SEO-related questions-阿里云帮助中心

SEO depends on many factors. These factors include site traffic, update frequency, friendly links, Baidu Webmaster Tools verification, and sitemaps. This topic answers common questions about SEO.

What is SEO and what is its purpose?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of using search engine rules to improve a website's natural ranking. Effective SEO can help your site gain prominence in its industry and increase brand revenue. It is primarily a commercial activity for website operators.

SEO guide

Set the SEO title, keywords, and page description. For more information, see Page SEO.

Important Do not frequently change the SEO title, keywords, or page description. Frequent changes can lower your site's ranking weight.
Set image alt titles. Search engines cannot recognize images on your site. By setting alt titles, you help search engines understand the content of the images. Follow these steps to set an image alt title:
1. Add an image control. Click Content > Image. Then, click anywhere on the page to add the control.
2. Set the alt title for the image. Select the image and click Settings > Data. Enter the image title in the image title field, as shown in the following figure.
  
  Note The content of the image title also serves as keywords. To help convert traffic, match the keywords with the theme of the current section and the image itself. Otherwise, you will only increase your site's bounce rate.
Add friendly links. A friendly link is an agreement between two sites to place each other's logo or site name on their respective sites. This logo or text then links to the other site. The following steps describe how to add a friendly link using text as an example:
1. Add a text control. Click Content > Text. Then, click anywhere on the page to add the control.
2. Set the hyperlink. Select the text control and click Settings > Data. Select the text to which you want to add a hyperlink. Click the Hyperlink icon. Select a protocol and enter the other site's link in the Hyperlink Information > URL field, as shown in the following figures.
  
  Note Ensure that you enter the link with the correct protocol (HTTP or HTTPS). Otherwise, the link will not be accessible.
3. Select how the hyperlink opens. You can configure this setting in the location shown in the following figure.
  Note
  - Before you add a friendly link, check the total number of pages on the site and the number of pages indexed by Baidu. If very few pages are indexed, do not add a link to that site.
  - Do not add too many friendly links. Quality is more important than quantity. If another site has a high PageRank (PR) value but has many outbound links, such as more than 50, its contribution to your site's ranking will be minimal.
  - Do not exchange links with fraudulent sites, especially sites that are penalized by Baidu or Google. For these sites, the number of indexed pages often differs significantly from the actual number of pages.
  - Check the Baidu snapshot date for the home page of the friendly link. If the snapshot is outdated, the site may have been demoted by Baidu. If you link to a site that has been demoted by Baidu, your own site may be negatively affected.
Set up a sitemap. For more information, see Sitemap.
Verify your site. Site verification proves that you own the domain name and helps accelerate site indexing. For more information, see Site Verification.
Submit the sitemap file. After you verify your site, you can log on to the webmaster platform to submit the sitemap file. This accelerates site indexing. For more information, see How do I submit a sitemap in Baidu Webmaster Tools?

Note Baidu indexing usually takes four to eight weeks. Please be patient. You can enter site:your-top-level-domain in the Baidu search box to check the number of indexed pages.

Why does my SEO title not take effect in preview mode?

Page SEO settings take effect only when the site is accessed through a top-level domain. After you make changes, click Publish and view the site using your top-level domain.

What types of sites are less likely to be indexed by Baidu?

Duplicate pages: Baidu does not index content that already exists on the Internet.
Pages with little or no main content.
Pages that use technologies that Baidu's crawler cannot parse, such as JavaScript (JS) or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX).
Pages that contain only images or videos: Search engines can only scrape text.
Fraudulent pages: If multiple subdomains redirect to the same website, this can be discovered and negatively affect the site's indexing and ranking on Baidu.

Four factors that affect Baidu ranking

Relevance: This refers to how well the page content matches a user's search query. Factors include the number of times user search keywords appear on the page, the position of these keywords, and the anchor text of external links that point to the page. After you add keywords to a page, try to incorporate them into the site's content.
Authority: Users prefer content from authoritative websites. Similarly, the Baidu search engine has more trust in content from high-quality, authoritative sites.
Timeliness: Newer and more interesting content better meets user needs and can increase site traffic.
Importance: This refers to the popularity of your site after it matches a user's search query. The more times your site is clicked from search results for similar keywords, the higher its ranking will be.

Can friendly links improve indexing efficiency and ranking?

Friendly links, also known as reciprocal links, link exchanges, or consortium links, are a simple form of cooperation between websites with complementary resources. Each site places the other's logo or text on its own website and creates a hyperlink to the other's site. When a user clicks the link, they are redirected to the other site, or the site opens in a new page. This allows users to discover your site from partner sites and is a basic website promotion method. Currently, friendly links can improve indexing efficiency and ranking. Although the Baidu search engine has reduced its reliance on hyperlinks and established stricter standards for high-quality, normal, spam, and fraudulent links, its ability to identify them has not diminished. For fraudulent links, Baidu not only filters and removes the links but also penalizes the beneficiary site to some extent. Conversely, Baidu still welcomes high-quality links. Hyperlinks remain one of the most important methods for discovering and indexing links.

Three ways to improve search engine ranking

Use a dedicated IP address. If your website uses a dedicated IP address, search engines consider it an independent site. This can improve indexing and site weight, leading to a higher search engine ranking.
Set up friendly links and share your site often. A significant part of Baidu or Google search rankings is determined by external links and traffic. This means that the more high-quality websites that link to your site, the higher your site's ranking will be. Share your site on major blogs, forums, and social networking sites. You can also submit your URL to directory websites or add your website link to your social media account signatures.
Set an SEO title and page description. For more information, see Page SEO.

How to check if your site is indexed

The following example uses Baidu, but the method is similar for other search engines. Open Baidu and enter site:your-domain-name. Then, click Baidu Search to check if your site is indexed and view the indexing data.

What is a Baidu snapshot?

A Baidu snapshot is a cached version of a webpage that has been scraped and indexed by the search engine's crawler. After you understand Baidu's algorithm rules, you can use certain techniques to improve your natural ranking. Baidu has two types of rankings: paid and natural. Paid ranking is a Baidu product where higher bids result in higher rankings. Natural ranking is related to the Baidu snapshot.

Note A site's snapshot update frequency is not directly related to its ranking weight.

When Baiduspider scrapes or checks new pages, it creates an index based on priority, which depends on importance and timeliness. The snapshot update time usually reflects the indexing time. Pages with frequent and important content updates are indexed faster.
If you make only minor text changes or the content is not time-sensitive, the search engine may not consider it valuable enough to update the index quickly. Even if the Baidu crawler re-scrapes the page, the snapshot may not update quickly.

Why does the snapshot time go backward?

A search engine database often stores multiple snapshot versions of an important webpage. These snapshots are scraped at different times. In rare cases, the search engine system may choose a snapshot version that is different from the one displayed in the current search results. This can cause the snapshot time to appear to go backward. This does not affect the website's performance in the search engine or mean that the search engine has penalized the site.

Note A snapshot update is directly related to whether important new content appears on the page. It is not directly related to the site's "weight" or whether it has been "banned by the search engine". Improve the content value and user experience of your site. This will help you earn the trust of both users and search engines.