SEO Best Practices – Content Issues August 24, 2008
Posted by simarprit in Blogging, Content, Internet, Search Engines, SEO, SES 2008, Spamming, Uncategorized, websites.Tags: Content, Content Duplication, Search Engines, SEO, SEO Best Practices, SEO Tips, SES, SES 2008, Simarprit
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Content Duplication Issues and SEO Best Practices
Continuing on my series on SES 2008 San Jose, this White paper is again a hybrid of what was shared and what I have learnt over a decade on search engines.
If I give you 10 pages to read, you would scan through, start reading and if what you are reading is “new to you” may be you would read all ten of them at one go.
Bingo.
Now, if I give you 10 pages to read and when you scan through you find that “you’ve read it before” or “only one page is unique”, you may not even read my one unique page and trash all, worse, you would remember me as guy who tricked you by giving 10 pages to read when he had just information for one page. You would make a note “not so nice man to know.”
To me this is content duplication and so it is to search engines, so here we go.
- Search engines job is to satisfy the searcher, they want to grow and be seen as credible.
- Search engines have no favorites.
- They trust you unless you betray them, they work with a basic premise that what you are feeding them is your own and unique.
- So when you feed search engines anything they “Scan”, if you are “New” they may read whole of it.
- If you are not “New” they’ll trash you and “remember” you as “not a good site to know”.
So what are your choices, simple choice is to always provide “New content”, but this choice is expensive and restrictive to many, so what do these many do:
- Put same content on many pages on the same site as it is.
- Put same content on many pages of the same site with minor modifications, disguising it as new content.
- Put same content on many different sites under the same ownership.
- Put same content on many different sites with minor modifications but the sites are under the same ownership.
- Put same content on many different sites under many different ownerships, in many different servers, in many different data centers with or without minor modifications.
They all presume that they would be able to manipulate their way around, some do succeed, but issue is how hard are you working to do something which is wrong anyway. Search engines are becoming smarter by every passing day, they are scanning better, they are storing better and they are recalling better. The best case scenario is don’t duplicate your content and don’t manipulate content of others and put the same on your site, remember sooner or later you would be caught and become “Not a Good Site to Know”, and search engines would drop you out, as we all do.
This leaves us with the issue of what if someone does this to me. Yes, this is the issue!
So if you are original source of the content, your worry is – How does search engine know that I am the original? Search engines are working very hard to reach the original, in case they don;t make them aware.
Do what you will do with your assets: Protect them, be vigilant and act if someone breaches your copyrights. A related issue is when you syndicate your original content, I will cover this subsequently.
Some common inadvertent content duplication mistakes and issues:
- When spiders read your content four times: http://example.com, http://www.example.com, http://www.example.com/index.html or http://example.com/index.html. Most of the spiders know how to circumvent it, but it will help to put 301 re-directions in place and route everything to http://www.example.com
- When you change platform
- When you change URL structures, remove the old one and deploy 301 redirects
- When you create test folders, remove your test folders
- When you shift to a sub domain, clear the content permanently from your servers
- Disclaimers and privacy policies running across sites and copyright statements running across site. put non-crawlable JS functions or connect them centrally.
- Check your landing pages, if you have multiple landing pages make them unique
- Check your meta titles, and meta descriptions, they need to be unique
- Be careful on mirrored sites
- Content in multiple languages with common attributes or language strings is a no no
- Use exclude protocol in robots.txt where-ever you need to share the same content, within the same site or at different domains
- Check out and remove any hidden link.
- Use password protection where you need to carry duplicate content
- Permanent deletion of duplicate content is better than redirection
The above can form some of the best practices SEO’s can follow.
more to come…
SES 2008 Site Clinic August 22, 2008
Posted by simarprit in Blogging, Internet, Search Engines, SEO, SES 2008, websites.Tags: SEO, SEO Best Practices, SES, SES 2008, websites
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So what is a website clinic? As per Search Engine Strategies 2008, San Jose organizers, a website clinic is a one to tow hour session where a panel of “Website Gurus” evaluate your site publicly.
They allow you to explain what your site does briefly. Each site review takes about 15 minutes, I attended three sessions on this subject today:
My random thoughts:
- Try to stick to one coder or a style of coding
- Ensure your site supports the resolution your customer group generally work on
- Maybe it is a good idea to give relative links from your homepage to internal server
- Seeing what you are looking for in the URL makes sense
- Dynamic Menus can create a problem, they may confuse the spider, robots and whatever
- JS is best avoided in all sorts of navigation.
- JS also adds to overheads
- It may be good idea to tackle multiple coder issue by rewriting the code for your top pages (top pages and not all pages) in one style from time to time.
- Hyphens are better than underscores in the path and on the page.
- Wisely use SEO products and be open to adopting them.
- All upper case usage is not good
- Ensure your sitemap is there and update it regularly
- Define your 20 second elevator pitch and put it prominently
- 404 hurts, avoid Not Found Errors
- Avoid denial of service errors, they hurt
- Bring up Page 2 and Page 3 words
- Try MSN funnel tool
- Use KML
- Provide data dircetly to search engines
- Try layering image over text, but don’t go overboard
More to come..
SES 2008 SEO August 21, 2008
Posted by simarprit in Blogging, Internet, Search Engines, SEO, SES 2008, websites.Tags: Blogging, SEO, SEO Best Practices, SES, SES 2008
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SEO Through Blogs and Feeds
Continuing on my blogging the SES 2008 at San Jose I must admit I am not the fastest blogger and neither do I do “Live Blogging”, my blogs are aimed to be educative executive summaries for myself and for all those who care. They are focused session on what all I have attended and express my opinion alongside those who are the knowledge givers.
Rebecca Lieb did a good job of moderating the session, her knowledge about the subject and her apt comments made the session lively, Chris Boggs, Lee Odden, Amanda Watlington and Daron Babin formed the speakers panel.
It is important to self qualify your blog and understand your objectives of blogging. The qualifications you must answer be:
- Is your blog official or personal?
- Is your blog residing on a sub-domain or is it a separate domain in itself?
- Does your blog carry your corporate signatures or it has a personal touch about it?
- Are you the lone blogger or there are are multiple bloggers who would work working on the blog?
Choosing your platform is very important. WordPress looked like the preferred platform for most around.
Some quick takeaways (includes my own interpretations and learning)
- When writing a blog remember Steven Covey, begin with the end in mind.
- You should know precisely what you want to write on and what you want to gain by that writing.
- You should make a note of the keywords you want that post/blog to cover and ensure that they find a place in your title.
- The panel also recommended that you should do some research on the tags you would like your post to be covered under.
- Socializing and creating community around the log helps
- Customize and optimize your blog and feeds
- Use blog widgets or bligets wisely, don’t be obsessed
- Acknowledge and link to others liberally, develop credibility for your blog
- Links are currency, work towards them
- Try to become a top referrer on the topic of your choice
- Twitter, Flickr, Stumbleupon you need all of them at some stage or another
- Goals should drive your content on the blog
- Refine your blog
- Use Auto Discovery Tag of blog feeds
- Use trust rank inside your blog to increase credibility
More to come
SES 2008 Domain Auction August 21, 2008
Posted by simarprit in Domain Names, Internet, SES 2008, websites.Tags: Domain Auction, Domain Names, Domainer, SES, SES 2008
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Yesterday the domainer Simarprit Singh saw himself in action once again. The auction had less than 100 in attendance, most of them freeloaders who had come for free drinks and food. I thin there were about 5 – 10 committed buyers who were there to pick-up whatever they liked at reasonable prices.
I picked up 6 domains in the auction two on SEO, recognizing my firm acceptance and current stance of the SEO industry, one on vehicles, two generic .org domains, one on baseball and one on Jobs.
The experience was good, most of the domains below $1000.00 got sold, there were hardly any takers for big domains. The auctioner with due respect was not very good as he had no clue about the subject. There was no passion and no involvement in it, the auctioneer in Domain Round Table in SFO was far better. Good for me, had he been good I would have landed spending far more than I did.
Why am I investing in domains, simple, I see a huge upside in it. I am picking up these domain names to complete my portfolio and be in a position to release my list so that anyone serious finds something worthwhile.
Do I have four letter domains? Yes! Do I have generic domains? Yes! Do I have two words logical domains? Yes! My story is getting complete.
Do I recommend domain name investments? Yes! I think it is good to have a domain portfolio as an investment option. Like all other portfolios you should build it up part by part.
SEO Best Practices August 20, 2008
Posted by simarprit in Blogging, Internet, Search Engines, SEO, websites.Tags: Search Engines, SEO, SEO Best Practices, SES, SES 2008
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The most important takeaway for me from the SES 2008, San Jose is that I have come to accept SEO as an integral part of doing business on the net. I must put a quick rejoinder, Ethical SEO is good and it must center around the concept that Search Engines need you more than you eed the search engines. Search engines main stay is good content and high degree of relevant top quality results.
This post is going to be an ever evolving post on SEO Best Practices, this would be an extension of my own own learning and growth as an SEO practitioner.
Search Engine Optimization is good and is here to stay, it all depends on you as an SEO practitioner on how strongly you define your best practices and how religiously you follow them and live the guidelines.
So what is the rule of thumb, and the most critical best practice:
Make your site in a form that it enhances the search engines usage experience. In other words, Search Engines should need you at the least as much as you need them, preferably they should need you more than you need them.
Much more to come, it has just begun…
SES 2008 – Landing Pages August 20, 2008
Posted by simarprit in Blogging, Internet, Search Engines, websites.Tags: Landing Pages, Online Advertising, PPC, SES, SES 2008
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Landing Pages and Science of Online Business
This write-up is inspired by the two sessions I attended on Landing Pages at SES 2008, San Jose. I must add a disclaimer that this write-up includes certain parts of my own “random gyan” beyond the framework of the sessions attended by me:
Sage Lewis is good at introducing and setting pace for the speaker, Tim Ash did a good job of not ony talking candidly but also did a good job of letting people know that he is an accomplished expert by encouraging them to buy his book “Landing Page Optimization – The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversion”.
The second session – Landing Page Utopia: Expert Roundtable – was a half ‘n half session. Half knowledge and half sales pitch. Moderator was Ron Belnager from Yahoo ad speakers were Scott Brinker from Ion Interactive, Frans Keylard from Widemile, Alissa Ruehl from Apogge Search and Jonathan Mendez from RAMP digital.
- Landing Page – The page where your visitor arrives/ lands. It can be any page and in today’s world of deep diving every page is a landing page. However in this context, landing page(s) is a term referred to those pages which have to run the kitchen and pay for the mortgage, and pay for the gas, and pay for the fee of attending conferences and seminars like this one 8)
- Landing Page Testing – The act of experimenting (real life/ live) on a large data set to reach to the most suitable, appropriate and optimized landing page, tweaking and tuning on the way
- Define your Landing Pages
- Define the goals and expectations from he landing pages
- Set measurable targets
- Let the visitor determine and have the final say on how your landing page should look like
- Keep it above the fold/ envelope to the extent possible
- Your visitor is a smart customer/ don’t waste his time
- Define the size of your test
- Business expectations and your PPC or other spending should point to the test size and techniques you would like to implement/ deploy
- Focus on test Data Collection and detail methodologies to be adopted for the same
- Plan quick and precise Data Analysis
- Use optimization tools effectively including Google Optimizer
- Always challenge between the wireframes, which is better
- Being minimalist is good
- Don’t confuse when closing
- Basics of conventional sale apply to your landing page
- Give the same respect to your unknown visitor as you give to the potential standing across you
- You’ve got him, now convert -eliminate choices, unclutter what remains and focus on on your goal
- Be at your best and cut the chase at this stage
- Always tell yourself and anyone who matters “Less is Better” when it comes to landing pages
- No shortchanging, give him what you promised him on the “click to me” page
- Deploy as many confidence building measures (CBMs) in a discreete manner but above the envelope as you can to break the ice. Use risk reducers or CBMS across your pages, don’t create doubt
- Customer recommendations on landing pages help, customer references, logos and recommendations on Landing Pages push the envelope little more
- Smart transaction interaction could help, avoid re-entry at all stages, avoid useless or unnecessary entry, every data entry beyond stage one pains and pains a lot
- No surprises should be your motto with the customers
- Measure, maintain and monitor your conversion rate (CR)
- Be normal with your error messages, error messages as and when they come should be non intrusive
- Having a consistent landing page for a customer helps, use cookies if required.
- Plan effective follow-up. Put your phone number at all convenient positions
- Make measurement easy, plan micro-sites for your landing pages (where ever possible)
- Net is going local, local is critical to your game plan
- Search engines can do their job only if you have the data
- Make lead generation forms simple, simple, simple.
- Seek opinion on your cruical landing pages from all quarters
- Design your landing page to meet the goal of the individual even if it doesn;t meet the prefernces of the individual
- Testing is continual, just keep testing
Google Cuil Comparison Report July 31, 2008
Posted by simarprit in Internet, portals, Search Engines, websites.Tags: comparison, Cuil, cuil search engine, Google, Google Cuil
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Search Engines have always excited me, and I am loving doing Google Vs Cuil Comparison or Cuil Vs Google Comparison, choose the form you prefer. I am neutral.
For data reference please look at my other post title Cuil Review, available at https://simarprit.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/cuil-review/
- In Cuil Google comparison across 70 plus datapoints Google wins hands down
- Cuil is a serious attempt
- Cuil’s launch could have been delayed, or only a beta done at this stage
- Cuil needs to be thoroughly debugged
- Cuil needs to carry and define boundaries for geographies and verticals
- Cuil doesn’t recognize itself – Search for Cuil Reviews on Cuil and enjoy
- Cuil doesn’t speak or understand spoken English try “World Map from Mapsofworld.com” Google does it very well.
- Most of the filters require serious re-look
- Error Messages need to be polished
- Image integration is an issue
- Local data integration is non existent a search with a particular hotel address stated No results found – try “1510 North First Street San Jose” on both the search engines
- I would consider it much inferior to even Ask/ Yahoo/ Live and the gang, forget comparing it with Google
- Updating content process is not defined – As a result on search terms “Google Cuil Comparison” & “Cuil Review” – Cuil doesn’t pick up any of the results while Google picks both these posts. (July 31,2008 ). Even four days later August 4, 2008, Cuil just can’t locate this post.
- Some specifics, I checked for Great Mall at Milpitas, and I gave over 10 combinations for it – I didn’t;t get the official site even once. No chance. I check for “The Great Mall”; “Great Mall at Milpitas”; “Great Mall of the bay area” and so on.
- Be prepared to see “West Indian recipes” when you look out for Indian Recipes. Categorization looks to be a major issue.
- Google’s maturity shows when you search for “Time in New York” on both the search engines. Cuil gets a BIG ZERO, while Google tells the EDT as aspecial result.
- Cuil doesn’t understand “Geography Filter”. Search for “Map of San Jose” as an absolute search. Google knows that you are sitting in Bay Area and shows you San Jose, CA results fisrt, it also shows one result of San Jose, Costa Rica. Cuil gets it all wrong.
- Cuil doesn’t have “read my mind features” at all. I don;t know how correct it is to compare both on this account, I had the same experience when I checked the search engine for the word Time in New York I just now checked now for California Area. Google read my mind correctly and Cuil sent me over to Alcoholics Anonymous. For those who are alcoholics and need help the result was relevant.
- Google understands Wikipedia and does excellent meshing up of wiki information with search results. Look for “California Area”, it goes to Wikipedia, picks up the Area of State of California from the table on the right hand side and displays it up, bingo! Now search for California Capital, the special result is Sacramento. Cuil is yet to co-exisit with Wikipedia the way Google does. Google’s “spoken english language interface capabilities” are awesome. I just tried this “What is the area of California” to check whether Google still shows me the wikipedia culled out result or not, yes it does. It just truly filters out what is the and of. When I searched for “Where is California” Google showed its map of North America and also brought the wikipedia result telling me exactly “Where is California”. I may not go further making Google a destination site itself.
- Google realizes that there are other wonders on the Internet and is always looking at an opportunity to gain from them and provide a better user experience. Shall we call it maturity? Cuil is miles away ad Google on this count is many smiles 8) ahead.
- “Coffee Company Pleasanton” searched on both the sites brought in 100% different results. Google’s precise and accurate (and also justifiably with my post on the very top). Cuil struggled to find out where Coffee, Company ad Pleasnton were. This search phrase was given by me to look at categorization depth. My questions were – Do they know where it is? Do they have a meshing up table to bring the most apt rsult on the top? Is their weightage system working? is there database really the largest? I am afraid it doesn’t look like. It is about two month old post, a niche post. Zero on ten again. I am sorry Cuil, but I am just trying to make you better. Free of cost.
- Official Sites Filter – Cuil kept on getting searches wrong all the time. Worst happened when I gave both “Paris Vegas” non absolute. Google promptly understood that I was looking for Paris Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada and promptly brought me the Map and the official site. Cuil couldn’t find the official site and showed me assorted results.
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No results were found for: Biography of John Travolta
If you’ve checked your spelling, you could try using fewer or different keywords to broaden your search.
Still no luck? Send us your feedback: noresults@cuil.com – Good Morning Cuil aren’t you making a Fuil by actualy running this search engine. Why I am loosing my cool, a tester just tests.
The 70 plus parameters on which I did my reserach are mentioned in https://simarprit.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/cuil-review/
This post is being edited by me on daily basis and made more comprehensive.
Last update: August 6, 2008
Goodbye Christmas Carnivals Website! May 31, 2008
Posted by simarprit in Christmas, Internet, portals, Review, websites.Tags: About Christmas Websites, Christmas, Christmas Carnivals, Christmas Website, Compare Infobase, Side Show Ventures, Simarprit, Website Sale
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Way back in 1999, I was not taken seriously on my attempts to develop a Christmas site. What does a “Sardar” (Sikh) know about Christmas, and what are his credentials. Of course I knew just a little better than nothing about Christmas and had never been to a Church except as a tourist, so I had no credentials, per se. I knew something about sites, and that got me going. Nine years of profitable ownership later, http://www.christmascarnivals.com is sold. Sold to Side Show Ventures, I am sure Jimmy Sutton would be a far better owner-manager to my absentee landlord approach.
Jim, congratulations on your acquiring Christmas Carnivals, it is a good site which offers lot of information on Christmas. It has been very close to my heart , and I would add a lot about the site to this post in next few days.
Let us have a farewell Q & A.
Q: What was the need to design and develop a website for Christmas?
A: I don’t need to develop websites, and surely not for a living. To me developing a website is picking up a canvas and letting it known as a painting. On a more serious note, way back in 1999 there were many sites on Christmas, but there was a need for the site on Christmas. Christmas Carnivals was developed to cover that niche. Christmas Carnivals was also developed as a spoke, to the hub and spoke model of http://www.dgreetings.com. DGreetings, at that time had no significant section on Christmas and Christmas Carnivals acted as a spoke. It was you scratch my back, I scratch yours. Having said that, Christmas Carnivals is very close to my heart, and would remain so. Every year, the site had a new look and a new treatment, we kept on changing the site
More to come…
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