Latest Articles
SEO in the Mobile Search Space
June 17, 2010 By Spiker
In 2007, search went crazy for mobile devices. Once the iPhone launched, Google’s search on the mobile Internet bloomed. Then smartphones were introduced – they now have about 15% of the mobile search market, and statistics show that smartphone users are more engaged on their mobile devices than ever before.
Which means that now, due to the limited display space on a mobile device, the top search rankings have become more valuable…but the details of each listing are shorter. Each carrier displays results in a different layout, and each carrier is highly focused on providing the most relevant information to their end user. For optimum SEO, this focus makes your meta data, description and keywords even more essential.
Why is Meta Data Important?
- Results listings are shorter compared to traditional search results, and the URL displayed is often truncated to save valuable space.
- Some users evaluate the URL itself when selecting a site to click on. However, many mobile search results display a URL based on its relevancy to a user’s query AND location.
- Mobile devices now provide GPS coordinates with geo-targeting capabilities. So, much of mobile search focuses on providing relevant local results that include maps, weather, local points of interest, sports scores, etc.
- Some mobile devices allow you to set your location preferences for search results, and these location settings impact both the local and vertical results the user sees.
What does this mean to you?
Everything if you want to be listed at the top of mobile search results.
Mobile SEO techniques are still in the beginning stages and there is much left to be learned. Many providers continually test to improve mobile search experience, making mobile SEO more challenging than traditional SEO. But, not so much we have to re-invent the wheel. So keep your eyes wide open on these slowly forming standards and be ready.
The New WebPosition Reporter Launches Today
May 11, 2010 By Webposition SEO Team
Today marks the launch of the all new, all online WebPosition Reporter. This new release is completely web-based and lets users run and view search engine rank reports from a web browser on their Mac or PC – nothing to download or install. With this new online version, WebPosition introduces brand-new features, including filtering & sorting, downloadable data and competitor identification & tracking. Additionally, the new WebPosition Reporter runs reports anonymously, without involving users’ local IP addresses.
There are several subscription options available, including the Free Pilot Pack. We’re curious what you think – try it out at http://www.webposition.com and let us know!
Techcrunch Reports on Search Growth in the United States
April 9, 2010 By Frank.Torres
Eric Schonfeld at Techcrunch published a great article this morning on the decline in growth of search in the United States. While it’s challenging to say the search industry’s best days are behind it, it does make sense to say that the search industry has increasingly become more efficient in delivering results. As a result of the push to improve traffic quality over the past few years, we’re seeing less and less low quality search results. What does this mean? It means you no longer land on parked pages overstocked with a list of ads when you perform a search. The same can be said about low quality vertical pages that don’t produce relevant and unique content. The algorithms have become more intelligent in how they rank websites and their content, not to mention the introduction of in search results intelligence. Just search for a stock ticker in Google and you’ll see the most recent stock price.
Here’s some of the growth numbers outlined from Techcrunch post:
March, 2009: 33.1%
June, 2009: 21.8%
September, 2009: 17.3%
December, 2009: 16.5%
January, 2010: 12.4%
February, 2010: 10.4%
March, 2010: 7.6%
(Source: Techcrunch, 4/9/2010)
Some of the commenters made good points about the introduction of informational sites such as Wikipedia and how they’ve played a role in decline by providing high ranking information in a place people tend to trust (even if it is user generated). Another interesting fact mentioned in the article is that Bing still continues to chip away at Google’s share.
One thing’s for certain, your position/rank in the search engines results are becoming more and more important once again as the competition to be the best becomes more fierce.
How Not To Advertise Your SEO Services
January 23, 2008 By Webposition SEO Team
By Scott Goodyear
A few weeks ago, I had a post talking about link exchange spam that we periodically receive. As a follow up, just a few things to note regarding advertising your SEO services online. I got an email from a “Nick Slevin” advertising that he could “help to improve my rankings”. It appears that I wasn’t the only one. As an online marketer, I get all sorts of questions regarding how sites should market online. Email marketing is often a touchy subject.
In the case of Nick Slevin’s email, his email address leads to a non-existent web site. The email came to us out of the blue and with no prior business connection that I could find. Even Google appears to get marketing spam similar to this.
Generally, if you are a web site owner, you shouldn’t throw money and the keys to the kingdom (your site’s login) at places like this. Even in cases where the “scam” is not readily apparent, you may end up with a very minimally SEO’d web site and a lot of hidden pages. I’ve heard many horror stories and have spoken to several web site owners where they find that they’ve been added to Google’s Malware list and have no idea why. They think back to that time they had the site “SEO’d” and wonder if that had anything to do with the current low rankings or malware notice.
When they have some one review the files on their web hosting account… They may end up finding a lot hidden pages, pages that are not linked from their normal web pages. Often these hidden pages include links to pirated software sites, spy ware installers, link exchanges they hadn’t approved of, and the like.
These bad experiences can put a bad spin on SEO and make it harder for legitimate SEOs to successfully use email marketing. Because Google and other engines may decrease rankings or add pass-through/warning pages, with out much notice to the web master of the “bad” site or if they are even able to find a good email in a WHOIS record, it may look bad on the engines until a web site owner begins to understand that the problem is with their site rather than an engine. Google does have a review tool here but this may not root out the entire problem. If you’ve been working with an SEO from a random email, you may still want to have a look at the files and HTML pages in your web hosting account.
It is possible that this Nick Slevin is real, that he is creating a real SEO business, maybe, but who knows. An actual web site, some clients that tell the good and bad about your business, perhaps membership in organizations like Sempo or local search organizations similar to SEMPDX, and other activities can help to further back the legitimacy of a business. Not guarantee, but further the positive impression.
If you are an SEO reading this post and you’ve read Mr. Daz’ post, an additional tip… You also shouldn’t promise any top 10 rankings. Lets face it, the engines control the rankings. SEOs work with some of the art and science behind SEO but largely we are similar to coaches, professional resume writers, marketers of all stripes, and many other professions in that we try to shape an outcome that is largely out of our hands. It doesn’t mean that you can’t help to obtain top rankings, just that you can’t guarantee rankings. Most site owners think that you mean top 10 rankings on competitive phrases, not the low hanging fruit that ranks just by adding some meta tags and a title tag.
When I get one of those “we guarantee top 10 rankings” emails, and I’m feeling ornery, I sometimes reply and ask that they guarantee that my site can rank in the top 10 for the terms: Google, MSN, or Yahoo within Google, MSN, or Yahoo. Or better yet, can they guarantee that they can put their own site in such a top spot? Odd, they don’t usually reply and I don’t see them in the rankings.
Link Exchange Spam, Our Site Has Nothing To Do With Snowmobiles.
December 11, 2007 By Webposition SEO Team
By Scott Goodyear
Like quite a few of you, we receive spam and link exchange requests all of the time. We also receive requests from existing WebPosition customers asking that we include some type of automated link exchange module. While I can’t tell you what is in store for the future of WebPosition, I can show you why most software companies shy away from creating link exchange software…
Link Exchange Spam Example
Lets look a recent example of a link exchange email that was sent to us:
“This is John from xxxx Snowmobile. I found your site
marketposition.com and I really enjoyed it. The info is great and the
site is very easy to navigate.
Please consider adding the following info to your web site:
xxxxSnowmobile.com – Snowmobile Parts, Accessories and Apparel
I noticed some other snowmobile related links on this page:
http://www.marketposition.com/blog/archives/2007/10/reciprocallinks.html,
but any area on your site would be great. Let me know what you think.
Thanks!
Ride Safe,
John xxxx
xxxx Snowmobile
xxxx@xxxxsnowmobile.com
http://www.xxxxsnowmobile.com
1-800-xxx-xxxx”
How Link Exchange Software Attempts To Work
As you can tell in the email above, John probably hadn’t done much to edit the basic template that came with their program. And obviously their program didn’t work to find sites related to “snowmobiles”. Since they ended up focusing on this page: http://www.marketposition.com/blog/archives/2007/10/reciprocallinks.html, I’m guessing that they had something about “link exchange” as one of the parameters of their search. Perhaps looking for snowmobile sites that had link exchange pages?
Many link exchange programs go through a lists of keywords that you build, scan through search engine results for related sites and harvest/download a page, section of a site, or entire site. They also scan for email addresses or phones numbers from those pages then use free or private look up systems like whois, public wikis, and other sources. And that is how a link exchange spam is born.
Link Exchange Spam Doesn’t Work
The problem with this is that spam doesn’t work. You can argue that the 1% or so that responds and adds a link is a “success”. Well sure, first hurdle over, snowmobile spammer now has a new link back to their site but search engines aren’t happy about random links on “link pages” which is where most of those links will go. Link pages have been ineffective for a really long time where as content pages with links in them tend to work much better.
As for those 1% responders, they often don’t understand what search engine marketing is about, nor my friends, does the snowmobile guy. Having a link on a SEO/SEM like MarketPosition isn’t going to count for much since we rarely if ever talk about snowmobiles. A link that is put just “…any area on your site…” won’t count for much either.
Having a link on a specific web page of a site is what is important. A page that gets lots of views, that has lots of links to it, and gains new links all the time… that is where you ideally want a link to be. Barring that, on a page that is relevant and has some links is a second runner up. Lets say you were in the “architecture, engineering, and construction” category that Adobe.com markets to. Would you rather be highlighted on the AEC page, in a newer blog article of the AEC blog, or would you want to be listed on some blogger blog that was just created 10 days ago and that will link to anything that is sent it’s way? Which will get more targeted traffic? Which is likely to be used as a resource by industry pundits and others for some time to come?
What If It Was Done Differently?
So what should he have done differently, aside from using the generic form letter/software? Well, how about actually appealing to the web site / web master? What about asking questions about the site, about a point in the article, developing a bit of repertoire for what the site links to and typically talks about before popping the link question? Similar to this XKCD comic, wanting high rankings through links doesn’t make it real. High rankings may actually take some real world work and a bit of search engine knowledge in addition to links.
If snowmobile John did exchange a few emails with me, developed some trust, and then broached the subject, I’d tell him that I would be happy to link to his site under a few conditions (commonly known as the “what’s in it for me” caveat). If he had a relevant search marketing article that was previous unpublished, he could submit that article for publishing consideration. If I liked it, it would probably end up on MarketPosition with a byline that included his name and a link back to his site like this article by Kent Lewis of Anvil Media. If it was a good article and became popular, it would gain him some visibility and it would give him an avenue to publish insights that might not be relevant to his snowmobile visitors. But you probably wouldn’t get that with just a self serving “please, can I have a link, can I have a link?” type of email.
And if he were smart, (yes I looked at his web site) he would turn his generic, carbon copy e-commerce site into something more than just product descriptions and pricing. Consider writing up a guide to getting the best snow gear for the price. Create a review of the newest snow gear that includes MP3 pockets, pouches, integrated headphones, etc. and submit the guide to techy/news/gadget sites like Geeksugar, Gadget Lab, or others who are specifically within the snow sports industry. They may not only link to your article, but also write up a blurb talking about your review, the products, similar products, or something. Good or bad, you could get both a link and a fair amount of traffic. Maybe one day he’ll learn, maybe not. Good luck and holiday wishes to all!
Apple.com telling Google “we don’t want to rank”?
May 17, 2007 By Webposition SEO Team
by Scott Goodyear
As I mentioned a while back, Google states that they are getting more aggressive in how they treat links. High rankings based entirely on links (i.e. the term does not appear on the page) are often called “Googlebombs”. For several years Apple.com has enjoyed a first page ranking for the terms MP3 Player, MP3 Players, and often top 10-20 rankings for related terms like MP3 device, digital music player, and others. Today they no longer rank in the top 100 for keywords that they should dominate like MP3 players and simply MP3. In the past, they were supported by benign Googlebombs.
The page that was normally well ranked for most MP3 related terms is: www.apple.com/itunes. However just about any of the sub pages from this section including www.apple.com/ipod/ipod.html would potentially make good pages to attempt to rank for MP3 related terms.
When you look at the source code for their iTunes page or just check the cached text in Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc. you find that they do not use the keywords “MP3″ or “player” any where on this page. Even thought they have used that term in the past.
On the other hand, Apple’s pages still rank well in Yahoo and MSN as these engines still place a high relevance rating on inbound links. But even in these engines, the textual content can make a difference. (Ask.com, appears to be taking a route more akin to Google.) Should this concern Apple? It should. According to a quick search of the Wordtracker.com service, Google has about 47% of all search engine traffic. I’ve seen other estimates that say Google is 60-80% of all search traffic.
I thought links were all we need for Google rankings?
If you still think that links alone can support your site in Google, consider the following Google rankings for the keyword phrase MP3 player:
680,000+ inbound links from non Apple.com pages is nothing to scoff at. Even if you think that perhaps Google might be devaluing some of the potentially paid or off topic links that point to the iTunes page, take out even 200,000 links and you still have a linking juggernaut. Discount all of those links and a single link from their main page to the iTunes page could push a lot of Page Rank weight to the iTunes page. But… again, for the keyword phrases related to “MP3″, Apple just doesn’t use the term and so, they are essentially telling Google through their optimization or specific lack of optimization, ‘we don’t sell MP3 Players and we don’t want to rank for them’.
There is a hole in your chart/theory! Or is there?
I know that some of you will say, “but Scott, look at number 8. Musicmatch.com doesn’t even use the keyword!”. That would be true, but Google considers “jukebox” to be a keyword that is similar to MP3. Really? Yep, that is semantic indexing at work. However the strength of this association is quite weak.
Here you see keywords in bold that have strong relationships to “jukebox” such as MP3 Player, MP3, and player.
Below you see keywords that have a strong relationship to “MP3“. But you will notice that the term jukebox is not highlighted by Google in bold. Thus indicating that the relationship between the two keywords is not all that strong.
And some of you will say “Why do I see MP3 in some of my Yahoo searches for this Apple page?”
It is because they use Yahoo’s paid Search Submit service. Essentially they have a bit more control over what text appears in the Yahoo search results, faster indexing and refreshes from Yahoo, and a few other perks. However it does not directly improve their rankings in Yahoo and does nothing for their rankings in Google.
Does Apple play MP3 files? Who cares. Should they use “MP3″ on their web pages?
Speaking to some of my evangelical Mac friends, it is true that a Mac does not technically “play” MP3s. However they do convert MP3 based music files, CDs, etc. into a format called AAC that can be used on Mac’s iPod hardware players. I know from personal experience that their iTunes software player either converts or plays MP3s as well. However whether it is converting them or playing them directly, to me, doesn’t matter. I can play them. The average person is in a similar situation online. They are looking for an “MP3 player” in Google, not an “AAC player”.
There may be some technical or licensing considerations preventing Apple from using the ubiquitous “MP3″ term on their site. Maybe they are trying to subtly encourage new/non-techie iPod owners to only use the iTunes music store by remaining a bit silent on the word MP3 and the ability to convert MP3s to something usable by their players. On their iPod and iTunes promotional pages they always use more general terms like “music files”, “music library”, etc. rather than talking about song formats. Even their help pages don’t really help you to understand if your existing MP3 library works with iPod or iTunes. I doubt that they simply forgot to use the term.
Lets go back to Wordtracker for a second. The keywords MP3 player and MP3 players are estimated to have 900 to 1600 searches in a 24 hour period. While I think this value is a bit low, what is potentially at stake? Lets combine the keywords and figure that 900 people could hit Apple.com in one day from a combined “MP3 player” and “MP3 players” search. Over the course of a month, that could mean 27,900 visitors to their site or roughly 328,500 visitors a year. What if 1% of those visitors ended up buying the average iPod at $199? That is an additional $55,521 a month in revenue or more than $600,000 over the course of the year. While this is all “in theory”, remember that there are also various other MP3 related searches that they are missing out on as well.
Summary and Suggestions…
Apple.com probably should consider their rankings loss for MP3 player and similar terms. They have one of the most popular music players on the planet and it can use MP3 songs, convert them to AAC, or whatever needs to happen. As some one who thinks in terms of search engines though, their pages are -not- optimized for MP3 or MP3 related terms. And that side of me thinks that they have a great opportunity to re-gain their Google rankings. No, they don’t have to go out of their way and start talking about “MP3″ all over the place. It would be easy enough to just add a sentence or two at the bottom of their iTunes page where it reads:
“Cars available on iTunes in selected countries. © Disney and Pixar. No celebrity endorsement implied. iPod games will not play on Apple TV. All rights reserved. TM & Copyright © 2007 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.”
Perhaps just a quick sentence/phrase/slogan like “Your MP3 tunes work on iTunes and the iPod music player.” Or add a short paragraph that talks about Steve Job’s recent announcement on DRM free music. Do you have recording of his speech? Um, podcast anyone? Post a descriptive text link that points to a free AAC copy of the speech as well as an MP3 copy. This will provide another instance of “MP3″ for your page. Certainly there is a creative, yet valid and logical way to squeeze MP3 onto your page in order to regain the MP3 related Google rankings.
For the rest of us, it will take more than just a few mentions of MP3 and a few links to rank on this term or others. There are literally hundreds of search engine factors to consider when optimizing a site to rank well. But when you are strictly focusing on the linking side of things, dealing with hundreds of thousands of legitimate links, a trusted domain, etc. many of those other factors can fade into the back ground. However whether you are a behemoth computer industry site or a mom and pop trying to rank on a few terms, some of the more fundamental SEO considerations are considerations that every site should keep in the forefront of the web and content design decisions.
International SEO, A Check List for Improving the Rankings of International Web Sites.
December 20, 2006 By Webposition SEO Team
by Scott Goodyear
Need to improve a site’s rankings in an international search engine? Have you already tried traditional optimization of content and link strategies? What else can an SEO do? Surprisingly, there are a few more steps to be considered in order to improve an international web site which can also prove helpful when pursuing improved international search engine rankings.
Is .COM Considered An International Domain?
The .com domain is typically the most sought after and well known of all domain types. While a .us top level domain does exist for US companies to register, it is thought that search engines consider a .com address as related primarily to US based websites or often used by sites that are not typically country specific. If your site is based in the UK, you might still consider a .com domain as it is easy for customers to remember, but if you are focusing primarily on UK search engines, register a .co.uk domain. If your site is in Ireland, an .ie domain should be considered, .fr for France, .in for India, .ca for Canada, and so on.
If you have both a regional and .com domain, the next question is do you use both or do you use only one and forward visitors from one URL to the other? If you have the resources to maintain both web sites, it is not a bad idea to keep both URLs up and running. If you do this and they are both in the same language, make sure that each has its own unique content to avoid duplication penalties. You may even link between the two domains to provide some link popularity between the domains but don’t over do it. There is an line drawn between what some engines consider a “articifical linking network” and simply two or more sites that link to one another. On the other side, if one site is one language and you have another URL that has roughly the same content but in another language like say Italian, search engines generally do not penalize for duplicated content in different languages.
International Hosting
Like a domain name, where your site is hosted can play a role in rankings. In real life, if you spoke with an accent, this non-verbal clue may help someone to identify where you were born or grew up. Similarly, if you are a UK or Scottish company, the IP address can be a give away. Does your site have pages served from a fairly local server in Edinburgh, Scotland or is it served from a location like Dallas, Texas? Search engines can use this information to further identify your site for regional or international rankings.
If the hosting company you use tells you that their offices are in the UK or they use a .co.uk domain for their site’s URL, be aware that they could be a reseller for another company in another country. In some cases, they may use a co-location service to host or manage web hosting servers in another country rather than in the country that their domain would seem to specify. Get in touch with your current or potential web hosting service to see where they host from. You may find that you will need to seek other hosting options or you may need to simply ask them to move your site to a server that they manage in the same target country.
If you are already online, you may be able to check where your site is being hosted from on your own. There are various tools online like those at DNS Stuff and Canvas Dreams’ Web Host Locator which can check on your URL and give you the data that you need.
Don’t Hide Your International Address, Phone Number, Etc.
Have a local or international phone number (a non-800/888 number)? Do you have an international business address? While it may seem like over-kill on some sites, depending on the design/style of the site, it’s not a bad idea to keep this type of information readily available on many or all of your web site’s pages. There are both SEO and non-SEO reasons for this.
SEO reasons: Niche keyword searches. While there are many keywords which are very difficult to rank on such as mortgage, real estate, realtor, etc., some searchers use a combination of items like a postal or zip code, a partial street address, a partial phone number, or other information along with a keyword or two during their search in order to narrow down general searches to something more specific. Since many of these combinations provide only a few hits per month, many companies ignore trying to optimize for these keyword combinations, and thus improve your chances of appearing with the addition of your contact info on the page or some basic optimization.
Customer Service reasons: Customers generally should not have to dig through your site’s architecture in order to contact you if you have a high contact or regional specific company such as in real estate, mortgages, building supplies, local groceries, etc. While you generally want customers to read through your site in order to answer most of their questions before they contact you, every one reads/understands information in a different manner and they may not know or understand that they should click the ‘contact us’, ‘about us’, or a similar page for such information.
Directions To Your Location
Although I think you should keep your contact information on most your pages, this doesn’t mean that you should remove or forget to use some type of ‘contact us’, ‘about us’, or a similar page on your site. When you create this page, do use words that represent your country, regional naming conventions, states, zones, and other words that describe your location. If you have any abbreviations, spell them out as well. After all “St.” could reference a street, a suite, or a saint.
Give driving directions from a few well known locations rather than simply relying on external services. The content on your site helps you for SEO reasons and helps your customers to find you. If you want to also place links to an external mapping/driving directions service in order to give your visitors a means of double checking directions, go for it, but these external links normally do not play a direct part in helping you to obtain higher rankings.
Localized Language
Even if you speak the same language as the country and international site that you are attempting to get ranked, there may be regional or local spelling differences, slightly different terms to use, grammar differences, or other challenges to take into consideration. Although I speak US based English, it makes a difference if I am trying to SEO pages for boot repair parts and trunk repair parts in the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia. A boot is a type of shoe in most of these areas but outside of the US it can also indicate the storage compartment of a car. In the US we would call this area a trunk where as both in the US and elsewhere, a trunk usually indicates the main portion of a tree or a large container for storing items.
In Mexico and Span the way that one would optimize for mortgage lending services differs as well. The term “bienes raices” in commonly used in Mexico and in the Spanish speaking areas of the US and roughly means “real estate” or literally “root assets”. In Spain you would use a term like “inmobiliaria” to describe real estate. In Mexico and the US you would use the term “prestamista” for a lender such as a mortgage broker or loan officer where as in Spain this term is often used for dishonest or questionable lenders such as “loan sharks“. So you would not necessarily use the same terms in the same language to optimize for different countries that have a common language.
I love tools like Babel Fish and search engine based translation systems, but I would not put complete trust in them to accurately and meaningfully translate any web site for strict business and SEO purposes due to language nuances. Because of factors like these, a good translator or regional copy writer is a must.
Summary
SEOs are constantly working to improve website rankings but international and regional web sites often need a few extra tweaks to help them rank well. If you are attempting to improve a web site’s ranking in an international engine, there are some basic steps that can take to increase the odds of ranking well. Use a domain that relates to your target country rather than a general domain like .com. If you use both a regional domain and a .com, provide unique content on both sites. Obtain hosting services from an IP address/host that is actually located in the country that you are targeting. Be obvious about your company contact information by placing it on all or many pages of your site so that it is easy for customers to find and easy for search engines to index. Even if you have basic contact information on many pages of your site, do have a “contact us” or similar page. Do research your target market’s keywords and language style, if you are not native to the target country, and consider hiring some one to translate or regionalize the text for you. While these ideas may not cause your site to rocket to the top rankings in a international search engine over night, taken as a whole (along with traditional linking and SEO strategies), they can give you an edge toward improved rankings.
Basic Security Considerations for SEO
October 12, 2006 By Webposition SEO Team
by Curtis Friedl and Scott Goodyear
www.marketposition.com
When every day business owners search for a means to improve sales, they often start by examining their sales force. Sales people are trained on the latest sales techniques, or provided incentives to push the higher margin products to customers. While many owners often overlook their web site as their best sales person, SEOs understand that looking at keywords, weighting, and placement in addition to links and excellent navigation are important just as important to their virtual sales person; their website.
This SEO effort sometimes over looks the need for information security. Business plans, photos, product descriptions, and customer information are often left less protected then they should be. As part of creating and training our best sales tool, we need to look at how much information websites give to search engines, and ask “Are our sites giving out information that they should not?” Are they providing your mission critical information to your competition? In this article we intend to provide a few examples of basic security considerations that every SEO or business owner should keep in mind.
HTTPS:// vs. HTTP://
As we’ve said in the past, you can use a robots.txt file to help control search engines. However some engines like Live.com’s robot (MSN) actually requires that you have a robots.txt file for both the secure https:// and unsecured http:// versions of your site (really each folder on your site that can be visited by an engine may need its own robots.txt file). While we’ve heard some rumblings that search engines other than MSN can index sites in both secure and unsecured fashions, it is not entirely clear if this could cause a duplicate content issue. The arguments that content from both the secure and unsecured versions of your site could cause a ‘duplicate content’ issue tend to lead one to want to play on the safe side. This is especially true of Live.com as it does not appear to have an obvious supplemental index as Google displays.
Some engines like Yahoo state that they will not index information from secure areas of your site:
“…There are several ways to prevent our crawler from indexing your site or portions of your site:
* create a “robots.txt” file on your web site to prevent our crawler from indexing your site
* add a “noindex” meta tag to your documents
* remove the original document from your web site
* host the document on an access restricted section of your web site…”
On some of the regional versions of Yahoo the statements clarify this a bit by stating:
“…* host the document on a secure section of your web site (HTTPS or login)…”
How does Google treat secure https:// pages? At this time, they are indexed:
So, as you can see, there is a problem with secure pages. If you place content on them that you do want indexed, this content may not be indexed by all engines, and the opposite is true as well, just because your page is secure, this does not mean that your secure content is kept out of some engines results.
Some engines treat the secure pages as an entirely different site. Some engines index secure pages. Secure pages and the use of the https protocol are important for Webmasters, and site owners to consider. Protecting the privacy of your customer’s information is of paramount importance for any business; however it does not mitigate the need for the site to be indexed by the search engines. Lest we forget if a customer can not find you, you will not have a customer.
Controlling Access
Is your site really ’secure’? Even sites thought to be ’secure’ are vulnerable to accidental intrusion by search engine robots. A North Carolina school district found out the hard way that their site had both secure and non-secure information available in a semi-unsecured area online. Social security numbers and test scores appeared in web results after Google was able to index their site’s secure content. Originally this was sensationalized as if Google may have ‘hacked‘ the website. Like Search Engine Watch, we think that it is more likely that a student had logged in to view their test scores online. The student then posted a direct link to this ’secure’ area perhaps on a personal website, which Google subsequently spidered. They might have avoided this issue by using a robots.txt to disable a spider from indexing content in particular areas of their site. Alternately they could have used .htaccess and rewrite engine techniques to change a url such as user:password@somesite.com/logged/in/testscores to something more like www.site.com/testscore-login. A URL like “www.site.com/testscore-login” would prevent direct linking to the scores pages if there was not a cookie, active session, etc. in the browser attempting to view the page.
Bandwidth Security
In the 1990’s, bandwidth constraints were a major issue to businesses large and small. Today, it can still be a very problematic issue for many small businesses as many pay for bandwidth exceeding a certain level per day/week/month. An .htaccess file can help prevent bandwidth theft. We often hear from site owners who are upset that their site’s graphics and other files are used as icons for forums on other websites, to decorate MySpace.com pages, etc. You may wish to read up on using .htaccess to prevent image bandwidth theft. While preventing this theft can save you some cash, a popular site can sometimes be slowed down or even pushed offline depending on their web hosting resources. If a search engine spider visits a site while it is offline, this can throw your hard earned rankings out the window. When your site is back online, most engines will re-visit and self correct the issue however whether this takes days, weeks, or months is up to the engines. Can you afford to wait on this?
Additionally server configuration tools, (like a mod_rewrite) can help by displaying one URL to site visitors while the actual content exists elsewhere on your site. Thus an attempt by others to link and display this content off site may be thwarted. Depending on your hosting package you may even have an easily configurable ‘leech protection‘ configuration script to turn on/off.
The Secure Server and the Certificates
One part of displaying to your visitors that your site is secure requires the creation, and installation of a secure server certificate. This security certificate on its own does not make your site secure but it can be reassuring to customers if they go from an unsecure to secure area of your site or move from a normal website to a third party site like PayPal, Yahoo Stores, or similar to complete a secure transaction. The purpose of the certificate is to certify that the website being viewed, or organization that employs the certificate is who they claim to be. The certificate contains information about the owner, expiration date, and how it can be validated with the issuing party.
There are two methods by which you can obtain a secure server certificate, first and recommended is to buy one through a company like Verisign, or a subsidiary of their’s Thawte. The second is to create your own; this is not very difficult however it does involve you signing the certificate yourself. This sprouts additional issues, and will requires additional steps to be executed prior to all browsers viewing your certificates in the same light as these two companies.
In addition to the server certificate you need to have a mechanism in place to provide a secure interface between the originating web server and the client, examples are Apache Stronghold, Apache SSL, Windows SSL, etc.
Conclusion
Remember in our discussion above where we mentioned Yahoo does not index content under the secure protocol, while Google does. SEOs need to be conscientious of where both public and private content is stored on their site, and how links to the content from within, and from outside can affect security. Providing reassurance to customers that they are still dealing with the site that they intended to transact with can build confidence in your site.
Each of these solutions will vary in ease of use; each can provide you with some basic starting points in both securing your content and helping to keep the right content publicly accessible by the search engines. The main focus of search engine optimization is to understand search engines and work to create or adjust content so that web pages rank well. Success in this endeavor usually ensures a business’ success or failure online. But going the extra step to make sure that right content is made public can be just as important.
How can I optimize my website, it’s dynamic? The Rewrite Engine! What?
April 24, 2006 By Webposition SEO Team
By Curtis Friedl
Many people will ask what you are talking about when you refer to a Rewrite Engine. This may be one of those tightly held secrets, which are spoken about only in hushed whispers in the corner of a darkened room.
Today nearly everyone uses a URL several times each day; we share them by email, Instant Messaging, or simply recall them from memory. Many of the dynamic sites of today have URLs that resemble this one: http://www.your-web-site.com/catalog.php?cat=category&product_name&color=product_id. The larger and more complicated a site becomes, the greater the number of variables the URL may contain.
Google makes a statement on one of their webmaster support pages that they will support this dynamic site, but only to a point:
http://www.google.com/support/pages/bin/answer.py?answer=470&topic=8490
“Google does index dynamically generated webpages, including .asp pages, .php pages, and pages with question marks in their URLs. However, these pages can cause problems for our crawler and may be ignored”.
Google goes on to say that “you might consider creating and submitting a detailed Sitemap of your pages using Google Sitemaps.”
The recommendation of a site map is extremely important, and it is one that every website owner needs to ensure they follow. Providing the search engines with a quick and easy way to locate all of your pages should be common sense. However this does not provide the complete picture of creating a URL that is easier to use and one that is short and descriptive. The URL should have information describing the content (not just a list of variables), and it should not be too long.
A rewrite engine like Apache’s mod_rewrite, will accomplish several factors that will be beneficial to a site. First off, this makes website URLs more user friendly so they will be easier to understand and remember when shared with a friend or customer. Additionally this will prevent undesired linking, or stealing of content, and will not expose the inner workings of a site to users. More importantly for SEOs, these new urls are more search-engine friendly. As Google and other engines have trouble with websites that utilize complex variables as discussed above, every step that can be taken to ensure a search engine will be able to quickly locate, and index your content is important. Websites which are easier to index are more likely to have their content included in search results.
A URL rewrite engine can be presented with URLs in one form (one with several variables like the one above) and display information in another form (www.your-web-site.com/subfolder/something-ABC.html). A rewrite engine allows URLs to be cleaned up and made friendly by creating a set of rewrite rules, rather than modifying the configuration of the web server software.
A good example of the setup of a rewrite can be seen in this discussion at Search engine watch http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3925
Duplicate Content: How Does it Affect Your Rankings?
March 24, 2006 By Webposition SEO Team
by Richard Drawhorn
If search engines detect duplicate content on your web site, it can have an adverse effect on your rankings. When a search engine finds the same content on more than one page, they tend to consider it a form of spam. In this post, I’ll review some of the ways duplicate content may appear on your site and a few strategies to avoid being penalized by search engines.
In general, the rule of thumb to follow when creating content for your web site is this:
The same content should never be available from more than one URL.
If your web site is violating the above rule, then the site’s search engine rankings may be suffering as a result. Any blatant violations of this rule should be removed from your web site immediately. There are, however, a few scenarios that can result in duplicate content violations that are not intentional or even obvious. A few examples are presented below.
Multiple Domains
If you own more than one domain name and point these domains to the same page, a duplicate content problem can result. It’s fine to have multiple domains, but it’s important to use the correct type of redirect to point any additional domains you have to the primary domain. If a search engine finds the correct redirect, it will follow it, land on the primary domain’s page, and no duplicate content penalty will result. The proper redirect to use in these cases is called a 301 Redirect, which indicates that the requested page has been assigned a new permanent URL. By contrast, a 302 Redirect should only be used for pages that have been temporarily removed and will be restored in the future. Using the wrong type of redirect for your multiple domains will cause duplicate content penalties and possibly result in your web site being completely removed for a search engine’s index.
Dynamic URLs
Most search engines do not have any problem indexing dynamic URLs, which are typically associated with sites that are database driven. However, sometimes webmasters make the mistake of setting up the site so that the same content might be presented for several different dynamically generated URLs. This might occur if the content is delivered based on a selection of search parameters, for example. It’s important to avoid these types of situations, because search engines consider each of these dynamic URLs as unique. If duplicate content is found, then a penalty might be applied to the web site.
Sorting Content
Some web pages present content that can be sorted in various ways for the convenience of the user. For example, you might have a site that sells floor tiles and allow the various tile types to be sorted by texture, color, style, etc. The sorting feature is an excellent way to help your customer decide on the right floor tile, but it can cause duplicate content issues for your web site. Often, the various sort combinations are presented using different URLs, even though the core content of the pages are the same. Search engines do not distinguish the various sort pages as unique content, and consider these multiple URLs to be duplicate content. One good strategy to avoid this problem is to use your robots.txt file to allow only one of your sort options to be accessible to search engine spiders. Make use of web analytics to identify the page that has the highest customer conversion rate, and present only that page to search engines.
What if my web site content appears on other sites?
It sometimes happens that the content you present on your web site is posted on another site, like a blog site about the topic. For example, you might write an article that is published on several other web sites related to the article’s topic. Do these reproductions of your content result in a duplicate content penalty for your web site? Thankfully, the answer to that question is no. Search engines look at the hostname for these pages, and will typically only penalize a web site if the duplicate content pages are served up by the same host. In addition, search engines make efforts to locate the originating source of the content and present its URL in search results.
Conclusion
Duplicate content issues can be problematic for webmasters and possibly result in penalties that can lower search engine rankings. The good news is that these penalties are easy to avoid with a little education and understanding of how they can arise in the first place.
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