SharePoint 2013 offers rich capabilities for building public-facing websites. In this session we will walk through the process of optimizing your public-facing website for Internet search engines. Additionally we will discuss the steps required to implement SEO in content-driven portals built using the SPA approach.

1. Optimizing SharePoint 2013
public-facing websites for
Internet search engines
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint Server MVP

2. Waldek Mastykarz
 SharePoint MVP
 Developer at Mavention
 http://www.mavention.com
 http://blog.mastykarz.nl
 @waldekm

3. Overview
 Setting the expectations
 Client-side rendering and public-facing
websites
 Using SharePoint 2013 SEO features
 Optimizing SPA public-facing websites for
Internet search engines
 Resources

4. Setting the expectations
 SEO in SharePoint 2013 possible but
requires effort and trade-offs
 SEO must be a part of the project from the
beginning
 Perception
 Cannot use everything from SharePoint on a
website
 WYSIWYG vs. WYGIWYW

5. Recommended process
• Responsive or mobile website?
• Schema.org or not?
• Accessibility
• Progressive enhancement
Requirements
• Verify that HTML supports all requirements
• Verify cross-device and browser support
• Sign-off with customer
Static HTML prototype
• Aim for 100% alignment with static HTML prototype
SharePoint website

6. HTML-first
 Building public-facing websites requires
different approach than building intranets
 Clean and semantic HTML is necessary
 It’s what is indexed
 It influences the ranking of your website
 It’s not what SharePoint 2013 renders by default
 Tip: Leverage Device Channels to gain
control over HTML

7. Client-side rendering and public-
facing websites
 SEO requires Search-driven publishing
 Content aggregations with Friendly URLs
possible only via search
 XML Sitemap built using Search
 Search uses client-side rendering by default
 Client-side rendering is JavaScript and is not
indexed by Internet search engines
 Exposes internal information
 User account names

8. Client-side rendering and public-
facing websites
 SharePoint 2013 uses fallback server-side
rendering for search bots
 XSLT-based
 Default rendering using tables
 Customizable but doubles the effort
 Doesn’t support paging out-of-the-box
 Tip: Always use server-side rendering on
public-facing websites

9. SharePoint 2013 SEO features
 Friendly URLs
 XML Sitemap & Robots.txt
 SEO Properties

10. Friendly URLs
 Part of Managed Navigation
 Benefits
 Decouple physical site structure from navigation
 Clean and extension-less URLs
 Consequences
 Content aggregations possible only using
search
 Risk of content duplication

11. XML Sitemap & Robots.txt
 Automatically generated using Search
 Require content to be crawled
 Require anonymous access
 Enabled per Site Collection
 No support for relevance and crawl rate

12. SEO Properties
 Browser Title
 Meta Description
 Robots noindex
 Canonical URL
 Works partially

13. Why building public websites as
SPA?
 Performance
 User Experience

14. SPAs & SEO
 Single Page Application = JavaScript-based
rendering
 JavaScript is not indexed by Internet search
engines
 Tip: Google guidance for optimizing SPAs
for Internet search engines

15. SEO Requirements for SPAs
 Each dynamic state must be retrievable
statically
 SPA must accept states via the
_escaped_fragment_ query string parameter
 Basically requires you to build your website
twice

16. SharePoint SPAs & SEO recipe
 Build static website
 Build SPA on top
 Add support for _escaped_fragment_ using an
HTTP Module
 Rewrite URLs in all pages
 Rewrite Canonical URL
 Rewrite URLs in XML Sitemap
 Tip: Use a separate Device Channel to avoid
unnecessary postprocessing

17. Resources
 SharePoint 2013 SEO white-paper
http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=40848
 Google guidance of optimizing SPAs for
Internet search engines
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/aja
x-crawling/
 SEO
http://blog.mastykarz.nl/tag/seo/
 Mavention
http://www.mavention.com

18. Thank you for attending!
Waldek Mastykarz
SharePoint Server MVP
http://blog.mastykarz.nl | @waldekm