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Sunday, May 31, 2009

How to Optimize Dynamic Websites for Better Search Engine Rankings

There is a misconception related to dynamic websites that dynamic websites are not search engine friendly or they can’t have good positions in major search engines. This is absolutely wrong, dynamic websites can have better and more controlled positions in search engines comparatively than static websites.

What is a dynamic website?

A dynamic website is database driven website in which parts of the content are generated by Server Side Programs/ Middle Tier.
Dynamic webpage doesn’t physically exist as a file/document on (hosting) server, unless the request comes for a webpage. The request contains parameters, user identities, date & time, context etc.

Problems with Dynamic Websites according to Search Engines

This is true that search engines are not good at reading dynamic web pages, but there is always a solution for any problem, first you need to understand that why search engines are unable to read dynamically generated websites? What hurts them not to read dynamic web pages?

Dynamic webpage doesn’t physically exit on server
Dynamic website has complex URLs such as “ http://www.wahidqazi.com?name=value&blabla%blabla@session_id@2226897&blabla=77
Search engine bots/crawlers usually have difficulty in reading these characters “?”, “=”, “@”, “%”, “$”, “*”, “&”, “!” in URLs
Search engine usually considers dynamic website as group of never ending links
Search engine bots/crawlers might get stuck in an infinite loop, specially if the dynamic webpage has session id

Tips to Optimize Dynamic Websites

Now you know what hurts search engine bots/crawlers to index your website? What you need to know is that how you can keep your valuable website indexed by search engines, the more your web pages are indexed the better your website will impress search engines

Create an HTML sitemap with 100 text links or less. If you have more than 100 links, break the sitemap into more than one web pages
Google Sitemap will also be an advantage, specially if your website is big and dynamic
Get inbound links deep into your website from other relevant websites such as directories, classified directories, vertical industrial portals
Convert dynamic web pages into static web pages with the help of URL re-writing techniques
You can use some plug-in applications that will change your existing dynamic URLs into static ones, specially for shopping carts there are plenty of applications available
Avoid using session IDs in the URL, specially when user has not logged in
If you do need to include parameters, limit it to two and limit the number of characters per parameter to ten or less
If you do have small dynamic website and enough time you can apply this technique. Just right click on page by page of you website, copy the source code and create new static page with .htm or .html extensions

URL Rewriting Techniques and Tools

A rewrite engine is a piece of web server software application that is used to modify URLs before fetching the requested items for a variety of purposes.

Rewrite Engine for Apache HTTP server:

Apache HTTP server has a rewrite engine called mod_rewrite, which has been described as “the Swiss Army knife of URL manipulation”

Rewrite engines for Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS):

IISRewrite from Qwerksoft
ISAPI_Rewrite from isapirewrite.com
URL Replacer from Motobit
Ionic’s ISAPI Rewrite Filter (IIRF) (open source) from Ionic Shade

Rewrite HttpModule for Microsoft ASP.NET:

URLRewriting.NET

Rewrite engine for Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) Servlet container servers:

Apache Tomcat, Resin, Orion etc)
HttpRedirectFilter (open source)
UrlRewriteFilter (open source) - allows you to rewrite URLs before they get to your Servlets, JSP’s, Struts etc
URL Rewriter (open source - LGPL) - URL Rewriter is a tool for rewriting URLs in Java Servlets. It is similar to mod_rewrite

Conclusion:

Dynamic websites are not impossible to optimize, it’s just a small fine tune that you need to keep in mind when developing a dynamic website, if you can understand the problems search engine bots/ crawlers have to face when crawling your website, you can better prepare your website, so that search engine bots/crawlers can easily index your valuable website.

About The Author

Wahid Qazi is a Research Analyst, eBusiness and eMarketing Consultant, SEO Consultant, SEO Trainer, SEO Speaker and Author, specializes in eBusiness, eMarketing, SEO, branding and promotion and has trained dozens of qualified SEOs. He is a Professional SEO Consultant can be reached at http://www.wahidqazi.com/

How Effective are Your Title Tags?

Here is an easy method for testing title tag effectiveness - or how sexy your title tag is to searchers. Using this method you can easily estimate the CTR of your title tags.

First get a title tag indexed and showing in the SERPs. Then start an adwords campaign, bidding high enough to stay on the first page for your target search term - and have a budget high enough so that your adds will not slow or go over budget. It’s also important to use “exact match” for your keyword. Let this run for a couple of days - or shorter if there are lots of searches for your term. Your goal is to find out how many impressions that search term generates.

After you have the impressions data, then run your log analysis software to see how many referrals came from google for that search term and time frame. Then use this formula….

CTR = google referrals for term / adwords impressions for term

This formula estimates the CTR for your title tag. Now change your title tag and see if you can improve the CTR.

Don’t blindly use that same old title tag when testing its effectiveness is so easy to do.

Footnote: The method above assumes constant google SERPs and constant title tags on competitor websites.

SEO Campaigns that Ruin Rankings?

A popular thread at HighRankings started by the owner of Gamer’s Corner (who was right to seek SEO help) shows, in detail, how a poor quality SEO firm has “optimized” a website. They primarily changed the meta-tags (yeah, I know) and the title tags of the site’s pages and it seems the SEs did not appreciate the new “over-optimized” pages and promptly dropped their rankings.

I particularly love this e-mail from the SEO company:

Hello I inform you that as the search enngine crwals the site also crawls depending upon the traffic generated. Its not your site there are thousands of sites crawl every day so this fluctation arises. It will almost take 90 to 120 days to get listed in major search engines according to the rules of search engines. I assure you once again that kindly be patience your site will be listed in search engines dont get panic.

There’s a lot of good advice in the thread form HighRankings members, but what I take away from it, more than anything else, is how ignorant much of the site-owning population is about SEO. It would be great if a few media publications could help to clear things up with some high profile articles on what does and doesn’t help/hurt in the SEs.

And the Perfect Title Tag is…

Thanks to Michael (Graywolf) for his exceptional effort to bring us the answer to a vexing question - what is the “best” possible title tag:

From his research, it’s - “keyword phrase” : site title

That would have been my guess as well, but I’m glad to see it confirmed (with some wiggle room). Of course, the SEs could always change the algo on us, but this format makes the best sense - it tells you what the page is about and who’s bringing it to you - the exact format a human could get the best data from.

Formatting the Title Tag

Back to the basics for a minute - let’s talk about how to create the ideal title tag. There are several best practices that, in my opinion, make a big difference for the major effects you’re shooting for in title tag optimization (CTR in the SERPs, rankings at the search engines and value to users as navigational data).

In the simplest situation, you’ve got 3 pieces of data to convey:

* Company or Website name (for branding and ID purposes)
* Location in site architecture (if on a non-landing specific page)
* Keyword term or phrase targeted for search traffic

There are several ways to put this information together. Examples are probably the best way to show this:

1. SEO | SEM | Articles >> Beginner’s Guide to SEO
2. Beginner’s Guide to SEO | SEO | SEM Articles
3. Articles >> Beginner’s Guide to SEO from SEO | SEM
4. SEO | SEM | Beginner’s Guide to SEO
5. SEO Beginner’s Guide

In most situations where you have or are attempting to build a long-term brand online, configuration #1 is preferable - it accomplishes all of the goals sucessfully. However, certain situations demand more attention to keyword usage, or don’t require navigational structure, in which case, #2 or #4 might be options. If you need to be “ultra-optimized” (mostly for Yahoo! or MSN purposes), #5 is also a choice.

What to avoid:

1. SEO | Beginner’s Guide to SEO from the SEO experts at SEO | SEM
2. Beginner’s Guide to SEO where you’ll learn all the basics about the subject from industry leaders at SEO | SEM
3. ||>>|| SEO | SEM ||<<|| Beginner’s Guide to SEO

#1 - No need to run on and sound unnatural. #2 will never be seen or read and run-on titles appear highly unprofessional. #3 may look like it stands out in the SERPs, but Google and the other engines have been cracking down on overuse of non-letter characters, even those characters they would normally display.

If you’re dealing with the need to optimize for multiple terms/phrases on a page, the best thing you can do is to cleverly combine them in a phrase or short sentence. Using comma separation is a surefire way to look spammy. For example:

* Cellphones, ringtones, Nokia
Cellworld | Covering the cellphone world from ringtones to Nokia
* Glass art, glassblowing, Dale Chihuly
Glas.com | The art of glassblowing & glass art from masters like Dale Chihuly
* Dell, Gateway, Compaq, Lenovo
CPUStyle | Machine comparisons from Dell, Gateway, Compaq, Lenovo & more

I know I just broke the comma rule, but since it makes sense and fits logically…

The important point to remember is that the evolution of search technology means that its less and less important to make the targeted KW first in the title tag or repeat it multiple times or avoid too much additional text. What’s good for the visitor is, largely, what’s good for the engines.

Be Wary of How the Engines Use your Title and Meta Description Tags

Check out this stellar example of how the major search engines display results for Netflix’s home page.

netflix-title-serps

We see a high level of variation because while Ask & Google use the title and meta description directly from Netflix, Yahoo! and MSN are pulling data from the Yahoo! directory and DMOZ (respectively). I’d bet $50 that Netflix could get a 20%+ boost in their CTR at MSN simply by using the NOODP tag?

Currently, there’s no way to opt out of the Yahoo! directory listing. We’ve been trying to do it with one client for almost two years, but they won’t throw us out even when we don’t pay our dues! Someone at Yahoo! needs to fix that issue.

As search engines start to use metrics like CTR in the SERPs, you might lose more than just eyeballs - you’ll slide in rankings to boot. Here’s the strategy I’d recommend - look at your top 20-100 search referral phrases for the year, then search for each of them at the major engines. Note not just where you rank, but how well your “ad” (after all, what is a meta description tag if not ad copy) is written. Just as you constantly tweak and refine copy in your PPC listings, so too should you apply that same logic to the natural SERPs. You’ll probably find a far greater rate of return.

Title Tag Showdown

In Rebecca’s Fresh Egg Internship experience, she mentioned a disagreement that Ammon Johns (Internet Marketing legend and someone I consider a mentor) and I have on the issue of brand names in title tags. The dispute centers around how a company’s brand name should be used in their title tags:

Ammon’s Strategy - Put the brand name first in the title tag of the home page, but at the end of the title tag on any interior pages. Thus, Amazon.com’s title tags might read: “Sony 46″ Bravia Televisions - Amazon.com”

Rand’s Strategy - If it’s a short brand name (not “Washington Mutual Bank” for example), always have the brand name preceed the content. So, in my view, Amazon’s title tag would read - “Amazon.com - Sony 46″ Bravia Televisions”

It seems like a small area to have a debate about, but both sides bring up good points.

Ammon’s Strengths:

You can fit more keywords into the visible portion of the title tag
Users only read the first few words of a title tag and are searching for information about a subject/product/etc, not a brand
Bookmark usability is far higher with descriptive title tags rather than brand-first tags

Rand’s Strengths:

The brand at the beginning serves to help remind the user of where they’re going and who’s providing the service - yeah, it’s beating them on the head a bit to have it on every page, but branding is an exposure-based system. Note the studies that say most TV ads have no recall until they’ve been viewed 7 or more times…
Having the brand first in the SERPs can make a user who knows/loves your brand choose you over results that may rank above you - think of the times you search for a product and see a C|Net review or an Epicurious recipe. Assuming those are brands you like, you’re far more inclined to click them than a dodgy brand/URL you’ve never seen before. Brands carry inherent trust.
Even if users don’t click you in the SERPs, seeing your brand front and center dozens of times over many searches will show them that you’re a strong brand, and brand recognition will follow. Sites like Expedia, Craigslist, Epinions and even, I’d argue, SEOmoz, have built brand recognition in this way.

For my caveat, I’d probably not put the brand name first in several of the clients Ammon was working on. I’d conceed the point that it’s not as valuable in many areas - just look at the title tags for our client, Avatar.

What’s your verdict? Is there a hard and fast rule? Should I be won over by Ammon’s years of experience and multiple strong points?

p.s. Somehow, I forgot to mention that Ammon is talking about this very same topic on the Fresh Egg Blog… Thanks to Kevgibbo for the reminder.