With SharePoint 2010 just around the corner, the focus on using SharePoint for web facing sites is about to increase dramatically. And with it, the need to ensure that SharePoint (or MOSS) driven sites are properly optimised for search engines.
But what about existing SharePoint 2007 sites? Although MOSS has a number of problems in terms of web standards, and difficulty with setting meta tags there are resources that can help.
SEO for a SharePoint site is similar in many ways to SEO for other sites (eg WordPress). The usual rules of writing quality content apply, as do the strategies for link building.
However, where things differ is in the On-page strategies. ie how each SharePoint page displays its title tags and meta tags, as well as how URLs are formatted, sitemaps generated and the site is architected.
Here’s a few resources to help you get started optimizing your SharePoint 2007 sites:
- MSDN article on How to Optimize SharePoint Server 2007 Web Content Management Sites for Search Engines
- MOSS SEO – a good overview article by Sean on how to approach SEO for your SharePoint site
- Tool: Sitemap generator for SharePoint – Tim Dobrinski and Chris Prime have continually improved their SharePoint sitemap generator
- Tool: Imtech SharePoint SEO slugs, plus Waldek’s post explaining how to use the feature
- Tool: Imtech SharePoint XM sitemaps, plus Waldek’s post explaining the goodness
- Product: KWizCom SharePoint SEO Toolkit – Includes tools for setting title tags, and generating sitemaps, but is expensive!