17 tips on how to deploy effective structured mark up, improve your website ranking, site speed and Meta data. Download Checklist.

5. 1
The www.domain and other versions of the domain
must be 301 redirected to the non-www domain
(or vice versa).
Assigning a preferred domain name prevents search
bots from thinking you have more than one website
and directs them to one domain name for your
business.

6. 2
A 302 redirect code does not pass any authority or trust the
page may have had to a new page. It is particularly
harmful to use a 302 redirect for a home page. Always
use a 301 permanent redirect to ensure all the authority
and trust built up over time is being transferred to the
new page/s.
Web pages redirected within the website must all be 301

7. The lack of a custom 404 error page misses the opportunity
to provide bots with links to your important pages, and can
confuse users who may abandon the website entirely.
A good 404 custom error page will keep the bots moving
through the website efficiently and provide users with
helpful information to get back on track with their
research, purchase, desired action, etc.
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8. 4
When a bot cannot connect with a web page/swell, it may
decide to leave. When this happens repeatedly, you are
training the bot to leave your page alone because the
website or web page/s are broken. It is imperative to
remove these errors to the best of your ability, allowing
the bots to easily crawl, index and rank your entire website.

9. 5
The robots.txt file is the first stop for a search bot.
It will make or break any future crawl activity with
your website. It is the equivalent of a handshake
when you meet someone; you want to make a
good impression with a firm strong handshake,
e.g., properly coded robots.txt file.

10. 6
I.E., naming schemes such as ftp: , mailto:,
tel: , etc., are not advisable to
proliferate (as these may change).
File locations and mail addresses change,
and telephone numbers change often.
By keeping this class of naming schemes
to a minimum, there is less likelihood of
change conflicts or inconsistency.

11. 7
...as changing URLs later will break any already established links.
http://example.com/index.php?page=name
http://example.com/name

12. 8
http://www.xyz.com/folder/sub_folder_1/2/day/content
http://www.xyz.com/content

13. 9
Site and page load speed affect a bot's ability to
consume your entire website efficiently with
minimal resources. This results in better
indexing and ranking capabilities.

14. 10
The rel-canonical tag is one easy method
for preventing duplicate content which
search bots will greatly appreciate. It
tells the bots a particular page is very
similar (almost identical) to another
page, and is the primary page to
consume, index and rank.

15. ...for search bots to follow deeper content,
e.g., page 1 of 10, page 2 of 10, page 3 of 10, etc.
When a bot cannot crawl past Page 1 to the
additional related page/s, it becomes confused
and may not consume, index and rank all of
your pages. The bot may determine your
website lacks content and/or may reach
a dead-end and leave your website.

16. 12
For obvious reasons, the Title tag is the most
important of all meta tags.
The Title Element, commonly known as the Title tag, is a search
bot's best friend. It tells the bot what the page is about. The bots
assume a Title tag describes the main theme of the page and
uses this information in the search engine result page/s (SERPs)
to describe your website or web page. Users rely on your Title
tag by reading a short description of the site or page to
determine if they want to go there or continue searching
for something else.
<title>This describes me</title>
www.domain.com

17. The Meta Description tag, is a search bot's second best friend. It
tells the bot in more detail what the page is about. The bots
assume it further describes the main theme of the page, and
uses this information in the search engine result page/s
(SERPs) to describe your website or web page in detail.
Users rely on your Description tag by reading a short
detailed description of the site or page to determine if they
want to go there or continue searching for something else.
13
<meta name=
"description"
content="..."> For obvious reasons, the Description meta tag is
one of the most important of all meta tags.

18. 14
The Header tags, commonly known as H1, H2, H3, etc., help the
bots understand the structure and meaning of the content
following the tag. It tells the bot in granular detail what that
section of the page is about.
For obvious reasons, the Header tags are
among the most important meta tags that help
bots understand the content and context of
words on a page.

19. 15
The body text adds context around the Title, Description and
Header tags. Of course, it is also the information and the
message you are providing to users reading your page/s.
It helps when all of these criteria provide both bots and
users with consistent information and messaging. Bots
will reward pages with unique, well-written body text
on all pages.

20. 16
site can be verified using Google Mobile testing tool.
When Google recently launched an algorithm to
favor sites that are "mobile-friendly," the SEO
community labeled this as “mobilegeddon.”
Google estimates a 65% market share of U.S.
Internet searches want sites to load quickly and
be easy to navigate on a mobile phone.
Therefore, it is no longer possible to ignore mobile
searchers and mobile websites; you are competing
with those who optimize for mobile, and Google
favors those who have mobile optimized sites.

21. In August 2014, Google addressed HTTPS as a ranking
signal and clearly states, “We've seen positive results, so
we're starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal.”
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22. Summary & What's NextSummary & What's Next
Prior to implementing a semantic strategy with structured
data markup, a website must be in excellent SEO condition.
All technical and editorial factors hindering website rankings
must be resolved.
Search engines must be able to freely crawl the website,
which should have fewer than 5% server errors and all
server-configuration issues resolved.
Content on the website must be unique and follow all
search engine guidelines.
Once SEO site health is achieved by
ensuring the majority of your SEO-related
issues are in compliance, you are ready
to implement structured data markup.

23. Paul is a managing partner at Semantic SEO Solutions,
a group of academic PhD's, semantic strategists, advanced
SEO's and experienced digital marketing managers here to
help you understand your market opportunity on the Web of
data as related to search engines Google, Bing, Yandex and
other bots.
Paul has two decades of experience with search engine
technology and has been researching semantic web
technology over the past six years.