Append Tracking Information Without Creating Duplicate Content
I mentioned towards the end of my Search Engine Land article about redirects how you can use the hash or pound symbol (#) in a URL to append tracking information. Why do this? Because it would prevent duplicate content (ie. the same page at multiple URLs that look unique to the engines), and it would […]
Arrrghโฆ Google Still Isnโt Recognizing Underscores as Word Separators in URLs
Although it isn’t a primary “signal” like the title tag or anchor text, keywords in your URLs can help with your Google rankings. But ONLY if Google can see the actual words in the URL. Turns out that separating the words in a URL with hyphens allowed Google to see the individual words, but using […]
A Deeper Look At Robots.txt
This article was originally published under Search Engine Land. The Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) is not exactly a complicated protocol and its uses are fairly limited, and thus itโs usually given short shrift by SEOs. Yet thereโs a lot more to it than you might think. Robots.txt has been with us for over 14 years, […]
SEO Report Card: Poor SEO Choices Cost Worthy Charity
This article was originally published under Practical Ecommerce. Although you might not think of nonprofits as having ecommerce sites, they do. They accept donations via secure transactions. Rarely will they have a shopping cart, but nonetheless, nonprofits suffer from a number of the same search engine optimization ills that plague traditional ecommerce sites. Combat Blindness […]
How to balance usability with SEO
This articleย was originally published under Multi-Channel Merchant. Finding the balance between search engine optimization and a successful user experience can be a challenge. The two strategies can conflict, and companies may mistakenly favor one over the other. For example, one company may choose to โstuffโ the same keywords into every โaltโ tag in its navigation […]
