SharePoint SEO

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.