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Posts Tagged ‘url’
Monday, August 3rd, 2009
If you’re new to online marketing you might be wondering why you see some websites with www in front of the URL in the browser and some without the www. Furthermore, you could be asking whether that www is necessary. Really, it’s not.
As far as SEO is concerned, you don’t get any additional search engine benefits either way. And as for branding, there’s nothing to add to the benefits on that end either. The only issue you’ll run into regarding the www in your domain name is with duplicate content. If you fail to point your DNS to the one you are not using then you could have duplicate content issues with the search engines. While there is no penalty for that per se, you could see some drop in rankings or a de-listing altogether of one of those – and it could be the one that you want to use.
To prevent those kind of issues, one of the first things you want to do when you buy your new domain name is point the DNS to one or the other. In other words, you want people who type in www to landing the site without the www, or vice-versa. To make that happen, you need to make sure your web host redirects all traffic from the one you aren’t using to the one that you are. Your host can help you get that done if you need it.
Tags: domain name, url, website address, www
Posted in website development | 2 Comments »
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
Your URL is important for a number of reasons. Google algorithms change from day to day, but there are days where your URL can push you up in the rankings a few notches if it contains your primary keyword in it. There are times when it won’t. Overall, I’d say having your keyword in your URL is very important. It’s not a make-or-break it factor in rankings, but it can be a slight edge in the competitive dance if all else is equal between your site and your competition’s.
Nevertheless, your URL is important in other ways as well. It’s a great branding tool, for instance. In fact, you can brand your company with your website URL even without using a keyword. There are many examples of this:
- Flickr
- Google
- YouTube
- MySpace
- Facebook
- Digg
And that’s just to name a few!
If you mention the niche each of these companies exist within, you’ll no doubt think of these companies. Google = search engine, Flickr = photo sharing, YouTube = video sharing, Digg = social bookmarking, and MySpace and Facebook = social networking. The URL = the name brand. Powerful marketing!
This combination of URL importance is getting even better since Google is introducing a new feature into its Google Suggest tool. From Marketing Pilgrim:
Google’s also added navigational suggestions–so if you start typing the name of a company or brand, you’ll more likely see the actual URL appear in your suggested items.
What this means is that your URL could actually become a suggested destination or query result at Google for generic keywords that searchers type in. But for that to happen you have to establish yourself as an authority website in your niche. That means building unique and original content that increases your reputation in your niche. When you do that, you have a bigger edge and that edge is what it’s all about.
Tags: Branding, domain name, google suggest, url
Posted in Branding | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
Your permalink is the complete long URL that you use for the address of your individual blog posts. An example of a permalink is:
http://www.smallbusinessmavericks.com/internetmarketing/seo-for-small-business/can-a-sitemap-get-your-website-indexed/04/28/2009/
Let’s walk through it line item by line item:
- The domain name URL – This is simply your domain name. If your visitor is sitting on your home page, this is the URL that would show in her browser. In my case, that URL is http://www.smallbusinessmavericks.com/. It’s important to understand, however, that this address is the URL of my website, not the blog.
- Blog Address – If your blog is your website then it may sit on the root domain. That would be the above-mentioned URL for my home page. But if your blog is a part of a larger website then it will have its own folder and will look something like this: http://www.smallbusinessmavericks.com/internetmarketing/. internetmarketing is the name of the folder where my blog sits. Yours will be something similar, but you should name that folder something related to your niche and put an important keyword in it. This will help you with SEO.
Everything that follows from here pertains to the individual blog post. There are several ways you can go. First, you must decide whether you want to include the category name in your permalink. I have chosen to do that and you can see the category name in the permalink to the above blog post. It’s the part of the URL that reads seo-for-small-business/. The category name isn’t necessary, but it can further help identify to your readers the nature of your post.
After the category name (should you decide to use one), there are generally three other protocols in popular use:
- Date protocol
- Number of post protocol
- Post name protocol
It is generally accepted not to use all three protocols, but you can, technically. They can appear in any order, but I’d prefer to put my post name closer to the beginning to make good use of my keywords in the domain name. Analyzing the above URL, you’ll see can-a-sitemap-get-your-website-indexed/. That’s the name of the individual blog post. After that, the numbers represent the date of that blog post. The number of post protocol is generally a 3 or 4 digit number, like this: 231. That represents the 231st blog post you wrote on that blog.
Which of these protocols you use for your blog depends on factors that are important to you in perception and ranking with the search engines. However you do it, just know that you have options.
Tags: blog, domain name, permalink structure, url, website
Posted in website development | 3 Comments »
Friday, June 13th, 2008
Now here’s a Google tidbit I wasn’t aware of: Don’t end your URLs with .0. They won’t get ranked.
Evidently, this phenomenon is only true at Google. Yahoo! and MSN Live index those pages anyway, but it does seem to be a rather arbitrary rule. As Rand says, a human review might be in order to ensure that such pages aren’t spam. If they are, Google can ditch them. If not, then approve them and index them. Seems simple.
It pays to read the leading SEO blogs from time to time just to see if anything new develops. In fact, I’d say that the three most important activities for anyone interested in do-it-yourself SEO are:
- Read a handful of SEO blogs to stay on top of industry changes
- Test and experiment
- Review and analyze
I know SEOmoz does these things. Any serious SEO and any successful Internet marketer is doing all three and that’s why the .0 rule is such big news. None of us have ever seen it before.
Get the scoop on small business SEO at Small Business Mavericks.
Tags: .0, google, SEO, url
Posted in Local Internet Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Tools for Small Business | No Comments »
Thursday, May 1st, 2008
A permalink is the URL of a specific blog post once it has moved beyond your home page into the archives. It is the part of the URL that follows the first / in your blog post’s URL.
For instance, the Small Business Mavericks blog URL is http://www.smallbusinessmavericks.com/internetmarketing. Each individual blog post has its own URL that is designated by the website URL followed by the / symbol and usually the title of the post. Yesterday’s blog post permalink is http://www.smallbusinessmavericks.com/internetmarketing/seo-for-small-business/5-seo-tips-to-improve-your-business-website/04/30/2008/.
That’s pretty long, isn’t it?
The part that follows the second / and begins with the word “seo” is the blog post’s specific page URL. In the case of this blog, the permalink consists of the name of the category into which that blog post was set (SEO For Small Business) followed by a / symbol and the name of the blog post (5 SEO Tips To Improve Your Business Website) followed by another / and the date of the post.
You can format your permalinks any way you want. You can format them with or without your category names. You can format them with or without the dates. You can even shorten the post part of the URL with some blogging platforms, such as WordPress, by finding the place in the system that allows you to do that and manually changing the URL “slug.” When you do that, your title will not be changed, but the actual URL, or permalink, will.
The permalink is what tells search engines and human visitors where to find each individual blog post. It is a necessary part of that blog post’s address and if you write about the same topics often then you’ll want to make sure that each blog post has a unique permalink.
Tags: blog, permalink, SEO, url
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | No Comments »
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