URL Referrer Tracking

by Nathan Buggia on November 30, 2008

There may be instance when you want to track the source of a request, and a common way of doing so is by using tracking parameters in URLs. Unfortunately, implementing referrer tracking in this way can result in significant issues with search engines. In particular, it can cause duplicate content issues (since the search engine [...]

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Managing Robot’s Access To Your Website

June 4, 2008

Controlling what content is blocked from being found in search engines is crucial for many websites. Fortunately, the major search engines and other well-behaved robots observe the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP), which has evolved organically since the early 1990’s to provide a set of controls over what parts of a web site search engines robots [...]

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Effectively Using Images

May 14, 2008

A picture is worth a thousand words. Unfortunately, when it comes to major search engines (which are still primarily text-based), a picture is worth a lot of blank space. Does this mean you shouldn’t use images on your site if you want to rank in search? Not at all. Just keep some simple things in [...]

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Domain Canonicalization

May 2, 2008

Pop quiz: what’s the difference between the following URLs:

http://website.com
http://www.website.com
http://website.com/default.php
http://www.website.com/default.php

Give up? If you’re a user, then chances you expect all of those URLs will lead you to the same page. Robots, however, are not as good at determining if pages are the same, so they often store each separately. A big part of how search engines [...]

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Search-Friendly Design Patterns For Web Developers

April 24, 2008

Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t a marketing gimmick, spammy scheme, or destroyer of web usability. It’s a fundamental building block of effective infrastructure design that ensures web applications can thrive in an online environment in which potential customers turn to search first. It also can dramatically improve site usability and visitor happiness.
Watch this space for [...]

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