Sharepoint SEO Tips

Question

Does anyone have any tips / best practices regarding SEO on sharepoint (2010)?

I have the task of migrating a existing internet facing website over to SharePoint, and would like any information at all regarding SEO with sharepoint.

I have gathered a list of general SEO best practices, but I am just wondering if there is anything specific I need to handle from a SharePoint point of view.

I plan to handle 301 redirects using a httpmodule that I am going to develop, basically it will check a table within the database for any incoming requests matching the existing URL format, and where a match appears it will direct to the appropriate page, any that do not match, will be added to a custom list for further attention.

Any pointers gratefully welcomed

Answer 1

I assume your 301 redirects are to map the old URLs to the new SharePoint-based URLs. That is the best way of doing it - you are telling the search engine that the content has permanently moved to the new URL. You will also redirect users who have come to your site using bookmarks or out-of-date links.

However, you shouldn't need to develop an HTTP Module for this. Microsoft have an add-on for IIS7 called URL Rewrite that does the job. There is also a third-party module called urlrewriter.net. Both of these support redirects as well as rewrites, and are very flexible to configure.

Speaking of rewrites, which you didn't mention - avoid resorting to these if you possibly can. Certainly don't use this kind of technique for SEO reasons.

There is a lot of nonsense talked about SharePoint's URL structure. The fact is that current search engines are good at getting keywords from URLs, and won't penalize your pages because they have /Pages/ in the URL or end with .aspx. They are also good at getting content from your web pages - as long as it is there in the first place! The same principles apply to SharePoint sites as to any other WCM platform, such as using HTML header tags properly, using hyphens to separate words, and so on. You can also use tools like Google Webmaster Tools to see how Google is indexing your site, and any problems they encounter. Most of these issues will be fixable, although not all of these will justify the effort.

In summary, design your site in a way that makes sense for the content and the SharePoint publishing model. Don't waste time trying to make it do SEO tricks to game the search engines.