3 Common URL Problems

Three of the most common URL problems that I have seen on different websites. If your site has one or more of these problems, take a look at these solutions and get them fixed as soon as possible.

Problem #1: Non-www and www Versions of Site URLs

If your site has a non-www and www version of all your URLs, you’re going to be splitting link value for the same content between two URLs. Rather than capturing 100% of the link value on the page you want to rank in the search results, you could be doing a 50/50, 60/40, or some other kind of split between the two URLs.

The Fix

There are a couple of things you need to do to fix this:

• Decide which URL style you want to use, www or non-www.
• Set up a 301 redirect so that any links to your non-preferred URL style will go to the right style. This way you don’t waste link value by splitting it between two URLs.
• Set your preferred domain in Google Webmaster Tools so your search result listings are consistent with your style preference.
• Make sure whenever you build links to your site that you use the preferred URL style.

Problem #2: Duplicate Home Page URLs

This is a close cousin to Problem #1, but is especially bad because it’s your home page.

It is possible to have a lot of different URLs that all go to your home page content, especially if you haven’t fixed your www and non-www duplication, which can result in a lot of unnecessary duplication. For example:

    http://www.mysite.com
    http://mysite.com
    http://www.mysite.com/index.html
    http://mysite.com/index.html

These URLs will all lead to the same content. If you have links going to all four of them you will see a four-way split in link value. There are a lot of sites out there that have fixed their non-www and www problems, but I can still find multiple versions of their home page.

I’ve even come across sites with different extensions (.php, .html, .htm, etc.) that bring up the same page as well. This leads to even more duplication and potentially wasted link value.

The Fix

The fix here is very similar to the first one. Here are a few tips:

• Set your main home page URL to be http://www.mysite.com. 301 redirect everything else to this URL since it is the most basic (If your preferred URL style is non-www, then do http://mysite.com)
• If you have to set up different versions for tracking purposes or some other reason, set a canonical tag to show the search engines which version you want showing up in the search results.
• Make sure when you build links to your home page that you link to the correct version.

Problem #3: Dynamic URLs

This is a fun one that a lot of not-so-SEO-friendly shopping cart programs run into. Once you start including all sorts of variables and parameters in your URLs, the opportunities for duplicate content and wasted link value are endless.

Allow me to illustrate. All of the following URLs could lead to the same content:

    http://www.mysite.com/somepage.html?param1=abc
    http://www.mysite.com/somepage.html?param1=abc&dest=goog
    http://www.mysite.com/somepage.html?param1=abc&dest=goog&camp=111
    http://www.mysite.com/somepage.html?param1=abc&dest=goog&camp=111&id=423

Now what if I start rearranging the parameters? Well, they’ll still show the same content. So, as you might imagine, this can create a lot of wasted link value.

There are other causes for the dynamic URL problem. A lot of companies use these parameter-based URLs for statistical purposes. We just want to make sure that you don’t shoot yourself in the foot from an SEO perspective.

This problem also happens with sites that give their affiliates a unique ID to use in their links. You could have 100 affiliates linking to the same page, but all of the URLs will be different because each affiliate has their own unique ID.

The Fix

• If possible, make sure that your site is using SEO-friendly base URLs. It’s better to have a base URL that will lead to the content rather than a URL that relies on a parameter. For example: http://www.mysite.com/unique-product.html is much better than http://www.mysite.com/category.php?prod=123 where some generic category page is really the base URL.
• Set a canonical tag that tells the search engines to use the base version of the URL. That way you can still use parameter URLs like http://www.mysite.com/unique-product.html?param1=123&param2=423 to get your data, but the search engines will consider the basic version as the official one.
• An even better way to handle this is to capture the data on the server side and then redirect the visitor to the correct URL after you have captured your data. The visit basically goes like this: Visitor clicks on links with parameters -> Visitor goes to site, server records parameter data and 301 redirects them to the right landing page – >Visitor barely notices the switch because it happens fast.This way you can get all the data you need, make sure all of the link value goes to the right page, and your visitor still sees what they were after.

Choosing Domain Name

So you’ve decided to get serious by promoting your business with a website?

Domain name registrations are made on a first come first served basis so before you even think about your website it’s worth registering a domain name to secure it for the future.

As well as building your brand with a good domain name, search engines tend to give weight to keywords in a domain name. This increases the importance of considering some SEO strategies when selecting a good domain to promote your business. Google values keywords within a domain name when ranking your business in search engine results.

The key in selecting a domain name is to arrive at the best medium between branding your domain and choosing for SEO alone. To help you, I’ve come up with my top 10 tips:

• When coming up with your name, start by listing as many words that relate to your preferred domain name or to the content of your website and industry.
  
• Take your chosen keyword search term for your industry and add another word, for example kpLiaisoning, FreezeTechChillers, SpiceWebs, Sync-Host, GireeshCoolingTower, TicketGoose, etc. These words have excellent SEO rankability because people must use the keyword search term when linking to your domain name. You’ve also managed to retain an element of unique branding in the process!
• It’s a good idea to choose a name that reflects your site or business. This will make it easier for people to remember and also to find you.
• You can check on the availability of any domain name by carrying out a WHO.IS search or by visiting a domain name registrar.
• Avoid the use of hyphens in your domain name (or no more than one if you really have to) as they have no branding value.
• Choose something descriptive – you want it to describe exactly what you do and relate it to the core of your business.
• Make it something memorable.
• Try and keep it short if possible, not too hard to spell and easy to pronounce on the phone!
• Use a popular domain extension and one that suits your market. For example, .com for international, .co.in for India.
• Remember to always check your spelling before completing any registration!

Basic SEO Tips & Tricks

• Manoj's first advice would be; get a exact keyword check to see where your website is right now in the SERP's.
• Make sure your main index page is content rich with text, links and images.
  Never use a 'splash page' or an 'Enter Website' page.
• Don't use keyword stuffing techniques, i.e doorway pages, invisible text etc
  And always use relevant keywords.
• If you have to use a database i.e. php or asp, always make sure that you keep it to a minimum, and only use it if you have no other option. Always keep as many pages as possible as static pages.
• Don't submit your website until it is ready. Make sure that all pages are full of text and complete, without any 'under construction' stuff.
• Don't ever use the free submission programs available on the internet. Whilst there are some that may be good, it's very hard to tell which ones they are.
  Submitting to 100's or even 1000's of search engines may well get your website, removed or black-listed at best it will simply get your email address on thousands of spammers mailing lists.
• Also remember that some directories like Yahoo only accept one submission, and if you exceed this in a limited time frame the human will block all your further submissions. Some search engines accept 5 URL submissions per day like Altavista, others only accept 2 per month, or 1 per day. The key is to know which ones allow how many, how often. Then just when you get the hang of it, they change the rules again.
• 'Monthly Submission - still necessary?' - Absolutely yes. Google and Fast are the only search engines in the 'we're the biggest and best' war. Everyone else like Lycos, Inktomi, Dmoz etc may remove you if you don't keep your listings updated or request their crawler to visit your site on a regular basis. The number of pages that have to be searched through slows down the search engine process. If your site is not getting sufficient number of click-through's to activate the crawler on its own, you need to request it.
  The only problem here is some search engines have maximum tolerances and if you over-submit, they will remove your website!
• 'Watch those inbounds!' - When you get another webmaster to place a link to you on their site you need to make sure they place keywords in the linking text.
  This increases ranking for those keywords and is called 'anchor text'. Always remember that the reverse always applies in search engine optimisation. Having no keywords or irrelevant keywords in the linking text can 'lower' ranking. So if anyone is linking to you with the words 'click here', 'this is a great site', 'visit our sponsor' and so on, get them to change it or remove it before it causes problems.

SEO Tips

There are no tricks here, just a bit of work and some time. So let's get started by reading the following list of SEO Techniques!

1. Domain & File Names:
   Choose your site domain name that contains words from your primary keyword phrase. Your domain name should also be easy to spell and easy to remember. You keyword phrase also should in many cases go in your file name. Read this thread Keywords in the URL from SEO Chat Forum.
   For example I use the file name seo-techniques.html for this page.
2. Keyword Phrases:
   
   1. Use keywords that are being searched for. You can check your keyword phrases with either the Search Term Suggestion Tool or the Overture Keyword Popularity Tool to find out how often they are being searched. You can also look at Google AdWords Keyword Suggestions for suggestions for different keyword phrases.
   2. Add keyword synonyms to your content.
   3. Put the keyword phrases in the .
   4. Insert the keyword phrases in a

      keyword phrase

      tag at the beginning of your page. Keyword synonyms should be put in your h2 & h3 tags. The h1, h2, h3 tags are used for titles and subtitles in articles.
   5. Make sure you use your keyword phrases from the page you are linking to, in your anchor text on the site map. i.e. SEO Techniques.
3. Keyword Density:
   Keyword density is a very important part of search engine optimization. Keyword density is the percent that your keyword or keyword phrase are of your web page text. You may want to look that your competition to see what keyword density they are using. To high a keyword density will be considered search engine spam and can get you blacklisted.
   Your keywords should be toward the top of your page and your keyword phrase be in either every paragraph or every second paragraph depending on your paragraph length.
4. Bad Techniques:
   Bad search engine optimization techniques can get you blacklisted from a search engine. Some techniques that are considered spam are cloaking, invisible text, tiny text, identical pages, doorway pages, refresh tags, link farms, filling comment tags with keyword phrases only, keyword phrases in the author tag, keyword density to high, mirror pages and mirror sites.
   While these techniques might work to give you a higher ranking for short time in the long run they will hurt you.
   Google has a good article on Google information for webmasters that is very imformative if you are considering Getting a SEO Company to so work on your website.
5. Title & Meta Description Tag:
   Construction of your title tag is one of the most important things you need to do. Each page should have a different title with 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning. When search engine results are displayed the title is the first thing people see.
   Below the title is a description which will be either be taken from your meta name description content="Description phrase" or from the first sentence on at page. You description should also have 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning as so should your first sentence. You should have a different title, description and first sentence on each page. You many also what to try shorter titles with only one keyword or keyword phrase as this will raise you keyword relevance. Also you can consider putting your domain name at the very end of the title.
6. Meta Keywords Tag:
   The meta keywords tag is not as relevant as it used to be and some say Google doesn't ever look at it anymore, but put it in anyway. It is as follows, and put in it all your keywords and keyword phrases. This tag should be different for each page.
7. Author & Robots Tags:
   The Author Tag should contain the name of the company that owns the site. This tag will help you get a #1 position for your company's name.
   
   Use a generic Robots Tag on all pages that you want indexed. This instructs the robots to crawl the page. The following is the generic robots tag.
   
8. Quality Content:
   Quality content will bring people back and as people always want to tell others about a good thing it will get you forward links from other sites. Your content should be written with your keyword phrases in mind
9. Quantity Content:
   The more the better. Just remember your content will need to be both quantity and quality.
10. Changing Content:
    You can do this by hand or with a script. For example you can have a php script that draws five paragraphs from a pool of twenty paragraphs when the content is different each time the php page is accessed.
    www.carsinlondon.com/used-cars-london-ontario.php shows a sample of php script that will do this.
11. Avoid Dynamic URLs:
    Are you pages via php, asp, or cf? Some search engines may have a problem indexing them. Create static pages whenever possible. Avoid symbols in your URLs like the "?" that you will often find in php, asp or cf pages.
    Static pages are the best but if you have a db driven site, make sure the menu and site map like go to inventory.cfm not inventory.cfm?vn=0 .
12. Frames:
    Many search engines can't follow frame links. Make sure you provide an alternative method for the search engines to enter and index your site. For more information read Search Engines and Frames.
13. Site Map:
    A good menu system is really a site map. A well constructed menu system that is on each page and contains a link to very page on the website is all you need.
14. Site Themes:
    All of the top 3 search engines look for site themes or a common topic when they crawl a website. If your site is about one specific topic you will rank better than if you have more than one theme or topic on your site. By using similar keyword phrases in each page the search engines will detect a theme this will be to your advantage.
15. Site Design:
    You may think, what does site design have to with search engine optimization. Well if your website has a bad color scheme that is hard to read, is not organized, is a cheesy looking site, then all your site optimization has been a waste of time. Make your site attractive to the viewer, make things easy to find, have you graphic header and menu bar the same place on each page.
    These things will keep your visitors on the site and bring them back. A well optimized site with a high search engine results position that is ugly and is hard find information on, will not keep the visitors your optimization has brought to the site.
    Use W3C Link Checker to make sure all your page links are good. If you have broken links on your site this can effect the ranking you are given.
    Put a proper doctype on each page. If you don't have a proper doctype on each page Internet Exployer will go into quirks mode and display it different.
    Use The W3C Markup Validate Service to verify that your pages are Validate HTML or XHTML code. The W3C validation will verify that your HTML or XHTML is not broken. This validation show you any broken code that could cause your webpages from displaying properly in all the different browsers and browser versions.
16. Separate Content & Presentation:
    Put all your presentation code into Cascading Styles Sheets (CSS). This separates the presentation from the content and makes your html files up to 50% smaller. It is reported that the search engine bots prefer this and the more content you have compared to presentation in your file, the better you get rated. Read why tables for markup are stupid for an overview.
17. Robots.txt File:
    While this file is not really required it should be included so that the search engine bots don't get 404 errors when they look for it. Just include the following 2 lines and drop it in the root.
    User-agent: *
    Disallow: