July 16, 2009

Zobrist Offers Search Friendly URL Service for IBM Websphere Commerce Customers

E-commerce sites are prone to be developed by systems that employ dynamic URLs. You know, those long URLs with numbers and gobbledy gook. Now, Zobrist Consulting is offering a SEO friendly service for customers of IBM Websphere Commerce.

One of their customers is The North Face. An example of how Zobrist's service works can be found on the Jackets & Vests page in the Women's section, on the U.S. site. Check out this short but sweet URL:

http://www.thenorthface.com/catalog/sc-gear/women-s-jackets-vests.html

It gets even better. Clicking on the "W Grace Jacket" takes you to this gloriously SEO-friendly URL:

http://www.thenorthface.com/catalog/sc-gear/womens-jackets-vests/womens-grace-jacket.html

Now, I know there's debate on whether such "little" things like dynamic URLs really hold that much weight in the SEO game anymore. But if you don't want to take your chances, this service from Zobrist is great for those of you using IBM Websphere.

But, hey, what's YOUR opinion? Leave it in the comments section below.

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Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 30, 2008

SEW Experts: Tin Foil Hat? I Have Mine On

Google's intentions are good, but we must also remember that they aren't in the business of helping your Web site rank highly in Google. So when Google advises against URL rewriting in their Webmaster Central blog, is there an ulterior motive? In today's organic SEO column, "Tin Foil Hat? I Have Mine On," Mark Jackson weighs the pros and cons of URL rewriting, and explores some possible reasons why Google would rather webmasters didn't do it.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 26, 2007

SEW Experts: Large Enterprise SEO: CMS Duplicate Content

For large sites, CMS-created duplicate content obliterates SEO. In today's By the Numbers column, "Large Enterprise SEO: CMS Duplicate Content," Eric Enge shares the top duplicate content problems and the best ways to deal with them.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

December 20, 2007

Search Engine Visibility and Crawlability of Dynamic Sites

Huge databases that generate Web site content on the fly can be the bane of search engine spiders' existence. They can't find pages; they can't see URLs. So they can't index pages. In a two-part SearchDay series, "Search Engine Visibility and Site Crawlability, Part 1," and "Search Engine Visibility and Site Crawlability, Part 2," Eric Enge looks at key problem areas with sites that have dynamically generated content, including information architecture and keyword research; robots.txt files; and the use of Sitemaps.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 2:53 PM | Permalink

December 12, 2007

SEW Experts: SEO Hell, a CMS Production

Large scale Web sites with a content management system (CMS) face different SEO problems than smaller Web sites. In today's By the Numbers column, "SEO Hell, a CMS Production," Eric Enge explains that while CMS developers' knowledge of SEO has improved, serious SEO issues resulting from CMS software still need to be addressed.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

October 25, 2006

Google Removes Dynamic Parameter Clause From Webmaster Guidelines

The Google Blog notes that they have updated their webmaster guidelines to be more up to date with their crawling and indexing technology. Since Google now is able to crawl and index URLs with parameters, i.e. dynamic URLs - they have removed the line that reads "Don't use "&id=" as a parameter in your URLs, as we don't include these pages in our index." Google still recommends keeping those parameters down to a minimum and calls rewriting dynamic URLs into user-friendly versions, "a good practice."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 12:42 PM | Permalink

May 10, 2006

Google Bug or Webmaster Bug? Google Responds To Shared Server Bug Issue

Matt Cutts responded to the Google anomaly we reported last week, where Google was displaying a different site's information from the same shared server. In short, two sites are hosted on the same server and same IP address. When conducting a search that should have brought up Site A, Site B was coming up in the SERPs.

The issue was technically not on Google's side, as Matt explained. The server folks that set up the server set up the virtual hosting configuration incorrectly. So why wasn't it an issue on Yahoo, MSN or Ask.com? Matt explains that Google uses "persistent connections to a webserver via a Keep-Alive header" that allows Google to use one single connection for all the sites on one server, thus taking up less server resources for Google and the Webmaster's server.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:01 AM | Permalink

October 12, 2005

Going CMS? Some SEO Issues To Consider

Search-Engine Friendly Content Management Systems from Shari Thurow over at ClickZ looks at issues to consider if you're going to a content management system but want to ensure your content remains visible and well optimized for search engines.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:34 AM | Permalink

September 12, 2005

New Katrina Missing Persons Meta Search Site & Spidering Issues With Red Cross Site

Katrina Search is another new service designed to let you meta search from a variety of web sites that have information about people missing in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Search Katrina Missing Persons Sites from Lycos and Katrina: Search for Missing People from Yahoo are two others we mentioned going up last week.

Meanwhile, Sites not yet in sync on searches looks at how Yahoo cofounder David Filo got personally involved to create the Yahoo service. It also illustrates how what sounds to me to be dynamic URLs from a Microsoft server platform meant a new site from the Red Cross became unspiderable by Yahoo and other services.

That's apparently been fixed or will be shortly. The story calls the site "Family First" but I believe it is actually this one: Family Links Registry.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:23 AM | Permalink

April 25, 2005

Mod Rewrite Tips For Solving Dynamic Issues

Mod_rewrite is a powerful tool for making dynamic pages seem like static ones to search engines. In the Mod Rewrite Tips and Tricks thread at our Search Engine Watch Forums, member seomike kicks things off by providing code and tips to make the dynamic-to-static change, to fix misspellings and name changes in URLs and to normalize URLs. Don't forget, there are also a variety of other good threads for those with dynamic site issues in the forums. Browse though the others within the active Dynamic Web Site Issues section of the forums.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:03 PM | Permalink

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