Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [155]
Review your site for unclear text links. Take some time to rewrite the link to include a descriptive explanation of what the reader will see after the click. Take care to ensure that the context is communicated through the link alone, and consider screen reader users.
Take the following steps the next time you are creating a PDF for web use:
When you’re creating the PDF using a document to create a PDF, such as Microsoft Word, check to make sure you are using the tagging features, such as the Heading 1, Heading 2, text, alt attributes, and URLs. Adding links in PDF documents can also provide a means of search visitors being able to navigate back to your main website instead of being trapped in the PDF file. Many organizations have developed the styles in Microsoft Word to be custom to their business.
Open a few of the PDF documents that you have on your computer and check the accessibility options. If you can use the Read Out Loud feature, highlight a block of text and hear it being read to you; then the search engines will be able to “see” the text as well.
Turn on Reflow (View ⇒ Zoom ⇒ Reflow), and then increase the size of the document. This should fit the document on your screen, regardless of the size.
Understanding how these features enable better search engine friendliness as well as accessibility will enable businesses to take advantage of these easy tips. This also enables better viewing and reading for all users regardless of the various vision or assistive technologies they may need. Increasing accessibility increases ease of use for everyone.
Chapter 14
Week 11: Identify Technical Roadblocks
As websites become more and more automated through content management systems, a simple change can result in thousands of pages of errors. Understanding how to identify, troubleshoot, and correct these issues is vital to today’s marketer. IT departments are many times overwhelmed with work, and they do not have the time to constantly keep the website under surveillance. It is the business owner and the marketer’s responsibility to stay current with the website and be aware of issues that could be preventing search engines from viewing the website or preventing users from seeing valuable content.
Chapter Contents
Monday: Check the Quality of Your URLs
Tuesday: Understand URL Rewrites
Wednesday: Use Redirects
Thursday: Uncover Duplicate Content
Friday: Utilize Robots.txt to Welcome Search Engines
Monday: Check the Quality of Your URLs
Many of the problems within a website can be evidenced or traced to the uniform resource locator (URL). Every document on the Internet has to have a unique address in order to be requested and displayed. Much like a residence has a mailbox, every document has a unique address that enables it to be found in order to deliver the document and receive inquiries.
Similarly, some addresses are easier to understand than others. It is very easy, for example, to look at an address from your home country and understand the syntax of the format and the words, and you can easily figure out the location of the address. Looking at addresses of another country, there may be a different syntax and additional numbers or letters that just aren’t familiar.
Every page of a website has a unique address. Problems arise when that page is duplicated at another address. This is similar to having more than one mailbox for your house, because the mail carrier would become confused as to which mailbox to deliver the mail, much as you may be confused as to which mailbox would contain the mail.
The consequence of duplicated pages is that a search engine would catalog multiple pages of the same content. In doing so, it would not be apparent which version of the page was the correct version. Having these duplicated pages reduces