RagePank SEO

Google crawling of flash content "improved"

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +1200

Google have recently announced that they have improved their algorithm for crawling flash content on websites.

I'd expect this would be a welcome change for many web developers, but I'm going to hold off on the excitement for a few reasons.

Flash as a page element

I have always supported using flash as a page element, rather than as the 'meat and potatoes' of a website. The reasoning behind this is simple - flash breaks browser functionality, and that will piss off all but your most technically-illiterate users.

Flash will do all kinds of nasty things when you use it for the main content.

No copy-paste of text (this isn't always the case)
No right-click 'save target as' for images
No 'open this link in new tab / window'
No statusbar text showing where a link will lead
No title text on links unless specifically put there by the author
No standard browser scrollbar mechanisms, often no mousewheel support either

This all seems really bad, and it is, but most of these things aren't an issue when you use flash as a page element - a header banner, an advertisement, an image rotation or an interactive page element - all great stuff. Make sure your body content is in regular HTML, and also the main navigation, and then spice up the non-content areas of the page with some flash.

For accessibility reasons, it's nice to offer non-flash content to browsers without flash. And with swfobject, this process is very easy. Rather than telling the non-flash user to run off and get flash before they can view your site, you show them a static image instead of an animated banner, and the user can still enjoy the site without even realising they are missing out on something.

Which brings me to the main point

So, now that Google can index flash files better, this doesn't mean we should start developing complete sites in flash. Nothing changes - in almost all cases, flash is still best used as a page element - for usability reasons and accessibility reasons.

Google indexing flash files better will be a very welcome change for those who already own a flash website and aren't enthused by their current indexing, I'm sure.

So as I'm writing this post...

...it seems I'm not alone. Have a read of the comments on Google's official blog, and you can see some reasonably good questions and points being raised.

Google, don't encourage people to start doing splash pages again.
Google, what about W3C, usability, accessibility (basically my objection above).
Google, we have been using flash to hide our low quality content from you, what now?
Google, we don't want the word "loading" to be all over our indexed content, and we don't want to replace plain text with images as you recommend.
Another user points out what happens when doing a Google search for loading filetype:swf
Lots of complaints about Google being vague on details (nothing new here).
One commenter asks, will this cause a black hat revolution in 1 pixel flash files jam packed with text content, now Google-readable?
Good developers have already made sure their sites have text-only representations of their flash content - how do they 'opt out' of this new indexing?
Can we expect a big shift in search results as all these flash sites start appearing in the index?
Some good questions regarding content in XML - XML is meaningless when it's read out of context - the application (eg flash) needs to import the data before it becomes meaningful. Google says they don't import XML content and will index that separately (meaning it will be indexed without context)

So while this seems like a welcome addition to the feature set of Googlebot, it really does open up a large can of worms. No doubt, indexing SWF files is hugely complicated, and this is early stages - but Google's inability to determine 'content' text from 'fluff' text in the SWF is a big issue, and could definitely contaminate search results and cause headaches for developers. Combined with the dumbed-down explanation of how Google is indexing flash, developers are left with more questions than answers.

Best practice

Best practice web development for flash websites means providing alternative content to non-flash users, which in the past includes Google. Usually this is done using swfobject, or a similar mechanism.

Has this change just given developers one less reason to 'do things properly'? I can see developers getting to the end of the project and saying "Argh, now that Google can index flash files, there's no need to provide a plain text alternative".

Robots.txt

If you want things to stay the same, and don't want the search results for your website's search index polluted with flash listings of questionable quality, now might be a good time to use robots.txt to block Googlebot from your SWF files.

Source: Google crawling of flash content "improved"

The pagination issue

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +1200

Here's one of my favourite duplicate content issues that pretty much everybody gets wrong. It's the question of how you handle a paginated set of pages, without causing duplicate content problems for yourself.

Here's the basic problem

Imagine a product database site, it has 100 products in a particular category, showing 20 per page. There are pagination links at the top and bottom which lead you to page 2 and so on.

With me still?

So you are currently on page 1, which is (let's say) www.domain.com/keyboards/. Next, you click on the "page 2" link in the pagination, which takes us to www.domain.com/keyboards/page-2/. Cool.

Next, you click back to page 1 - pretend you are GoogleBot and are happy to click on any link at all. You are now back at page 1 again, but this time the URL is www.domain.com/keyboards/page-1/.

There it is!

And there's the issue - there are now 2 slightly different URLs for page 1 (see above). The fault lies with the pagination code, which uses the same formula for making the page 1 link as the rest of the links.

Duplicate content is something I have had mixed experiences with - sometimes it causes no issues whatsoever, other times it can bring a site to a halt. My advice is to always be safe, and make sure there are no instances of dupe content on your site. Which means fixing the page 1 bug.

To fix

Two things to do to banish this demon back to it's evil spawn hole...

Do a 301 redirect from www.domain.com/keyboards/page-1/ to www.domain.com/keyboards/ - this prevents Google from indexing the duplicate URL, and ensures the user gets to the right place.
And secondly, fix up the pagination links so that "page 1" points to the correct URL in the first place.

For what it's worth, I spent over a day writing my own pagination class in PHP, so it can take time to get things right. But now that's one problem I don't have to deal with anymore.

Other things to do with paginated pages

So while we are on the subject of pagination, it's worth pointing out something else that is fairly important. This comes down to the question of "what page is my entry point". If you have your 'Keyboards' page optimised for the phrase 'keyboards', actually you have all the paginated versions of the page competing with each other. Generally, you will want page 1 to be the page that appears in the search results for the visitor.

I like to give Google a helping hand and de-optimise page 2 and onwards. Start the Title with "Page 2 - " followed by the normal title. Add "Page 2" to the H1 heading. Remove any opening paragraph text you may have, to increase the uniqueness of the text on page 1. Small changes that make page 1 look that little bit more attractive in the eyes of Google (considering also that it should have more incoming links).

Paginated versions of pages can be very similar looking, so look at ways in which you can make them look more unique, or at least make page 1 look better / more unique than the rest.

In some cases we have nofollowed the page 2+ versions of a category page - less pages on the site means more strength for the pages that are included. This does mean less links to the products listed on the page, so ensure (at the very least) you have direct links to all the products from your sitemap / XML sitemap. Having links to 'related products', and 'featured products' also helps get some valuable internal links to these product pages.

Source: The pagination issue

Coding College interview: Why I do code

Sun, 25 May 2008 00:00:00 +1200

I was recently interviewed by Coding College, a New Zealand blog about code, the web & PHP, about how I got started with PHP and some of the early projects I worked on. Mostly, these were fun projects - I started out coding music jukebox software and a gaming ladder website.

It's easy to enjoy coding when you are doing it for fun and don't mind not getting paid.

Check out the interview with Harvey Kane (me).

Source: Coding College interview: Why I do code

seo.co.nz for sale

Fri, 23 May 2008 00:00:00 +1200

seo.co.nz is currently for sale. It's been quietly doing it's thing for the last few years, and the owners (Intersect) are putting it on the market, available to the highest bidder.

Of course, I considered making an offer.

Not buying it for traffic

However, I then got to thinking why I might want such a domain name. Not why it's a good domain to have, but selfishly, why I would want it, and what I could use it for.
Yes, seo.co.nz ranks well on google.co.nz for 'SEO'. But ragepank.com is ranking better for this phrase most of the time (currently 1st, but it changes daily), and even with great NZ rankings for 'SEO', the phrase is only bringing in 50 or so visitors per month.

Not buying it for prestige

So while ragepank.com brings in a pretty small portion of it's traffic on the phrase 'SEO', it's great for credibility to offer SEO services and rank well for 'SEO'. So for that reason, it's important for SEO companies to do well for these kinds of phrases, at least in their local market. I find prospective clients ask less questions because I can show evidence of good rankings in this area.

But how much can you claim in the way of bragging rights when your domain name is an exact match to the search phrase? webdesign.co.nz ranks well for 'web design'. babmoo.org.nz ranks well for 'bamboo'. seo.co.nz ranks well for 'SEO'. I'm not suggesting that these sites don't deserve to rank well, but that Google gives a huge bias to exact match domains. It's great to exploit this bias, but you can't legitimately claim bragging rights to clients.

Not buying it for rankings

Because the site doesn't rank particularly well for 'search engine optimisation' or 'search engine marketing', I'm wondering if it's relying a bit too heavily on that domain name bias? Because of this, you wouldn't want to 301 redirect seo.co.nz to your main domain as there wouldn't be much to gain from this. You would definitely be better off leaving the site intact in it's own right, and letting it hold a spot in the top 5.

It does however have a DMOZ listing, and the domain is 5 years old. Respect.

Keeping out the competition

So here's where the domain has some real value. It's holding a much-coveted spot in the top 5, which means that someone else isn't. Whoever buys the name gets a bigger slice of the pie, especially if they already have another domain in the top 10. While the traffic volume isn't likely to be great, it's better than paying Adwords for that extra bundle of traffic each month.

Value in many forms

The value of anything in an open market is whatever a buyer is prepared to pay. In this case:

The name has value to someone not already in the top 10, but could that money be better spent getting their own site ranking instead?
It has value to someone already in the top 10 for blocking out the competition.
It has value to anyone paying for traffic on Adwords.
It's a great domain for a brand new SEO company without an established brand, no doubt about it.
It has value to a domain name investor.

Value to ME

To me, the name is probably worth about NZD$1000. I suspect the owners are holding out for considerably more than that (based on the fact that it's still for sale), so I haven't made a formal offer. For my site, any more than that amount is better spent building links and improving design / content / community, which is going do more for rankings, bring in more traffic, and be better long-term. For my site.

But that's my opinion - it's worth that amount to me, and it could be worth a lot more or a lot less to someone else. I thought this post might be interesting as an insight into my thought processes, and perhaps illustrating some of the reasons why this great domain name hasn't been snapped up by someone just yet.
We just sold our house for considerably less than we wanted to, and know exactly what it's like to be on the market for ages and have to re-adjust your perception of 'value'.

I'll be interested to see what happens to the domain.

Source: seo.co.nz for sale

Alternative domains not in Google

Mon, 05 May 2008 00:00:00 +1200

A customer has just brought to my attention a problem that hadn't occured to me. It's to do with all those other domain names you own and are 301ing to the main site.

Problem:

You have www.domainname.com and it's appearing in Google searches for "www.domainname.com" like it should.

You have www.domain-name.com 301ing to www.domainname.com and it's not showing in Google searches for "www.domain-name.com" (as you would expect). Neither site is.

Domain searches

As my customer pointed out, people often find a site by typing a domain into Google. And he's right - I guess it's easier for some people to do it that way, or they don't know that the address bar is how normal people browse sites. The keyword stats on sites I manage suggest that a great many people find a site by Googing for the domain name. So if you aren't being found for your own domain name, then that's a problem. Especially if you are advertising that domain name in offline mediums.

Misspellings

The dashed version of the domain was registered mainly to catch traffic who mistakingly added the dash into the domain.

But searching for www.domain-name.com in Google brings up an empty result set - the domain is not indexed and never will be.

Solution

I have added the dashed version of the domain into the footer text of the site, so that the regular domain name will get cached with that text on it, and I expect this to solve the problem.

It will be interesting to see how many visitors come via Google searching for "www.domain-name.com".

Source: Alternative domains not in Google

PHP redirect function (301 / 302)

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +1200

I'm often asked how to do 301 redirects in PHP. It's not hard, but it's a pain having to remember the exact syntax every time. Here's a little function I wrote for Jojo CMS for making redirects easy.

Usage

Add one line of code whenever you need to do a redirect.

301 redirects...

redirect('http://www.domain.com');

redirect('http://www.domain.com', 301);

302 redirects...

redirect('http://www.domain.com', 302);

The function

You will need to include this code in your PHP script to be able to use this redirect function.

function redirect($url, $type=301)

{

if ($type == 301) header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");

header("Location: $url");

echo 'This page has moved to <a href="'.$url.'">'.$url.'</a>';

exit();

}

Jojo users

This function is available as part of Jojo CMS. Simply place "Jojo::" before the function call eg...

Jojo::redirect('http://www.domain.com');

Not so hard

There we go. A little function that makes a reasonably simple job very simple. It's saved me lots of time having to remember the exact syntax for a 301 redirect.

Feel free to send a link my way if you find this useful.

Source: PHP redirect function (301 / 302)

Sending clients to Google

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +1200

I heard an ad on the radio for Down Under Insurance. What peaked my interest about this ad was that they didn't give the web address for finding our more information - instead they asked you to Google for "down under insurance".

My first thoughts was that this was a bit silly. By sending the user to Google, you are giving them an opportunity to click on another company's listing. Of course, Down Under insurance is going to show up first on a search for "down under insurance", and they do have sitelinks which are hard to go past, but there are still competing Adwords results on the page that users will see.

Radio advertising is damn expensive - if it was me paying for the campaign, I would be minimising the risk of losing that traffic.

.com vs .co.nz

Also, if you enter the query on google.co.nz their .com site is showing up before the .co.nz - surely the New Zealand site has locally targeted content, and surely a New Zealander coming to the site from a radio ad would want to see the New Zealand content?

Strategy

Maybe they have some strategy I'm not aware of. I don't particularly like the duinsure.co.nz domain name, so personally I would be sending traffic to downunderinsurance.co.nz - it's obvious, easy to say over the radio, easy to remember, will get the NZ user to the .co.nz site, and with no chance of giving the competitors any extra traffic.

I'm struggling to think of why sending the radio listener to Google is a better idea.

Source: Sending clients to Google

Change of contact details

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +1200

This is just a quick announcement to say that some of my contact details have changed.

We have moved home / office to Hobsonville, Auckland, meaning a new address and telephone number.

Updated details are as follows:

Office phone: +649 950 4133
Home phone: +649 950 4132
Mobile: +6421 811 951
Address: 165 Clark Road, Hobsonville, Auckland 0618, New Zealand.
Email: info@ragepank.com, or whatever email you have been using (I have lots of email addresses)

VoIP

The new phone is VoIP based, in an attempt to break free from the clutches of evil parasites Telecom. However, my hardware is a bit dodgy and new hardware isn't available in the country for a few weeks, so please bear with me if call quality isn't fantastic in the meantime.

But that's another story.

Source: Change of contact details

Yellow pages thinner than ever

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +1200

Our new 2008 Yellow pages directories arrived this morning. We keep these and the phone book on top of the fridge, and they never get used. Bless the internet.

The old yellow pages was firmly wedged between the top of the fridge and the bottom of the liquor cabinet - I had to give the books a good yank to get them out.

When I inserted the new Yellow pages into where the old ones were, there was now plenty of room free. What was previously wedged in there tightly now has about an inch of clearance.

Hmmmmmm.

That inch of lost Yellow Pages probably represents several million dollars worth of lost advertising for Telecom.

It would be a fair guess to say that more and more people are pulling the plug on their Yellow Pages advertising, and putting their spend into internet marketing activities such as Adwords.

So why is it such a job to convince people of the value of organic SEO in this country? Google has done a great job of making 'adwords' mean the same thing as 'internet marketing', just like Microsoft has done a great job in getting people to refer to Internet Explorer as simply 'the internet'.

Adwords, SEO consultants, link buying, Yellow pages, and offline marketing all compete with each other. My experience is that there is usually a fixed budget available for advertising, as opposed to an unlimited budget with a specified cost per conversion (ie spend as much as you like so long as it doesn't cost more than $30 per sale).

May the best medium win!

Source: Yellow pages thinner than ever

Please login to comment

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +1300

Recently I have noticed a trend on a number of blogs. It goes something like this...

There are 0 comments on this post.
Please register or login to place a comment.

Hmmm. Asking random visitors to register an account when they only want to leave a one-off comment is a huge ask. Especially when there is a good chance registration requires email based activation, which takes even more time to deal with.

Speaking for myself, I'll usually just leave rather than posting a comment when registration is required. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I'm equally frustrated when I'm forced to register an account when I'm making a one-off purchase from somewhere. If I'm providing my name, email, address, and credit card details, as far as I'm concerned this is enough information to complete the order. I have abandoned a number of shopping carts because the registration process looked too painful.

And some good reasons

There are of course good reasons for requiring registration - maybe your blog is so popular it gets hundreds of comments on any given post, and restricting comments is a bigger issue than getting them. In this case, registration makes sense. Likewise if spam is more out-of-control than usual, then the registration also helps keep things manageable.

Combining registration forms with other forms.

Some of the best sites I have used combine the registration form with other forms.

Let's say the following details are needed for posting a comment...

Name
Email
website (optional)
CAPTCHA

And your registration process requires...

Name
Username / login
Password + confirmation
Email
website (optional)
CAPTCHA
Opt-in confirmation for newsletter

So why not modify the comment form to create a user account at the same time?

This could be as simple as adding optional fields for username / password / password confirmation. If the user has no interest in coming back, they don't need to create an account and clog up your user database. Otherwise, you are asking for a tiny bit of extra information in addition to what they are already providing. And you could pre-populate the username field with something based on their name, and use AJAX to check for duplicates, to make the process even easier.

Shopping carts

I have also seen shopping cart systems that email you a username / password after you have completed your order to make it easier to order next time. Let's face it, placing barriers in front of the ordering process is a really expensive idea - it makes sense to get the first order paid for and finished before getting too concerned about what happens with their second order.

I'm spending some time on implementing better registration features into Jojo CMS which includes easy user registration from blog comment forms and forum post reply / new topic forms. And introducing OpenID support into the mix means users can set up an account with even less typing.

Source: Please login to comment

ROCK2WGTN Review

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +1300

ROCK2WGTN - Wellington's Easter weekend rock concert - is over. I'm sitting in a camping ground watching all the bogans pack up their tents, and I thought this was as good a time as any to put my thoughts into a ROCK2WGTN review, while I contemplate packing up my own tent.

If you are looking for something related to SEO or web development, you won't find it in this post.

ROCK2WGTN - 6 great headline bands over 2 nights in Wellington New Zealand. We flew down from Auckland, and somehow thought it was a good idea to stay at a camping ground in 'the windy city'. Amazingly, it was. The weather was stunning, the wind was minimal, and the camp ground bogans were friendly. I'd stay here again.

Saturday

It all started off on Saturday night. We catch the train to the Westpac stadium, and unlike Auckland, it's totally painless. We stroll into the entranceway, finish the bottle of wine and head for the stadium. At this point cursing for forgetting to get some face paint, as everyone else is all painted up for KISS. I also notice there are more Iron Maiden shirts in the crowd than any other - pity they weren't included in the line up, they would have kicked ass.

Into the stadium, grab our seats (we are all in our 30's now, it's ok to sit down at rock concerts) and watch the crowd. After an hour or so, some guys appear in the groud who perform some well decent guitar solos.

Lordi

So Lordi come on stage. I had never heard of Lordi up until now, but I'm well impressed by their show. A rock concert is not about music, it's about entertainment - I like good music, good crowd interaction, good stage effects, and good costumes. Lordi are apparently known for their costumes, and it's easy to see why. It's hard not to be impressed by the devil wings, battleaxes or imps playing instruments. And great music to boot - great stuff Lordi, I'll be buying an album soon.

Alice Cooper

I have always been an Ozzy Osbourne fan, and listening to Alice Cooper was something I never really made the time for. Alice Cooper had an interesting little show going, which included what appeared to be hammering a stake through a baby doll in it's pram, beating a woman, and hanging himself from a noose. All good family-friendly stuff.
I just wasn't really captured by the whole show though - it wasn't bad, but it just didn't stand out for me.

KISS

KISS, the headline act for Saturday night. KISS have been around for 35 years, and have their collection of fans - a decent collection.
And easy to see why - the music was great, the attitude was present and accounted for, and the stage antics were the best of the weekend. Paul Stanley seemed to think Wellington was going to sleep on him, but it was probably more that it was just windy and cold (at least in my case). We got to see bigass explosions, the stage moving up and down on rockets, Gene Simmons covered in blood with his battleaxe bass, and Paul Stanley crossing the crowd on a flying fox.

Easy to see why this band has been around so long, a top show.

Sunday

Sunday consisted of a little early morning drinking, followed by a good afternoon nap. Then mounting a blanket over the picnic table to avoid getting sunburned. And some disgusting feijoa flavored RTD drinks - honestly, don't go there.
Then on the train again, and off to see Ozzy.

Poison

Poison kicked off in what was basically daylight, and managed to grab people's attention pretty quickly. By the sound of things, Poison had spent the last 3 days on the piss in Wellington, and put on a decent show despite this. Bret Michaels spent lots of time greasing up to the crowd, which seemed to put him in good standing after "Every rose has it's thorn", clearly the hit for everybody.

WhiteSnake

Whitesnake managed to rock the stadium on exactly one song - 'Here I go again' - arguably the best loved song by the crowd of the weekend. I just didn't know any other Whitesnake songs (and it seemed I wasn't alone), and there just didn't seem to be much for me to get into. It was loud, fast, and cool, but not enough wow factor after watching Lordi and KISS the night before. Lordi were an unknown band to me and managed to rock me anyway - Whitesnake just wasn't there, sorry.

Ozzy Osbourne

Ozzy Osbourne was the big ticket item of the weekend, and the reason I came all this way for the concert. I last saw Ozzy in Auckland, probably about 7 or 8 years ago in a much smaller and more low-key venue.
This time round there was more hype and more spectacle. Much more.

Ozzy starts cackling into the mic about 15 mins before he appears on the stage, which does great things to wind up the croud. Then followed by a 5 min video clip where Ozzy is inserted into TV shows such as Lost and The Sopranos doing things like biting heads off bats, and taking a poo on the office floor. Clearly Ozzy's creative department is in fine form still.
The show starts with a track off Black Rain, then proceeds to go through all the favourites - a good number off 'Blizzard of Ozz' and a couple off 'No more tears'. The standout track for me was 'Mr Crowley' - a personal favourite of mine anyway, but just so great to hear live with an impossibly loud organ intro shaking the stadium.

The sound quality was pretty average for the first few songs - the volume was turned up several notches from all earlier bands, but the balance seemed to be butchered a little - 'Bark at the moon' wasn't as good as it could have been, the sound was very muddled and hard to make anything out - a shame, that song rocks. The sound quality got noticeably better after a few songs, and I think Ozzy picked a really good mix of songs overall.

We got 2 Black Sabbath numbers - 'War pigs' which is just such a kickass live singalong song, and 'Paranoid' which I guess is staple diet of any Ozzy concert, which I'm pretty sure he finished the show on.

Zakk Wylde's guitar solo was fast, loud, and just a bit long. Personally, I would have rather had another favourite Sabbath number, as the weekend had already had it's share of blistering guitar solos by this point.

Ozzy promised to stay on longer only if the crowd went "fucking crazy". After one encore song, there were cries of "one more song", but clearly not enough to persuade the mighty Ozzy, and hope failed as the stadium lights went on. In our defence, it was a big venue and half empty, and my voice is certainly a bit raw from doing big earthy growls at the top of my lungs.

One of the highlights of the show was watching a pissed guy in his 50's a few rows in front of us 'going fucking crazy' at Ozzy's command. The funniest bit was watching his sway from side to side and keep landing on his wife/girlfriend, who was clearly unimpressed by the whole affair. Perhaps it would have been better for her to join in the fun, or leave him to it.

I really do hope Ozzy manages to make it back to New Zealand again.

A great time had by all

The weather held out, getting to and from the concert was painless, the food and beer at the concert was reasonably priced (compared with usual concert pricing), the tent held together, and the concert was well decent.

Ozzy's performance was several steps up from the last one in Auckland, KISS really got my attention with their energetic show, and Lordi managed to rock the stadium as the 'lesser known' band of the weekend.

It would have been nice to see a few more bums on seats, as the show was far from being full - maybe the crowd could have gone a little crazier and squeezed a couple of extra songs out of Ozzy?

Feel free to post a comment if you had any thoughts on the show, similar or otherwise.

Cheers,

Harvey.

Source: ROCK2WGTN Review

I got sitelinks

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +1300

Google has benevolently given my blog sitelinks. It's been a long time coming, and it would be fair to say I'm pleased as punch about the whole thing - I was wondering if it was ever going to happen.

Google love

If Google continues this trend and approves our Summer of Code application for Jojo CMS, it's going to be one big bundle of Google love around here.

Thanks, big guy.

Edit:

It looks like there might have been an algo shift in the last couple of days in relation to Sitelinks. After checking a little further, I noticed that at least 5 of my other sites have been given sitelinks as well.

Anyone else notice a change? Possibly Google made it easier to get Sitelinks when they added the new search box below authority sites?

Source: I got sitelinks

Nofollowing internal links

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +1300

I have just been reading an interesting article on Search Engine Land about nofollowing internal links. The author, Shari Thurow, argues that web developers should not be nofollowing links to low-priority pages (terms + conditions, privacy policy etc). Shari points out that it's odd to put a nofollow on links that search engines won't crawl, that these low-value pages are stripped from search results anyway, and that giving spiders different links to users is a bad idea. Instead of nofollowing pages, a better idea is to revamp the link architecture of the site.

Personally, I don't see the problem. While spiders might index a site not micromanaging their nofollows just fine, Google is hardly going to start penalizing webmasters for using nofollow excessively (that would be a bit rich).

I like to nofollow certain internal pages for the following reasons...

Multiple links to the same page

When you have a number of links all pointing to the same plase, I like to nofollow the links with the worst anchor text. Typically, you might have a product listing with a clickable title, image, and "more info" button. I would nofollow the image and the button, because they have poor anchor text. If Google is going to use anchor text as a ranking factor, let it use the rich anchor text from the best link we have (ie the product name / title).

Low-value or machine-generated pages

I'm talking member profile pages, product image popups, and pagination links. These pages are usually database generated and fairly similar looking. I'll often nofollow these because I don't want to pour precious link juice at them - but I'm happy to have them show up in search results if someone else wants to link to them directly (which is why I don't use a noindex tag). In this respect, I view nofollows as more a way of prioritizing than blocking - I'm effectively saying "Google, you can index this page if you want to, but don't use my link juice to do it".

Truly worthless pages

I view terms and conditions pages and the like as a truly useless entry point to a site - but they can be important for users who are already on the site.
I'll usually use a noindex tag on these pages, because I just don't want them in search results. And if I don't want them indexed, I don't see the harm in nofollowing the links pointing to them. Why send the Google spider out to look at a page when you know it's going to find a dirty big noindex tag on there? I'd rather the Googlebot used that extra click to view some of my good content instead. True, if you add the page to your robots.txt (which I also often do) then Googlebot won't even visit the page, so consider the nofollow to be a backup measure in this case.

Useless, at worst

If you accept the concept that Googlebot is only going to spend a certain amount of time on your site / or only look at a certain number of pages, then it makes sense to give the Googlebot the best instructions possible - and that means nofollowing links to pages you don't want it to find.

I compare the practice of micromanaging your nofollows similar to measuring the ingredients in a Jamie Oliver recipe. Most of the time, you can get away with estimating the quantities, and the recipe still comes out great. But being pedantic about measuring the quantities is not a bad thing, and at worst it gives you the same result, but takes a little longer.

Likewise about nofollowing the links - you can probably get away without them if you have good link authority, but I think you need every little advantage you can get. And hacking a template with some nofollows isn't a difficult job, so I'm saying it's still an important change to make to most websites.

Source: Nofollowing internal links

What do weight loss and SEO have in common?

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +1300

I'm going through the process of losing some weight. It's been one of those things which I have needed to do for 10 years or so, made especially worse by the fact I work in front of a computer and don't play any sport. I have managed to lost 12kg (26 pounds) so far, which isn't a bad start, but I have a lot further to go.

So what has this got to do with SEO?

Well, I could have visited a weight loss expert at any point in time over my life, and got some advice on how to lose weight. Any expert would have probably told me I needed to do more exercise, and maintain a balanced diet. Without being rude to weight loss experts, I think the bottleneck is always lack of motivation rather than lack of information.

When you ask for SEO advice on a website, it's just like asking someone how to lose weight. The expert will tell you you aren't targeting the right words in your titles and body copy, and that you need more links.

As a fat person, I bought a book on diet and exercise only after I had got into the habit of going for a walk every day, and had already lost some weight. I didn't need to waste money on a book when motivation was the bottleneck. The book talks about the more advanced concepts of how to balance different food types, and which muscle exercises to do etc. Great stuff, once you are in the habit of doing any exercise at all.

When you are seeking help on your site, you get the best value when you sort out the basic stuff yourself. Do a little bit of homework, and put the basic measures into place, otherwise the expert will spend their time explaining obvious problems. You wouldn't want to pay a weight loss guru to tell you to do more exercise and to eat less food, would you? Likewise, no point in paying someone to tell you that you need more links, when you could be out there getting more links.

SEO reports

I used to offer a free service where I did a SEO report on people's site - and I'd politely ask for a link as a way of saying thanks. I'd suggest obvious changes to site structure and content, but most of the time the advice got ignored, and people would leave their homepage title as "Untitled document" and their H1 as "Welcome to our site".

It's the same reason why fat people are still out there buying pies - Learning how to fix a problem is much easier than actually fixing it, but it won't get you results.

I don't do free reports anymore, because people don't value them enough to actually do anything with the information I give them. I still do paid reports, and even these have a fairly average ratio of recommendation to implementation. Knowing this, I try to prioritize the recommendations so that people can start with the most important and "low hanging fruit" changes.

Source: What do weight loss and SEO have in common?

Coding in paradise

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +1300

I got bored with the daily grind last week, so I disappeared for a few days with the kids to Hokianga in Northland New Zealand. However, I had work to do, so I thought I would drag the laptop along for the ride (my 20" HP Pavillion HDX is too heavy to carry, so you do actually have to drag it).

Could you get used to this as your office?

Vodafone 3G wireless

I finally got around to installing my wireless connection on the Vista machine. It was a piece of cake once I found the right instructions. And amazingly, the connection was pretty good from Hokianga (which is not exactly metropolitan). Dial-up speeds, sure, but nothing to stop a web developer from coding.

I definitely recommend using the 3G wireless through your phone as opposed to using a Vodem or PC card.

The nokia software was easy to find and install, Vista has everything else you need.
The phone connects to the PC via bluetooth, no cables, no dongles.
You can use the phone as a modem for your laptop, or you can browse via the phone directly using a mobile browser.
It did cut out a few times, but less regularly than my old dial-up modem did.

This makes the whole experience nicer than previous experiences with a vodem (keeps disconnecting) and a PC card modem (took way too long to get the software working).

On the downside, Vodafone weren't especially helpful at getting things setup, as their staff weren't at all familiar with the "use your phone as a modem" concept. Upgrading the data plan was a piece of cake, but moving back to a smaller plan took a fair amount of negotiation - and I had to do my "grumpy customer" voice to avoid their proposed $200 fee for downgrading an account.

Some thoughts, though not new ones

I work mostly from home. I have an internet connection. I work for clients around the world, but mostly on my own projects.

Why do I choose to work from a 3 bedroom house in the suburbs?

Source: Coding in paradise