In my ever so humble opinion (and I'm humble since when?), this topic is of at least some value to virtually everyone on the list. You may not be in a position today which requires you to have knowledge of these SEO issues, but it's very important, given that we all work on web applications, that we are prepared with some knowledge in the area. You never know when you may have to switch to a major ecommerce role! I spent a year doing only high-end nuclear and mathematical apps for internal users at a DOE lab, but I kept up with all of this type of information at a high level and it really paid off when that contract was over and I rolled into a $1.5 million a year ecommerce site as the sole developer AND marketing force.
--Ferg -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jacob Cameron Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 8:57 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Search Engine Friendly URLs I'm very interested in the subject, but I don't know how on topic it is for this group, I'll leave that to the committee. I know that a lot of people just code internal or non-public sites, but I'm not sure of the percentages. I would also like to discuss SEO vs. Overture and Google paid listings: Is the money for SEO worth it anymore? That is the 1 billion $ question in my mind. As I have used both. I'm a small business owner, and I do not do Google or Overture ads anymore, but I still get about 50% of my new business from the web. Of course you could argue that that is because of the industry that I am in, web development. Jacob -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Johnny Thompson Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 8:33 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Search Engine Friendly URLs I can't share ALL my secrets, or else I'd be out a job!! ;o) ...and to clarify - I didn't say spiders COULDN'T read dynamic sites....I just said they PREFER static ones (or ones that appear static). If you guys want me to speak on SEO in a future meeting, I'd be happy to share SOME knowledge on the subject... -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jacob Cameron Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 10:14 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Search Engine Friendly URLs As I mentioned, CATV had no SEO, it doesn't have title or meta tags, I just used it for an example. It was a $500 site thrown together for a church. Showbizjobs.com used to have sub pages that it linked to earlier this year. I'm not sure why they don't right now, but I believe it is because of the google ad-words my client has started to do and putting on the home page only. Of course, as you know, Search engines rank home pages higher than sub pages for the reason of giving you greater variety in your results. I used 'Downey studios jobs' as an example for SBJ because it is not even on the home page (except in a drop down of companies) and ranks high, it is only in the sub pages that use URL parameters. I was including that one in case any so called SEO experts saw CATV, and came to the same results as you. However, my clients dynamic pages are ranked highly that are dynamic. If spiders couldn't read them, they wouldn't be ranked at all. That was my argument. Now, if you would share your expertise with us and explain how you know how all search engines rank, I would be very interested in hearing that. An interesting search engine ranking is: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=blue+lantern+inc+about+us&fr=FP-tab-web-t&t oggle=1&ei=UTF-8 http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=MSNH&q=blue%20lantern%20inc%20about% 20us Notice how Sonyarenee.com is ranked on the first page of both and is a sub-page using a URL string. Of course it is nowhere to be found on Google because all spiders are different and rank on different things. I've stopped using Google as my search engine of choice because of it bringing up irrelevant sites such as hundreds of sites like this because all the SEO companies have found out how it ranks: http://www.the-divorce-resource.com/ http://www.yourskincarecenter.com/ http://www.qualityelectronicsonline.com I really hate that Google ranks these types of sites bigger than most with real content and all they have are links to other sites. The site is nothing more than one php page and one .htaccess file, I know I wrote hundreds of them for a SEO company this summer. You'll probably also notice that my pages all use sub-directories in hopes of ranking, as I have tried everything over the years. In my experience Google seems to like this but inkatomi, yahoo, and msn are beyond that, they do not fall for simple url tricks. That is why Google has been returning really bad results for the last six months, everyone is creating fake sites just to rank. I appreciate you joining the conversation, but it is easy to just say someone with is wrong. However, I have offered examples and proof to how I reached my hypothesis, all you did was say that I was wrong with no proof, just your opinion. That's not a good argument, that is arrogance. Believing that you know better than I, without knowing my history is pure arrogance. Please enlighten us as to what your hypothesis is based upon. I would really like to know how to get better rankings as I'm sure we all would. My clients are top for the keywords they choose. I submitted these keyword: carpet cleaner garland, a few weeks ago. If you search for: carpet cleaner garland, on yahoo and msn, he is number one (alwaysacleanercarpet.com, on Google, it doesn't look like he is indexed yet). You'll notice currently on Google that it brings back companies that are not even based in Garland, but junk sites that just have links to other sites. This is why I believe Google is useless. It appears that I know what I am doing because if I optimize a client, I can usually get them on the first page for the words they want. Of course like any good SEO person, I talk them out of using 'Insurance', or 'Computers' and make them use more relevant words. Jacob -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Johnny Thompson Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 9:06 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Search Engine Friendly URLs With some trepidation....I enter into this discussion.. BACKGROUND: I'm a Sr. Systems Architect at one of the nation's premier SEO firms and premier plus sponsor to this past week's SES conference in Chicago (please don't misinterpret as arrogance - see http://www.jupiterevents.com/sew/fall04/) Additionally, our company is on the board with SEMPO and participate regularly in ongoing discussions regarding Search Engine strategies). MYTH: dynamic url's don't matter to spiders REALITY: well...that depends on what kind of search results you want. While a spider doesn't STOP in reading a URL which contains parameters, it will strongly favor one without them (if you they both contain the same target keywords). Why you say?...well, spiders love STATIC content. All of the search engine reps agree (this past week at the conference, I cornered askJeeves and Google)...STATIC content (or at least the appearance of) gets a higher ranking because of the probability that that content won't change. Nothing more frustrating to a search engine (and users) to display results of a search and the have the user click to a broken link...makes them look bad. SIDENOTE: In Jacob's example of 'catv dallas', his best result was #1 in yahoo and worst was #7 with Google. While this may seem impressive, the reality is, 'catv dallas' didn't even register on overture's inventory analysis tool. In fact, world wide, the term 'catv' was only requested 2399 times for the month of November. That's WORLDWIDE. So - of course your rankings were good Jacob! ;o) Additionally, the phrase 'entertainment jobs' ranked well for showbizjobs.com because it was the HOMEPAGE. No dynamic URL's there! If it sounds like I'm doggin' you Jacob..I apologize....just trying to clear the air about what people believe about search engines and what the reality is.. Hope that helps... Johnny Thompson Z�nch Communications, Inc. http://www.zunch.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jacob Cameron Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 10:49 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Search Engine Friendly URLs We are submitting each dynamic page using submittal software that spiders the site and sends them one at a time 5 minutes apart. For a 100% dynamic site example, type this into any of the top 3 search engines: catv dallas Each one will return a different sub-page of my clients site: catvdallas.com You'll see that everything runs through the index.cfm page. I chose this site because it has no meta tags or search engine optimization. It is all there because spiders can read dynamic content. Of course I have clients that rank very high for their submittals for standard websites. I also have a lot more clients that get good dynamic results, the best is showbizjobs.com, search for: entertainment jobs, universal jobs, Downey studios jobs Jacob -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kevin Fricke Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 9:46 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Search Engine Friendly URLs Jacob, Do you have some example sites? I have still found this to be a problem. Are you submitting each dynamic page or are the seach engines finding them? Thanks! Kevin -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Jacob Cameron Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 8:39 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Search Engine Friendly URLs I personally think that it has not been an issue this century, and find the effort an exercise in futility. I do a lot of SEO and have clients with top 3 ranking using Fusebox style sites on MSN, Google, and Yahoo. Jacob -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jake Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 6:09 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Search Engine Friendly URLs Thanks for the history. That puts all the pieces together I've heard discussion about. So do you think it's really that big of a deal these days to make the /index.cfm/action/something syntax? Or is it just a legacy thing that people hold onto more for nostalgia than for necessity? Jake Daniel Elmore wrote: >The term "search engine safe" was coined in the early search engine >days because spiders would skip links with &'s and ?'s when indexing >your site. >The reason, AFAIK, was because the search engines didn't want to store >pages with dynamic content. Thinking it would degrade the accuracy of >keyword searches. This became a ridiculous idea as the web matured. >Many static pages are generated dynamically and most pages that use >query strings are actually creating "static" content. A link to a >product description page for example. So to get around this people >started writing links like so: >http://www.mysite.com/index.cfm/action/something > >and then using a filter to convert the link. This fooled the spiders >into thinking it's a link to a page with static content. There are >plenty of web filters for the various middleware languages that allow >your web server to translate that url into the actual url. > >Things have slowly changed though and the spider bots are starting to >allow query strings with more and more attributes. So the value of the >web filters and the work involved to code your links like that is >degrading rapidly. > >So in a nutshell, (I just realized that this tangent has not specially >answered your question) a search engine safe URL is constituted by >having a URL with no query string syntax (& and = and &). > > >-----Original Message----- >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On >Behalf Of Jake >Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 2:07 PM >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Subject: Search Engine Friendly URLs > >All, > >What is the consensus on what constitutes a "search engine safe" URL? >Would something like: > >www.mysite.com/index.cfm?action=something > >or > >www.mysite.com/index.cfm?action=something&ID=190 > >be SE safe? > >Jake > >---------------------------------------------------------- >To post, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: > http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberUnsubscribe.cfm >To subscribe: > http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberRegistration.cfm > > > >---------------------------------------------------------- >To post, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: > http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberUnsubscribe.cfm >To subscribe: > http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberRegistration.cfm > > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------- To post, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberUnsubscribe.cfm To subscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberRegistration.cfm ---------------------------------------------------------- To post, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberUnsubscribe.cfm To subscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberRegistration.cfm ---------------------------------------------------------- To post, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberUnsubscribe.cfm To subscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberRegistration.cfm ---------------------------------------------------------- To post, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberUnsubscribe.cfm To subscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberRegistration.cfm ---------------------------------------------------------- To post, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberUnsubscribe.cfm To subscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberRegistration.cfm ---------------------------------------------------------- To post, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberUnsubscribe.cfm To subscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberRegistration.cfm ---------------------------------------------------------- To post, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberUnsubscribe.cfm To subscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberRegistration.cfm ---------------------------------------------------------- To post, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberUnsubscribe.cfm To subscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberRegistration.cfm ---------------------------------------------------------- To post, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberUnsubscribe.cfm To subscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org/form_MemberRegistration.cfm
