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SEO
(Search Engine Optimisation)
Statistics show us that
more than 80% of
traffic from search engines comes from
organic results. Basically, unless you are on the first page of
Google™,
regardless if you have a
PPC strategy, your website may not be performing to
it's full potential. For experienced, proven
SEO Australia
results, contact us
today about
website
audits, SEO, and how we can improve
your organic search engine
optimisation with proven
results.
Copywriting
A
good copywriter knows which words
trigger the feelings that compel people to make decisions. They write with
flair, making it easy for people to be drawn into what they are saying about
your business, services or products. Read an an example of good copywriting for a
fictitious Sydney
Mercedes Dealer, or
just "ok"
website copy for a
Used Mercedes dealer.
Trademarks
The most effective way to safeguard you against people "trading off" your business name, product or service, is to register a trademark. For more information, including about the
justweb® trade mark, please read our
trademark registration article.
W3C Validated:
XHTML |
CSS
It is, or should be, common knowledge that
duplicate content does not do your
website any favours, particularly where the major search engines such as Google,
Yahoo and MSN (Live) are concerned.
What you may not know is that you can have one page, but multiple links going to
that page which will also be doing your site "harm".
This situation may arise for example in a shopping cart, where one
page may be linked to using two or more different URLs.
Perhaps you are selling a search engine optimisation book by the name "Mr Magoo's SEO How To Guide". The main URL to this page might be
www.justweb.com.au/books/product.php?cat=seo&prod=seoguide,
however, elsewhere in your site this page may be arrived at by the URLs
www.justweb.com.au/books/product.php?prod=seoguide and
www.justweb.com.au/books/product.php?prod=#123456
etc etc.
Essentially, this will be viewed as multiple pages with the same content. The
actual link, or the one you want to be the "official" link, may not be the link
that Google (or other search engines) decide to use. This process Google terms "canonicalization"
- the act of picking the best (or most appropriate) link to display in it's
index. Unfortunately, this may not be the link YOU want them to use.
Lets say different websites pick up different links to the same page. Google
will give weight to the canonical link, and not the alternate links.
Up until now, this has been a problem, but easily remedied by using .htaccess
rewrites, PHP rewrites, etc etc to attribute a 301 redirect.
Now, in what must be a first in cooperation, early in 2009 Google, Yahoo and MSN have agreed
to a new standard. By simply adding a "link rel" tag to the header of your page,
you can "suggest" the canonical link to the search engines. The tag to fix the
example link above would look like:
<link rel="canonical" href="www.justweb.com.au/books/product.php?cat=seo&prod=seoguide"
/>
Google say that this is not actually a "directive", but instead a hint - one
which
Joachim Kupke, an engineer from Google's Indexing Team says they will
honour strongly. This way, you can choose what you think is the most
representative link for your page. EG, the link in the "link rel" example uses
the keywords "seo", "books", and "seo guide" - all strong keywords.
Another
example where the new canonical "link rel" tag may be very useful is in a
situation where a business directory may link back to your pages using their own
links, rather than yours. One directory that uses such referrer links is
Clickfind™ - if
you look at the inbound links to justweb, you will see they add a referrer link
to their outbound URLs, however when you follow that link, notice the referrer
has been removed by a redirect.
In my opinion, a 301 permanent redirect (which IS a directive) is the
best, but the "link rel" may be easier to implement in some cases.
The difference between (eg)
http://justweb.com.au
and
www.justweb.com.au is yet another example of a canonical link. You will notice with some websites if you use the http
without the www, you end up going to the website at http://something, or even
worse, nothing at all.
An example of this is the VoIP provider SIPME - go to
http://sipme.com.au, and
you are met with an "address not found" page, whereas
www.sipme.com.au, or
http://www.sipme.com.au works fine.
However, when you go to
http://justweb.com.au and
www.justweb.com.au,
look at the address and you will see you are instantly at
http://www.justweb.com.au. The same
applies to deep links - go to
http://www.justweb.com.au/searchengineoptimisation/duplicate-content.html
(
with www), and
http://justweb.com.au/searchengineoptimisation/duplicate-content.html (
no
www) and you will see the URL is the same.
In summary, ensure your website URLs are always one or the other and
do not have
multiple variations, or in other words, ensure you have a procedure in place to
force (or suggest) the
canonical link.
15.03.2009
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