A breakdown of this session

Mikkel deMib Svendsen – deMib.com

• Problems, Options and Solutions
• Problem: some pages are just not accessible to spiders. Happens with dynamic sites often.
• IRTA: Indexing, ranking, traffic, actions (get the visitors to take action)
  • Dynamic problems: indexing – a lot of barriers
  • Ranking – dynamic – can potentially outrank static sites
  • Traffic – not much difference
  • Actions – limited role
• Dynamic Website Architecture
  • Request for page, server goes into DB, requests content (includes, variables, etc..
  • Returns final page to user
  • Problem: complexity of what happens in back end
  • Solution: bridge between front and back end, translate what goes on in back end to front end
  • Use a URL rewrite engine: complex URL — rewrite to Simple URL – don’t have to pass on all this complex information to front end
  • Static replication: can be done in real time
• Search engines will not query your database… need to find info through navigating through links
• ? mark is not a problem. Easy way to identify a template based dynamic web page. One file can serve up many different types of content
• SSI (server side includes) not a problem as well
• Extension names not a problem – .asp, .jsp, .cfm
• Directly Related Issues
• Long, ugly URL’s
  • Duplicate content, session IDs, click IDs, time stamped URLs
• Indirectly Related Issues
• • Required support of cookies, javascript, flash
  • GEO targeting and personalization
• Issues not related at all
• • Robots.txt and meta-robots
  • Password encryption
• Soutions that work
  • Fix content
  • Add a bridge
  • Replicate content that is in a better format
  • Remove parameters, put to database table on backend, with other url that ref. that table (R=35) now you’re only passing one parameter instead of 55
  • Do not serve Session ID’s to spiders
  • Make some static pages
  • Create a sitemap, guide the search engines

Laura Thieme – Biz Research President

• Most important – getting crucial pages indexed
• Basic vs. advanced optimization
• Timing – how long does it take?
• External Factors
• URL structure – no more than 3 variables in sites, will make it difficult to get indexed
• Spider Activity – net tracker
• Determine target terms – trying to overcome technology, resource and political challenges
• Do not need static pages to rank
• Home page titles really matter
• • Usually within 6 months
• Category page titles matter as well
• • Add target terms to title
  • Research wordtracker data
• Optimization – titles, headings, links etc…
• Don’t overoptimize titles
• External Factors
• • Is the CMS keeping you from getting indexed?
  • Research CMS system
• Position Tech – optimize a data feed to Yahoo data feed, Froogle
• Keep up on your site search engine (internal), check the version
• Soft 404’s can be a problem
• Keyword embed URLs, don’t forget 301’s, be willing to lose rank at first

Jake Baillie – STN Labs

• Multiple paths to sme solution can create problems, must have URL appear the same when you get to the final path
• Block print friendly pages from search engines (same content, duplicate)
• Pick an index format and be consistant
• DNS, domains pointing to one home page… registrars redirection not doing it right, doing it in DNS instead of webserver.
• Do not use cloaking scripts
• Avoid duplicate content
• Image service – ebay stealing images
  • Use mod rewrite rule serve another image
  • Swap RegEx
  • Can do A/B testing with mod rewrites