Best Search Practices for CQ5

Best Search Practices for CQ5Randal Birkey - Managing DirectorKyle Williams - Search Strategist

• Content authors and managers • Business owners, marketers• System and technology admins• Public web visitors and Google

Monday, October 18, 2010

hello!

Creativity+Technology


Every business needs a search strategy• Protect its brand• Establish its position online• Unify corporate messaging


• We are all content authors• SEO is natural• “copywriting services”• “recontextualizing value-added web-

readiness”

Why should we all understand SEO?


Content Publishing Basics• Blogging• Twitter• Facebook• Yelp

…and of course, web content management

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Content Publishing Basics“The better your organization understands SEO, the more efficient, unified and optimized your company messaging will be.”


Everything Affects SEO• A company TV

commercial that goes viral

• A great product that a company develops


=


Content Management

Content Management SoftwareManagement Software

CMS

WMS CMS


Two parts to SEO:• Technical SEO (1/3 of the work)• Creative Content (all the rest)• What do I need to do to make my content

interesting?• Who is my audience?• What will cause them to tell their friends about my

content?

SEO Basics


Myths About SEO• Keyword “stuffing” or repetition• META tags• Businesses in “enterprise” markets canʼt

benefit from SEO


Myths About SEO• SEO is a separate process that can be done

at the end of the project cycle• SEO hinders branding and design efforts


What CQ does well, out of the box• Search engine friendly URLs• Customizable templates• Paragraph formatting with <p> and <h1>

tags in the RTE component• Multiple page property inputs to better

describe your content (tags, keywords, description, subtitle, etc.)


Tip #1 - Heading and Paragraph Tags• Proper use of heading and paragraph tags

helps Google understand what your content is about.

Best SEO Practice for CQ5


Hierarchical Heading Tags<html>

<body><h1>Green Electronic Widgets</h1><p>Our green electronic widgets are the best in the world offering more green than anywhere!</p>

<h2>Customer Reviews</h2><h3>Green Widget Review</h3><p>Review Summary</p>

</body></html>


The Text Component in a default CQ5 installation does not offer this kind of paragraph and heading formatting.

However, paragraph formatting as well as other Rich Text editing options can be enabled by your CQ5 developers.

RTE Formatting


Text Component out of box


Text Component w/ RTE enabled


Best SEO Practice for CQ5Tip #2 - Image Optimization• Images should always have meaningful

<alt> tags • Use logical, descriptive file names• This increases relevant indexable content in

the search engines and can increase traffic to your site.


CQ5 Image Component


Image Path Issues• <img src=”http://www.day.com/

content/day/en/company/management/_jcr_content/par/textimage_1/image.img.jpg/1276601616678.jpg” />


http://domain.com/content/clientname/en/filename.html










Preferred Image Path URL Setup• The SEO best practice:

<img src=”http://www.day.com/content/dam/day/david-nuescheler-cto.jpg” width=”123” height=”155” alt=”David Nüescheler, Day Software CTO” />












Image Paths for Better SEO


Some considerations when using the “fileReference” property. • You lose image manipulation: no resize, crop, etc.• Make sure proper error handling is in place to verify

that node referred to in fileReference is actually there and is a DAM asset.

• Either disable the image upload in your dialog or include a check to use the Image object if there is an uploaded file.

Image Paths for Better SEO


Weʼve created a custom CQ5 component that makes this easier for the content author. • http://www.headstandmedia.com/

learn/knowledge-base/day-cq5/clean-image-path/

• Available FREE on the Day Package Share site

ImageSEO Component


• Removing /content/ from your URL• This is done by the majority of CQ5 sites we

see, but it is important that we all understand why.

Additional Tips


We Can’t Control GoogleSo we must perfect the things we can control.• Efficient, descriptive URLs are important.• Having /content/ at the start of your URL

tree wastes space.


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Q&A


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