Well, somehow “a week or two” turned into 10 months since I posted part 1 of this case study. Since then, DotNetNuke 5.1 brought a minor improvement to DNN’s XML sitemap implementation and has grown more web standards compliant, but other than that the points discussed so far in regards to SEO still apply. With that in mind, let’s refer back to my DNN SEO quickstart guide and pick up where we left off.

Local Search

While software development companies are at the forefront of reaching far beyond their offices, it’s still worthwhile to get listed in the local directories of Google, Yahoo and Bing as Mitchel has done for ICG. Many potential clients use local qualifiers such as state, city or town when searching for products and services and a local listing is an easy way to capture that traffic.

Search Engine Friendly Skin & Navigation

Mitchel went the extra mile and invested in a professionally designed and developed skin, which has paid for itself in no time with increased traffic through higher ranking pages and increased brand awareness. As the skin forms the foundation for solid on-page DNN SEO, I recommend CSS based layouts over HTML tables, a spider-friendly menu provider, and semantic containers all marked up with valid (X)HTML and CSS.

Search & Human Friendly Urls

IowaComputerGurus.com runs iFinity Url Master, which provides rich Url rewriting and redirecting capabilities for DNN websites. The module enforces SEO best practices such as short, human-readable Urls, 301 redirection of non-www to www or vice versa, as well as custom Url rewrite functionality for dynamic pages created by the blog.

Fresh & Unique Content

“Content is king” may have turned into a cliché, but without giving Google and company something fresh and tasteful to chew on, none of the above on-page SEO factors will make big strides on their own. For that very reason, Mitchel recently added this blog. Now it’s a matter of covering link-worthy topics and crafting smart post titles without losing track of the target audience: people, not search engines.

This concludes my “real world” application and implementation of DotNetNuke search engine optimization techniques and best practices. For more coverage of the subject, visit my blog and download the DNN SEO webinar hosted by DotNetNuke Corp. And as always, Mitchel and I hope you join the discussion via the comments below.