What is a Reverse Proxy and How Can it Help My SEO? |
- What is a Reverse Proxy and How Can it Help My SEO?
- 10 Reasons (in Pics) Why Distilled's SearchLove 2011 NYC is a Must Attend
- 5 Content Management CMS Tips for Large Enterprises
| What is a Reverse Proxy and How Can it Help My SEO? Posted: 10 Oct 2011 04:25 AM PDT Posted by Slingshot SEO This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc. Subdomains! The bane of many SEO-conscious organizations, there is an easy solution right under your nose. By using subfolders in place of subdomains, you can unite your content under one domain. But What if two sites exist on two different servers? A reverse proxy can make the technical implementation quite simple. With that one change, the URL http://blog.slingshotseo.com/ becomes http://www.slingshotseo.com/blog/. By acting as a content broker, your master server acts as a proxy to the content of your other servers. Multiple CMSs, databases and even platforms can be used, while all appearing to come from the same domain. Check out this infographic to see how reverse proxy technology can relieve your subdomain woes.
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| 10 Reasons (in Pics) Why Distilled's SearchLove 2011 NYC is a Must Attend Posted: 10 Oct 2011 01:04 AM PDT Posted by randfish For the last few years, our partners at Distilled have run some incredible conferences in London, New Orleans and Boston. This year, for the first time, they're coming to New York City and it's going to be an incredible experience. Rather than pour over details of the event, I'll let some photos, images and screenshots do the talking. #1: The Speakers are Unparalleled
The team selecting speakers goes to dozens of events each year and we get to cherry-pick only those speakers we know can present exceptional quality material. Will, Duncan and Lynsey are religious about speaker quality and have a rigorous ratings system to make sure that only the best are invited back a second time. New York's SearchLove Lineup will be remarkable. #2: Content Quality is Insanely GoodYou will be amazed by this next screenshot. It's from the feedback forms Distilled collects from attendees and shows just how well they've done. Lynsey + Will didn't actually give me permission to share this... But I figure, ask forgiveness, right? :-)
For context, until this year (2011), the scores for our annual event, Mozcon, were not as good as these numbers. I've also gotten to see aggregate feedback for several other major conferences in the search + marketing world, and they've never come close. Typically, the folks filling out feedback forms pro-actively are going to be a mix of those who loved or hated the experience. The Distilled feedback suggests almost univeral happiness. In particular, the high proportion of attendees saying the content level was "just right" is unprecedented. Professionals in the Internet Marketing field are a demanding group and they've heard it all before. To show them something new, you need to have top notch content and that's what SearchLove has proven it can do. #3: The Head to HeadSeatlle's Mozcon face-off ended in a mixed result. The on-site vote count suggested a win for me, making the score an even 3-3 over 6 battles. However, our follow-up survey revealed that Will had better scores, thus making the wins Will 4, Rand 2. Whatever; I'll get him this time.
Though, probably not with an expression like that one. Seriously, though, my slide decks have been getting tens of thousands of views on Slideshare. What's up Critchlow? Too tired after your Quidditch game to upload more than these 2 measly presentations? Yeah. That's what I thought. I've been practicing. And I'm not taking any more losses. #4: Everything Around the Conference Rocks
Unlike Mozcon 2011 (where, for those who didn't attend, the hotel's wifi was largely broken until day 3), free wifi works. And like Mozcon, there's lots of awesome stuff surrounding the events including awesome afterparties, an SEO site clinic, great food, drinks and a terrific crowd for networking. #5: New York City
One of my favorite parts of going to conferences in NYC is the city itself. For anyone with extra time, there's a million things to do and for those with a strictly business agenda, it's next-to-impossible to not have other business in the city. Just make sure you don't schedule it over the sessions :-) #6: It's Only $899 for SEOmoz PRO MembersAs in years past, Distilled's generously given PRO members a discount of $200 off the regular price (and if your organization would like to purchase multiple tickets, the discount can apply for them as well).
To find the discount code, just head to the bottom of the Moz PRO Discount Store page. #7: Truly Exceptional PeopleOn our anniversary this year, my wife and I had a conversation about our favorite people in the world and the people who we most wanted to get to know better. Nearly every one was connected to the world of search and marketing. That's the incredible thing about the field we've also chosen professionally. Sure, in some circles, SEO has a bad name. But it hides a collection of inspiring, exceptional, down-to-earth, generous, fun, heartwarmingly-authentic people.
It's folks like this that make me proud and humbled to be in the search world. I couldn't ask for better compatriots. #8: Actionable InformationOne of my least favorite experiences is sitting in a session where speakers talk about problems or challenges, but provide no actionable solutions. I want something I can write down, email to my team or implement that night (or the next day) and get a win. It doesn't have to be easy or quick, but it has to be real. Advice like "engage with your audience" is the bane of my conference-going existence.
Which is why I love SearchLove. Will Critchlow has personal calls with every speaker. In those calls, he informs us that we have to make presentations that would impress him and show him something he's never seen before. No one gets up on stage without being through the rigors of Will's crucible (which also often involves an outline and slide review), and that makes for a list of tips, tools, examples and recommendations that will make you a better marketer and earn your site better traffic. #9: The PartiesNetworking is fun. Networking with fire-breathers, acrobats and magicians is way more fun.
This year, SearchLove NYC falls on Halloween, and that Monday night, Distilled's holding a bash that will rival anything they've ever done. I've got my costume all picked out, too (OK, technically, Geraldine made it for me). #10: The FormatThe SearchLove format isn't for everyone, but for me, it's heaven. I dislike most panels - I've gone on the record many times as saying I think the content that can be delivered in 10-15 minutes tends to be shallow and unactionable. I dislike what panel formats do for speakers, i.e. make it not worth the time for great speakers to attend. If you're a talented, keynote-quality presenter, why would you go to a show where you only get 15 minutes on stage next to 2-3 other folks on the same subject. It's tough to make sure there's no overlap, impossible to be comprehensive and the focus isn't on your material.
SearchLove is different. A single track and 30-60 minute talks per speaker means it is worth the time of folks like Mat Clayton, Mike King, Bob Rains or Wil Reynolds to come and deliver their best material. It means that after the sessions, the networking is easier because we've all seen the same material and can discuss our thoughts on it. It means there's no weak links in the conference. I've attended a few other events with this format and from a personal perspective, it's how I get the most value. If you feel the same way, you should give SearchLove a try. From what I've seen in the feedback forms and my experience at prior events, I think you'll find it to be one of the best professional events you've ever attended.
You can get tickets here. Hope to see you on Halloween! p.s. My understanding is that the London show (which happens a week before) is nearly sold-out - if you're hoping to come, you'd better book your place. NYC will likely be getting full soon. |
| 5 Content Management CMS Tips for Large Enterprises Posted: 09 Oct 2011 01:46 PM PDT Posted by Stephanie Chang At Distilled, we've recently acquired clients that would be categorized as large enterprises. Some of the challenges of working with large enterprises revolve around the complexity of how the company is internally organized. For instance, many large enterprise are comprised of several different departments that may or may not have existing relationships. In such circumstances, our roles as SEOs become more complicated as our task as SEOs oftentimes becomes that of a project manager, while we simultaneously develop strategies on how to implement strong internal processes that are ideally somewhat automated. One of our clients is in an industry where new content is continuously being generated. Multiple entities contribute to the site's new content and because these contributors manage many responsibilities, implementing SEO best practices are rarely a priority. The development team wanted us to come up with CMS recommendations that will help to automate and consequently, improve the SEO on their sites. Below are 5 of the recommendations we suggested that could benefit anyone who is working or will work with a large enterprise client. 1) SEO Score SheetA method of effectively optimizing the site for SEO is to create an SEO score sheet. Any new content in the CMS must meet a minimum requirement for SEO optimization before it can go live. This score could then be translated into a grade. For example, following only the minimum requirements of the score sheet would result in a C grade. Below is a sample of what the specs of the SEO checklist might include. Obviously these requirements are based on the individual realities of each company and thus, would need to be modified as such. In this example, the content must meet all the criteria listed under the "Required" section and any 3 items listed under the "Recommended" section before the content can be published. You can use this full technical site audit checklist to get ideas about what your SEO score sheet should include. Required
Recommended
Our client responded positively with this suggestion and even came up with their own ideas. For instance, they declared that this would work perfectly as an internal departmental competition to see which departments received the highest SEO grades each quarter. In addition, the client even suggested that this score sheet could work well as an internal SEO report card. Overall, this type of system could also become a useful internal analytical tool to see which departments have trouble meeting the requirement and thus might benefit from additional internal SEO training. 2) AlertsAlerts can be bothersome, but a well-engineered alert is also really appreciated. For instance, I really like this Gmail alert which asks if you had forgotten to attach the files. This has saved me from resending countless emails. Alerts can either be used alongside or independently from the SEO score sheet. These could be used to make sure that any article contains a minimum of 80 words before it can be published or in other scenarios, such as when articles contain the same title as another live article. This would require content writers to edit their title to something more unique, which would eliminate duplicate title issues. For sites that have issues with having tons of different tags (some of which are heavily utilized, while others are rarely used) like blogs, consider implementing an "Are you sure?" alert that would allow individuals to reconsider whether the tag should be created. For a more detailed and actionable tag, consider implementing a "Did you mean _____ tag?" that would include suggestions from existing utilized tags based on the tag that was about to be added. For example, if a "content management system" tag was about to be added, a "Did you mean CMS?" alert would appear. This would help to eliminate variations of similar types of tags from the CMS. 3) Help CenterTo help content writers understand and implement different SEO practices, incorporate more information about SEO in the CMS. Some CMS systems already provide additional information for other sections via the question mark, such as on how to set time/date like in the example below. Consider adding this feature for other sections that are particularly important for SEO, such as title and description fields. These sections should provide very brief, but explicit instructions (such as specific word counts) on how they should be utilized.
4) Adding Canonical and 301 Redirect FieldsAdding rel canonical for cross-domain canonicalization and 301 redirect fields on every page within the CMS would allow sites to better manage their content and actively optimize for SEO. Although this field might not be used regularly, its purpose is to act as an insurance mechanism in case of any major future changes or implementations, such as a site redesign. This field should have limited access to those who would know how to properly use it. The SEOmoz blog actually incorporates this feature as shown in the screenshot below.
5) Incorporating Keyword ResearchTo improve and encourage the use of targeted keywords, create a tool that would provide keyword suggestions based on the content. Ideally, this type of implementation would be used primarily for landing or category pages, where the targeted keyword list has already been compiled and approved. For example, if the content was written about "selling cars", the keyword tool might suggest including terms, such as "cars for sale." I would love to hear about how other SEOs in the community handle content management for large enterprises in the comments section below. What has been effective or what problems are you struggling with? |
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