what would be the impact on SEO of changing the text of the <h1> dynamically on the server side each time the web page loads?
I'm not talking about changing the whole text, just part of it, for example if the header contains some fixed text (with keywords of course), and also contains the current date or time/the current number of logged on users/the count of items current in stock/whatever.
how would that affect my ranking? is it bad? doesn't make a difference?
thanks.
i don't think that element you need should be H1, since semantically, H1 is most important heading on a page which can but shouldn't contain anything that isn't of crucial importance like that number of logged in users o time.
Personally, i would use H1 just for important heading which contains important keywords.
Otherwise, you can put wanted H1 and perhaps a Paragraph and put them in a DIV altogether for such purpose where paragraph contains content irrelevant to page and still harness the value of a H1 and content you want in virtually the same spot.
You can use dynamic text in H1, but you need to make sure that no duplicates is allowed. Its not recommended to have duplicate H1 across the site.
You can use dynamic text in H1, but make it a template based.
For Example: If you have categories in your shopping cart and want to display the name of the category in H1...follow a templated structure like
"category-name | Keyword or Company Name"
By doing so, you do not have duplicate tiles, and can achieve uniform structure across the site
Similarly for product pages
"category-name | product-name | Website Name or Company Name"
If you have a long titles with dates and numbers and query string, format in a way which can be read by users and searchbots, and remember the semantics
The fact that h1 tags affect SEO is far from being a myth, but with SEO evolving the way it is, it's becoming fairly useless. It's the same thing with meta information and such practices: after the Panda and Penguin, and other reforms Google is making right now, all SEO methods that are easy to abuse of are becoming less and less important for being ranked in Google. Back in the day people could rank at the top by repeating a keyword hundreds of times on a page, in the same way that properly written h1s ranked sites very well. We're far from those times now, Google is aware of the fact that people can abuse of these simple practices, so anything from h1 text, to meta, and even to backlinks, is taking less importance in search engines by the day.
Rather than focusing on h1s, which you shouldn't be putting much effort in, focus on writing good content, and on updating that content as frequenly as possible. Good luck :)
Related
I've got this grid (a list of products in an internet shop) for which I've no idea how big it can get. But I suppose a couple hundred items is quite realistic, especially for search results. Maybe even thousands, if we get a big client. :)
Naturally, I should use paging for such a grid. But how to do it so that search engine bots can crawl all the items too? I very much like this idea, but that only has first/last/prev/next links. If a search engine bot has to follow links 200 levels deep to get to the last page, I think it might give up pretty soon, and not enumerate all items.
What is the common(best?) practice for this?
Is it really the grid you want to have index by the search engine or are you afer a product detail page? If the last one is what you want, you can have a dynamic sitemap (XML) and the search engines will take it from there.
I run a number of price comparison sites and as such i've had the same issue as you before. I dont really have a concrete answer, i doubt anyone will have one tbh.
The trick is to try and make each page as unique as possible. The more unique pages, the better. Think of it as each page in google is a lottery ticket, the more tickets the more chances you have of winning.
So, back to your question. We tend to display 20 products per page and then have pagination at the bottom. AFAIK google and other bots will crawl all links on your site. They wouldnt give up. What we have noticed though is if your subsequent pages have the same SEO titles, H tags and is basically the same page but with different result sets then Google will NOT add the pages to the index.
Likewise i've looked at the site you suggested and would suggest changing the layout to be text and not images, an example of what i mean is on this site: http://www.shopexplorer.com/lcd-tv/index.html
Another point to remember is the more images etc... on the page the longer the page will take to load the worse your UI will be. I've also heard it affects quality on SEO ranking algorithms.
Not sure if i've given you enough to go on, but to recap:
i would limit the results to 20-30
I would use pagination but i would use text and not images
i would make sure the paginated pages have distinct enough 'SEO markers' [ title, h1 etc.. ] to be a unique page.
i.e.
LCD TV results page 2 > is bad
LCD TV results from Sony to Samsung > Better
Hopefully i've helped a little
EDIT:
Vlix, i've also seen your question ref: sitemaps. If you're concerned with that, i wouldnt be, then split the feed into multiple seperate feeds. Maybe on a category level, brand level etc... I'm not sure but i think google would want as many pages as possible. It will ignore the ones it doesnt like and just add the unique ones.
That at least, is how i understand it.
SEO is a dark art - nobody will be able to tell you exactly what to do and how to do it. However, I do have some general pointers.
Pleun is right - your objective should be to get the robots to your product detail page - that's likely to be the most keyword-rich, so optimize this page as much as you can! Semantic HTML, don't use images to show text, the usual.
Construct meaningful navigation schemes to lead the robots (and your visitors!) to your product detail pages. So, if you have 150K products, let's hope they are grouped into some kind of hierarchy, and that each (sub)category in that hierarchy has a managable (<50 or so) number of products. If your users have to go through lots and lots of pages in a single category to find the product they're interested in, they're likely to get bored and leave. Make this categorization into a navigation scheme, and make it SEO friendly - e.g. by using friendly URLs.
Create a sitemap - robots will crawl the entire sitemap, though they may not decide to pay much attention to pages that are hard to reach through "normal" navigation, even if they are in the sitemap.xml.
Most robots don't parse more than the first 50-100K of HTML. If your navigation scheme (with a data grid) is too big, the robot won't necessarily pick up or follow links at the end.
Hope this helps!
Currently I have a site developed in cakephp that has the following type of URL's:
http://www.travelenvogue.com/clubs/page/accommodations/1-Ritz_Carlton_Club_Bachelor_Gulch
I have heard that because our most valuable keywords "Ritz Carlton Club Bachelor Gulch" are so far to the right of the beginning of the URL that they may not be helping us for SEO purposes. My first question is if this is accurate?
Secondly, my programmer told me he could change it for less time/money to:
Ex:travelenvogue.xxx/1-Ritz_Carlton_Club_Bachelor_Gulch/accommodations
(with the 1 before the keywords)
or (for more significantly more time/money) to:
Ex:travelenvogue.xxx/Ritz_Carlton_Club_Bachelor_Gulch/accommodations
Is the URL without the 1 in front of the keywords much more helpful than the one with the 1 in front of the keywords.
Any help is appreciated, I'm so confused! :)
The problem with rewriting the urls in backwards order like this is that it makes less sense to humans, especially since CakePHP's pretty-url structure is designed to conform to the accepted informal standard.
Here are Google's own recommendations: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=76329&hl=en
A site's URL structure should be as simple as possible. Consider organizing your content so that URLs are constructed logically and in a manner that is most intelligible to humans (when possible, readable words rather than long ID numbers). For example, if you're searching for information about aviation, a URL like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation will help you decide whether to click that link. A URL like http://www.example.com/index.php?id_sezione=360&sid=3a5ebc944f41daa6f849f730f1, is much less appealing to users.
The thing to remember is that Google are good at picking up keywords from your URLs and from your pages. So long as your pages and URLs follow a semantic, logical structure, there is very little to worry about.
Edit: As an addendum to the above - the 1 is redundant as far as both users and search engines are concerned, since it doesn't add any keyword value and is apparently some kind of identifier. It's the sort of thing that should be separated from the keywords somehow (usually by using a directory structure - http://example.com/accommodations/1/hotel-name ). Probably too late to change it now if it's a mature app, though. It would be better if it were a real keyword, say a particular country name or a location group or similar.
Yes it is right. More your main keyword close to the root folder more points it will get in Search engine.
This is not the only SEO thing.
in On page optimisation. your main keyword must be present in following.
Page title
H1 Tag
URL(in domain if possible)
In Image alt tag)
in Links on your home page.
meta keywords and description. (still some search count it)
first sentence of each paragraph
end of page.
you keyword must be sparse 20% in the whole page content in different places.
on off page optimisation, How popular you site with your keyword is on other sites.
Generally, there is more SEO weight for the page higher in the site hierarchy. For example, in order from good to bad.
www.mysite.com/page1
www.mysite.com/sub/page2
www.mysite.com/sub/sub/page3
Exactly how much weight depends the search engine. But keep in mind there are other factors.
In my opinion, the 1 before the title would not hurt you any more or less than the other example.
I will say the best would be: travelenvogue.com/1-Ritz_Carlton_Club_Bachelor_Gulch
In the end, SEO can be a bit of black magic. That is to say this particular optimization doesn't mean your page will appear ahead of another page that is under several sub directories. So you will have to decide time and budget.
I run an online shop and I wonder what would be more SEO-friendly URL for a product page:
a) domain.com/category-name/product-name OR
b) domain.com/product-name
I already have URL-s for product category pages with format domain.com/category-name.
On one hand I heard (but cannot find proof for) that Google like tree hierarchies in URL (vote for "a"). On the other hand though longer URL could lead to smaller kewyord density, also "product_name" comes as the last URL part so probably the least important (vote for "b"). Maybe both options are equally SEO-effective?
PS. I know about canonical URL's but this is not the case, I don't want/need both URL's formats, just want to choose the best.
In my opinion, category-name/product-name might drive more traffic compared to just product-name. Because former one has the advantage of two keywords, while the later just has one.
But, it may affect the results when user just searches for product-name. Because search engines will prefer the keyword which comes very first in the url. In this case, product-name will defeat category-name/product-name.
So, it depends on the product and category you are going to use. How the users will address the product. simply the product or always with the category name. Just do a little keyword research and decide which one to go with.
In a client case of mine, including both category and product name in the URL rendered much better SEO results. I have no empiric references, though. The keyword density landed on about 9-11 %.
smaller url are better. hard to manage as links grows.
so if you can do domain.com/product-name
nothing beats it. and it looks great on search result.
A sites URL structure should be as simple as possible:
Google Webmaster Central Advice on URL structure
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=76329
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html
Google does highlight the search terms if they appear in the URL.
In Googles words:
"While static URLs might have a slight advantage in terms of clickthrough rates because users can easily read the urls, the decision to use database-driven websites does not imply a significant disadvantage in terms of indexing and ranking."
As https://stackoverflow.com/users/290503/iamgopal stated. Smaller is better. More important if you use the category and at a later time you decide to put your product in another category you have changed the url. Which is not good even if you redirect.
We actually removed all categories from our url's (8 million products or so) to make re-categorization easier. We haven't noticed a significant drop in ranking after the redirect effect wore off.
If I name my HTML file "Banks.html" located at www.example.com/Banks.html, but all the content is about Cats and all my other SEO tags are about Cats on the page, will it affect my page's SEO?
Can you name your files whatever you want, as long as you have the page title, description, and the rest of the SEO done properly?
Page names are often not very representative of the page content (I've seen pages named 7d57As09). Therefore search engines are not going to be particularly upset if the page names appear misleading. However, it's likely that the page name is one of many factors a search engine considers.
If there's no disadvantage in naming a page about cats, "cats.html", then do so! If it doesn't help your SEO, it will make it easier for your visitors!
If you want to be on better place when someone searchs for 'banks', then yes, it can help you. But unless you are creating pages about cats in banks I'm sure that this wont help you very much :)
It shouldn't affect your search engine ranking, but it may influence people who, having completed a search on Google (or some of the other great search engines, like um...uh...), are now scanning the results to decide where to click first. Someone faced with a url like www.dummy.com/banks.html would be more likely to click than someone faced with www.dummy.com/default.php?p_id=1&sessid=876492u942fgspw24z because most people haven't a clue what the last part means. It's also more memorable and gives people greater faith in getting back to the same site if you write your URLs nicely. No one that isn't Dustin Hoffman can remember the second URL without a little intense memory training, while everyone can remember banks.html. Just make sure your URL generation is consistent and your rewriting is solid, so you don't end up with loads of page not found errors which can detriment search engine ranking.
Ideally, your page name should be relevant to the content of the page - so your ranking may improve if you call the page "cats.html", as that is effectively another occurrence of the keyword in the page.
Generally, this is fairly minor compared to the benefits of decent keywords, titles, etc on the page. For more information take a look at articles around Url Strategy, for example:
"I’ve heard that search engines give some weighting to pages which contain keywords users are searching for which are contained within the page URL?"
Naming your pages something meaningful is a good idea and does improve SEO. It's another hint to the search engines what the page is about, in addition to the title and content. You would be surprised if you opened a file on your computer called "Letter to Grandma.doc" and it was actually your tax return!
In general, the best URLs are those that simply give a page name and hierarchical structure, without extensions or ID numbers. Keep it lowercase and separate words with dashes, like this:
example.com/my-cats
or
example.com/cats/mittens
In your case you will probably wanna keep the .html extension to avoid complexities with URL rewriting.
Under circumstances this can be considered a black-hat SEO technique. Watch out not to be caught or reported by curious users.
Google's PageRank algo has hundreds, thousands or even millions of variables and factors. From this point of view, you can be sure that the name of the files that you use on your website will affect your pagerank and/or your keyword targeting. Think about it.
There are few on-page elements that have significance. The URL, while it can be /234989782 is going to be more beneficial if it's named relevantly.
From any point of view, Google and all search engines like to see a coherence between everything: if you have a page named XYZ, then google will like it better if the text, meta, images, url, documents, etc, on the page to have XYZ in them. The bigger this synchronisation between the different elements on a page, the more the search engine sees how focused the content of that page is, resulting in more hits for you when someone looks up that focused search term.
If you have an image for example, you're better off having the same:
caption
description
name
alt text
(wordpress users will recognize that these are the four parameters that can be set for images on wordpress).
The same goes for all files you have on your website. Any parameter that can be seen by a search engine is better of optimized in regards to the content that goes with it, in sync with all the other parameters of this same thing.
The question of how useful this all is arises afterwards. Will I really rank lower if my alt text is different than the name of my image? Probably not by a lot. But either way, taking advantage of small subtleties like these can take you a long way in SEO. There are so many things we can't control in SEO (or that we shouldn't be able to control, like backlinks), that we have to use what we can control in the best way possible, to compensate.
It's also hard to tell if it is all useful after the Google Panda and Penguin. It definitely has less of an impact ever since those reforms (back then, this kind of thing was crucial), the question is simply how much of an impact it still has. But all in all, as I said, whenever possible, name your files according to your content.
Today algorithm is totally different when the SEO was introduce. The seo today is about content and its quality. It must produce a good reader and follower so any filename and description are no longer important.
Page name doesn't affects much in terms of SEO. but naming a page is also one of the Google 200 SEO signals.
Naming a url different sure will reduce your bounce rate a little. Because any user comes to your site through organic search results doesn't understand what the page has.
Even search engines loves when a page name is relevant to the topic in the page.
We've got Ultraseek 5.7 indexing the content on our corporate intranet site, and we'd like to make sure our web pages are being optimized for it.
Which SEO techniques are useful for Ultraseek, and where can I find documentation about these features?
Features I've considered implementing:
Make the title and first H1 contain the most valuable information about the page
Implement a sitemap.xml file
Ping the Ultraseek xpa interface when new content is added
Use "SEO-Friendly" URL strings
Add Meta keywords to the HTML pages.
The most important bit of advice anyone can get when optimizing a website for search engines and indeed for tools like Ultraseek is this...
Write your web pages for your human audience first and foremost. Don't do anything odd to try and optimize your website for a search engine. Don't stuff keywords into your URL if it makes the URL less sensible. Think human first.
Having said this, the following techniques usually make things better for both the humans and the machines!
Use headings (h1 through h6) to give your page a structure. Imagine them being arranged in a tree view, with a h1 containing some h2 tags and h2 tags containing h3 tags and so on. I usually use the h1 tag (there should be only one h1 tag) for the site name and the h2 tag for the page name, with h3 tags as sub-headings where appropriate.
Sitemaps are very useful as they contain a list of your pages, consider this a request of pages you would like included in any index. They don't normally contain much context though.
Friendly URL strings are great for humans. I'd much rather visit www.website.com/Category/Music/ than www.website.com?x=3489 - it does also mean that you give the machines some more context for your page. It especially helps if the URL matches your h1 and h2 tags. Like this:
www.website.com/Category/Music/
Website
Category: Music
Welcome to the music category!
Meta keywords (and description) are useful - but as per the above advice, you need to make sure that it all matches up. Use a small but targeted set of keywords that highlight what is specifically different about the page and make sure your description is a good summary of the page content. Imagine that it is used beneath the title in a list of search results (even though it might not be!)
Navigation! Providing clear navigation, as well as back links (such as bread-crumbs) will always help. If someone clicks on a search result, it might not be the exact page they are after, but it may well be very close. By highlighting where people have landed in your navigation and by providing a bread-crumb that tells them where they are, they will be able to traverse your pages easily even if the search hasn't taken them to the perfect location.