Google Panda VS Penguin Update

5 Tips for Create SEO Friendly URL

Every SEO eventually gets fixated on a tactic. Maybe you read 100 blog posts about how to build the “perfectly” optimized URL, and you keep tweaking and tweaking until you get it just right. Fast-forward 2 months – you’re sitting on 17 layers of 301-redirects, you haven’t done any link-building, you haven’t written any content, you’re eating taco shells with mayonnaise for lunch, and your cat is dead.

Ok, maybe that’s a bit extreme. I do see a lot of questions about the "ideal" URL structure in Q&A, though. Most of them boil down to going from pretty good URLs to slightly more pretty good URLs.

All Change Is Risky

I know it’s not what the motivational speakers want you to hear, but in the real world, change carries risk. Even a perfectly executed site-wide URL change – with pristine 301-redirects – is going to take time for Google to process. During that time, your rankings may bounce. You may get some errors. If your new URL scheme isn’t universally better than the old one, some pages may permanently lose ranking. There’s no good way to A/B test a site-wide SEO change.

More often, it’s just a case of diminishing returns. Going from pretty good to pretty gooder probably isn’t worth the time and effort, let alone the risk. So, when should you change your URLs? I’m going to dive into 5 specific scenarios to help you answer that question…

(1) Dynamic URLs

A dynamic URL creates content from code and data and carries parameters, like this:

It’s a common SEO misconception that Google can’t read these URLs or gets cut off after 2 or 3 parameters. In 2011, that’s just not true – although there are reasonable limits on URL length. The real problems with dynamic URLs are usually more complex:

• They don’t contain relevant keywords.
• They’re more prone to creating duplicate content.
• They tend to be less user-friendly (lower click-through).
• They tend to be longer.

So, when are your URLs too dynamic? The example above definitely needs help. It’s long, it has no relevant keywords, the color and size parameters are likely creating tons of near-duplicates, and the session ID is creating virtually unlimited true duplicates. If you don’t want to be mauled by Panda, it’s time for a change.

In other cases, though, it’s not so simple. What if you have a blog post URL like this?

It’s technically a “dynamic” URL, so should you change it to something like:

I doubt you’d see much SEO benefit, or that the rewards would outweigh the risks. In a perfect world, the second URL is better, and if I was starting a blog from scratch I’d choose that one, no question. On an established site with 1000s of pages, though, I’d probably sit tight.

(2) Unstructured URLs

Another common worry people have is that their URLs don’t match their site structure. For example, they have a URL like this one:

...and they think they should add folders to represent their site architecture, like:

There’s a false belief in play here – people often think that URL structure signals site structure. Just because your URL is 3 levels deep doesn’t mean the crawlers will treat the page as being 3 levels deep. If the first URL is 6 steps from the home-page and the second URL is 1 step away, the second URL is going to get a lot more internal link-juice (all else being equal).

You could argue that the second URL carries more meaning for visitors, but, unfortunately, it’s also longer, and the most unique keywords are pushed to the end. In most cases, I’d lean toward the first version.

Of course, the reverse also applies. Just because a URL structure is “flat” and every page is one level deep, that doesn’t mean that you’ve created a flat site architecture. Google still has to crawl your pages through the paths you’ve built. The flatter URL may have some minor advantages, but it’s not going to change the way that link-juice flows through your site.

Structural URLs can also create duplicate content problems. Let’s say that you allow visitors to reach the same page via 3 different paths:

Now, you’ve created 2 pieces of duplicate content – Google is going to see 3 pages that look exactly the same. This is more of a crawl issue than a URL issue, and there are ways to control how these URLs get indexed, but an overly structured URL can exacerbate these problems.

(3) Long URLs

How long of a URL is too long? Technically, a URL should be able to be as long as it needs to be. Some browsers and servers may have limits, but those limits are well beyond anything we’d consider sane by SEO or usability standards. For example, IE8 can support a URL of up to 2,083 characters.

Practically speaking, though, long URLs can run into trouble. Very long URLs:

• Dilute the ranking power of any given URL keyword
• May hurt usability and click-through rates
• May get cut off when people copy-and-paste
• May get cut off by social media applications
• Are a lot harder to remember

How long is too long is a bit more art than science. One of the key issues, in my mind, is redundancy. Good URLs are like good copy – if there’s something that adds no meaning, you should probably lose it. For example, here’s a URL with a lot of redundancy:

If you have a “/store” subfolder, do you also need a “/products” layer? If we know you’re in the store/products layer, does your category have to be tagged as “featured-products” (why not just “featured”)? Is the “featured” layer necessary at all? Does each product have to also be tagged with “product-“? Are the waffles so tasty you need to say it twice?

In reality, I’ve seen much longer and even more redundant URLs, but that example represents some of the most common problems. Again, you have to consider the trade-offs. Fixing a URL like that one will probably have SEO benefits. Stripping “/blog” out of all your blog post URLs might be a nice-to-have, but it isn’t going to make much practical difference.

(4) Keyword Stuffing

Scenarios (3)-(5) have a bit of overlap. Keyword-stuffed URLs also tend to be long and may cannibalize other pages. Typically, though a keyword-stuffed URL has either a lot of repetition or tries to tackle every variant of the target phrase. For example:

It’s pretty rare to see a penalty based solely on keyword-stuffed URLs, but usually, if your URLs are spammy, it’s a telltale sign that your title tags, <h1>’s, copy, etc. are spammy. Even if Google doesn’t slap you around a little, it’s just a matter of focus. If you target the same phrase 14 different ways, you may get more coverage, but each phrase will also get less attention. Prioritize and focus – not just with URLs, but all keyword targeting. If you throw everything at the wall to see what sticks, you usually just end up with a dirty wall.

(5) Keyword Cannibalization

This is probably the toughest problem to spot, as it happens over an entire site – you can’t spot it in a single URL (and, practically speaking, it’s not just a URL problem). Keyword cannibalization results when you try to target the same keywords with too many URLs.

There’s no one right answer to this problem, as any site with a strong focus is naturally going to have pages and URLs with overlapping keywords. That’s perfectly reasonable. Where you get into trouble is splitting off pages into a lot of sub-pages just to sweep up every long-tail variant. Once you carry that too far, without the unique content to support it, you’re going to start to dilute your index and make your site look “thin”.

The URLs here are almost always just a symptom of a broader disease. Ultimately, if you’ve gotten too ambitious with your scope, you’re going to need to consolidate those pages, not just change a few URLs. This is even more important post-Panda. It used to be that thin content would only impact that content – at worst, it might get ignored. Now, thin content can jeopardize the rankings of your entire site.

Proceed With Caution

If you do decide a sitewide URL change is worth the risk, plan and execute it carefully. How to implement a sitewide URL change is beyond the scope of this post, but keep in mind a couple of high-level points:

1. Use proper 301-redirects.
2. Redirect URL-to-URL, for every page you want to keep.
3. Update all on-page links.
4. Don’t chain redirects, if you can avoid it.
5. Add a new XML sitemap.
6. Leave the old sitemap up temporarily.

Point (3) bears repeating. More than once, I’ve seen someone make a sitewide technical SEO change, implement perfect 301 redirects, but then not update all of their navigation. Your crawl paths are still the most important signal to the spiders – make sure you’re 100% internally consistent with the new URLs.

That last point (6) is a bit counterintuitive, but I know a number of SEOs who insist on it. The problem is simple – if crawlers stop seeing the old URLs, they might not crawl them to process the 301-redirects. Eventually, they’ll discover the new URLs, but it might take longer. By leaving the old sitemap up temporarily, you encourage crawlers to process the redirects. If those 301-redirects are working, this won’t create duplicate content. Usually, you can remove the old sitemap after a few weeks.

Even done properly and for the right reasons, measure carefully and expect some rankings bounce over the first couple of weeks. Sometimes, Google just needs time to evaluate the new structure

On Page SEO Elements Value

On Page SEO Elements

High value:
Title
Root domain
Body text (without keyword stuffing)

Moderate value:
meta description (for users to read)
URL path
URL filename
Alt attribute
Image filename

Low value:
Outbound anchor text
H1, H2, H3
URL parameters
Text in bold

No value:
Meta keywords (the only people looking at this are your competitors!)
HTML comment
CSS styles

Awesome Tip and Tricks for On Page SEO

On Page SEO Tips and Tricks

On Page SEO or search engine optimization is making sure that your website is as search engine friendly as possible. If your website is not optimized then you have less chance of getting good results in the search engines, here is a quick guide towards good on page SEO:

• Make sure that all of your web pages can be indexed by search engines - make sure that they all have at least one link from somewhere on your site.

• Make sure that you have unique content on every single page.

• Make sure that your meta-tags are arranged correctly - your page title tags and description tags should describe the content of your different web pages. The page title tags should be less than 68 characters and the description tags more detailed but less than 148 characters.

• Make sure you label the different headers on your web pages using H tags.

• Make sure that your web page URLs are SEO friendly, use mod re-write for Linux and Apahche hosting or use IIS redirect for Windows. Ideally make it so that the URLs describe your content i.e. use domain.com/blue-widgets.php as opposed to having something like domain.com/product.php?cat=146. Use hyphens or underscores to separate words in the URLs.

• Make sure that the links within your site are complete i.e. if you are linking to the blue widgets page link to domain.com/blue-widgets.php as opposed to just blue-widgets.php.

• Make sure that you use descriptive URLs for your images i.e. use blue-widget.jpg as apposed a bunch of numbers and or letters .jpg.

• Make sure that you label all of your images with descriptive alt attributes.

• Make sure that you make good use of anchor text links within your content - if you have a page about blue widgets, use the phrase blue widgets in the text that links to it.

• Make sure that there is only one version of your site - 301 redirect all non www. URLs to the www. ones or vice versa.

• Make sure that there is only one version of your homepage - 301 redirect the index or default page back to domain.com.

• Use the rel="nofollow" tag in the links to websites that you do not trust, you think maybe using spamming techniques or you do not want to help in the search engines.

• Make sure that your code is valid, in some instances bad code can lead to search engines not being able to properly read a page. Use the W3C validator to check your markup.

If you follow these guidelines you are on your way towards good on page SEO and to good rankings in the search engines.

Google Panda Update Version 3.7 On June 8th

Special visitors Greetings!!!! Wish all you must be experiencing your work to complete level therefore instead of taking much of your time let us begin our conversation for these days. It seems Look for engines has made the decision to remain in focus with new disputes. Where its Penguin upgrade since its beginning on Apr 24, 2012 has been experiencing experts by most of the website owners, these days again Look for engines has declared that it has presented a new upgrade in erstwhile system Look for engines Panda during last few days.

Confirming about this new upgrade in Panda resources of Look for engines advised that this new renew was combined out on May 8, 2012 and it has impacted to less than 1% of serp's in Combined Declares of The united states and 1% serp's throughout the world. The last upgrade from Look for engines, Panda 3.6 was presented 6 several weeks back on Apr 27, 2012. According to genuine resources of Look for engines, it is preparing to present up-dates to both its weaponry i.e., Panda and Penguin at frequent durations between one to two several weeks. The new upgrade is known as as Panda Update Edition 3.7. Before this other up-dates presented in Panda are 3.6, 3.5,3.4 and 3.3.

After this upgrade let us now delay for release of new upgrade in youthful brother of Panda i.e, Penguin which is predicted to soon be presented from Look for engines as revealed by Look for engines.

For last Panda Update News Click Here

Best Website Optimization Tips 2012

1. Content (Useful, informative, free, and easy to understand)

If you offer well written, original, easy to understand information, spiced up with good imagery, the chances of getting quality links, social media exposure and high spots in SERPs are bigger. The whole point of the Internet is finding useful, relevant, free information. Everything is about information. If you’re able to convey it in a manner that stands out from the crowd you’re automatically step ahead from the others in the pool.

2. Basic SEO

I vouch for the fact that you don’t have to be a SEO expert to rank your site high on Google search. Just several things to remember here:

* include meta title tags,
* optimal and natural usage of keywords,
* provide good link bait article titles,
* simple navigation through out the site,
* proper usage of H1, H2 and H3 tags,
* include sitemap,
* use Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to gain insight on what works and what’s not,
* use robots.txt file,
* proper permalink structure,
* avoid duplicate content (CMS issue),
* use canonical tags.
* read the Google SEO Starter Guide (PDF).

3. Design

You want more eyeballs on your website, and you want them to stick with it more often. Except offering quality content you’ll need some good graphics for your site. Number one tip: If you’re serious about your site don’t use free, generic template. I would go even further. Don’t use paid template that is available online for others to buy. Pay someone to design a unique website for you. It doesn’t need to be jaw dropping and very expensive. A simple, pretty enough, and unique look would be good for starters.

4. Competitors

Whatever you do, you have to be more innovative, original, have a better design, better content than your competitors. Simply try to beat the competition. Use them to learn what works for them, and what doesn’t. Don’t be antagonistic towards them. Instead try to befriend them and let them become your mentors. They rule your niche at this moment. Learn what they did in order to achieve what they are now. That doesn’t mean just to read their blogs daily, but to investigate what they are doing. Where is their presence, who is linking to them, what CMS are they using, their SEO etc.

5. Promotion

Promote your site whenever you have a chance to do it, but do not exaggerate (don’t be a spammer). Also several things to remember here:

* use Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or any other social platform popular at the moment,
* comment on other blogs related to your niche,
* be active on forums,
* guest post frequently on well established blogs,
* pay for ads if you really have to (Adwords).

This will certainly lead to significant exposure of your site. If you have the previous 4 points in place it’s just a matter of time when the ball starts rolling.

6. Speed

Make your site load fast as much as possible. This is important from two aspects: user experience and a SEO factor. Several things to remember:

* Use good server
* Optimize your code,
* Optimize the images,
* Use sprites,
* Use tools such as Google Speed, YSlow, Web Page Test, Pingdom,
* Gzip and minify your pages and static components where possible,
* Make your pages cacheable (both server and browser side),
* Use CDN for static content,
* If you’re using scripts, prefer asynchronous loading or place them at the bottom,
* Avoid redirects,
* Read in details what Google and Yahoo have to say about it.

7. E-mail addresses and RSS subscribers

Usually young webmasters and bloggers are overwhelmed with information and it might happen to forget to implement thing or two or they may think that some of the tips are irrelevant and not worth. So remember, capture e-mail addresses and get people to subscribe to your feed early. Two-three years from now (if you’re good) you might have 50k email list and 50k RSS Subcribers. And that is a big valuable asset. Trust me.

8. Monetization

This is the cherry on top of the cake. It’s time to gather the fruits of your labor. I’ll suggest don’t do it early. Wait some time until your blog gets traction. The possibilities are virtually endless and experimentation is the key. There are basically three main methods to get money out of your blog/site:

* Placing ads (CPC, CPM, CPA, CPV). Basically you need click, page view, action or video view in order to get paid.
* Promoting affiliate products.
* Selling you own products (ebooks, membership websites, services – design, coding, coaching, etc).

Webmaster Tools and SEO

Here we talk about how utilizing some features in Webmaster Tools as though I were the SEO for www.googlestore.com.