Central Perk

joi, 10 martie 2011

Link Building – Creating Encyclopedic Content Graywolf's SEO Blog

Link Building – Creating Encyclopedic Content

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 08:01 AM PST

While SEOs are well known for hating Wikipedia for its truthiness factor, as a whole, you have to acknowledge that, at some level, the content strives to be encyclopedic in nature. It’s this encyclopedic and non commercial quality that makes it linkworthy. When building my own websites or working with clients, one of the areas I feel is important to identify and work on is the page (or pages) of encyclopedic content.

The biggest mistake many people make when working on content for a website is assuming that all of the content should be monetized. Yes, you should strive to make a project profitable, but not at the expense of of link building. There are some page where monetization and conversions are the primary factors, there are some pages where social traffic and link building are number one, and there are others where reference quality and link building are key. It’s a subtle but important distinction you need to understand. What are some examples of this:

Disney Website

Disney World Hotel Reviews – conversion centric
Top 10 Disney Thrill Rides – social media centric
A History of Famous Disney Animators – reference centric

Cooking Website

All Clad Cookware Reviews – conversion centric
Foods to Avoid if Want to Get Lucky on Valentines Day – social media centric
Chili Powder – reference centric

The next key element is template layout and monetization. A key component of reference centric content is the absence or subtle placement of advertising. You can probably safely get away with some masthead advertising. If you have one or two side banners, that should be fine, but any more and it starts to look too commercial. Putting adsense or affiliate links in the main content is almost a sure guarantee that you are shooting yourself in the foot as far as link building potential, especially when dealing with “.edu” sites.

As far as style, the content really should be written with an encyclopedic style and not a sales style. For example, the iPhone page from Apple has a “sales” based style, whereas the Wikipedia page is encyclopedic in nature. In most cases, this means having a neutral point of view–unless, of course, your website has an editorial bias or is written with a great deal of sarcasm; if so, then a neutral-ish point of view is fine. These are the types of pages that will get the best results from your traditional email request link building efforts.

One shady approach I have seen used is creating an official-ish looking page where none exist. For example there is a Mall Walkers Association of America, but they don’t have an official website. There is a facebook page and a myspace page but, to be honest, they look a little sketchy, so I’m not linking to them. By creating a pseudo-official looking site where none exists, you create a link magnet for people looking for somewhere to link. Now I would be very careful here in implementation. Saying you are the official website for blue widgets when you’re not is shaky legal ground. However, putting up an official looking website, but indicating that you aren’t, is only likely to get you in trouble with search engines. Once you have a nice, well-linked-to, well-trusted website, you can give your commercial website a well-placed-link with highly desirable anchor text. These sites are usually very easy to build and maintain and cost very little from one year to the next, usually much less than buying some link advertising. Just saying …

So what are the takeaways from this post:

Look for similar topics or related topics in your space that are well suited to become encyclopedic in nature
Develop a non-commercial or low-commercial template for type of content
Create this content with a NPV and encyclopedic style
Use this content to attract links, especially from EDU sites
Once you have some link equity, make the page a link hub and redirect link equity into commercial parts of the website
Create a link network with non commercial content on separate websites (implement with caution)

photo credit: jamiehladky

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Link Building – Creating Encyclopedic Content

Commander-in-Cute

Your Daily Snapshot for
Thursday, March 10, 2011

Photo of the Day

President Barack Obama greets William Jawando, Deputy Associate Director of Public Engagement, his wife Michele and their four-month-old daughter Alia in the Oval Office, March 9, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

SEOptimise

Product URLs – a Duplicate Content Minefield

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 06:57 AM PST

Over the past few months I have been conducting lots of SEO Audits for a vast range of clients of all sizes. One thing that always seems to come out of the audit as a significant action is to look at the URL structure and duplicate content, with a special note for the product URL.

I find it extremely frustrating that with today's technology and the skill set of most developers, CMS Platforms still generate multiple URLs for products associated with several categories. This instantly generates duplicate content for a single product, and if this is replicated across hundreds if not thousands of products, a serious duplicate content issue occurs.

To give you an example of what happens with some CMS Platforms (all CMS platforms are different), I have described a scenario below that is from the point of view of both a merchandiser and platform.

Merchandiser: a leading retailer has a new product that needs adding to the CMS.

CMS Platform: generate a generic URL that incorporates the product title and the SKU:

www.domain.com/product/product-title-plus-sku-number-011232

Merchandiser: the product that was added is a waterproof jacket; this fits into three categories, which were selected from the options available.

CMS Platform: generate three new URLs, BUT they are SEO friendly with keywords included.

www.domain.com/category/sub-category-1/product-title-plus-sku-number-011232

www.domain.com/category/sub-category-2/product-title-plus-sku-number-011232

www.domain.com/category/sub-category-3/product-title-plus-sku-number-011232

Merchandiser: the product is added to the correct brand

CMS Platform: another URL is created for the brand product.

www.domain.com/brand/product-title-plus-sku-011232

THREE MONTHS LATER: the winter season comes to an end, so the close of season sale is on.

Merchandiser: the product didn't sell very well and was added to the sale.

CMS Platform: a new URL is created for the product that is now associated with the sale category.

www.domain.com/sale/product-title-plus-sku-number-011232

The scenario above describes adding the product to three different core categories, a brand and sale category, resulting in the creation of five different URLs to go with the generic product URL.

Now what is the issue with that, when they are keyword rich?

One of the biggest, if not THE biggest issue with e-commerce sites is the amount of duplicate content that is created, the majority by products and product listings. The above shows a perfect example of how duplicates are being created by multiple product URLs through CMS Platforms.

So how do you solve this issue? There are a couple of ways, depending on how far you are along with the CMS and how co-operative your web development team are.

1. When adding a product to the CMS, make sure that the platform creates just ONE generic URL (www.domain.com/product/product-title-plus-sku-number-011232 ) that can then be associated with multiple categories, brands, sale page etc. This will allow the merchandiser to select multiple categories to associate the product with, which will link through to the same URL. By ensuring the use of just one URL, the amount of duplicate content would be significantly decreased.

There are numerous large brands that are already using this method to good effect, although in slightly different ways, including:

John Lewis
http://www.johnlewis.com/27573/Style.aspx
http://www.johnlewis.com/173405/Style.aspx

Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0470554185
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-KDL32BX300-32-inch-Widescreen-Freeview/dp/B004AHKUJA/

2. If your web development team are unable to change the way the URLs are generated, speak to them about automatically creating a rel="canonical" tag for each product with the generic URL added. This will provide the search engine with the generic URL to index instead of the other multiple URLs

3. If you are unable to implement either of the above recommendations, then I would suggest 301 redirecting the multiple URLs to the original generic URL. Before going ahead with this option, I would strongly urge you to try everything you can to get your web development team to implement either of the first two options. Option 3 will take up a considerable amount of time, with collating the different URLs for each product and then 301 redirecting them.

How does your current CMS generate product URLs? Is your web development team co-operative when you suggest SEO enhancements, or do your requests go unanswered? As a web developer, are you looking to improve the product from an SEO perspective? I look forward to hearing your views, not just from SEOs and Online Marketers, but also from web developers in the comments below or on Twitter – @danielbianchini.

Working Together to Keep Our Kids Safe

Good morning,

As a mother, it breaks my heart to think of any child feeling alone or afraid in their classrooms, on the playground or even online. But every year, nearly one third of school-aged children -- upwards of 13 million students -- are bullied.

Bullying in our schools and communities isn't a rite of passage or part of growing up. It's unacceptable.

Today, the President and I are attending a White House Conference on Bullying Prevention to talk about how we can work together to make our schools and communities safe for all of our children.

You can watch the Conference live online, participate in special online discussions throughout the day, and watch a special video message from Barack and me:

Every child deserves a chance to grow up happy, healthy and safe. Kids who are bullied are more likely to have challenges in school, abuse drugs or alcohol, or have health and mental health problems. As adults, it's up to us to send a message that bullying of any kind for any reason isn't OK.

Parents, teachers, coaches, faith leaders, elected officials, and anyone else involved in our children's lives have a responsibility to set a good example through our own behavior and to take action when we see bullying in our communities.

That's what today's Conference on Bullying Prevention is all about – working together to find solutions to keep all of our children safe. I hope you'll take some time today to tune in and join the conversation:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/Bullying-Prevention

Sincerely,

Michelle Obama
First Lady of the United States

P.S. To learn more about what you can do in your community to prevent bullying, visit StopBullying.gov.

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Please do not reply to this email. Contact the White House

The White House • 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW • Washington, DC 20500 • 202-456-1111

Seth's Blog : Assuming goodwill

Assuming goodwill

Productivity comes from interactivity and the exchange of ideas and talents.

People are happiest when they're encouraged and trusted.

An airport functions far better when we don't strip search passengers. Tiffany's may post guards at the door, but the salespeople are happy to let you hold priceless jewels. Art museums let you stand close enough to paintings to see them. Restaurants don't charge you until after you eat.

Compare this environment of trust with the world that Paypal has to live in. Every day, thousands of mobsters in various parts of the world sit down intent on scamming the company out of millions of dollars. If the site makes one mistake, permits just one security hole to linger, they're going to be taken for a fortune. As a result, the company isn't just paranoid--they know that people really are out to get them.

This is the fork in the road that just about all of us face, whether as individuals or organizations. We have to make an assumption about whether people are going to steal our ideas, break their promises, void their contracts and steal from us, or perhaps, that people are basically honest, trustworthy and generous. It's very hard to have both postures simultaneously. I have no idea how those pistol-packing guys in the movies ever get a good night's sleep.

In just about every industry (except electronic money transfer, apparently), assuming goodwill is not only more productive, it's also likely to be an accurate forecast.

Trust pays.