SEO Egghead Junior

Facilitating a Search Engine in Spidering a Popup

2006-06-13T15:09:00.000-07:00

From the previous post, it becomes clear that a search engine may spider a page only refered to via javascript; but what if want just the opposite -- you explicitly want it to be indexed?

It's pretty simple; change this:

<a href="javascript:myPopupFunction()" html="">Click here.</a>

To This:

<a href="page.html" onclick="javascript:myPopupFunction(this.href); return false;">Click here.</a>

Alternatively, you can link using something like this:

<a href="page.html">Click here.</a>

And then use Javascript included on that page that is automatically run to resize the window. Technically, it's not a popup. It's a new window that automatically resizes, but the effect is similar.

It is worth noting that since these pages will be indexed, some sort of navigation should be present to allow the user to get back to the parent page. Otherwise the user will be completely lost and proceed to the back button.

Don't Count on Javascript Links

2006-06-13T14:47:00.000-07:00

This may be common sense, but javascript links shouldn't be used as a sort of third exclusion protocol. This is for 2 reasons.

1) People still could theoretically look at the properties on the page, grab the URL, and link it externally. This may result in the page getting indexed.

2) It is been reported that Google at least does, in fact, index links embedded in javascript sometimes, or at least understand them for the purposes of spam detection.

The bottom line: Make sure that you also exclude the popup URL in robots.txt, or exclude it using meta exclusions.

Using Redirects to Change File Names

2006-06-08T13:57:00.000-07:00

The following is a simple way to redirect a page A to a page B with a few lines.

In .htaccess using mod_rewrite:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^foo\.php$ bar.php [R=301,L]

In PHP (place in foo.php):
$base_url = 'http://www.foo.com';
header('Location: ' . $base_url . 'bar.php';

Hope this helps!

JiffyCounter

2006-05-23T16:11:00.000-07:00

So I admit it, I started yet another web counter site. But mine is different, really! Mine isn't for the sake of link-building, it's for the starving children in Zimbabwe. Ok </sarcasm>.

It is for link-building, but it is also different. The principle difference is that the counter comes pre-fabbed and ready to go. All you have to do is cut and paste the code -- no forms to fill, etc. It even has a nifty button you hit to copy the code to the clipboard in the interest of:

a) Providing a clear call to action
b) Make it even easier to use

You can configure it later on by using the customize page. This is backwards, but it gives the user less to do inititally. It's actually more powerful than most of the ones out there since it tracks both uniques and totals, gives you various fonts, colors (any in hex), etc. Of course I'm not up against much, but I'm anal retentive and need to create something high-quality regardless.

Let me know what you think. The site is called "Jiffy Counter" -- http://www.jiffycounter.com

If you had bunker busting bombs at your disposal ...

2006-04-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

Yes, this is a hypothetical question:

If you had bunker buster bombs at your disposal, and you could choose to bomb Iran or all the editors at DMOZ at a meeting conspiring how to be the worst, blatantly biased editors possible, which would you pick?

Let me know.

Press Releases

2006-04-12T11:10:00.000-07:00

Many of us may know that press-releases for the most part, at least in Google, do not bring about much in the realm of "link juice." But, like any good "whitehat" SEO, I would tell you that it's not all about link juice. Press releases can be a great way to get business when news comes out. I call this "riding on the coattails." I'm sure it's not a new idea, but it's a valid technique that can get results.

Here is the press release:
http://www.primezone.com/newsroom/news.html?d=97335

Users were then directed to:
http://www.lawyerseek.com/Practice/Pharmaceutical-Injury-C1/Fosamax-P76/

And besides, press releases do still yield "link juice" in MSN and Yahoo.

Site Downtime and SEO

2006-04-04T07:10:00.000-07:00

It's common sense that if your site is down that it cannot get spidered. But I'll reiterate it anyway.

"When a site is down, it cannot get spidered."

And when DNS is down, your site cannot get spidered even if your webserver is up. And many people use managed DNS these days because it's easy and hosting agnostic.

Today, for about 1 hour 9AM-10AM EST, Network Solutions was entirely down. Yes, even their homepage (networksolutions.com) wouldn't load. I believe it was as a result of a DNS outage, since some of my customers use them for managed DNS.

You would think that Network Solutions, the company that, I believe, even manages the root servers as the result of the privatization of Internic, would be able to manage a standard DNS. I guess not. The root servers were fine, but isn't that a bit scary?

I'd accept periods of slow resolution when, for example, a few of their NSes go down for whatever reason, but all of their DNSes going 100% down? That took down a small part of the internet.

Scary.

DMOZ is dead

2006-03-24T10:12:00.000-08:00

Let's face it. The internet is a very big place. Long ago in a place called "1996," directories attempted to organize the resources of the WWW into a directory structure. It worked, kind of. That was then. This is now.

The problem is that they're still used as authoratative resources for search engines, and many of them are volunteer-driven. DMOZ.org is one of these. There are thousands of people complaining daily that their submissions never get evaluated. I'm one of them.

Furthermore, DMOZ.org makes things even harder by disabling your account as an editor after 90 days of inactivity. This is volunteering. If you log in more than that, I question your motives.

And therein lies the the last problem. DMOZ attempts to make you claim your affiliations. I'm sure most editors do not. And I'm sure that in the most competitive areas (law, casinos, etc.). the majority of the editors are editing the categories, at least subtly, in a bad way. I've even heard stories of sites getting deleted by competitors.

So what makes you think that's not why your site isn't getting added?

So DMOZ is busy disabling the accounts of the volunteers, while more and more cronies are controlling the most influential directory around. Oh yeah, and Zeal.com just closed shop. Bye-bye Zeal. There goes another quality directory.

I'm just another SEM waiting for a site to get added for the company I'm working for: http://www.seegerweiss.com.

Personally, I think directories are so 1996 ...

Copywriting for queries, not English

2006-03-21T12:08:00.000-08:00

Another major issue these days becomes obvious when one realizes that popular queries aren't requisitely English.

For example, when a user is looking for a "Vioxx attorney," one must consider whether this is actually English. The answer is yes, and no. Ask yourself a simple question. "Would I actually call up a law firm and say: 'Hello, do you have a Vioxx attorney?'"

Maybe.

But I'd be more likely to phrase the question "Hello, do you have attorneys who handle Vioxx?"

(BORING ENGLISH GRAMMARIAN RANT)

English is a funny language. Most of the words are derived from the romance languages (Western Europe), but the grammar is from the germanic languages (unsurprisingly German is one of these). One of the neat things that Germanic languages permit is the concept of the "construct noun." Semitic languages (Hebrew, Arabic, etc.) also have this concept.

English is also highly erratic.

So users search for "Vioxx lawyers." They also search for "MP3 player -sony" to find music players that don't pay homage to the RIAA. Just because someone types a bunch of keywords in to a query box, and it accidentally forms a valid language construction, doesn't mean it's (desirable) English. You can say it once maybe and get away with it. But after that it starts to look spammy and unprofessional.

In Spanish (and other romance languages), we would say (translated) "bus of school," not "school bus." This sounds silly in English, but that is not always the case.

Consider 2 of my favorite salad items.

1) Hearts of Palm
2) Artichoke Hearts

Notice that the first is in a "romance construction" whereas the second is in a "germanic construction."

(/BORING ENGLISH GRAMMARIAN RANT)

So why is this relevent?

Nobody says "Vioxx Lawyer!" Saying it more than once in your copy will look stupid. And, yes, keyword density counts. Not to the extent that it's worth measuring and calculating, but you'd be wise to include it 3-4 times in your copy in various inflections (tenses, plural/singular, etc).

So here is how to do it:

We construct 2 sentences (see: http://www.lawyerseek.com/Practice/Pharmaceutical-Injury-C1/Duragesic-P64/) --

Contact us regarding Duragesic; attorney consultations are free

... and hope for the best.

Lousy copy scares clients away. This won't. English is a beautiful but highly erratic language. When you copywrite, this is important to consider.

The "real" search engine optimization (internal site search)

2006-03-20T08:39:00.000-08:00

One thing that has been bothering me for years in this industry is the insistance of lazy site programmers that site search apparently doesn't matter. Numerous studies indicate that people prefer search, not navigation when looking for information, at least from the macroscopic point of view.

Once there, they use navigation, but search cannot be ignored. We can see this in action by looking at several prominent sites that have garbage search engines --

CDW
All Invision Power Board sites.

Try it for something non-trivial. People expect it to work. And it usually doesn't.

I'm also amazed how many programmers declare defeat so easily and just use Google search for internal search results. This is undesirable for several reasons. Among them, it's unprofessional, but there's another reason. Google doesn't understand the structure of your site as well as you do. Perhaps you'd like to seperate or filter out news from the rest of your content, or you'd like model numbers with dashes (Google chokes on these sometimes) to pull up products easily. For this, you need your own search engine.

External search engines, even those that you install on your own server, have many of the same issues. Some also seem to index the ads on their pages. CNN.com seems to do this because they use Yahoo, and Yahoo cannot filter out ad content reliably (see above).

The proper approach in my opinion, and the one that provides the most control is a fulltext search engine -- either the one that comes with mySQL, or the one that comes this postgreSQL. I cannot speak for the Microsoft people, but I'm sure there is an equivalent solution. This allows you to select exactly what is indexed, what isn't, and gives you control over how it is ranked to a certain degree. Sometimes this requires a bit of ingenuity, but it's all possible.

I have implemented:
Weighed fields: Title counts 5x as much as the body.
Stemming: ex. suicide = suicides = suicidal
Copy highlighting: The relevent text gets highlighted in your search results.

... among other things.

You can see the fruits of labor on Lawyer Seek.

Example queries:
http://www.lawyerseek.com/Site-Search.html?action=show_list&query=vioxx+heart+attack&x=0&y=0
First result -> http://www.lawyerseek.com/Practice/Pharmaceutical-Injury-C1/Vioxx-P57/

http://www.lawyerseek.com/Site-Search.html?action=show_list&amp;query=ortho+evra+lawyer&x=0&y=0
First result -> http://www.lawyerseek.com/Practice/Pharmaceutical-Injury-C1/Ortho-Evra-Patch-P48/

People like things that work. If your search engine doesn't work, it will yield false negatives. That's worse than not having one at all in my opinion.

Old School Table Bloat

2006-03-16T07:19:00.000-08:00

I'm old school. I still use tables. I admit it, but every once in awhile, the bloat gets out of control. Take the navigation on a new site I'm designing. There is a navigation strip on the right side with links to all the sections of the site. Alltogether there are 120 of them. Each link used to be in a table. I replaced it with divs and some CSS.

This is what it looked like before:

<div class="tbgs" onclick='_g("http://www.lawyerseek.com/Practice/Pharmaceutical-Injury-C1/Vioxx-P57/");'><b class="tbgsb"> | </b><a href="http://www.lawyerseek.com/Practice/Pharmaceutical-Injury-C1/Vioxx-P57/" class="jbx" title="Information regarding Vioxx litigation"><b>Vioxx</b></a></div>

This is what it looked like afterwards:

<div class="tbgs" onclick='_g("/Practice/Pharmaceutical-Injury-C1/Vioxx-P57/");'><b class="tbgsb"> | </b><a href="/Practice/Pharmaceutical-Injury-C1/Vioxx-P57/" class="jbx" title="Information regarding Vioxx litigation"><b>Vioxx>/b></a></div>

That doesn't look like much until you iterate 130 times in a navigation bar. To remove the "http://www.lawyerseek.com" from every link also saved about 6k and reduced load time.

Interestingly enough, this is the same principle I use when programming. When programming, I always look at the loops. If your PHP is iterating 130 times, you may also want to remove tabs and spaces in the ?> Moral of the story: Tables are bloaty, but one can achieve most of the benefits by replacing tables where they're the most troublesome.

In terms of marketing, load times can actually have a real effect. People looking for a lawyer might just like the site better when it takes fewer seconds to load.