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How to Completely Ruin (or Save) Your Website with Redirects |
How to Completely Ruin (or Save) Your Website with Redirects Posted: 17 Jun 2013 07:13 PM PDT Posted by Cyrus Shepard Have you ever redirected a page hoping to see a boost in rankings, but nothing happened? Or worse, traffic actually went down? When done right, 301 redirects have awesome power to clean up messy architecture, solve outdated content problems and improve user experience â" all while preserving link equity and your ranking power. When done wrong, the results can be disastrous. In the past year, because Google cracked down hard on low quality links, the potential damage from 301 mistakes increased dramatically. There's also evidence that Google has slightly changed how they handle non-relevant redirects, which makes proper implementation more important than ever. From Dr. Pete's post - An SEO's Guide to HTTP Status Codes Semantic relevance 101: anatomy of a "perfect" redirectA perfect 301 redirect works as a simple âchange of addressâ for your content. Ideally, this means everything about the page except the URL stays the same including content, title tag, images, and layout. When done properly, we know from testing and statements from Google that a 301 redirect passes somewhere around 85% of its original link equity. The new page doesnât have to be a perfect match for the 301 to pass equity, but problems arise when webmasters use the 301 to redirect visitors to non-relevant pages. The further away you get from semantically relevant content, the less likely your redirect will pass maximum link juice. For example, if you have a page about âlabrador,â then redirecting to a page about âdogsâ makes sense, but redirecting to a page about âtacosâ does not. 301 redirecting everything to the home pageSavvy SEOs have known for a long time that redirecting a huge number of pages to a home page isnât the best policy, even when using a 301. Recent statements by Google representatives suggest that Google may go a step further and treat bulk redirects to the home page of a website as 404s, or soft 404s at best. This means that instead of passing link equity through the 301, Google may simply drop the old URLs from its index without passing any link equity at all. While itâs difficult to prove exactly how search engines handle mass home page redirects, itâs fair to say that any time you 301 a large number of pages to a single questionably relevant URL, you shouldnât expect those redirects to significantly boost your SEO efforts. Better alternative: When necessary, redirect relevant pages to closely related URLs. Category pages are better than a general homepage. If the page is no longer relevant, receives little traffic, and a better page does not exist, itâs often perfectly okay to serve a 404 or 410 status code. Danger: 301 redirects and bad backlinksBefore Penguin, SEOs widely believed that bad links couldnât hurt you, and redirecting entire domains with bad links wasnât likely to have much of an effect. Then Google dropped the hammer on low-quality links. If the Penguin update and developments of the past year have taught us anything, itâs this: When you redirect a domain, its bad backlinks go with it. Webmasters often roll up several older domains into a single website, not realizing that bad backlinks may harbor poison that sickens the entire effort. If youâve been penalized or suffered from low-quality backlinks, itâs often easier and more effective to simply stop the redirect than to try and clean up individual links. Individual URLs with bad linksThe same concept works at the individual URL level. If you redirect a single URL with bad backlinks attached to it, those bad links will then point to your new URL. In this case, itâs often better to simply drop the page with a 404 or 410, and let those links drop from the index. Infinite loops and long chainsIf you perform an SEO audit on a site, youâll hopefully discover any potentially harmful redirect loops or crawling errors caused by overly-complex redirect patterns. While itâs generally believed that Google will follow many, many redirects, each step has the potential to diminish link equity, dilute anchor text relevance, and lead to crawling and indexing errors. New changes for 302sSEOs typically hate 302s, but recent evidence suggests search engines may now be changing how they handle them â" at least a little. Google knows that webmasters make mistakes, and recent tests by Geoff Kenyon showed that 302 redirects have potential to pass link equity. The theory is that 302s (meant to be temporary) are so often implemented incorrectly, that Google treats them as âsoftâ 301s. So, not only do search engines limit us when we try to get too clever, but they also help to keep us from shooting ourselves in the foot.Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! |
#MozCon Speaker Interview: Aleyda Solis Posted: 17 Jun 2013 03:27 AM PDT Posted by Lindsay Today Iâm pleased to bring you Aleyda Solis, Madrid-based International SEO at SEER Interactive, a Moz Associate, and State of Search blogger. Weâre excited that sheâs bringing her international perspective to MozCon, where sheâll lay out how to make the bold but lucrative move into the international market. You definitely donât want to miss her talk, âInternational SEO and the Future of Your ROI,â if youâre interested in growing your online business.Tell us about the presentation you have planned for MozCon. Itâs going to be an exciting adventure, guiding the audience to discover their international SEO potential and what could be the future of their ROI. It will be beyond the "ccTLDs vs. subdirectories for country targeting" type of session (although best practices with examples and tactics will be also shared). Itâs meant to answer frequent questions I get from strategic, operations, and business perspectives, like: âHow do I connect with international audiences and develop an attractive offer and assets when I donât even speak the language or know anything about the country?â Or, âHow can I develop original, localized content for all of these non-English websites if I donât have enough resources?â If this is an issue for your business, then itâs highly likely that your international SEO strategy wasn't planned and established well enough from the beginning, allowing your investment to become cost-effective and scalable in foreign organic search markets. I started to cover international SEO from this perspective in a SEER post I wrote about establishing an international SEO strategy. Why would it be unwise for someone to miss your presentation? Because I will be giving away delicious Iberian ham that I will be bringing from Spain to selected audience members in my session! :D (Iâm kidding!) I really wish I could do that, but unfortunately it is forbidden by US Customs. (Nonetheless, you might want to ask for a change in customs law to make it friendlier to Spanish gastronomy so I can do that in the future.) Seriously, though, it would be really unwise to skip my session because I will be sharing what could be the next step to grow your online business. You definitely donât want to miss that. What types of businesses should be thinking about international SEO, and why? All businesses that might have an audience in other countries or that speaks other languages should be thinking about it. Sometimes people think that only huge businesses that already have a multinational physical presence should be thinking about an international web presence and search marketing activity. But this is far from true and is just myopic. For more, take a look at this Moz post I wrote about discovering your international online potential. Regarding international SEO, what is the most unexpected thing you've learned along the way? Maybe not unexpected, but unfortunately usually overlooked: The characteristics of audience behavior in each country. Beyond language differences, there are many cultural, economic and sociological factors that can affect the success of many aspects of your SEO process, like the level of response from a link-building campaign, for example. At the end, beyond search engines that serve as a bridge, SEO is about the people. You can have a better understanding of what Iâm talking about in this post I published at State of Search about different aspects that drive an international SEO industry and audience research. What do you do at SEER Interactive? My activities at SEER are quite diverse: On one hand, Iâm helping to grow the international SEO business, giving SEER more visibility by speaking at diverse events in Europe, identifying and validating leads, giving pre-sales support, and establishing and coordinating the best organization and processes for international SEO. On the other, Iâm also developing and helping to implement international SEO processes for current clients. Tell us about the places you've lived. Iâm from Nicaragua, a small, tropical country with a lot of volcanoes, lakes, and beaches on both the Pacific and Caribbean coasts in Central America. Nicaragua's natural landscape is breathtaking; hereâs a photo of Momotombo Volcano (one of the 12 volcanoes on the Pacific coast of the country): Photo from Flickr (under Creative Commons): http://www.flickr.com/photos/garrettziegler/7355295166/ I grew up, studied, and worked there until I left to study in Salamanca, Spain in 2006. Itâs a beautiful student town full of history, with students from all over the world (a lot of people go there to learn Spanish). Itâs also home to the University of Salamanca, the oldest university in Spain (where I went to study), which was founded in 1218. Its front building looks like this: Photo from Flickr (under Creative Commons): http://www.flickr.com/photos/paullew/3855579280/ I ended up staying in Salamanca after finishing my studies, and got my first SEO job at an online marketing company. I lived in Salamanca for a bit more than 4 years â" until I came to Madrid, the city where I live now. I came to Madrid after accepting an SEO manager position at a company here at the end of 2010. Madrid is an amazing place, since it has the great alternatives that big cities offer, and at the same time allows you to have a good quality of life. Hereâs a view of Gran Via, one of the main streets in Madrid: Photo from Flickr (under Creative Commons): http://www.flickr.com/photos/nico_/6887000482/ What is it about Madrid that keeps you there? Madrid (followed by Barcelona) is where most of the bigger types of business activity happen in Spain, from trade shows and professional networking events to a wide range of cultural activities. Thereâs also good weather (thereâs always sun, although it might be a bit cold during winter) and great culinary offerings (delicious tapas everywhere!), so Iâm happy here at the moment. Although, of course, Iâm quite open to experiencing new places to live in the future. I love to travel and experience new cultures. Are you doing what you thought youâd be doing when you were growing up? I had the somewhat common âdreamsâ among children of being an astronaut (I really just wanted to go to space, it wasn't necessarily because I knew what an astronaut actually did). So thatâs really a pending point in my life: going to space! I definitely need to start saving more for that. What is the last thing that you have seen/heard/experienced that has inspired you? Iâve recently had two experiences that have been inspiring in different ways. A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to go to Israel to speak at KahenaCon and had the great opportunity to spend a Saturday walking around Jerusalem Old City. It was a truly inspiring experience, seeing places with such a rich historical and also religious background, like the Western Wall, the Holy Sepulchre and Dome of the Rock. Even if Iâm not religious myself, it was a somewhat magical experience. Photo from Instagram: http://instagram.com/p/Zucpg1N8yT/ Another (and totally different) inspiring moment happened a week ago when I had the chance to try Google Glass. I felt like I was already living in the future, interacting with that small, translucent movie theater-like interface in my glasses with just my voice. Truly amazing. Photo from Instagram: http://instagram.com/p/Z8tuxJt8yd/ What is the best piece of advice youâve ever been given? To ask myself âWhatâs the worst that could happen?â when Iâm making an important or scary decision. This question allows me to get my risk-averse considerations under control, and gives me a great opportunity to start assessing a new situation with more balanced criteria. By asking this, Iâve been able to go out of my comfort zone more frequently and live new experiences. Thank you, Aleyda! It was great to learn a bit about your background and how international SEO matters for all types of businesses, not just the big multinationals. If, like us, you just can't get enough of Alyeda, you can find her as @aleyda on Twitter (where she juggles Spanish and English). Still don't have your #MozCon ticket yet? Reserve your spot now! Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! |
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It's not between you and your boss, your critics, your editor, your competition, your spouse or some other outsider.
The essential confrontation, of course, is with yourself.
You are your own biggest critic.
And your own biggest competitor.
Now that it's easier than ever to pick yourself, the question is, "why haven't you?"
And now that it's easier to ignore the competition and become a category of one, the question is the same.
Our instinct is to externalize the forces that are holding us back, but in fact, that's not the problem, is it?
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Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis |
Pettis on China, Europe, Japan: Bad News for Those Looking for Growth Posted: 17 Jun 2013 01:26 PM PDT Via email here is another update from Michael Pettis at China Financial Markets. What follows is from Michael Pettis. Special points
Adjustment Derailed Away from Europe the US continues slowly to adjust but I worry that this adjustment will be derailed by a weaker external sector. Meanwhile Japan is still struggling with its debt burden and seems to have no real way of resolving it except by forcing down the currency and interest rates, both of which mean that household sector is expected to reduce consumption to support the debt burden without, it seems, any corresponding increase in investment. In China the good news is that the rebalancing process seems to have become more determined than ever before in the past, although as of yet there has been minimal rebalancing at the expense of a significant reduction in growth rates. This I expect will continue to be the case, but European trade policies are going to put additional pressure on China's adjustment. How much slower? The big worry I have had over the past year is that as China moves to rebalance its economy away from its over-reliance on its investment, with the accompanying investment misallocation, the economy will slow much more quickly than even the reformers expected, so scaring Beijing into backtracking. So far, I am glad to say, this doesn't seem to have happened. We keep getting surprised on the downside by the growth numbers, but to anyone who understands the way China's growth model works and who knows the historical precedents, this should in no way surprise. I don't think China is yet heading towards an economic crash, but I do think that even current growth rates are too high, and sell-side researchers and the various official entities in China and abroad will continue, as they have in the past, to revise their growth numbers downward almost on a quarterly basis. And because growth will consistently underperform expectations, many members of the Chinese policymaking elite, and their effective allies among the shrinking but still large contingent of China-bulls, will increasingly argue that the economic rebalancing is being mismanaged, thereby putting pressure on Beijing to go into reverse. This is the real risk. There is no way that China can rebalance its economy even at growth rates of 6-7%, and attempts to keep growth above that level will simply mean that it will take much longer for China to fix the underlying problems in the economy, that the costs will be much greater, and that the risk of a disorderly crisis will increase. Can China spend its way to growth? Real debt servicing costs are growing much faster than the debt servicing capacity. Clearly this cannot be sustained. There are still bulls out there who insist that China is out of the woods and making a strong recovery, for example former Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Stephen Grenville, who argues in his article (strangely titled "China doomsayers run out of arguments"). Of course more stimulus will indeed cause GDP growth to pick up, as Grenville notes, but it will do so by exacerbating the gap between the growth in debt and the growth inn debt-servicing capacity. Because too much debt and a huge amount of overvalued assets is precisely the problem facing China, it is hard to believe that spending more borrowed money on increasing already excessive capacity can possibly be a useful resolution of slower Chinese growth. The slew of economic data released last week will have been much discussed and analyzed in the media so I won't add much more than I already have. Yes, Chinese growth is slowing, but by now this cannot have been a surprise to any but the most determined of bulls. Inflation and unemployment To me far more interesting than these numbers is what has been happening on the inflation front. Consumer price inflation continues to decline, to the extent that you can trust the numbers, but what is really impressive is the producer price index. The data showed China's producer price index, which measures wholesale inflation, fell 2.9 percent year on year in May, marking the 15th straight month of decline and the steepest drop in seven months. Part of the decline in PPI is a result of declining commodity prices, of course, which is good overall for Chinese businesses except to the extent that they have stockpiled commodities (although I suspect that direct and indirect stockpiles are pretty high), but this implies that debt servicing costs as a share of total expense must be rising rapidly. China is reducing its heavy financial repression tax on households and subsidies to borrowers, in other words, not by raising interest rates but rather by a sharp decline in nominal GDP growth rates. This, of course, is exactly what should have been expected, and it certainly is the way Japan resolved its own financial repression after 1990. I am not sure where this leaves us for the rest of the year. Premier Li said on television on Saturday that China's economy and employment were stable, and that growth was within a "relatively high and reasonable range", and so it sounds like he is perfectly willing to let growth continue to slow in order to force the economy into a healthier state. I wonder, however, just how much more Beijing can tolerate before we start seeing political friction and rising unemployment. Last week People's Daily had an article on unemployment for college graduates that is pretty worrying: Never before has the nation had so many graduates competing for jobs, particularly when so few are available. As of April 19, less than 30 percent of graduating seniors in Beijing had signed contracts with employers. Shanghai faces a similar situation. University education used to be the one certain source of upward social mobility in China, but for many students a college education actually now puts you behind in earning power compared to high school graduates who went straight into the work force. I am not sure what social impact this will have, but historically a country with a large and growing population of unemployed college graduates must worry about the political consequences. Speculation The explosive growth in Chinese exports at the beginning of this year had very little to do with strong external demand and nearly everything to do with speculative inflows. With borrowing costs in US dollars in the Hong Kong markets roughly two hundred basis points lower than domestic RMB interest rates, large Chinese companies with subsidiaries in Hong Kong were borrowing money in HK and bringing that money illegally into the mainland by over-invoicing exports. This allowed them to pick up the 200 bp "arbitrage" plus any appreciation in the currency. This, plus the "arbitraging" of credit (borrowing cheaply from banks and lending to businesses that do not have access to credit) is becoming an increasingly important part of the profitability of large businesses, it seems, and that is always a bad sign when "financial engineering" becomes a profit source for businesses. The PBoC has cracked down on this kind of activity, but it should remind us just how porous China's capital controls really are. Huge amounts of money have been able to enter and leave the country. In the mean time let's see how many more months of declining growth numbers Beijing can tolerate before we see steps to accelerate growth. Complaints by disappointed bulls notwithstanding, the longer Beijing waits, the better for China in the medium term. END PETTIS Thanks Michael. If you have not yet read his book, "Great Rebalancing", I suggest it's well worth a look. Here is my review: "Great Rebalancing" Book Review: Two Thumbs Up; Investment Ideas for Unconventional Times. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
New Mish iPhone, iPad, Android App Now Available Posted: 17 Jun 2013 10:11 AM PDT A new Mish iOS app for iPhone and iPad devices is now available on the App Store, and a new version of the Android app (compatible with phones and tablets), is now available on the Google Play store. The original iPhone app is still available in the App Store so you may have to scroll to find the correct one, or you can download it from iOS app link above. Here is the symbol you are looking for: There is no text on the icon for this app. The previous app had the word "Mish" on it. If you had the original iPhone app installed, I recommended deleting it and loading the new app. This link will explain How to Delete Apps From iPhone 5 or iPod Touch. The new app was developed by Stephen Asherson and Rachel Strate at 2Bits, and it's free. Feel free to contact them with any app queries. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
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Damn Cool Pics |
People Are Awesome Women's Edition 2013 HD [Video] Posted: 17 Jun 2013 04:50 PM PDT |
32 Funny Ways To Tell You Are Pregnant Posted: 17 Jun 2013 02:46 PM PDT |
Recent Flooded Cars in Germany Posted: 17 Jun 2013 02:30 PM PDT |
Facebook Opens New Data Centre in Sweden Posted: 17 Jun 2013 11:02 AM PDT Facebook has opened a new data centre in Lulea, a coastal town Sweden near the Arctic Circle, joining Google and other firms to set up data centres in chilly temperatures. Lulea was selected for new data centre due to its renewable energy resources, with the equipment within the facility being powered by locally produced hydro-electric energy. Facebook said in a statement that the data centre is now handling live traffic from users around the world. Via facebook |
The Shield of Superman: The Evolution of an Icon [Infographic] Posted: 17 Jun 2013 09:34 AM PDT To celebrate the 75th anniversary of Superman, HalloweenCostumes.com created this graphic that celebrates the changes in Superman's emblem over the years. Click on Image to Enlarge. Via HalloweenCostumes.com |
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