Optimize Publishing Pages for search engines using the Imtech SharePoint SEO Slugs Feature

Recently I have made a Live Writer plugin which helps you create search engines optimized names for your blog posts (slugs). While I was working on a new MOSS 2007 Web Content Management (WCM) solution I have noticed that the standard page names generated by SharePoint while creating Publishing Pages can be optimized for better findability.

How MOSS 2007 deals with slugs

While creating a new Publishing Page the first thing you do is to enter the title. Based on your input SharePoint automatically fills in for you the name (slug) of the Publishing Page you are about to create.

While creating a new Publishing Page the first thing to do is to enter the page title

While generating the name SharePoint removes special characters from the title and makes one huge word of it:

Standard page name (slug) generated by SharePoint is not optimized for search engines

Such slug is difficult to index by the search engines as they cannot easily distinct the various words making up the page name. As a result your page will end up relatively lower in the search results than a page with similar content and an optimized slug.

The page name generated by SharePoint is just a suggestion and while you can overwrite it each time you create a new Publishing Page why would you not make it happen automatically?

Introducing Imtech SharePoint SEO Slugs

Imtech SharePoint SEO Slugs is a SharePoint Feature which hooks up to the Create Page Application Page provided with MOSS 2007. While creating a slug it not only separates all the different words with a hyphen (-) but also removes all the stop words as well! Looking at the example I used before: instead of the standard: OptimizePublishingPagesforsearchenginesusingtheImtechSharePointSEOSlugsFeature (which is by the way almost impossible to type) you will get a nice: optimize-publishing-pages-search-engines-imtech-sharepoint-seo-slugs-feature. Notice that such URL is easier to read and memorize.

Generate optimized slugs for Publishing Pages using Imtech SharePoint SEO Slugs Feature

Imtech SharePoint SEO Slugs is a Feature which can be used with MOSS 2007 WCM only. Upon deployment a new WebApplication-scoped Feature will be installed. By activating the Imtech SharePoint SEO Slugs Feature the new mechanism will get installed.

Important

In some scenarios it might be required to restart IIS and clear the ASP.NET Temporary Files (located in C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files) upon the Feature Activation in order to enable the Feature.

Download: Imtech SharePoint SEO Slugs v1.0.0.0 (11KB)

Technorati Tags: SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, MOSS 2007, WCM, SEO

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