Just thought i would post my solution for this.
SEO is a huge topic but i do believe these changes do make TBH more indexable.
[u]Page Titles</u>
Like many of you I aim to use the TBH structure for other websites. Currently all my content pages have their Title property set to "MyWebSiteName: PageName". I think this looks good but as the size of the site grows it will be a real pain if you then decide to name your site something different or use the same template for another site.
In addition to this (as already discussed), when I view different articles within my site, I don't want every one to have a page title of "MyWebSiteName: Show Article". I want it to appear as if they are viewing a completely different page in my website (rather than dynamically driven content from a database.
[u]META Description Attribute</u>
Similarly to the Title, I dont want every page to have the same "Decription" <meta> atttibute. Many search engines use the description data when showing search results. If there is a link to a page regarding a specific product, I do not want my description to show as "Welcome to MyWebSite.com, on this site we do all sorts....". I want it to be associated with the page being displayed.
[u]Solution</u>
First thing was to add 2 new properties to my custom configuration section in Web.Config:
Code:
<retroWebSection defaultConnectionStringName="LocalSqlServer" webSiteName="MyWebsite.Com"
webSiteDescription="Some description">
Then I added 2 new properties to my RetroWebSection Class in App_Code/ConfigSection.
vb.
I set a default value for the PageTitle property so that if one was ommitted from web.config I can show the name of my template:
Code:
<ConfigurationProperty("webSiteName", DefaultValue:="RetroViz.Cms")> _
Public Property WebSiteName() As String
Get
Return CStr(Me("webSiteName"))
End Get
Set(ByVal value As String)
Me("webSiteName") = value
End Set
End Property
<ConfigurationProperty("webSiteDescription")> _
Public Property WebSiteDescription() As String
Get
Return CStr(Me("webSiteDescription"))
End Get
Set(ByVal value As String)
Me("webSiteDescription") = value
End Set
End Property
Once added I can access both properties (or values from web.config) from
Code:
Globals.Setting.WebSiteName
Globals.Settings.WebSiteDescription
Fairly simple :D
Now I needed to dynamically add the title and description attributes when required. One thing I took into consideration is that I only really wanted to override the Page Title property on my ShowArticles.aspx?.. pages so needed some way of preserving the Title values for other pages.
I decided to add a MasterBasePage class (similar to BasePage) that my MasterPage.Master page can inherit from. In there I defined two public properties for PageTitle and PageDescription that can be accessed by my ContentPages as well as the code to dynamically change some <meta> tags in the head of the page:
Code:
Imports Microsoft.VisualBasic
Namespace Retro.Web.UI
Public Class MasterBasePage
Inherits System.Web.UI.MasterPage
Private _pageTitle As String
Private _pageDescription As String
Public Property PageTitle() As String
Get
PageTitle = _pageTitle
End Get
Set(ByVal value As String)
_pageTitle = value
End Set
End Property
Public Property PageDescription() As String
Get
PageDescription = _pageDescription
End Get
Set(ByVal value As String)
_pageDescription = value
End Set
End Property
Protected Overrides Sub OnLoad(ByVal e As EventArgs)
If String.IsNullOrEmpty(PageTitle) Then
_pageTitle = Me.Page.Title
End If
If String.IsNullOrEmpty(PageDescription) Then
_pageDescription = Globals.Settings.WebSiteDescription
End If
Me.Page.Title = Globals.Settings.WebSiteName + ": " + _pageTitle
Dim metaTag As HtmlMeta = New HtmlMeta()
metaTag.Name = "Description"
metaTag.Content = _pageDescription
Page.Header.Controls.Add(metaTag)
MyBase.OnLoad(e)
End Sub
End Class
End Namespace
Then in the code behind for my MasterPage:
Code:
Namespace Retro.Web.UI
Partial Class MasterPage
Inherits MasterBasePage
End Class
End Namespace
And thats it.
If I load my Default.aspx I get my website name and the Title property set in the ContentPage definition i.e. "MyWebSite.Com: Home". If I view the source for the page I can see the Description META information is the text set in my web.config file.
For my Article pages, I first need to add the following to the top of my ShowArticles.aspx page to allow the MasterPage properties to be accessed:
Code:
<%@ MasterType VirtualPath="~/MasterPage.master" %>
Then I can add the following to Page_Load event:
Code:
Master.PageTitle = article.Title
Master.PageDescription = article.Abstract
Now when I re index with Zoom Search, not only do I get a title that relates to the actual article, but also the related description from the Abstract field of that record.
Quote:
quote:100 results found.
10 pages of results.
21. MyWebSite.Com: Launch of new website!
MyWebSite.com has been completely revamped. Our new site will help you to find the pump application you require and give you access to online s...
|
Simple as that. If anyone has any further suggestions or improvements that could/should be made then please do comment. It's in
VB.net so you may want to translate if working with the C# version. My namespaces are the same as TBH but its Retro.Web.UI instead of MB.TheBeerHouse.UI (and so on and so forth)
Thanks,
TBH Search Engine Optimization
