Nov 19 2009

Back to Basics: Fixing Canonicalization Issue

*The following tip was  shared by Eric Gesinski from Tulsa SEO* Editor's note: While this issue is well discussed in SEO circles, the post serves as a good reminder - don't miss it! One element to SEO that web designers sometimes miss is a big one: canonicalization. While you may know about it, you have to realize the impact it has on SEO is a major one. This is an issue that is definitely worth fixing; you may see your site jump a few positions if you correct this issue on a site that needs it. What exactly is canonicalization? In SEO, it's a reference to the different ways you can access a site. I'll use "dailyseotip.com" as an example (even though...

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Want Google to Figure Your Error Pages Faster? Try 410 Status Code

Dealing with error pages that might keep Googlebot wondering what to do (and wasting Googlebot's time is never a good idea for your site Google crawl rate) is a too often-discussed issue. That's why we return to it again and again and again trying to share some tips and clarifications. The problem is, we can't do without them because error pages always pop up during the...

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Check and Fix Broken Links with This Wordpress Plugin

A broken link hurts both your site usability and SEO. Users feel disappointed when clicking a link to land nowhere and search engines certainly don't want them to: so if they find a lot of broken link on your pages, this may hurt your reputation. Anyway, it is quite clear that broken links are bad. But there's hardly any website out there that has no broken links at all - because it is hard to keep...

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SEO for e-Commerce Sites: Dealing with Out-of-Stock Product Pages

The following tips are from Ran of Wood and Beyond Here are my 2 tips as to how we deal with product discontinuation to preserve some SEO value and to shift authority gained from indexed products. Hopefully you'd like my tips and I suspect other e-commerce sites might benefit from them as well. Problem: Having products discontinue or out of stock is a real challenge for us,...

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Removing 404 Pages From Your Google Webmaster Tools Account

This question is being asked so often that I just decided to go ahead and write a post about that: You notice Google report a 404 page on your site; You go to your site and fix the error (delete the link to the non-existent page or just fix the broken URL); Your Google Webmaster Tools account is still reporting the error Is there any way to tell Google the error is fixed? Currently, the only question to this question...

27 Comments

URL Extension Pro and Cons: What’s Your Strategy?

Thinking of the URL structure of your future site is a very important step. Give it more time to make sure you plan everything ahead. One thing to take into consideration here is whether your site URLs need an extension at the end or not (examples: .html, .php, etc). Two contradicting points of view are based on the following:

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Don’t Ignore Directories

. One of the main goals of SEO is to build traffic. Why are so many SEO professionals ignoring directories? Search engines have not abolished directories! Google has simply gotten stricter when it comes to acknowledging specific directories. Despite that, they are still beneficial for PR and traffic gain. There are many different types of directories that can be of great value to your website or blog. Check out the article at Search Engine...

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On-Page Navigation (Named Anchors) Added to Google Mini-Sitelink?

For a long time SEOs have been wondering about the SEO value of named anchors (/page#headline1) linking to some parts of the page. It is often used for FAQ pages where each link qauickly takes you to the chosen answer. A really great find by WebmasterWorld member: Google adds Wikipedia on-page navigation to mini-sitelinks within Google SERPs. Here's one of the examples: Here's how Google SERPs look like for [Star Wars]: Notice those mini-sitelinks under...

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Using Symbols to Make Page Title Stand Out in SERPs

Getting your page to top 10 results in Google is one thing but getting people to click through is yet another story. It is easier if you are #1 of course - but if you are somewhere in the middle, catching surfers' eye is quite hard. One way is to make your title short and concise, as well as do your best to make it contain the search terms (which will be...

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Mind the Keyword-in-Anchor-Text Factor in Breadcrumbs

We have already discussed why adding breadcrumbs is beneficial for both user experience and SEO: they help users to  understand where they are in relation to the rest of the site and provide better interlinking and thus easier crawling. However what also should be mentioned is that usng your keywords in each and every level of the breadcrumb path may look like you are stuffing your internal anchor tet with keywords.

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