On February 19, Google announced a new tag that specifies the standard version of a URL to help avoid duplicate content issues with search engines. The new tag specifies the canonical, or standard version of a URL. MSN and Yahoo also announced that they will recognize the canonical tags.
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Search Engine Optimization
The Canonical Link Tag
Sunday, March 1st, 2009Using a Sitemap with Google, Yahoo and MSN
Sunday, June 10th, 2007If your web site is not getting fully indexed by search engines, there may be a problem with the linking structure. Sometimes a site is just too large and it is just not feasible to design a linking structure that places each page within three clicks of the home page, which is a general guideline that should be followed. In situations where a site is not getting indexed properly, a sitemap can be used to help search engine spiders find pages deep within your site.
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Guidelines for Proper Use of Meta Tags
Monday, April 2nd, 2007Meta information is “information about information.” When used in web page code, meta information is used to describe the type of information found on the page.
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What Will a Web Site Evaluation Do For My Site?
Friday, February 2nd, 2007Today, there are literally more than a billion web sites on the Internet and every web site owner craves the free traffic that top search engine rankings provide. The problem is that only a very select few make it to the top of the rankings for each search phrase. If your site does not rank well for search phrases that people frequently use in a search, your site will never receive the benefit of free traffic.
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The Long Tail Approach to Internet Marketing
Friday, February 2nd, 2007Long tail marketing is an effective tactic closely related to a Pareto distribution. The Pareto Principle is the 80-20 rule in marketing that states that 80% of your business is likely coming from 20% of your customers. Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, is credited with coining this phrase in a 2004 article that described the marketing tactics of Internet companies such as Amazon.
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Targeting Effective Inbound Links
Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007The nature of search engine optimization continues to change as search engine ranking algorithms evolve. At one time, all you had to do to get a web site listed in any major search engine was to submit the site’s home page URL to the search engine using a submission form on their site. Today, that may get them to recognize the home page, but they may not index the site and add additional pages beyond the home page. Obtaining inbound links to a site, called backlinks, is an essential ingredient for effective search engine optimization.
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An Update to Supplemental Results Issue
Monday, October 16th, 2006Supplemental Results were a method that Google once used to weed out web pages that it felt were not worthy of ranking well. It did not work very well and resulted in perhaps millions of web pages that were dumped into a secondary database, frequently for reasons that were not apparent. It is now an outdated concept, but nonetheless we explain what is was for those not familiar with this issue. (more…)
How Website Design Issues Affect Site Rankings
Tuesday, August 1st, 2006Determining why a Web site will not rank well can be a complex issue. It can take several days to completely diagnose the possible range of problems with a average size web site. Part of the issue is that proper search engine optimization techniques are not taught in Web design classes, so many designers unwittingly search engine build barriers into web site designs. We still hear from designers who were taught that meta tags are the key to better search engine rankings. Techniques like that may have worked in the 1990s, but have been hopelessly ineffective since then.
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Search Engines and the Art and Science of Writing Content
Tuesday, May 30th, 2006One of the most important issues to understand about attracting search engines is how to write content that effectively helps to boost a site’s rankings in the major search engines. There isn’t really any trick to writing effective content once you understand what search engine algorithms are seeking.
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What is a Google Bomb?
Wednesday, March 15th, 2006One of the many quirks that we run into with search engine optimization is a phenomenon that is called a Google Bomb or Google Bombing. Simply put, a Web page inherits a value from the keywords used in the hyperlinks that point to the Web page. These keywords do influence a pages ranking and can be a powerful factor in determining the search results ranking of the receiving page for those specific keywords, even if the keywords do not appear anywhere on the web page or the entire web site.
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