“我思故我在” “I think, therefore I am”
Posts tagged SEO
The Importance of Canonical Link Element
Oct 11th
In sometime mid February this year, the three big search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live) gang up to announce a coordinated effort and it is wise for us to take this matter seriously. It is about the canonical page and canonical link element.
Many people might not heard of this canonical page and canonical link element. So I just briefly explain what is it:
Due to the use of dynamic URLs, one single web page can have more than 1 valid urls (address) pointing to it. For example:
www.yoursite.com
yoursite.com
www.yoursite.com/
yoursite.com/
www.yoursite.com/index.html
yoursite.com/index.html
www.yoursite.com/Home.aspx
yoursite.com/Home.aspx
http://www.yoursite.com
http://yoursite.com
http://www.yoursite.com/index.html
http://yoursite.com/index.html
http://www.yoursite.com/Home.aspx
http://yoursite.com/Home.aspx
https://www.yoursite.com
Of which the official one (or your most preferred version) is www.yoursite.com. So the page at www.yoursite.com is call the canonical page. A canonical page is the preferred version of a set of pages with highly similar content.
However, if you don’t tell the search engines which one is your canonical page, they might not know which one it is, as such, they will just select one of the URL and flagged others as DUPLICATE CONTENTS!
That’s why now with the introduction of this canonical link element, you have to add the line of code in all your other non-canonical pages to identify your canonical page. Your problem can be solved by adding a <link> element with the attribute rel=”canonical” to the <head> section of the non-canonical version of the page. Adding this link and attribute lets site owners identify sets of identical content and suggest to Search Engines: “Of all these pages with identical content, this page is the most useful. Please prioritize it in search results.”
From the above example, this is how you specify your canonical link element in one of the non-canonical page e.g. https://www.yoursite.com:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.yoursite.com”/>
Add this line of code to the <head> section of the non-canonical page.
If you are using CMS, you can just hardcode the canonical URL into the section (please make sure you test and confirm) so that any duplicate variants of that URL should still contain the correct canonical URL inside.
One more important point to take note is Google currently will take canonicalization suggestions into account across subdomains (or within a domain), but not across domains. So site owners can specify a canonical page on www.yoursite.com from a set of pages on yoursite.com or help.yoursite.com, but not on yoursite-blog.com.
Take a look at this video from Matt Cutts on the details on Canonical Link Element:
For those of you who use WordPress, there is a plugin by Joost de Valk – Canonical URL’s that you can install, very useful.
How I Use Twitter
May 29th
From my last blog post, I didn’t really mentioned what I use Twitter for. In fact, many people have wrong perception about Twitter, they think they need to update their friends (followers) on what they are doing every now and then, though this can be one of the purpose, I don’t think many people are so interested in learning what you are doing every hour… or about your personal life, unless you are a celebrity.
I use Twitter mainly for sharing and bookmarking at the same time. For example, sharing some interesting videos or articles. It is also very much depends on my interest. I believed my followers are mainly people who are interested in Internet Marketing, so whenever I have read articles or news about SEO, SEM, etc, I would then shared them on Twitter. After sometimes, I can refer the links that I’ve shared in my updates box, so it become a bookmarking site for me as well.
Another purpose I use Twitter is to pull some traffics to my websites. But using Twitter for “link juice” is a lost battle in Google’s ranking methodology. Twitter adds a “nofollow” attribute to links submitted by its users. The “nofollow” attribute advises Google, and a few other search engines (Yahoo, MSN, except Ask.com), to ignore the link.
So Twitter is not a good place for creating backlinks to achieve higher Page Rank. However, it do have offsite SEO value where your followers will see your tweets and click on the links, thus it brings some traffics back to the site hence improve the Alexa ranking. The more followers you have, the better traffics you will get.
Search Engine Marketing: 12 Campaign Mistakes to Avoid
Mar 22nd
http://www.fathomseo.com/products/search-engine-optimization/ – Fathom SEO’s Mike Murray presents the top 12 SEO campaign killers. 12 campaign mistakes to avoid to ensure your search engine marketing yields the best results. Learn the mistakes to avoid making when planning your own search campaign for your business. To learn more about Fathom SEO’s search engine optimization services, visit http://www.fathomseo.com/products/search-engine-optimization/ …
Search Engine Optimization SEO Tutorial – Google allinanchor
Mar 19th
http://www.gsinc.co.uk/video/seo-videos.html Discover Google’s all in anchor command and see how you can use this useful research tool yourself. Search Engine Optimization SEO Video Tutorial by Gareth Davies of GSINC Ltd. For more SEO, Link Building and ECommerce tips visit http://www.gsinc.co.uk/video/seo-videos.html
Search Engine Optimization, Show Me How Videos
Mar 18th
Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals of SEO & Rankings BONUS!!! DVD Includes Links to Search Engine Websites Let Us Show You How IN THIS VIDEO YOU WILL LEARN •How to check the search engines •To properly submit your URL to the major search engines •How to create site maps •How to optimize your website •To avoid common mistakes •How to use meta data •About headline tags •How to use affiliate links •The importance of text •To use free sources to improve your rankings Your Host: Stephen …
Internet Marketing – Search Engine Optimization – Google
Mar 17th
PPC SEM SEO Search Engine Optimization Internet Marketing Website Prime Visibility Design Web Analytics Google Yahoo MSN
The Man Who Almost Invented The Vacuum Cleaner
The man officially credited with inventing the vacuum cleaner is
Hubert Cecil Booth. However, he got the idea from a man who almost
invented it.
In 1901 Booth visited a London music-hall. On the bill was an
American inventor with his wonder machine for removing dust from carpets.
The machine comprised a box about one foot square with a bag on top.
After watching the act -- which made everyone in the front six rows sneeze
-- Booth went round to the inventor's dressing room.
"It should suck not blow," said Booth, coming straight to the
point. "Suck?", exclaimed the enraged inventor. "Your machine just moves
the dust around the room," Booth informed him. "Suck? Suck? Sucking is
not possible," was the inventor's reply and he stormed out. Booth proved
that it was by the simple expedient of kneeling down, pursing his lips and
sucking the back of an armchair. "I almost choked," he said afterwards.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
The man officially credited with inventing the vacuum cleaner is
Hubert Cecil Booth. However, he got the idea from a man who almost
invented it.
In 1901 Booth visited a London music-hall. On the bill was an
American inventor with his wonder machine for removing dust from carpets.
The machine comprised a box about one foot square with a bag on top.
After watching the act -- which made everyone in the front six rows sneeze
-- Booth went round to the inventor's dressing room.
"It should suck not blow," said Booth, coming straight to the
point. "Suck?", exclaimed the enraged inventor. "Your machine just moves
the dust around the room," Booth informed him. "Suck? Suck? Sucking is
not possible," was the inventor's reply and he stormed out. Booth proved
that it was by the simple expedient of kneeling down, pursing his lips and
sucking the back of an armchair. "I almost choked," he said afterwards.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"