The Golden Hat

Site owners should think about URLs as if they were name tags. Imagine going to a big convention, SMX for example, and walking around a room full of search marketing industry experts that you want to meet. You notice from a distance that they are all wearing name tags so you figure that’s a sure way to casually introduce yourself and begin jaw flapping.

As you get closer though you notice that on the name tags aren’t written clear, descriptive names. No first and last name. No recognizable language like “Tim” and “Bill”. Instead you find name tags with “&=ses1246396″ and “%rev%false_34973″. Suddenly you realize you can’t decipher who they are and what they do by their name tag. You may recognize the person if you’ve seen s/he before but if you haven’t, well… no dice. The only way you’ll be able to find out who they are is to dig a bit, ask some questions, and eventually piece together a story that helps you identify that person.

Same rule applies for a website. The URL is your site name tag. If it doesn’t clearly state with static, keyword-centric phrases what the content of the page is about then it isn’t serving it’s optimal purpose. No where is this more evident then in the top organic search results. It’s your opportunity to introduce yourself and what you’re about at the front door. With static, keyword-centric URLs iterating primary and secondary keyword phrases in your targeted landing page then the combination of a descriptive URL and matching meta data will greatly increase the click-thru of your organic listing.

Below are some rules to live by with URL naming:

1. Iterate a targeted, primary keyword phrase in each URL
2. Keep URLs as short and descriptive as possible
3. Use hyphens or underscores between keywords
4. Minimize the use of dynamic variables and session IDs
5. If you have hundreds or thousands of pages then organize them into keyword targeted sub-domains
6. If manual re-write isn’t possible then use mod_rewrite to serve static looking URLs to users and spiders
7. If re-directing from an old URL to a new URL then do so with 301 permanent redirects to pass link value and ensure the new URL is indexed

More to come on URLs, especially for e-commerce sites!

Like this article? Share, save, and spread it!

If you’re not the patient type or if you have bosses demanding greater search visibility, then quickly and accurately indexing the various pages of your site is something you might be interested in. Traditionally it can take the major search bots several weeks or even months to make a pit stop at your site to crawl and index the content. For sites with lots of fresh content or dynamic products, such as e-retailers, getting your site indexed frequently is also important. Yahoo! Search Submit Pro is one way of feeding new pages and/or fresh content to search engines, but you also have to pay for it.

A free and effective way of notifying major search engines about new pages, or just giving them a road map to all of the URLs in your site for crawlability purposes, is by using tools such as Google Sitemaps. Not only can you let Google know that you have (x) amount of pages and give Google Bot a map for crawling and indexing, but you can give Google additional information about your site such as how frequently content is updated and which pages in your site are most important. All of this information helps Google Bot determine how often it should crawl your site, and which pages carry the most “juice” in terms of value to your site.

The process is pretty easy. (1) Create a list of URLs in your site (2) Generate an XML version of the list . If you don’t know how to create the XML document yourself then use Google’s software to do it for you (3) Upload the Sitemap to your servers and submit the server file location in Google’s Webmaster Tools section for XML Sitemaps. By giving Google the location of your Sitemap file Google Bot will then reference the file and crawl the pages indicated.

Make sure that in your Robots.txt file you also reference the Sitemap file location as a double-check so that future crawls by Google Bot will direct the spider to your Sitemap. The reference is very simple and can look like this in your Robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /scripts/
Disallow: /help/
Disallow: /OrderStatus/

Sitemap: http://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml

Lastly, if you’re a WordPress blogger you can find a great Sitemap generator in the Plugins section. This plugin automatically generates an XML Sitemap file of your blog pages that a user can then submit to Google Webmaster Tools.

Cheers!

Like this article? Share, save, and spread it!

I like to personify search engine spiders as a casual Sunday grocery shopper. When you go shopping for groceries you expect a few simple things when you enter the store. Firstly, you want to be greeted by the friendly elderly person at the door welcoming you in….. wait, that’s Wal-Mart…. I digress. FIRSTLY, you want to see neatly organized product aisles. Fruits and vegetables in aisle 1, canned veggies and condiments in aisles 2, and so on and so forth. Secondly, when you walk down the aisle you expect to find the product that was listed on the aisles product sign. Thirdly, you want to move quickly through the line and exit the store with everything you expected to purchase.

Much is the same with the site sub-domains, taxonomy, and URL naming conventions. If a user were to cover the screen up with their hand and read the URL they should be able to identify what products/information will be found on the page before they even look at it. Too often you encounter a site with dynamically generated URLs with several dozen, or even hundreds of random characters (e.g /%#$35561135633?464….. blah blah blah). As a user I certainly don’t want to see that. As a search engine bot I DEFINITELY don’t want to see that. Much like the casual Sunday shopper who wishes to easily find the desired product in a well-labeled aisle and move on with their day, a search engine spider wants to find well labeled site architecture (in this case we’re focusing on URLs) to easily identify what product/information will be found on the page, then crawl the page, and associate a clean, descriptive, static URL with the content found on the page (and hopefully it’s all relevant!)

For example I did a Google search for “home furniture” and clicked on a link for Ashley Furniture. I then clicked on the “chairs and ottomans” section. This is the URL I got…..

http://www.ashleyfurniture.com/Showroom/Showroom.aspx?PageId=
Showroom&CategoryID=8&SetDomTab=1&PageNumber=1&IsClicked=1

Ok….. imagine you didn’t know that you were visiting a site for home furniture, or that you wanted to check out their chairs and ottomans. Would you be able to predict what was on the page just by reading the URL? Probably not.

Next I visited www.OfficeFurniture.com and again clicked on “chairs”. This is the URL for the chairs section.

http://www.officefurniture.com/Browse/Office-Chairs.aspx

Could you describe what products exist on this page without seeing the page itself…. most definitely!

I also want to point out that if you click on the dynamic URL for Ashley Furniture, it lands you on the root directory page for their “show room” and does not place you on the “chairs and ottomans” page that I had initially clicked on, and from where I captured that dynamic URL. When clicking on the OfficeFurniture URL however it lands you on the exact page for “office chairs”. From an external linking perspective then, if you wished to link to that dynamic backlink and land users on the page specific to “chairs and ottomans” that unfortunately probably wouldn’t happen and they would end up on the showroom sub-directory. To wrap it up then, make the URLs static, clean, and descriptive. Avoid dynamically generated character strings whenever possible. Draft them so that they are indicative of the products/information on the page. Pat yourself on the back for making the URLs both user and spider friendly and you’re on your way to long-lasting, quality SEO results!

Like this article? Share, save, and spread it!