Chapter 13

Optimizing Your Site

What you will learn in this chapter:

• Optimizing for search
• How the WebMatrix Reports area works
• How to create SEO-friendly URLs
• Optimizing for performance
• Gathering visitor data

If the site you have built is a public site, you want people to come and visit it often. You want the site to perform well on search engines, which is the primary way that people find out about new sites, and when you have attracted traffic to the site, you want your site to perform well on the server. It’s also important to know about your traffic, such as who your visitors are, where they came from, how long they spent on your site, and how they found out about it.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process by which you configure your site so that it is as search engine friendly as possible. This chapter looks at some of the tools that WebMatrix offers to help you optimize your site for search engines, as well as providing some basic SEO advice. You will also explore some ways in which you can improve the performance of your site on the server, thus ensuring maximum availability when people do come visiting. Finally, this chapter looks at the Analytics helper, which is designed to make working with free traffic analysis services as easy as possible.