University Logos & Guidelines|Webmaster Resources |The University of Utah

Making Your Pages Searchable

 

Accessibility
  DO:  
  • Make sure your root URL is listed in the university search engine index.  
 
  • http://www.honors.utah.edu
  • http://uuhsc.utah.edu
  • http://www.huntsmancancer.org
  • http://www.uofupress.com
 
 
  • Provide an HTML Site Map  
  • Use Server 301 permanent redirects  
     
  DON'T:  
  • Place searchable content behind SSL (https://) or firewalls  
  • Require cookies or session ID's on pages with searchable content  
  • Rely only on javascript or Flash navigation  
     
  Special Considerations:  
  • Dynamically generated pages require special attention  
  • Notify U webmaster if your site uses querystring elements (=, ?, +)  
 
 

Meta-data
  Meta-data is the information about a website contained in the website code but not displayed by browsers. Meta-tags are the individual HTML elements which help search engines classify and rank web page content.
   
  HTML Title - Include a unique HTML Title for each page of your site containing content you want searchable. The HTML Title will also be displayed as part of the search results.
   
  Description Tag - Include a unique description for each page of your site containing content you want searchable. Limit the description to one or two sentences containing the keywords for the content specific to that page. The description will also be displayed as part of the search engine results.
   
  Keyword Tag - Include additional keywords for each page of your site containing content you want searchable. Limit keywords to ten or twenty terms specific to the content contained on that page.
   
  Spam Detection Thresholds: Most search engines, including the university's Ultraseek search engine, set a spam detection threshold for keyword repetition. The following table shows the number of allowable repeated keywords for different HTML elements:
 
Elements
Importance

Spam Detection Threshold
(per 100 words)
<title>
8
2
<meta name="description">
4
4
<meta name="keywords">
4
4
<img alt>
1
2
<body> text
 
8
 
 
More information about optimizing for search engines can be found at:
http://www.utah.edu/uwebresources/search_engine/index.html