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	<title>&#124; Jere Matlock Blog &#187; Search Engine Optimization</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.jmblog.com/category/search-engine-optimization/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.jmblog.com</link>
	<description>the web journal of Jere Matlock. Observations on Website Design, SEO and much more....</description>
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		<title>How to Count Backlinks</title>
		<link>http://www.jmblog.com/2011/10/28/how-to-count-backlinks/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jmblog.com/2011/10/28/how-to-count-backlinks/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 28 Oct 2011 22:36:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jere Matlock</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Design]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jmblog.com/?p=987</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p><p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2011/10/28/how-to-count-backlinks/">How to Count Backlinks</a></p><p>For the past couple of years I&#8217;ve been farming out link-building work for my clients, to several companies that have specialized in article marketing. Is Article Marketing for Link-Building Dead? However, the recent Panda updates seem to have resulted in &#8230; <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2011/10/28/how-to-count-backlinks/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a></p></p><p>&copy; JMBlog - all rights reserved.</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2011/10/28/how-to-count-backlinks/">How to Count Backlinks</a></p><p>For the past couple of years I&#8217;ve been farming out link-building work for my clients, to several companies that have specialized in article marketing.</p>
<h2>Is Article Marketing for Link-Building Dead?</h2>
<p>However, the recent Panda updates seem to have resulted in the de-indexing of the majority of all the article marketing links, as far as Google is concerned.  I&#8217;m about 95% certain that that&#8217;s true. </p>
<p>There seems to be little point in continuing with article marketing, if the links within those articles are not being counted.<br />
<span id="more-987"></span><br />
If it is true, I can&#8217;t really blame Google for de-indexing the article marketing links.  They were basically paid (or unpaid) link generating schemes, being done almost entirely for the purpose of increasing the number of links Google counted, for the purpose of getting more Google PageRank and higher rankings in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).  </p>
<p>In other words, article marketing was being used to &#8220;game the system&#8221; &#8211; something Google obviously doesn&#8217;t want.</p>
<p>We&#8217;ve been trying to monitor the number of links that are being counted by Google (the only links that matter for the purposes of link-building!) on behalf of our clients, and we&#8217;re getting wildly different numbers from one week to the next, and different numbers depending on which <strong>source of backlink statistics</strong> we check.</p>
<h2>How to Count Backlinks?</h2>
<ol>
<li>Google:   using the &#8220;link:site.com&#8221; command.  This tool, which has been broken at Google for 3 or 4 years now, gives a ridiculously low number of links.
<p>For the purpose of proving that last statement, search at Google for:  </p>
<p>link:www.jmblog.com </p>
<p>and that tool shows that there are only 4 links to the site you&#8217;re reading now, www.jmblog.com. </p>
<p>Search at Google for: </p>
<p>link:www.wordsinarow.com </p>
<p>(that&#8217;s my business site) and it shows that there are only 7 links, even though that site has been around for 12 years and has over ten thousand links to it, which have been gradually added and are &#8220;natural&#8221; links, not obtained through any linking scheme.</p>
</li>
<li>Google: using the command &#8220;www.site.com -site:www.site.com&#8221;, like this:
<p>search Google for:    &#8220;www.jmblog.com&#8221; -site:www.jmblog.com   </p>
<p>That parcitular search command will search for all instances of www.jmblog.com found on other websites, minus any pages from www.jmblog.com itself.</p>
<p>Doing that search today, Google claims there are 13,900 results &#8212; those are mentions of and links to www.jmblog.com from other websites.</p>
<p>(Note: I have never done any link-building for www.jmblog.com.  Those are all &#8220;natural&#8221; links, just the way Google wants them.)</p>
<p>Do the same Google search for:  &#8220;www.wordsinarow.com&#8221; -site:www.wordsinarow.com</p>
<p>and at the top of the first page of search results, <strong>Google says there are 33,500 results.  But if you click to page 10 of the search results, Google says there are 83,300 results</strong>.  </p>
<p>Which number should one believe?</li>
<li>Google Webmaster Zone.  You will get a different number from there, and it is typically several months out of date.  Google will list out a finite number of links for you.</li>
<li>Bing Webmaster area.  Similar to the Google Webmaster Zone.  You&#8217;ll get a different number of Backlinks from Bing than you get from Google.</li>
<li>SEOMOZ:  Open Site Explorer:
<p>Here&#8217;s the link to click to check backlinks at SEOMOZ:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.wordsinarow.com">Words in a Row Backlinks at SEOMOZ</a><br />
(this currently shows  313 links for www.wordsinarow.com, which is rather on the low side compared to the data reported by Google.)</p>
<p>and <a href="http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.jmblog.com">JMBlog.com backlinks at SEOMOZ</a><br />
(This currently shows only 233 links &#8211; also rather low.)</li>
</ol>
<p>So, depending on which tool you use to count them, the number of links to this site (www.jmblog.com) is somewhere between 4 and 13,900.  (It&#8217;s kind of funny, but not in a good way.)</p>
<p>The number to which I&#8217;m paying the most attention, and graphing, and monitoring regularly, is the one I get from doing this search at Google:</p>
<p>search Google for:    &#8220;www.jmblog.com&#8221; -site:www.jmblog.com </p>
<p>But lately with all the Panda updates, that number has really jumped around for some of my clients; one client&#8217;s backlinks plummeted from 55,000 to 15,000 over the course of the last month.</p>
<p>If one assumes that Google has de-indexed the links from the article marketing sites, then those drops in the statistics, although painful, start to make sense</p>
<h2>See this page from Google Webmaster Central:</h2>
<p>http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=0ee276cbb4c93397&#038;hl=en</p>
<p>Specifically, this answer from Google, where one webmaster wonders why his reported links have dropped from 19500 to 4000.<br />
&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;</p>
<p>Could be a couple of things. </p>
<p>Firstly, lets start with the number of links. Obviously if someone creates a link to your site, they can also delete it. So that&#8217;s one possibility. But you have a large number of links gone all of a sudden, so to me that would suggest one of two possibilities &#8211; You had a large number of links coming from one (or a small number) of domains and this/these domains have either: 1. not paid their domain name registration fee and thus have dropped off the internet, thus you links no longer physically exist online&#8230; </p>
<p>or 2. Google has &#8216;de-indexed&#8217; this/these domain/s  for their index (could be for any number of reasons) and thus <strong>Google is not counting these backlinks anymore even though the sites physically exist in cyberspace.</strong></p>
<p>(emphasis added.)</p>
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		<title>Google +1 (Google Plus 1) is available</title>
		<link>http://www.jmblog.com/2011/06/04/google-1-google-plus-1-is-available/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jmblog.com/2011/06/04/google-1-google-plus-1-is-available/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 04 Jun 2011 20:30:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jere Matlock</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Design]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jmblog.com/?p=921</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p><p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2011/06/04/google-1-google-plus-1-is-available/">Google +1 (Google Plus 1) is available</a></p><p>Installing Google +1 on your site Google recently released its &#8220;+1&#8243; service, which is a button you put on your blog or on your website, which lets people who visit the page tell Google that they like the page they &#8230; <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2011/06/04/google-1-google-plus-1-is-available/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a></p></p><p>&copy; JMBlog - all rights reserved.</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2011/06/04/google-1-google-plus-1-is-available/">Google +1 (Google Plus 1) is available</a></p><h2>Installing Google +1 on your site</h2>
<p>Google recently released its &#8220;+1&#8243; service, which is a button you put on your blog or on your website, which lets people who visit the page tell Google that they like the page they are on.  Google will then use that in determining which sites to display, and will show you which of your friends have &#8220;plus oned&#8221; a page, when it comes up in the search results.<br />
<span id="more-921"></span><br />
It&#8217;s an effort to compete with Facebook, of course.  I&#8217;m sure Google AdWords is feeling the hit from people using Facebook advertising instead of Google AdWords.  Although Google is still raking in billions of dollars, they have every reason to fear Facebook&#8217;s encroachment into their extremely lucrative advertising territory.</p>
<h2>How to add Google +1 to your WordPress blog</h2>
<p>1.  Log into your WordPress admin area.</p>
<p>2.  Click on &#8220;plugins&#8221;</p>
<p>3.  Click on &#8220;Add New&#8221;</p>
<p>4.  Search for &#8220;Google +1&#8243; </p>
<p>5.  Pick one of them &#8212; I picked the first one, which had four stars.</p>
<p>6.  Click the link to install it.</p>
<p>7.  Click the link to activate it.</p>
<p>It should now be showing at the bottom of every post on your blog. Go to your blog&#8217;s home page and you&#8217;ll see it at the bottom of every post.</p>
<p>You&#8217;re done.  To see what it should look like, look at the bottom of this post and you&#8217;ll see a blue &#8220;+1&#8243; button.  Click it if you like this page.</p>
<h2>How to Install Google +1 on your regular website</h2>
<p>It&#8217;s simple cut and paste &#8211; anyone who can edit a web page can do it.<br />
<code></p>
<p>Place this tag in your head or just before your close body tag </p>
<p>&lt;script type="text/javascript" src="http://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;</p>
<p>Place this tag where you want the +1 button to render </p>
<p>&lt;g:plusone&gt;&lt;/g:plusone&gt;</p>
<p></code></p>
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		<title>Good Link Building Tips</title>
		<link>http://www.jmblog.com/2011/06/01/good-link-building-tips/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jmblog.com/2011/06/01/good-link-building-tips/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 01 Jun 2011 20:31:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jere Matlock</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Online Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[link building]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jmblog.com/?p=900</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p><p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2011/06/01/good-link-building-tips/">Good Link Building Tips</a></p><p>Good search engine rankings (especially at Google) depend mainly on two things: Having plenty of good text content that Google can index. Google doesn&#8217;t really index pictures well, or flash, or javascript, or videos. Google can&#8217;t pick the text out &#8230; <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2011/06/01/good-link-building-tips/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a></p></p><p>&copy; JMBlog - all rights reserved.</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2011/06/01/good-link-building-tips/">Good Link Building Tips</a></p><p>Good search engine rankings (especially at Google) depend mainly on two things:</p>
<ol>
<li>Having plenty of good text content that Google can index.  Google doesn&#8217;t really index pictures well, or flash, or javascript, or videos.  Google can&#8217;t pick the text out of an image or a Flash presentation or a video.  They do a great job of indexing straight text, whether in the form of a .txt file (just text, no formatting!), html files, and PDFs.  </li>
<li>Having lots of relevant links to your website from other relevant websites.  Note the use of &#8220;relevant&#8221; in there.  If a site or web page has nothing to do with what your site is about, it&#8217;s usually a waste of time to get a link from it to your site.  But any relevant link is golden! </li>
</ol>
<p><span id="more-900"></span><br />
Link building is an ongoing activity.  You can do projects to get links to your site (for example, <a href="http://www.wordsinarow.com/wheretogo.html">registering at all the<br />
top directories</a>.)  Once you&#8217;re done with that, the head-scratching begins; &#8220;Where do I get links to my site?&#8221;</p>
<p>Here are two excellent resources for those who are looking for ideas on how to build links to their sites:</p>
<p>Matt Cutts (Google spokesman) talks about organic link building on this video:<br />
<center><br />
<iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/MkLFlaWxgJA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
</center></p>
<p>New slide show from Wordtracker with 25 ideas to help build links (warning, strong Scots accent!):<br />
<center></p>
<div style="width:560px; height:350px;border:1px solid silver;" id="__ss_7989792">
<iframe src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/7989792" width="560" height="350" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0"<br />
marginheight="0" scrolling="no"></iframe><br />
By Ken McGaffin, developer of Wordtracker&#8217;s <a href="http://www.wordtracker.com/linkbuilder" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','www.wordtracker.com']);">Link Building Tool</a>
</div>
<p></center><br />
Makes me want to make some videos answering the common questions I get about SEO, and make some introductory videos about various other subjects such as CSS, html, website hosting, and domain name management &#8212; mostly for newbies, but with advanced Q&amp;A as well.  How to optimize a WordPress blog, for example, is something not adequately covered out there on the web.  Hmmm&#8230;..</p>
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		<title>Updated JM Blog Design</title>
		<link>http://www.jmblog.com/2010/11/27/updated-jm-blog-design/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jmblog.com/2010/11/27/updated-jm-blog-design/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 28 Nov 2010 00:53:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jere Matlock</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Design]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jmblog.com/?p=814</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p><p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2010/11/27/updated-jm-blog-design/">Updated JM Blog Design</a></p><p>We recently updated the WordPress software for this blog, and the old theme (had it in place since 2003!) finally broke beyond all repair. So &#8211; we have a somewhat new look, which you&#8217;ll see on all the pages of &#8230; <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2010/11/27/updated-jm-blog-design/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a></p></p><p>&copy; JMBlog - all rights reserved.</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2010/11/27/updated-jm-blog-design/">Updated JM Blog Design</a></p><p>We recently updated the WordPress software for this blog, and the old theme (had it in place since 2003!) finally broke beyond all repair.</p>
<p>So &#8211; we have a somewhat new look, which you&#8217;ll see on all the pages of the site now.</p>
<p>The new design incorporates part of the old design (kept it in the image at the top of the page) and some of the colors.  But I think it was time to update it anyway.  My significant other simply detests all things Art Nouveau, but she somehow managed to convince me to keep the Art Nouveau design above anyway, because, she said, &#8220;You like it and I want you to be happy.&#8221;</p>
<p>So, guess what! I am happy with it.</p>
<p>We&#8217;ve incorporated the Yoost DeValk SEO module and many others, to make it as search engine optimized as it can be. </p>
<p>If you run into any problems using it, please let me know.</p>
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		<title>SEO Audits &#124; A Good Overview from Adam Audette</title>
		<link>http://www.jmblog.com/2010/11/04/seo-audits-a-good-overview-from-adam-audette/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jmblog.com/2010/11/04/seo-audits-a-good-overview-from-adam-audette/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Nov 2010 20:55:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jere Matlock</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Design]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEO Audit]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jmblog.com/?p=511</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p><p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2010/11/04/seo-audits-a-good-overview-from-adam-audette/">SEO Audits | A Good Overview from Adam Audette</a></p><p> "SEO is both an art and a science."  The science is in the DATA -- what you see when you look at the inner workings of the site.  The ART is in knowing what that data MEANS, and the way that one uses that data to achieve higher rankings <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2010/11/04/seo-audits-a-good-overview-from-adam-audette/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a></p></p><p>&copy; JMBlog - all rights reserved.</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2010/11/04/seo-audits-a-good-overview-from-adam-audette/">SEO Audits | A Good Overview from Adam Audette</a></p><p>Adam Audette of<a href="http://www.audettemedia.com/" rel="nofollow" target="audette"> Audette Media,</a> an SEO company based in Oregon, like mine, <a href="http://www.wordsinarow.com/seo.html" target="seo">Words in a Row</a> has done a good job of summarizing what&#8217;s involved in an <a href="http://searchenginewatch.com/3641521"><strong>SEO Audit</strong></a>; that is, an analysis of what a website needs to do to get better search rankings at Google.</p>
<p><span id="more-511"></span><br />
Adam presents a short list of some tools that are useful to anyone doing in-depth analysis of a website to see why it is not ranking at Google, and has organized the process into a checklist.  Kudos to Adam for sharing this info!  I&#8217;ve appreciated his generosity since the days (10 years ago and more, now) of his old email newsletters.</p>
<p>However, like most such checklists for doing an SEO audit I&#8217;ve seen online, a lot of the &#8220;why&#8217;s &amp; wherefore&#8217;s&#8221; are left out.  It just says, for example:</p>
<blockquote><p>Internal Linking:</p>
<ul>
<li>Related Linking Structures</li>
<li>Recommendation Engine</li>
<li>Cross and Category Linking</li>
<li>Nofollow Use</li>
<li>Canonicalization</li>
<li>Anchor Tech</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<h2>Partial list of SEO Audit Factors</h2>
<p>Adam gives the caveat that his is a &#8216;partial list&#8217;, and it does omit some important aspects of internal linking, such as &#8220;authority hubs&#8221; and &#8220;title attributes&#8221; of internal links, that should always be considered when doing internal linking.</p>
<p>He also doesn&#8217;t mention <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2010/10/30/seo-how-to-silo-a-large-website/" title="silo">siloing</a> a website by controlling the link structure and what links Google sees, versus what a human visitor sees.</p>
<p>But it is an overview, after all.</p>
<p>What the uninitiated are to do with such a list is never explained; a newbie to SEO would study over Adam&#8217;s list and be no wiser for it.  Adam assumes if you&#8217;re an SEO person, you already know how cross-linking can kill the flow of PageRank within a site, and how using nofollow &#8220;leaks&#8221; PageRank, and can hurt a page in the rankings.  </p>
<p>In my Words in a Row site and blog posts here on JMblog, I&#8217;ve tried to give explanations for these things &#8212; HOW they work, and WHY they work to optimize a website.  </p>
<p>When doing an SEO audit, it is necessary to inspect all these things Adam lists &#8212; but only an intimate familiarity with the subject matter will allow an SEO consultant to actually use them to perform an analysis and figure out what needs to change on the site to get better rankings in the search engines.  What is an analysis, after all, but <strong>comparing the existing scene to the ideal scene</strong>, and figuring out how to get there from here?</p>
<h2>Skills Needed for an SEO Audit</h2>
<p>In my view, SEO Analysis of a website boils down to a few key skills that, in the aggregate, comprise a LOT of SEO expertise.  An SEO audit should not be done by a newbie, and should never be trusted to a software program.  Here are the skills an SEO consultant needs to do an SEO audit:</p>
<ol>
<li style="margin-bottom: 10px;">Knowing what exactly your <strong>keyword phrases </strong>are, that you&#8217;re targeting. This holds true even for a very large site. And then comparing that knowledge against what the site is actually doing now to &#8220;target&#8221; those keyword phrases.  Do pages exist that have those keywords in their URLs?  Do such pages actually use those keywords in the right places (titles, meta description tags, headings, body text)?
</li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 10px;">Knowing how your <strong>site architecture </strong>affects the search engines.  This means knowing better than to use frames, Flash, or Javascript to build the pieces of the site that you want Google to index and deliver in search results.  How does the site currently deliver content?  Can Googlebot actually crawl and index that content?  Is the content of the website organized into sections that are logical/make sense?  Or dispersed everywhere?
</li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 10px;">Knowing <strong>how Google follows links</strong> and flows PageRank to sub-pages of the site, and how to channel that PageRank where you want it to go using &lt;A HREF&gt; links.  This means understanding siloing, and comparing the existing linking structure of the site to the ideal scene that would flow all your PageRank where you want it to go. </li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 10px;">Knowing HOW the <strong>on-page factors </strong>(titles, headings, meta description, canonical tags, body text, and so on) affect how a page will rank at Google, and comparing that to what actually exists in the website you are analyzing, so you can see how to improve it and make recommendations to do so. </li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 10px;">Knowing the <strong>other SEO factors </strong>that may kill a website&#8217;s rankings, and being alert for them.  Excessive use of 302 redirects, excessive 404 errors, incorrect sitemap.xml files, robots.txt settings that disallow Google from indexing it, etc.  Being able to SEE what you SEE is also important.  One actually has to  <big><strong>look, don&#8217;t listen!</strong></big>.  Often, I&#8217;ve found that what one is told by a webmaster or IT staff is not actually true when I went and looked for myself in the logs or in the files that make up the website.</li>
</ol>
<p>This is why automated tools, programs like IBP (and many others) must be interpreted by a human with SEO experience &#8212; and why most of them are useless and can waste a lot of time, money and effort to handle things that aren&#8217;t the real problem with the website.  I&#8217;ve had clients send me automated &#8220;Site Audit Reports&#8221; from Indian SEO firms that just run an automated report and send it out (a form of SPAM, really) in an effort to get business by confusing their prospects.</p>
<p>Clients often come to me and say, &#8220;I need to rank better for this keyword phrase:  blahblahblah&#8221;.</p>
<p>When I go look at the site, I often find that there are NO pages that use that specific keyword phrase, anywhere in their site.  When building their site, they completely omitted the phrase from body text, from titles, page names, meta data; it&#8217;s just not in the site anywhere.  (Which makes for an easy fix!)  </p>
<p>As Adam says, &#8220;SEO is both an art and a science.&#8221;  The science is in the DATA &#8212; what you see when you look at the inner workings of the site.  The ART is in knowing what that data MEANS, and the effective methods of using that data to achieve higher rankings at Google, Bing, Yahoo and the rest.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not certain that&#8217;s a complete list, but every item on it is important when looking at a website to see how it can do better at Google.</p>
<div name="googleone_share_1" style="position:relative;z-index:5;float: right; margin-left: 10px;"><g:plusone size="tall" count="1" href="http://www.jmblog.com/2010/11/04/seo-audits-a-good-overview-from-adam-audette/"></g:plusone></div><br/><a href="http://www.socialmarker.com/?link=http://www.jmblog.com/2010/11/04/seo-audits-a-good-overview-from-adam-audette/&title=SEO+Audits+%7C+A+Good+Overview+from+Adam+Audette&text=Adam+Audette+of+Audette+Media%2C+an+SEO+company+based+in+Oregon%2C+like+mine%2C+Words+in+a+Row+has+done+a+good+job+of+summarizing+what%26%238217%3Bs+involved+in+an+SEO+Audit%3B+that+is%2C+an+analysis+of+what+a...&tags=the+site%2C+seo+audit%2C+the+website%2C+knowing+how%2C+website%2C+google%2C+audit%2C+actually%2C+knowing%2C+linking" target="_blank"><img src= "http://www.socialmarker.com/bookmark.gif" border="0" /></a><noscript><a href="http://www.socialmarker.com" >Social Bookmarking</a></noscript><p>&copy; JMBlog - all rights reserved.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>SEO &#8211; How to Silo a Large Website</title>
		<link>http://www.jmblog.com/2010/10/30/seo-how-to-silo-a-large-website/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jmblog.com/2010/10/30/seo-how-to-silo-a-large-website/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 31 Oct 2010 05:01:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jere Matlock</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Design]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Large Websites]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEO]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Silo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Siloing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jmblog.com/?p=501</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p><p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2010/10/30/seo-how-to-silo-a-large-website/">SEO &#8211; How to Silo a Large Website</a></p><p>PageRank coming from Google, when the site is silo'd properly, is then smoothly distributed through your home page to your main sub-pages, then down to their sub-pages... <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2010/10/30/seo-how-to-silo-a-large-website/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a></p></p><p>&copy; JMBlog - all rights reserved.</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2010/10/30/seo-how-to-silo-a-large-website/">SEO &#8211; How to Silo a Large Website</a></p><p>The SEO tool for optimizing a website, called a  &#8220;<a href="http://www.bruceclay.com/seo/silo.htm">Silo</a>&#8221; is pretty well described on the Bruce Clay site.  But actually implementing Silos on a big website can be an exercise in frustration unless you know what you&#8217;re doing.</p>
<p>To optimize (SEO) a <strong>large site</strong> with a lot of categories and huge link menus, it becomes really important to do Siloing right.</p>
<p>If every page of a large site links to every other page of the site through the menu system, then any PageRank coming to the site from Google is passed down and diluted, not concentrated into your main categories and not USED the way it should be to get you better rankings at Google.<br />
<span id="more-501"></span><br />
The standard method of making a big menu that shows up at the top (or left side) of every page is NOT conducive to good search engine rankings, for a large website.  Especially if they are HTML/CSS drop-down menus using A HREF tags as links. (As pretty and clever as those menu systems may be).</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s the theory on which this is based.  (I have seen no proof of this, other than the increased PageRank of sub-pages of a site after setting up a silo system):</p>
<p>What happens when you have a big menu on your home page with, say, 100 links to pages in your site, is that the PageRank coming to your site from Google is cut up into 100 pieces and distributed to all 100 links.  Google says they give more weight to text links than menu links, but I&#8217;m not certain that&#8217;s true.</p>
<p>What happens if you link TWICE to certain pages (from a top menu and a bottom menu, say)?  Well, then you&#8217;re just wasting precious PageRank &#8212; Google only counts the first link for PageRank purposes. It still divides by 100 (if that&#8217;s the number of links from your home page) but it only passes PageRank once &#8212; a little bit gets &#8220;leaked&#8221; or wasted, then, for every double-link you have on your home page.  </p>
<p>But those big navigation menus are important pieces of your human interface for your site.  You don&#8217;t want to get rid of them entirely.  But how can you focus the PageRank down to your &#8220;silos&#8221; and still have those god-awful big menu systems?  I&#8217;ll tell you in a minute&#8230;.</p>
<p>We&#8217;ve achieved very good rankings for several websites, and increased the PageRank of their main sub-pages, by putting the main pages they want to rank for at Google, as the <strong>only VISIBLE (to Google)</strong> links from the home page.   That&#8217;s just one step of the silo process, which I&#8217;ll outline in full below.</p>
<p>There are problems with this, of course: </p>
<p>&#8220;How do you still have a user-friendly navigation system that shows the rest of your website to human visitors?&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;What about linking to our contact page on every page?&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;What about the links to our &#8216;Specials&#8217; page we have on every page of our site?&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;What about the link to the blog that we&#8217;re supposed to have on every page of our site?&#8221;</p>
<p>Those questions are answered below.</p>
<h2>The Silo Process for Large Websites:</h2>
<p><strong>1.  Keyword Research.</strong></p>
<p>Sorry if you thought it might be something else.  Doesn&#8217;t everything start with keywords?</p>
<p>Figure out the main keyword phrases for which your site should rank well at Google.  Pare that down to about a dozen terms.  If you aim for more than a dozen keyword phrases, then the silo process will be less effective.  For the purpose of the silo process, make sure you:</p>
<p>a) aim for keywords that are relevant to what the site is actually about, and </p>
<p>b) aim for keyword phrases have a good volume of searches at Google every month.  </p>
<p>We use the <a href="https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__u=1000000000&#038;__c=1000000000&#038;ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS#search.none">Google External Keyword Tool</a> to thoroughly research that information, but WordTracker and other keyword research tools are also very valid and work well.  Use the keyword tools you&#8217;re comfortable using. </p>
<p>What I&#8217;m saying here is, don&#8217;t use the silo process for &#8220;long tail&#8221; keywords.  If you try to have a thousand silos in your site, you&#8217;ll fail.  Try for a dozen &#8212; that&#8217;s an attainable goal. </p>
<p>Example:  For a large drug rehab website, the main, targeted keywords, based on our keyword research, might be:</p>
<blockquote><p>drug treatment<br />
drug addiction<br />
drug rehab<br />
marijuana addiction<br />
heroin addiction<br />
meth addiction<br />
oxycontin addiction<br />
cocaine addiction<br />
crack addiction<br />
drug rehab clinic</p></blockquote>
<p><strong>2.  Set Up Folders on the Server for Those Keywords</strong></p>
<p>Make sure you have your folders organized by content, focused on those keywords.  </p>
<p>These are going to be your &#8220;silos&#8221;.</p>
<p>So in my continuing example, your folders (directories on your server within the www/ or httpdocs/ or public_html/ folder) would be:</p>
<blockquote><p>drug-treatment/<br />
drug-addiction/<br />
drug-rehab/<br />
marijuana-addiction/<br />
heroin-addiction/<br />
meth-addiction/<br />
oxycontin-addiction/<br />
cocaine-addiction/<br />
crack-addiction/<br />
drug-rehab-clinics/</p></blockquote>
<p>The way I&#8217;ve set up the folders above, each of these folders (directories) is going to be a silo.</p>
<p><strong>3. The ONLY Links from the Home Page Go to These Folders</strong> </p>
<p>From the <strong>home page</strong> of the site, use standard &lt;A HREF &gt; links ONLY to these folders. One reason for doing this is that eight of these links will become the eight site-links under your site&#8217;s listing at Google, if you can get your site to the #1 spot at Google, instead of terms that typically show up under Google site-links, such as &#8220;contact&#8221; and &#8220;about us&#8221;.</p>
<p>On the home page, it is possible to put the standard set of normal links (to &#8220;home, about us, contact us, sitemap, privacy policy&#8221; or whatever) in a menu that humans will see, but that Google will not crawl and will not follow or index, by putting such links in an iframe, or using JavaScript to make your navigation menu, or using Flash as your navigation system.  It is perfectly valid to do that, so humans can go wherever they want, to ANY page of the site from within a JavaScript drop-down menu, from the home page.   But as far as Google is concerned, because Googlebot only follows A HREF links, you only have the 10 links (one each to each of your silos) coming off your home page.</p>
<p>So you CAN have a lot of other links on the home page &#8212; just don&#8217;t make them Google-friendly links.  You can even use standard A HREF links IF you put those in an iframe and then exclude Google from crawling them. (Use your robots.txt file to do that) the file called by the iframe (your menu for humans) is then never crawled by Google.  Links within it won&#8217;t count, for PageRank purposes.</p>
<p><strong>4.  From the Folders, Only Link UP or DOWN</strong>  </p>
<p>From the main silo pages, such as:</p>
<p>drug-treatment/index.php (or asp or html &#8211; it truly doesn&#8217;t matter what the file extension is)</p>
<p>you use A HREF menus that link only DOWN into that folder, and UP to the home page.   DO NOT LINK ACROSS to the other main categories/silos/folders of the site.</p>
<p>drug-treatment/index.php might then use A HREF links to:</p>
<blockquote><p>up to the home page<br />
down to drug-treatment/dual-diagnosis.html<br />
down to drug-treatment/outpatient.html<br />
down to drug-treatment/inpatient.html<br />
down to drug-treatment/admission/  (which has more pages in this folder)</p></blockquote>
<p>Again, you can have as many links to the other categories and pages within those categories as you think you should have, within menus for humans to use to navigate the site, but those links MUST be in a non-Google-friendly menu (such as JavaScript, Flash, or in an iframe).</p>
<p>These sub-pages might link across to other pages within the same silo, but not out of the silo to other categories or folders.</p>
<p>All the content of the site is then put within those folders, or other folders such as </p>
<blockquote><p>about/ (contact page, about us, privacy policy, references, etc. all go here).</p></blockquote>
<p>At some point you&#8217;ll have to put every page of the existing website (500 pages?  50,000?) onto a spreadsheet and figure out which silo/folder and sub-folder it should be in.  This is called &#8220;taxonomy&#8221;.  Taxonomy is your friend, at Google.  And, of course, set up 301 permanent redirects to the new page location from the old page location.</p>
<p><strong>5.  Go Deep!</strong>  </p>
<p>You can have silos that keep on going down, deep into the pages within a website. Using my hypothetical drug rehab site as an example, you could do a sub-silo for drug-treatment/heroin/, which would contain pages such as:</p>
<blockquote><p>drug-treatment/heroin/index.html<br />
drug-treatment/heroin/what-is-heroin.html<br />
drug-treatment/heroin/symptoms-of-heroin-use.html<br />
drug-treatment/heroin/intervention.html<br />
drug-treatment/heroin/drug-withdrawal-symptoms.html<br />
drug-treatment/heroin/methadone-pros-and-cons.html<br />
drug-treatment/heroin/relapse.html</p></blockquote>
<p>and so on.  You could have 20 or 200 pages about the rehabilitation and treatment of heroin users, each with its own unique content but focused on the rehabilitation of heroin users.</p>
<p>In this example, the methadone.html page would link upward to the drug-treatment/heroin/ folder it is in, but NOT across to every other page of the silo it is in, using A HREF links.</p>
<p>Again, you can have as many menus for humans as you want, with links to any other pages in the site (you could conceivably make a huge drop-down JavaScript menu system that would show a link to EVERY page in the site, viewable from every other page of the site) AS LONG AS you don&#8217;t make them Google-friendly.  Use JavaScript, Flash, or iframes for those menus you want humans to view, but that you don&#8217;t want Google to follow.</p>
<p>So what Google then &#8220;sees&#8221; when it crawls your site&#8217;s link structure, is:</p>
<blockquote><p>- home page &#8211; linking to 10 folders.</p>
<p>- each folder linking down within itself and up to the home page.</p>
<p>- each sub-folder linking down within itself and up to its main page within that folder.</p></blockquote>
<p>To a web crawler like Googlebot, this gives your site the appearance of being neatly organized into folders, making it simple to figure out your subject matter, and makes for an easy and certain categorization in their index under the keywords that YOU picked.</p>
<p>PageRank coming from Google, when the site is silo&#8217;d properly, is then smoothly distributed through your home page to your main sub-pages, then down to their sub-pages, and so on.  It&#8217;s not dispersed across a hundred links, then another hundred links on every page.</p>
<p><strong>6.  Take Advantage of Off-Site Links to Sub-Pages</strong></p>
<p>If you have a page that has many links coming to it from off-site, then it can be its own silo, as well.  It works like the home page: Google flows PageRank directly to that page, and you can flow that PageRank down to where YOU want it to go, if you organize the menus on that page, so that Google only sees the links you want.  Your Google PageRank coming to that page directly from Google (not via the home page) will then flow from that page only to the pages you link to.  </p>
<p>In our example, that page with many links to it from other websites, giving it its own PageRank, might be:</p>
<blockquote><p>drug-rehab-clinics/Los-Angeles/</p></blockquote>
<p>Turn that page into a silo by only linking UP and DOWN.  Link up to </p>
<blockquote><p>drug-rehab-clinics/  (the folder it is in)</p></blockquote>
<p>link down to</p>
<blockquote><p>drug-rehab-clinics/Los-Angeles/Hollywood.php<br />
drug-rehab-clinics/Los-Angeles/Inglewood.php<br />
drug-rehab-clinics/Los-Angeles/Beverly-Hills.php</p></blockquote>
<p>You might need to MAKE a folder to do that.</p>
<p>&#8212;&#8211;</p>
<p>That&#8217;s the silo method we use for our clients with large websites, and it works well.  </p>
<p>We&#8217;d be happy to talk with you about &#8220;siloing&#8221; your website so Google can figure out what it is about, and help you attain better search rankings as a result.  Feel free to call us at 541-572-2569 or <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/contact.html">contact us</a> by email.</p>
<div name="googleone_share_1" style="position:relative;z-index:5;float: right; margin-left: 10px;"><g:plusone size="tall" count="1" href="http://www.jmblog.com/2010/10/30/seo-how-to-silo-a-large-website/"></g:plusone></div><br/><a href="http://www.socialmarker.com/?link=http://www.jmblog.com/2010/10/30/seo-how-to-silo-a-large-website/&title=SEO+%26%238211%3B+How+to+Silo+a+Large+Website&text=The+SEO+tool+for+optimizing+a+website%2C+called+a++%26%238220%3BSilo%26%238221%3B+is+pretty+well+described+on+the+Bruce+Clay+site.&tags=the+site%2C+the+home%2C+drug-treatment+heroin%2C+links%2C+google%2C+drug-treatment%2C+folders%2C+pagerank%2C+pages" target="_blank"><img src= "http://www.socialmarker.com/bookmark.gif" border="0" /></a><noscript><a href="http://www.socialmarker.com" >Social Bookmarking</a></noscript><p>&copy; JMBlog - all rights reserved.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>Where can I register in Search Engines?</title>
		<link>http://www.jmblog.com/2010/10/27/where-can-i-register-in-search-engines/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jmblog.com/2010/10/27/where-can-i-register-in-search-engines/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Oct 2010 22:24:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jere Matlock</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Online Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Design]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jmblog.com/?p=491</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p><p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2010/10/27/where-can-i-register-in-search-engines/">Where can I register in Search Engines?</a></p><p>Where can I register in Search Engines? <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2010/10/27/where-can-i-register-in-search-engines/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a></p></p><p>&copy; JMBlog - all rights reserved.</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2010/10/27/where-can-i-register-in-search-engines/">Where can I register in Search Engines?</a></p><p>Reader Zahra posted this question:</p>
<p>Can you tell me how can i register my site on search engines?</p>
<p>Answer:</p>
<p>For <strong>SEARCH ENGINE </strong>registration, go to these three sites:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.google.com/local/add/analyticsSplashPage?gl=US&#038;hl=en-US">http://www.google.com/local/add/analyticsSplashPage?gl=US&#038;hl=en-US</a><br />
and<br />
<a href="http://listings.local.yahoo.com/">http://listings.local.yahoo.com/</a><br />
and<br />
<a href="https://ssl.bing.com/listings/BusinessSearch.aspx">https://ssl.bing.com/listings/BusinessSearch.aspx</a></p>
<p>If you want to register at <strong>DIRECTORIES</strong>, go here:<br />
<span id="more-491"></span><br />
<a href="http://www.wordsinarow.com/wheretogo.html">http://www.wordsinarow.com/wheretogo.html</a> &#8212; it will walk you through the<br />
process at the top 30 big directories.  It will cost you money to do that &#8211; about $1200 in &#8220;hard costs&#8221;, such as the $299 that Yahoo Directory charges to look at a normal site.  </p>
<p>You can also submit to about 2500 smaller directories by getting this<br />
software program for $25 (last time I checked) which is cheaper than paying for registration the big<br />
directories:</p>
<p><a href="http://jerematloc.bryxen5.hop.clickbank.net">Directory Submiter</a></p>
<p>About 900 of the smaller directories listed among the 2500 in that software program do not require payment or creating a reciprocal link (don&#8217;t do either of those, please!).  It will take you a lot of time, but it can be worth it.</p>
<p>(Note &#8211; that&#8217;s an affiliate link to Directory Submitter &#8211; I liked their product enough to use it often and so signed up as an affiliate for them.)</p>
<p>Best,</p>
<p>Jere</p>
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		<title>John Eberhard&#8217;s Link Building Tips: recommended reading</title>
		<link>http://www.jmblog.com/2010/04/17/john-eberhards-link-building-tips-recommended-reading/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jmblog.com/2010/04/17/john-eberhards-link-building-tips-recommended-reading/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 17 Apr 2010 23:53:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jere Matlock</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Online Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jmblog.com/?p=448</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p><p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2010/04/17/john-eberhards-link-building-tips-recommended-reading/">John Eberhard&#8217;s Link Building Tips: recommended reading</a></p><p>Recommended reading if you do any link building... <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2010/04/17/john-eberhards-link-building-tips-recommended-reading/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a></p></p><p>&copy; JMBlog - all rights reserved.</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2010/04/17/john-eberhards-link-building-tips-recommended-reading/">John Eberhard&#8217;s Link Building Tips: recommended reading</a></p><p>A few years back I helped John Eberhard get educated in the techniques of search engine optimization, when he was starting his <a href="http://www.realwebmarketing.net">Real Web Marketing</a> company. He does good work in SEO and web marketing now and he sends out a regular newsletter that I always read when it arrives; it is usually packed with good info and he summarizes the state of things very well.  He recently put out a list of <a href="http://www.realwebmarketingblog.com/2010/04/34-tips-on-building-links-to-your-website.html">tips for website link building</a> that was fairly complete and worth reading and doing.  Recommended reading if you do any link building or are trying to figure out how to get started down that road.</p>
<p>I have very few sites bookmarked to which I refer my clients for link-building ideas.  Rachelle Money wrote an article a couple of years back after interviewing Eric Ward, who runs a master class for link building.  The resulting <a href="http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/eric-ward-link-building-masterclass">advice on link building</a> is also worth reading.<span id="more-448"></span></p>
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		<title>How to Get Links To Your Site</title>
		<link>http://www.jmblog.com/2009/12/24/how-to-get-links-to-your-site/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jmblog.com/2009/12/24/how-to-get-links-to-your-site/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Dec 2009 04:21:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jere Matlock</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Design]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jmblog.com/?p=371</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p><p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2009/12/24/how-to-get-links-to-your-site/">How to Get Links To Your Site</a></p><p>If you link out to sites Google has banned, you can bet your site will be penalized by Google. <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2009/12/24/how-to-get-links-to-your-site/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a></p></p><p>&copy; JMBlog - all rights reserved.</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2009/12/24/how-to-get-links-to-your-site/">How to Get Links To Your Site</a></p><p>I routinely check all the outbound links from my site using a program from www.xpelo.com to look for sites I link to that Google has banned, and using www.linktiger.com to find any broken links.  If your site has a ton of broken outbound links, or if you link to a website Google has banned, you can bet that Google will penalize your site.<br />
<span id="more-371"></span><br />
I found one such banned link today on my site, on a page I hadn&#8217;t updated in a a while; I updated it with all the info I have on how to effectively get links to your site.</p>
<p>The article is here:  <a href="http://www.wordsinarow.com/how-to-get-links.html" title="link building">How to Get Links To your Site</a></p>
<p>Good luck on using it.  If you have questions about link building, I&#8217;ll be happy to answer them below.</p>
<p>Best,</p>
<p>Jere Matlock</p>
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		<title>Using .htaccess to make search engine-friendly URLs &#8211; &#8220;There is no spoon&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://www.jmblog.com/2009/11/15/using-htaccess-to-make-search-engine-friendly-urls-there-is-no-spoon/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jmblog.com/2009/11/15/using-htaccess-to-make-search-engine-friendly-urls-there-is-no-spoon/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:39:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jere Matlock</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Design]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jmblog.com/?p=365</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p><p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2009/11/15/using-htaccess-to-make-search-engine-friendly-urls-there-is-no-spoon/">Using .htaccess to make search engine-friendly URLs &#8211; &#8220;There is no spoon&#8221;</a></p><p>"There is no spoon" <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2009/11/15/using-htaccess-to-make-search-engine-friendly-urls-there-is-no-spoon/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a></p></p><p>&copy; JMBlog - all rights reserved.</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Content provided by: <a href="http://www.jmblog.com/2009/11/15/using-htaccess-to-make-search-engine-friendly-urls-there-is-no-spoon/">Using .htaccess to make search engine-friendly URLs &#8211; &#8220;There is no spoon&#8221;</a></p><p>User Jan wrote me with the following query about optimizing database driven websites.</p>
<hr />
<p>Hi there,</p>
<p>I have a question about search engine friendly sites in regard to your article here about <a href="http://www.wordsinarow.com/database.html">SEO of Database-driven Websites</a>.  I&#8217;m trying to make a website search engine friendly, using descriptive urls.  Currently every link to a subpage looks like this: www.dom.ain/?visit=cat  </p>
<p>So I only have 1 index file that provides information the user wants. Is there any way to improve this without creating a new php for every page on the site?<br />
<span id="more-365"></span><br />
I thought about creating a *.htm that will route to the corresponding php url.</p>
<p>E.g. company.htm file routes to /?visit=comp</p>
<p> But I gathered that search engines don&#8217;t like links that are opened via Java Script.</p>
<p>Thx for any help, it would be greatly aprechiated.</p>
<p>Kind Regards, Jan </p>
<hr />
<p>I replied:</p>
<p>When we have a website that uses variables in the domain names, we usually<br />
use a system called Mod Rewrite on a Linux/Apache/mySQL/PHP  (LAMP) server<br />
to make more user-friendly URLs.  This doesn&#8217;t work the same a Windows IIS<br />
server, but works well on a LAMP server.  Most websites nowadays are on LAMP<br />
servers.</p>
<p>It works like this:</p>
<p>In the .htaccess file put these lines for each of the pages of the site.<br />
(Contact a web programmer for a quote on doing this if it is beyond your<br />
technical skills &#8212; it should be fairly fast and cheap to get done.)</p>
<p> &#8212;-<br />
<code>RewriteEngine On<br />
RewriteRule ^airport.php /community.php?unit=airport.php&#038;language=english [L]</code></p>
<p> &#8212;&#8211;<br />
You only need to tell it &#8220;<code>RewriteEngine On</code>&#8221; once.  For every page you want to rewrite like this, you add another line.</p>
<p>So when someone goes to airport.php, what they actually get is the community.php page, with all its variables.  What Google &#8220;sees&#8221; is airport.php.  What a visitor &#8220;sees&#8221; in his browser address bar is airport.php.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s actually displaying to both Google and your visitor is</p>
<p><code>community.php?unit=airport.php&#038;language=english</code></p>
<p>This allows you to have a shorter URL that is more search engine friendly.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s a better example:</p>
<p><code>RewriteRule ^big-green-widgets.php /product-display.php?productid=widgets&#038;productstyle=blue&#038;productsize=big[L]</code></p>
<p>There IS no page named <code>big-green-widgets.php</code> on the server.  (Like Neo learns in The Matrix movie, &#8220;There is no spoon.&#8221;)</p>
<p>The server sees a request for the page &#8220;<code>big-green-widgets.php</code>&#8221; and because of this line in the .htaccess file, the server goes and gets the info it<br />
needs to create the page on-the-fly.</p>
<p>Also, don&#8217;t use JavaScript for your links.  In your navigation menus, link to the names of the pages you set up in the .htacess file, like &#8220;<code>big-green-widgets.php</code>&#8220;.  Even if that actually mod rewrites over to <code>www.dom.ain/?visit=cat1324</code>, it doesn&#8217;t matter.  As far as Google and your visitors are concerned, you have a page called big-green-widgets.php.</p>
<p>Mod rewrite is a wonderful tool for anyone trying to optimize a site that is built using only a single page with variables, or using a long string of variables and a database.</p>
<p>Make sense?</p>
<p>Best,</p>
<p>Jeré Matlock</p>
<p>http://www.wordsinarow.com</p>
<p>Website Design &#038; Marketing  / SEO</p>
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