Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The process of optimizing a website for a search engine is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The goal of SEO is to make the pages within a website score as high a ranking as possible when certain terms are searched for from a search engine.

A related part of the process of preparing a website for a search engine is optimizing the ease of use of a website's web addresses (URLs). Many website pages have a URL that contains numbers and/or other types of codes. For example, suppose the URL of a page that contains articles about the economy is http://www.nu.nl/category/99/30. For a search engine to be able to more quickly and easily locate this page, it would be better if the URL were friendly, that is, if it used meaningful, straightforward words instead of cryptic codes to identify itself such as http://www.nu.nl/economy/ or http://www.nu.nl/economy.htm. In XperienCentral, it is possible to assign URLs to pages and Content Repository items and database objects that search engines regard as friendly URLs (the Search Engine Friendly URL). An added benefit to SEO-optimized URLs is that they are also friendly for website visitors because the titles represent in plain language what the content of the content items is or at least can be assumed to be.