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This fourth page is harder to reach not only by humans (who need to click at least four times), but also
by search engines, which would probably consider the content in that page as less important. We call the
effect of this link structure “death by pagination,” and we suggest two possible approaches for mitigat-
ing the problem:
1.
Don’t use simple pagination. Page with “< prev” and “next >” links, but also add links to the
individual pages, that is, “< prev 1 2 3 4 next >.” This creates a better navigation scheme to all
pages.
2.
Add a sitemap with links to all the pages.
Because this problem is pretty common with blogs, in Chapter 16 you create a plugin that
implements pagination with links to the individual pages. This technique is also demonstrated in the
e-commerce case study in Chapter 14. You learn more about sitemaps in Chapter 9.
Overall Site Topicality
The fact that a web page is semantically related to other pages within a web site may boost the rankings
of that particular page. This means other related pages linked within a site may be used to boost the
rankings of the web site as a whole. This tends to happen naturally when writing quality content for a
web site regardless.
Invisible On-Page Factors
Invisible on-page factors are, as you correctly guessed, parts of a web page that are not visible to the
human readers. They can be read, however, by a search engine parsing a web site. Invisible page factors
include:
?
Meta description
?
Meta keywords
?
Alt and title attributes
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Page structure considerations
Meta Description
For the most part, the importance of a meta description lies in the fact that search engines may choose to
use it in the SERPs, instead of displaying relevant bits from the page (this is not guaranteed, however).
Speaking from a marketing point of view, this may improve CTR. A meta description may also have a
minor effect on search engine rankings, but it is definitely not a critical factor in that regard. Here is an
example:
<head>
<meta name=”description” value=”The secrets to baking fresh, chewy chocolate chip
cookies that make you wish thousands of calories were actually good for you!” />
...
</head>
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Chapter 2: A Primer in Basic SEO
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