all documents contain a breadcrumb trail. Breadcrumbs offer both a better user experience of a website and improve SEO.

Documents that fail to make use of a breadcrumb will be highlighted in a policy exception.

Identify Large Descriptions

Identifies documents that contain a description meta tag that with a value larger than 150 characters. 150 characters is considered sufficeint in terms of the description meta tag, once this number is increased it reduces the impact of search engines and affects rankings.

Description meta tag elements that contain more than 150 characters will be highlighted in a policy exception.

Detect Robots Meta Tag

Identifies documents that are missing the robots meta tag. Using the robots.txt file can be used to block sections of a site that should not be accessed and indexed by search engine spiders, for example a personal images folder.

Documents that do not include the robots.txt meta tag will create a policy exception.

Detect Common Words Not In Meta Description Tag

This policy aims to highlight common words used in the main body of the document that are not included in the description metadata. A series of stop words are used to exclude words such as 'a, the etc.'. This list can be modified to exclude domain specific words that may have no relevance.

These words that are extracted can later be added to the metadata description to provide a more accurate representation of what the document is aiming to portray, with the aim to optimise around the one key term.

This policy will generate a policy exception if there are words (over a configurable number) that appear on the page and are not included in the description.

Identify Links Without Title Attribute

This policy aims to identify Hyperlinks without the title attribute. Using the title attribute on Hyperlinks can assist in the understanding of where the link is going, this will assist in SEO.

Hyperlinks that do not use the title attribute will be highlighted in a policy exception.

<a href=”link_to_target.html”>Link with missing title attribute</a>

Detect Poor Images Folder Structure

Aims to highlight images that are not located in an appropriate folder, so folder level such as domain.com/images/ is better that images.domain.com in terms of SEO.

Images that are located in a poor folder structure, with an unexpected folder name will be highlighted in a policy exception.

Identify Image Based Navigation

Image based navigation should be limited, not only in terms of SEO, but also accessibility. Using images for navigation will not assist in gaining a higher SEO ranking, considering text is far more understandable to the spiders than a binary file.

Any images that are used primarily as navigation will be highlighted in a policy exception.

<a href="/image_link_to.html"><img src="some_image_based_navigation.jpg"/></a>

Detect Common Words Not In Meta Keywords Tag

This policy aims to highlight common words used in the main body of the document that are not included in the keywords metadata. A series of stop words are used to exclude words such as 'a, the etc.'. This list can be modified to exclude domain specific words that may have no relevance.

These words that are extracted can later be added to the metadata keywords to provide more accurate keywords to improve SEO rankings.

This policy will generate a policy exception if there are words (over a configurable number) that appear on the page and are not included in the keywords.