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A: That’s what we call it around Google. Canonicalization is the process of picking the best url when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages. For example, most people would consider these the same urls: * www.example.com * example.com/ * www.example.com/index.html * example.com/home.asp But technically all of these urls are different. A web server could return completely different content for all the urls above. When Google “canonicalizes” a url, we try to pick the url that seems like the best representative from that set.

Q: So how do I make sure that Google picks the url that I want?

A: One thing that helps is to pick the url that you want and use that url consistently across your entire site. For example, don’t make half of your links go to http://example.com/ and the other half go to http://www.example.com/ . Instead, pick the url you prefer and always use that format for your internal links.

Q: Is there anything else I can do?

A: Yes. Suppose you want your default url to be http://www.example.com/ . You can make your webserver so that if someone requests http://example.com/, it does a 301 (permanent) redirect to http://www.example.com/ . That helps Google know which url you prefer to be canonical. Adding a 301 redirect can be an especially good idea if your site changes often (e.g. dynamic content, a blog, etc.).

Q: If I want to get rid of domain.com but keep www.domain.com, should I use the url removal tool to remove domain.com?

A: No, definitely don’t do this. If you remove one of the www vs. non-www hostnames, it can end up removing your whole domain for six months. Definitely don’t do this. If you did use the url removal tool to remove your entire domain when you actually only wanted to remove the www or non-www version of your domain, do a reinclusion request and mention that you removed your entire domain by accident using the url removal tool and that you’d like it reincluded.

Q: I noticed that you don’t do a 301 redirect on your site from the non-www to the www version, Matt. Why not? Are you stupid in the head?

A: Actually, it’s on purpose. I noticed that several months ago but decided not to change it on my end or ask anyone at Google to fix it. I may add a 301 eventually, but for now it’s a helpful test case.

Q: So when you say www vs. non-www, you’re talking about a type of canonicalization. Are there other ways that urls get canonicalized?

A: Yes, there can be a lot, but most people never notice (or need to notice) them. Search engines can do things like keeping or removing trailing slashes, trying to convert urls with upper case to lower case, or removing session IDs from bulletin board or other software (many bulletin board software packages will work fine if you omit the session ID).

Q: Let’s talk about the inurl: operator. Why does everyone think that if inurl:mydomain.com shows results that aren’t from mydomain.com, it must be hijacked?

A: Many months ago, if you saw someresult.com/search2.php?url=mydomain.com, that would sometimes have content from mydomain. That could happen when the someresult.com url was a 302 redirect to mydomain.com and we decided to show a result from someresult.com. Since then, we’ve changed our heuristics to make showing the source url for 302 redirects much more rare. We are moving to a framework for handling redirects in which we will almost always show the destination url. Yahoo handles 302 redirects by usually showing the destination url, and we are in the middle of transitioning to a similar set of heuristics. Note that Yahoo reserves the right to have exceptions on redirect handling, and Google does too. Based on our analysis, we will show the source url for a 302 redirect less than half a percent of the time (basically, when we have strong reason to think the source url is correct).

Q: Okay, how about supplemental results. Do supplemental results cause a penalty in Google?

A: Nope.

Q: I have some pages in the supplemental results that are old now. What should I do?

A: I wouldn’t spend much effort on them. If the pages have moved, I would make sure that there’s a 301 redirect to the new location of pages. If the pages are truly gone, I’d make sure that you serve a 404 on those pages. After that, I wouldn’t put any more effort in. When Google eventually recrawls those pages, it will pick up the changes, but because it can take longer for us to crawl supplemental results, you might not see that update for a while.

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1. Search Engine Optimization

Natural Search Engine Optimization is gaining ground fast. Companies will invest in upgrading and optimizing their websites, using persuasive architecture and optimized content, so they can capture the 76% of searchers who click only on the natural search results, as opposed to paid results. Optimized content generation will make an appearance as a line item on website redesign budgets.

2. Usability Testing of Websites

Jupiter Research estimates that corporate America will spend $2.6 billion on search engine marketing (SEM) in 2005. Clearly, the market has recognized that internet search engines like Google, Yahoo! and others are effective in delivering consumers to company websites. And since most websites lose over 60% of their visitors right off the home page due to problems like confusing navigation and lack of relevant content, all this money is being wasted. Usability reviews and testing will be in corporate website budgets in 2005 so that the site actually becomes an effective marketing tool.

3. Optimized Press Releases

News search engines have more readers than CNN and the BBC. They are the number one choice for news in the 18 – 54 age group. Even loyal newspaper readers go online for their news and read their paper as a leisure activity. An optimized press release ranked high in the news engines is the best way to get fast search visibility and have qualified prospects find your news. Businesses wanting to reach their market online will invest in optimizing their press releases for the News Engines.

4. Business Blogging

Bloggers came into the mainstream with the last US election. People became aware of the power of blogging, and Corporate America was quick to see the value in this tool. Business blogging is becoming a hot new marketing and PR tool.

5. RSS and syndication

Syndication of content through the use of RSS feeds is set to become one of the hottest trends of 2005. Not only can your public subscribe to your RSS feeds directly, your content can reach a wider audience through other websites using the content. RSS can also be used to assist relevant journalists by offering them a feed of industry information.

The nature of marketing web sites has continually evolved from a focus on optimizing text to include an array of digital assset optimization such as images, audio, video and content delivery formats like RSS and mobile. Regardless, there continues to be a significant value in basic SEO.

In many cases, small businesses or small web sites especially, there’s a lot the site owner or webmaster/developer can do to improve the search engine friendliness of the site, i.e. fundamental content optimization, before pursuing outside help. However, those that do end up outsourcing on-page optimization and link building often do so because of a lack of resources or the desire to leverage expert experience to avoid big mistakes that can end up costing more to fix than a SEO consultant in the first place.

For those individuals and organizations considering their own basic SEO, here are a few items for review:

• Define clear and measurable goals for the site and take benchmark measurements
• Keyword research – generate a glossary of keyword phrases that addresses both prospect needs and the content you’re publishing. Here is a list of the best keyword research tools as voted on by our readers
• Content creation plan – Think of it as an editorial calendar for your web site. You must PLAN on creating keyword sensitive content on an ongoing basis that adds to the user experience
• Keyword mapping – Using a spreadsheet, map keywords to the page or category. Focus is important, 1-2 phrases per page
• Keyword phrase order – Does the keyword order in the page match order in the query? Anticipate queries and match the word order: “luxury hotels Chicago” vs “Chicago luxury hotels”
• Keywords and the buying cycle. Consider the content and where it fits within the buying cycle: Research, Consideration, Evaluation, Purchase
• Keyword prominence (how early in the page content or title/meta description tag) – Guide: most important phrases high and to left
• Write to inform and convert as your priority, not to rank. Title tags and meta description tags should be written with keywords in mind, but the focus must be on motivating the reader to click through or to perform some other desired action
• Keyword in alt text of images, particularly of images that link to another web page. Keywords should be relevant to the page being linked to
• Filenames containing keywords are useful, but do not change your entire site URL structure if you’ve already published another URL syntax
• Use hyphens in file names, not underscores
• HTML site maps listing links to all pages or top level categories on the site are still a good idea
• Google Webmaster Central and Yahoo Site Explorer accounts can provide useful crawling and link information/resources
• For bloated pages, try to place JavaScript and CSS data in an external file to speed page load and to move content up in the document
• Implement and review web stats for trends, visitor behavior, content performance, referring traffic and optimization enhancement opportunities: Google Analytics, WebTrends, ClickTracks, Index Tools, HitsLink Enterprise

About Links:

• Anchor text of interlinking site pages should include relevant keywords, not “click here”
• Are all internal and external links valid? – Validate all links to all pages on the site
• Employ a tree-like/organization chart linking structure with a minimal number of clicks to any particular page
• Intra-site linking – Use appropriate links between lower-level pages. cluster links between sub categories
• Linking out to external sites – Only link out to relevant, information rich sites. Do not link to sites that do not add value to the visitor experience
• Avoid exchanging links for the sake of improving rankings
• Ensure link stability over time – Avoid “Link Churn”, i.e. changing outgoing links often

Linking tactics:

• Employ a linking program to acquire incoming links from relevant web sites by researching back links to high ranking competitor web sites
• Contribute articles using keywords in titles to industry publications – not article directories
• Engage in blogger PR and online media relations with relevant industry web sites
• Submit keyword optimized press releases to search engine friendly wire services such as prweb.com, prnewswire.com, marketwire.com or pr.com
• Submit the site to major directories – Yahoo directory, BOTW.org, DMOZ, Business.com
• Leverage social networks and micro-blogging to promote linkable content
• Diversify your link building tactics

A few things to avoid:

• Don’t block your entire site from search engine spiders with a robots.txt during development and then forget to allow after publishing (believe me, it happens more often than you think)
• Avoid all Flash, all Ajax, iFrames or anything that makes it difficult for a search engine to find and understand site content
• Avoid more than 100 total links going out on any given page. Site maps can be broken up
• Avoid JavaScript for navigation links. Use CSS for rollover or foldout menus instead
• Avoid temporary (302) URL redirects. Use permanent redirects (301)
• Avoid dynamic URLs with session ids, or URLs with more than three parameters and approximately 10 or less characters per variable
• Avoid buying links from networks of blogs or sites of unrelated content. While we don’t have any particular issue with the idea of buying links as advertising, at TopRank, we prefer to “earn” links for the most long term value and lowest cost per acquisition

This list is about a third of the checklist I’ve recently revised for our internal use on text-based SEO projects, but should offer small web site owners ample insight into the variety of considerations with fundamental site optimization and link building. Interestingly enough, while things are constantly changing in the world of SEO, some things stay the same as you’ll see in this 2002 post from Brett Tabke, “Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone“.

A deep historical knowledge base combined with active engagement, testing, learning and analysis is what keeps web marketers savvy in the ways of SEO and depending on internal resources, it’s also why some companies are better off outsourcing SEO than handling it 100% their own.

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Critical steps to take before submitting

After developing a Web site and selecting the best hosting company, don’t rush out and submit it to search engines immediately. A Web site manager would be wise to take a little time to:

Fine tune the TITLE tag to increase traffic to the site

Improving the TITLE tag is one technique that applies to just about all the search engines. The appearance of key words within the page title is one of the biggest factors determining a Web site’s score in many engines. It’s surprising how many Web sites have simple, unimaginative titles like “Bob’s Home Page” that don’t utilize keywords at all. In fact, it’s not unusual to see entire Web sites that use the same title on every page in the site. Changing page titles to include some of the site’s key words can greatly increase the chance that a page will appear with a strong ranking in a query for those key words.

Create gateway pages that are specific to the focus of each site

Key word selection must be done carefully with great forethought and understanding of the search engine’s selection criteria for key words. The larger the number of key words that are used, the more the relevance of any one key word is diluted. One way to get around this is to create gateway pages.

Gateway pages are designed specifically for submission to a search engine. They should be tuned with a specific set of key words, boosting the chance that these key words will be given a heavy weight. To do this, several copies of a page should be made, one for each set of key words. These pages will be used as entry points only, to help people find the site, therefore, they don’t need to fit within the normal structure of the site. This provides the page developer with greater flexibility in establishing key words and tags that will encourage a stronger ranking with the search engines. Each gateway page then can be submitted separately to the search engines.

Ensuring that site technology won’t confuse the search engines

Often the latest technology being built into a site can confuse the search engine spiders. Frames, CGI scripts, image maps and dynamically generated pages are all recently created technology that many spiders don’t know how to read. With frames for instance, the syntax of the FRAMESET tag fundamentally changes the structure of an HTML document. This can cause problems for search engines and browsers that don’t understand the tag. Some browsers can’t find the body of the page and viewing a page through these browsers can create a blank page.

Today only 2% of browsers don’t support frames, but many search engine spiders still don’t support them. A search engine spider is really just an automated Web browser and like browsers they sometimes lag behind in their support for new HTML tags. This means that many search engines can’t spider a site with frames. The spider will index the page, but won’t follow the links to the individual frames.

Setting up a NOFRAMES section on the page

Every page that uses frames should include a NOFRAMES section on the page. This tag will not affect the way a page looks but it will help a page get listed with the major search engines. The NOFRAMES tag was invented by Netscape for backward compatibility with browsers that didn’t support the FRAME and FRAMESET tags.

Performing a maintenance check

All Web sites should be thoroughly tested using a site maintenance tool in order to catch errors in operation before customers are brought to the site. HTML errors can hinder a search engine spider’s ability to index a site, it can also keep a search engine from reading a page or cause it to be viewed in a manner different from how it was intended. In fact, a recent report by Jupiter Communications suggested 46% of users have left a preferred Web site because of a site-related problem. With NetMechanic’s HTML Toolbox or another site maintenance tool, all Webmasters, from the novice to the expert can avoid potential visitor disasters due to site errors.

Finding the best submission service

Selecting a search engine submission service requires careful thought and important decisions. Using an auto submission service is a good place to begin. Most search engines like Alta Vista, HotBot and InfoSeek automatically spider a site, index it and hopefully add it to their search database without any human involvement. Some engines, like Yahoo, are done completely with human review and for many reasons are best submitted individually. Chances are good also, that in the first submission a site will be rejected by several of the engines and will need to be individually resubmitted. There are several online resources for auto submissions. The best ones won’t submit a site to Yahoo where the customer is better served doing this on his own.

Understanding the waiting periods

A variety of waiting periods must be endured with each search engine before there is even a hope of being listed. Knowing and understanding these waiting periods before beginning the process can eliminate or at least minimize frustration and confusion. Typical waiting periods for some of the more popular engines are six months with Yahoo; one to two months with Lycos and 4-6 weeks with Excite or is that 4-6months? What they say and what happens in reality can be very different.

Ongoing promotion tasks:

To improve site rankings and increase understanding of the listing process, there are many tasks that can be done on a regular or semi-regular basis. Optimizing rankings within the search engines is also to help ensure that a site attracts the right traffic.
Some of the monthly and weekly promotion tasks are:

Crunching and examining log files

Data contained in log files is an excellent resource for identifying which engines are sending the majority of traffic to a site. It can also show which key words or gateway pages are generating the strongest traffic and what are those visitors doing when they enter the site.

Searching the Search Engines

Conduct a search of the search engines to analyze where the highest rankings of the site have materialized and what keywords are generating the best rankings. Different search engines use different rules to rank pages. Individual gateway pages should be created based on the knowledge and interpretation of what each search engine is using to determine top rankings. Several pages can be tested out on one or more engines and the pages that have the most success can be kept, while the unsuccessful pages can be dumped or revised to achieve a higher ranking.

Learning more about how the search engines work

Each search engine uses different rules to determine how well a Web page matches a particular query. As a result, building a single page that gets a good score in all the major engines is just about impossible. Learning how each engine ranks pages is also hard, since the engines often keep this information as a closely guarded secret. However, with a little patience, some experimentation and reverse engineering, the way that many of the search engines work can be discovered.

Resubmitting the site

For engines that reject a site or don’t list it high enough, it is strongly recommended that more information is learned about the engine’s criteria before resubmitting. This information should then be incorporated into gateway pages or key word revisions in order to have greater success with subsequent submissions. Fine tune the page (or pages) make adjustments to TITLE tags and META tags, then after resubmitting the site, track the results to further learn about the engine’s criteria and which adjustments made an impact on the rankings. Don’t be afraid to experiment, take some risks and gather data as you proceed.

Checking log files for traffic being directed to erroneous pages on the site

This is good news!! Don’t dump these pages or remove them from the search engine as most people will do when they redesign their site. Any page with a high ranking is of value. If a page is bringing traffic to a site, leave that page on the search engine, don’t change it but rather redirect the traffic to valid pages in the site.

Getting Noticed

For small to medium-sized Web sites, search engines are the most important source of traffic. Unfortunately, getting noticed in the search engines isn’t an easy job. A Web site manager can spend months getting a site listed in an engine, only to find it ranks 50th in their search results. It’s hard to give universal tips for improving search engine ranking because each engine has its own set of rules. In general, though, a page will rank well for a particular query if the search terms appear in the TITLE tag, the META tags, and in the body of the page.