Thread

I’ve just setup a sitemap for my sites and obviously would like to max out my SEO. I have a couple questions that I figured I’d ask for some professional opinions.

*I currently have my site setup using numerical values for entries rather than the title. For example, I might have http://www.mysite/blogs/details/9899 vs www.mysite/blogs/details/entry-with-a-title. Does this really hurt search engine friendliness?

*If the answer to the above question is yes, would it be worth my while re-do all my entry s and recreate my sitemap with the title entries even though the site has over a year of being searched (w/o a sitemap) with the entries mapped as numerals? Right now we are a ‘3rd or 4th page’ type of site on search engine results pages so there’s obviously room for improvement.

*If the answer to the question above is yes, what variable do I change in EE to make the sites handle the entries with the text url variable?

*How much of a difference does consistency in the small variables like having www or not or having a trailing backslash or no matter to SEO?

*If the answer to the above questions is “a lot” what can I do to make sure that everything is consistent both on my end and on the search engines.

Hi Mike,

I currently have my site setup using numerical values for entries rather than the title. For example, I might have http://www.mysite/blogs/details/9899 vs www.mysite/blogs/details/entry-with-a-title. Does this really hurt search engine friendliness?

Keywords in the URL are a factor for SEO.  Check out http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors.

If the answer to the above question is yes, would it be worth my while re-do all my entry s and recreate my sitemap with the title entries even though the site has over a year of being searched (w/o a sitemap) with the entries mapped as numerals?

Considering that these pages have been around for over a year, you wouldn’t want to change the URLs without doing 301 redirects from the old numerical URL to the new SEF (search engine friendly) URL telling search engine spiders that the pages have moved (permanently).  Without the redirects, your old numerical URL pages will just return 404 not found, and would lose whatever rankings and inbound links they may have previously had.

Depending on how many pages you currently have indexed, redirecting all those pages may be daunting…

If the answer to the question above is yes, what variable do I change in EE to make the sites handle the entries with the text url variable?

I’m pretty much a noob with EE at the moment as we’re just working on our first EE client site, so I’ll leave this one for the experts…  😉

How much of a difference does consistency in the small variables like having www or not or having a trailing backslash or no matter to SEO?

Using www versus non-www URLs (or trailing backslash, or using http://www.domain.com/index.html) results in what is referred to as URL canonicalization, where the search engine has to choose which URL to show in the results:

http://www.domain.com
domain.com
http://www.domain.com/index.html
domain.com/index.html
etc

These are all technically different URLs, and can result in some issues—particularly with splitting any link juice you may receive from your inbound links.  For example, let’s say you have 100 links to your homepage, evenly split between the URLs in my example above—so 25 links to each URL.  The “link juice” you get may be “diluted” in this situation.

Frankly, I haven’t been keeping up to date with this issue, so I don’t know how big a deal it is now.  When we build websites, we generally consider it good practice to take care of these issues from the beginning.

More info re: www vs non-www at http://forums.seochat.com/showthread.php?p=130468#SEO16.  Also see http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/canonicalization-update/.

If the answer to the above questions is “a lot” what can I do to make sure that everything is consistent both on my end and on the search engines.

You can use redirects (more details at link above).  Additionally, I’d recommend that you sign up for a free Google Webmaster Tools account as well (if you don’t have one already).  You can set your preference for Google to display www or non-www there…

If you’re wondering which is better to use from an SEO perspective (www or non-www), it doesn’t matter.  The key is to just be consistent with whichever you choose.

Hope that helps!

Cheers,
John

WOW. Thanks for the detailed response. That means I would have a TON of work to do to make my site SEF.

For one, I’ve got several thousand entries that are using the numeric values. To have to manually redirect these would be something I’d probably need to outsource. Does anyone know of a possible way to automate this process?

I think if I didn’t do the redirects but set up the site to use the SEF urls they would still connect correctly and wouldn’t show the 404 as you say but they would certainly dilute the “link juice.”

I will probably be shot for this, but I consider much of the energy and money which goes to “SEO” and “SEF” to be in vain. This is probably due to my having been active on the net since 1994 and a publisher since 1995. I have seen vast amounts of theories, experts and snake oil…..and we can NEVER underestimate the power that the creation of a multi-million dollar industry (SEO) creates.

I just typed into google ‘reviews of LG televisions” and got these urls as the top two:
http://www.cnet.com.au/tvs/lcd/0,239035307,240091646,00.htm
reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-tvs/lg-du-42lz30/4505-6482_7-31263307.html

Strangely enough, the properly named URLS were below that.

First, let me debunk the whole idea of “general” SEO. In todays world, you are worried about one thing - Google! That is my opinion, of course, but borne out by experience and stats. See enclosed - my site is a general subject and should reflect a lot of others.

Anyone who thinks they are “experts” in googles technology are, IMHO, full of it. If it were so easy, we’d see 100’s of competitors to google.

Anyway, my basic advice is this. You have a limited amount of time and money. Google, in general, will rank your pages by the quality of content and incoming and outgoing links. Time spent on improving your content will ace time spent on redirecting URLs.

BTW, the old version of this software, Pmachine, used numerical urls and I did just fine with them. Forum topics on EE are also numerical and they come up just fine in google.

I would suggest paying attention to TITLES as well as page content. URLS are nice for YOU to keep track of that is there…in some cases, so that is a plus for URLs with words. Perhaps change and redirect your main section or main page (pages with a lot of links) URLS if you want to spend time doing it.

But, in the end, I would throw out all the ideas about link juice and concentrate on building the best site you can build.

Thank you. Great post and something that I’ve observed for some time. I actually noticed it first on all the major news sites 6-7 years ago when they all had nonsensical alphanumeric URLs yet were still always at or near the top of searches. They are still not REALLY all that pretty with their URLs and you’d think they would have both the time, money and developers to do the URLs with words if it really mattered.

Still interested to hear others thoughts…

I will probably be shot for this, but I consider much of the energy and money which goes to “SEO” and “SEF” to be in vain.

(...snip!...)

Anyway, my basic advice is this. You have a limited amount of time and money. Google, in general, will rank your pages by the quality of content and incoming and outgoing links. Time spent on improving your content will ace time spent on redirecting URLs.

LOL.  Craig, I hear ya on that.  I guess I should have said that in the grand scheme of things, SEF URLs and dealing with redirects are not gonna give you the most bang for your buck.  Particularly with the thousands of pages Mike’s got on his site.

With that being said, building a site with SEF URLs from the start will make a difference in a competitive market, all other things (inbound link quality and quantity, content and code optimization, etc) being equal.

So Mike, don’t waste your time on the URLs.  Just keep that in mind when you’re building your next site…  😉

Cheers,
John

Got it! Thanks for the clarification. And just in time too. I had JUST hired a freelancer to redo all URLs. Actually had money in their escrow all set to go. I’ve since called it off and have him doing another job instead. Thanks again to both of you.

Amen. My thoughts mirror this. There’s a lot more SEO snake oil for sale on the web and it’s been that way for years.

I will probably be shot for this, but I consider much of the energy and money which goes to “SEO” and “SEF” to be in vain. This is probably due to my having been active on the net since 1994 and a publisher since 1995. I have seen vast amounts of theories, experts and snake oil…..and we can NEVER underestimate the power that the creation of a multi-million dollar industry (SEO) creates.

What I seldom see anywhere is a healthy list of Things To Do For Better SEO, that, once done, actually improve SE numbers, ranking, and, more important than anything, more page views.

I just typed into google ‘reviews of LG televisions” and got these urls as the top two:
http://www.cnet.com.au/tvs/lcd/0,239035307,240091646,00.htm
reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-tvs/lg-du-42lz30/4505-6482_7-31263307.html

Strangely enough, the properly named URLS were below that.

A perfect example where “density” doesn’t seem to matter much depending on the key words used in the search.

First, let me debunk the whole idea of “general” SEO. In todays world, you are worried about one thing - Google! That is my opinion, of course, but borne out by experience and stats. See enclosed - my site is a general subject and should reflect a lot of others.

Anyone who thinks they are “experts” in googles technology are, IMHO, full of it. If it were so easy, we’d see 100’s of competitors to google.

Exactly, the proof is in the taste of the pudding. Most of the sites I manage get the vast majority of search engine hits from Google. Yahoo! is a pale second at less than 10% of Google’s numbers. Microsoft is further down the list. All others are outrageously anemic compared to Google results.

What seems to make a difference with Google? My basics (not necessarily in order of importance):

1 - Fresh, regularly updated, original content, relevant to the whole site

2 - Other sites with decent Google Page Rank that link to the content on your site

3 - Keyword density (keywords, keywords in the URL string, which match keywords in the body of content)

IMHO, after doing it for a dozen years, that’s about it.

Anyway, my basic advice is this. You have a limited amount of time and money. Google, in general, will rank your pages by the quality of content and incoming and outgoing links. Time spent on improving your content will ace time spent on redirecting URLs.

Ditto. What he said. A site with relevant, updated content, that is linked to by other ranked sites, will fare better with relevant keywords. Most of the rest of the effort is mumbo jumbo.

BTW, the old version of this software, Pmachine, used numerical urls and I did just fine with them. Forum topics on EE are also numerical and they come up just fine in google.

That’s been my experience, too.

I would suggest paying attention to TITLES as well as page content. URLS are nice for YOU to keep track of that is there…in some cases, so that is a plus for URLs with words. Perhaps change and redirect your main section or main page (pages with a lot of links) URLS if you want to spend time doing it.

Also in agreement. In fact, on some sites I create a Title that works (not always possible to embed keywords or other density tricks in the title), but expand the URL string to include more keywords from the content.

But, in the end, I would throw out all the ideas about link juice and concentrate on building the best site you can build.

It does seem that if all those SEO tools and options actually worked that there would be a way to determine which work well, and which don’t, no?