Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Search Engine Optimization (MOSS SEO) explains how to optimize your SharePoint Search Engine & how to optimize your SharePoint site and content.
SharePoint Search Engine (Enterprise Search) and related SharePoint features, web parts and capabilities. Expose the potential of the SharePoint 2007 enterprise search engine:
· Actually give your users search results they are looking for - Relevancy
· Evolve your solution - Performance & Scalability
· Crawl your existing LOB systems - Business Data Catalog
· Taxonomy based search results - Meta Data Management
· Targeted searches - Search Scopes
· Security Trimmed Results or Not?
· What are they looking for and NOT finding - Search Usage Analysis
· Pre-set your results based on search terms - Best Bets
· Quickly find the right person - People Search
· Automatic Hit Highlighting (search results)
…and much, much more.
Search Engine Optimization (SharePoint SEO) - how to optimize your SharePoint site and content so internet users can find it using internet search engines.
SharePoint SEO explains how to optimize your public facing SharePoint 2007 WCM based web site for internet search engines. SharePoint 2007 running in “CMS” mode might just be the perfect opportunity to fully flex true Search Engine Optimization. All the necessary components are in place to help you finally achieve top search engine rankings (a rare find when talking about Content Management System driven web sites)! MOSS SEO will get your MOSS site on top where it needs to be.
The essence of this site is to share MOSS SEO techniques for implementing sound SEO. First lets touch base on some basics:
MOSS SEO Note: The terms “MOSS” and “SharePoint 2007” both refer to the same thing (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server). The terms are used interchangeably. They are one in the same, synonyms, alike, identical… It can at times be annoying I know and for that I am deeply regretful, it annoys me too. I keep flipping back and forth between the two because I’ve been calling it MOSS for a very long time now – and now that it’s released as “SharePoint 2007” I’m finding it difficult to abandon its pet name “MOSS”.
SharePoint 2007 running in “CMS” mode is the best way I can describe what Microsoft now calls Web Content Management (WCM). The shift from CMS to WCM came naturally as a result of combining the content management capabilities of Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) with the collaboration capabilities of SharePoint. WCM refers to a SharePoint 2007 site which exploits the content management abilities SharePoint has inherited from MCMS.
Internet Search Engine Players
Google, Yahoo, MS Live Search and AOL are the big players right now. Google is out in front at the time of this writing, but keep a close watch on Microsoft. Either way, these are the only ones you need worry about being ranked well with as they represent nearly 100% of the search engines people actually use.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization is how you get your web site ranked high in internet search engines. When somebody performs a search on Google or MS Live Search or Yahoo, etc… they get hundreds or thousands of results. These results can span across hundreds of pages all containing a “next page” link at the bottom of the page. Most people will click the “next page” link exactly one time. SEO is how you get your site listed within this extraordinarily tight list. It’s a discipline, a methodology and fortunately, MOSS provides lots of ways of implementing this very tall order.
If you are new to the world of MOSS SEO, please take a moment and read the advise freely given by Google called Webmaster Guidelines. This information should be taken pretty seriously if you are pretty serious about MOSS SEO. One of the things recommended not only by Google, but all the other major search engines is to take advantage of a site map. We are currently working on a control that can be added to your MOSS site via site feature which will dynamically update your site map when you publish a page. This will be shared freely, as well as the source code so your developers can further extend as necessary.
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08/16/2008
For about a decade Flash content has been largely ignored by internet search engines. Adobe, Google & Yahoo! have recently taken some steps to change all that. In the Adobe press release titled “Adobe Advances Rich Media Search on the Web” July 1, 2008 – Adobe explains the importance for internet search engines to crawl rich internet applications (RIAs). Google speaks to this point on their official blog post titled “Google learns to crawl Flash” June 30, 2008. This comes at a time when Microsoft is courting Flash developers for a blind date with Silverlight.
This (at least to me) begs the question – who’s crawling Silverlight? Bueller? The truth is Silverlight is already out front with respect to SEO concerns.
ZDNET’s article “Microsoft Silverlight Content is searchable, too” – July 2, 2008 – contains the following quotes from Microsoft: “Microsoft designed Silverlight from the beginning to be easily accessible by search engines. Because it is simply a ZIP archive, a Silverlight application packaged in a XAP (the Silverlight application-package file extension) file is easily accessible to search engines without a special software development kit (SDK). And because XAML is W3C-compliant XML, any static textual XAML content can be easily parsed by search engines. Furthermore, any metadata embedded in the ZIP file is easily indexed by search engines as well. Silverlight applications also support “deep linking” as they easily consume the URL they were loaded from, and use information on the URL query string to rapidly load and display appropriate data. Finally, the Silverlight DOM itself can be easily inspected to detect all text, links and images that are being visualized by the control.”
“So does this mean that Silverlight offers customers superior search engine optimization (SEO)? Yes. Not only was Silverlight architected to offer superior searchability, but Silverlight excels at enabling dynamic content published from content management systems to be easily indexed by search engines. By publishing dynamic content to Silverlight via XAML and XHTML mirroring, users are able to dramatically reduce the time it takes to optimize content for search engines.”
Now back to the Flash news. This is actually a great step in the right direction for sure. But, here’s some shortcoming you should be aware of. Google does NOT index the following:
1. Flash files (SWF) that only include images
2. Flash buttons which have no associated text
3. Video (it doesn't index FLV files)
4. Flash files that are loaded by using JavaScript will likely not be indexed because Google & JavaScript are largely ignoring each other for the most part.
The point is you need to consider any Flash being used on your site because it's going to start effecting and very likely diluting your content theme. If this is the case, you need to replace your Flash text with Flash images. Also, so far it looks like Flash files will carry less weight then HTML based files. Knowing this, you should be sure that the HTML based files which are beating out your Flash files are your own.
You could of course always just give Silverlight a go as it’s been architected from the ground up with SEO considerations in mind. 07/23/2008
SharePoint relays on the SharePoint Database server more so then any other server farm component. Bottlenecks related to the database server will hinder performance across the entire server farm. It is crucial to maintain the good health of the SharePoint farm’s database server if you hope to achieve anything close to high end performance out of your SharePoint farm. Although the database server is not the only SharePoint farm component to consider, it is the one I would start with when performance optimization is desirable.
Here are some general recommendations for optimizing your SharePoint database server performance:
Do not scan databases files with antivirus software.
Use 16 GB memory.
Move the SSP databases onto a different physical database server.
Use four 64-bit multi-core processors.
Segregate the configuration database and content databases into different SCSI disks in a RAID 5.
Segregate search databases, temporary databases, and temporary database logs onto different high-speed SCSI disks in a RAID 10. Add additional drives to the disk array to increase total I/O.
Defrag databases and drives on a regular basis.
Build a temp data file for each processor core on the server. 07/08/2008
I’m at the 2008 WPC in Huston, TX and wow what an event! There is so much to share I’m not sure where I should start. Undoubtedly the biggest news is Microsoft’s announcement around Microsoft Online. The specifics on Software as a Service (SaaS) were unveiled and you can bank on this making a huge difference in our industry (for the better in a big way). Basically it boils down to enterprise level hosted offerings, from Microsoft! That means your MOSS solution (Standard edition) can be hosted by Microsoft at a Microsoft data center. This will not include My Sites and the ability for the Search Engine to crawl your local network and of course exclude the Enterprise edition features such as Excel Services and InfoPath Forms Services.
SharePoint chatter is everywhere. Keep in mind this is not a “SharePoint” conference per say. It’s about bringing MS Partners together to learn where MS is heading and how we can help each other to get there. It’s about getting connected with other MS Partner companies and forming mutually beneficial relationships. It covers topics ranging from Visual Studio Team System and Windows Presentation Foundation to Windows Vista and Mobility. None the less, SharePoint chatter is intermingled across all topics. This is not surprising considering the wide reaching functionality stack SharePoint offers as a platform on which to build upon. My biggest problem is choosing which session to attend during a given time period, and I guess one more thing - it’s quit hot here in Huston.
I’ve been focusing much of my attention on Microsoft Dynamics and Software as a Service and SharePoint and of course any sessions having anything to do with Search (Search Server 2008, Fast Search, etc…). I’ve seen some pretty cool stuff not really related to my domain also; for instance, a robot that cleans your house for you (driven by a program written using MS Robotics Development Studio 2008 of course). Also a very cool demonstration on the WorldWide Telescope which you can play around with yourself at: http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/ .
Chris Capossela gave a great talk entitled “Realizing the Power of the Business Productivity Infrastructure”. This session covered some very cool BI and high-end Search capabilities. I couldn’t pass up the “Microsoft Office SharePoint Server: Best Practices…” session. That session re-affirmed how we do things (nice to know we’re still on track). I was also exposed to some solution specific tools that I will undoubtedly try out the first chance I get and let you know all about.
06/26/2008
Business Data Catalog: Surface existing (non-SharePoint) business data using the Business Data Catalog (BDC) integration feature. The BDC bridges the gap between your Office SharePoint Server 2007 site and existing business systems by integrating various business applications with SharePoint Server 2007 lists, web parts, search, user profiles and more…
I am speaking about the Business Data Catalog at the upcoming SUGDC Summer Regional SharePoint Conference in Dulles, VA.
Topics include; What is the BDC, the SharePoint 2007 BDC Feature, core BDC components and walking through the steps of implementing the BDC from start to finish.
Hope to see you there! 06/09/2008
Since this post on WSS 3.0 & Search Server 2008 Express - I have been involved with integrating Search Server 2008 Express with MCMS (Microsoft Content Management Server which has not yet been upgraded to MOSS). This integration involved deploying WSS 3.0 beside MCMS. We decided it would be best to start out with a simple proof of concept on the development server.
The POC involved installing Search Server 2008 Express. Search Server 2008 Express was configured to crawl the MCMS site using an account with elevated permissions to ensure all content would be crawled. We then stood up a Search Center site used for displaying search results. The final step in the POC involved writing a JavaScript driven form used to capture search keywords and pass them to the Search Center site for processing. This form was placed on the MCMS sites header.
Although the look and feel of the POC leaves something to be desired, the functionality portion proved highly successful. Now the MCMS site can take advantage of the powerful Search Server 2008 capabilities such as search scopes, best bets, and highly relevant result sets.
Future integration improvements will involve speaking to a Search Server 2008 Express web service from within MCMS. This will take care of the UI issues, including not having to move the user to the search center site and back. 06/01/2008
Content migration into SharePoint 2007 can be divided into two main categories:
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Migrating page content from your existing site into SharePoint.
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Migrating files into SharePoint (PDF’s, MS Word, Excel, Videos, etc…).
A successful content migration into MOSS requires careful planning, testing and execution. Many options exist which can save you time, money and ultimately lead to a successful migration - including 3rd party tools such as Metalogix, AvePoint and more. 3rd party tools offer some great time saving advantages, but you will still need to do some work to ensure the migration into SharePoint 2007 is a successful one. One popular advantage of using such a tool for migrating files is automating the process of renaming illegal filenames. If you have a lot of files to be migrated, this capability by itself may be enough. Also, if you have a lot of pages from your existing web site to migrate into SharePoint, a 3rd party migration tool can really save the day.
Automation can be used for migrating files (category 2 above). 3rd party tools such as DocAve 4.5 File System Migrator for SharePoint runs about $50 per Gigabyte of data being transferred. Additionally, files can be bulk uploaded into SharePoint 2007 using out-of-the-box methods such as drag and drop. In either scenario, subject matter experts must classify these files by assigning metadata values during or after migration. You can’t get out of this if you want your content to be classified correctly.
Migrating page content (category 1 above) can be automated when moving from MCMS into MOSS from the MOSS Central Administration. Additionally, migrating existing web pages can be effectively handled as part of the pilot group training process (if you have a reasonable number of pages). Metalogix offers a tool for migrating your existing web site pages (regardless of its platform) into SharePoint 2007. It’s called Website Migration Manager for SharePoint. Again, subject matter experts must classify these pages by assigning metadata values during or after migration.
Regardless of how you migrate content into SharePoint, you are still looking at tagging your content appropriately, and possibly learning how to master a 3rd party migration tool. Your planning should include realistic timeframes, governance and quality assurance. Before purchasing 3rd party migration software, make sure you know how much content (pages and files) you need to migrate. Have a plan which includes who’s doing what and when. And make sure your team is familiar with MOSS and its many time saving capabilities.
Your migration strategy should include identifying the right people to perform the migration and training them appropriately. If you’re using a 3rd party tool to assist in the migration process, consider training a smaller team on the migration tool so your content experts can spend their time on tasks related to content classification. Also consider performing a proof-of-concept content migration pilot run. This will allow you to work out any kinks prior to opening it up full speed. It’s always easier to make changes and improvements during a POC then after the effort is half way done. 05/21/2008
If you are running WSS 3.0 you should consider the FREE search upgrade offered by Microsoft called Search Server 2008 Express (SSE). Search Server 2008 Express offers several benefits including searching across multiple WSS sites. You can read all about the benefits on the Microsoft product page for Search Server 2008 Express.
Search Server 2008 Express gives WSS 3.0 the ability to search across multiple search scopes:
Search Server 2008 Express gives WSS 3.0 the ability to have a Search Center site which can be used as a centralized location for search results:
Additionally, a few new web parts exist OOTB on the Search Center page (right side) which ties in Microsoft LIVE Search!
Read the steps to upgrade to Search Server 2008 Express first.
Below are a few notes if you are considering upgrading your WSS 3.0 to use Search Server 2008 Express:
- WSS 3.0 SP1 must be installed (plus, make sure to run the Configuration Wizard after SP1 install and prior to SSE install).
- No upgrade reverse options on WSS 3.0 (Basic) installs (reverse options exist for WSS 3.0 Advanced installs) - either way, have server snapshot backup.
- SSE adds the "Shared Services" link to Central Admin (sweet!). You will have to create a new SSP for Search Services if you choose NOT to overwrite your existing site (overwriting you existing site is likely not what you want to do – so you will need to create the SSP manually here – no big deal).
- During the Configuration Wizard process, if you already have a default WSS 3.0 site on port 80 (which I think we can assume you do since we're talking "upgrade") – you will be prompted to choose between overwriting your existing site for Search Center (likely NOT a great idea). Alternatively you can put Search Center on a different port (not very practical in most cases). I choose to not create a site. After the install process (and after you have activated the feature from Central Admin and Site, you can create a Search Center site using the appropriate new site template in the "Enterprise" tab.
With so many great Enterprise Search options available from Microsoft, which one is right for your organization? Search Server 2008 Express, Search Server 2008 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server? Keep in mind Search Server 2008 Express is the FREE one. It’s tough to beat FREE and I can’t say enough about how well it performs and it’s depth of features. Next higher would be Search Server 2008 – the non-FREE one. Finally, there’s the full blown everything included and then some – Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (which includes Enterprise Search). So again, which Enterprise Search solution is the right one? The below chart should help determine which Enterprise Search solution is the right one (from the Microsoft Enterprise Search product page). Compare Search Server 2008 Express with Search Server 2008 or with MOSS:
Search Server 2008 Express vs. Search Server 2008 vs. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)
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