Marketing & SEO Discussion List - LED Digest

In LED 2080, Barb Radiavljevic states that she used search engine friendly URLs and page titles. With all the hype about search engine friendly, I can understand how it can be confusing with so many people expressing their opinions on what is "search engine friendly."

Search engines like Google state they can index Web pages created by ASP, PHP, JSP, ColdFusion and other extensions.  Then the search engines express an unwillingness to treat dynamic URLs with the same kindness they treat pages without variables.  In reality, search engines don't have too much trouble with Web pages that have variables in the URL.  The URLs with variables the search engines do have problems with include the following &id, CFTOKEN, PSESSION and a few other variables.  URLs with long, unruly variable markers also present problems.

Google states they will not index anything with &id in the URL. This is confusing to many because &pid, &uid, &sid and &cid all include id, but are also indexed by Google.  The &uid and &sid typically represent the session id variable in the URL.  Each new visitor to a Web page is considered a new session.  Subsequent visitations typically result in a new session id.  When search engines encounter this problem they end up indexing the Web page multiple times under different URLs.  This causes duplicate content and is devalued by the search engines.  Too much of this duplication can cause the entire Web site to perform poorly in the search engine results.  Eliminating this problem must then be a priority.

Dynamic pages are generated with either a POST or a GET function. The two functions pass information from the browser to the server. The GET function will include the session variable in the URL.  A POST function includes the session variable in the HTTP Header request.  The POST function will then not have the session variable in the URL.  Another problem is the GET function is less secure than the POST function.

What is an HTTP Header request?  When browsers request a Web page from a server, they include information up to 14 different variables.  These variables include such information as a referring Web page, the type of request, browser and its capabilities, the acceptable protocols and more.

It is typically assumed that the only way to remove a session variable is by using static, downloadable Web pages whose URLs then do not include variables, but rather include a .html type extension.  This is a misconception.

Dynamic URLs can be easily indexed if the session variable is removed from the URL.  The only problem found then is the lack of ability to merchandise products properly.  For example, an item could be in more than one category.  A dynamic URL will typically include a &cid where the cid is a numeric representation of the category.  Since no two categories can have the same numeric representation, having a product in two categories causes the search engines to index the same item twice due to the different category numbers.

Google states that the content management system should export the content in a manner suitable for search engine navigation.  Shopping cart applications come under the umbrella of the content management system.  This does get a little confusing and does imply they want static Web pages.  Google does not require .html extensions. Rather, they seek the simple removal of duplicate content and session variables in the URLs.  The other search engines aren't as open-minded Google when it comes to the number of variables a URL can have before they index the Web page.

Web pages using .html type extensions tend to be treated better than Web pages with dynamic URLs.  Why this occurs is based primarily upon the above mentioned problems.  Removing those problems tends to result in equal treatment.

Search engine optimization experts will tell you that a URL that includes keywords is search engine friendly.  This isn't entirely true.  Rather URLs that include the ability to use keywords are search engine optimization expert friendly.

Why is there a difference between search engine friendly (SEF) and search engine optimization friendly (SEOF)?

The simply answer is realized when we understand that search engines and search engine optimization experts have a love-hate or adversarial relationship.  Search engines want to have relevant results without a lot of spam or duplicate content.  With clean, relevant results the search engines tend to feel they are providing good user experiences.

Search engine optimization experts are paid to get their clients to the top of the search engine results so they can be found.  Here's where the adversarial relationship becomes understood.  Some actions performed by the search engine optimization expert are not friendly to the search engines.

Actions like stuffing keywords into every image ALT attribute falls into the not friendly realm.  Using the accessibility elements of HTML and XHTML such as table SUMMARY, image LONGDESC, NOFRAMES sections, TITLE attributes (not be confused with page titles) and many other elements incorrectly is not search engine friendly and is merely and attempt of the search engine optimization expert to spam the search engines.  Using spamming techniques is like taking advantage of another person because they were not as clever as you might be.  Obviously that isn't friendly to the other person and certainly not friendly to the search engines.

Back to the exporting of content from the dynamic application, we are faced with companies developing what they call SEF solutions by using a function to take the product information from the database and creating static, downloadable Web pages.  While this might be thought to be SEF, in fact, it typically isn't.  Typically, these static, downloadable Web pages create duplicate content.  Again, duplicate content is not SEF as it fills the search engine database with multiple copies of the same information.

At Apple Pie Shopping Cart, we've been wrestling with how to make cart software *both* SEF and SEOF effective for over 6 years, so we understand how hard it can be.  The search engines don't make it any easier, since they are constantly adjusting the ground rules.  But they *have* to, since the SEO experts and others are endlessly searching for techniques to help their pages rank higher.

The confusion over just what works in search engine optimization is not going to go away.  So site owners need to be very critical and do their homework in evaluating the claims of SEO experts and just as thorough when reviewing the claims of an application package like a shopping cart claiming to be "search engine friendly."

Sincerely,

Lee Roberts, Chief Executive Officer

Rose Rock Design, Inc.

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Written by Jenny L. Halasz
January 26, 2006

I would like to respectfully disagree with this comment. Not all SEO experts are focused on getting their clients to the top of the search results at any cost, and the SEO experts that use a more "wholistic" strategy do not have a love-hate relationship with the search engines.

Search engines want to provide the most relevant and informational content available to their users, so they index  sites that are easy to navigate, quick to load, filled with information or products, and most of all relevant to the search query. A good white-hat SEO campaign takes all of these factors into account and works with the site to make it:

1. easier to navigate (with technical and server side changes)

2. easier to index (by eliminating duplication and spider traps)

3. more informative (by adding relevant copy to pages and relevant ALT text to images)

4. geared toward conversion (whether it's retail sale, fill out a form for more information, etc)

5. instantly accessible (by avoiding large downloads, splash pages, flash, etc wherever possible)

What it all boils down to is that you can ask yourself two questions when creating optimization for a site:

1. Would I be comfortable telling (Sergei Brin, Bill Gates, insert SE owner here) what I'm doing?

2. Am I doing this for the users, the search engines, or both? If it's only for the search engines, you shouldn't do it.

A great shopping cart will take all of the above into account, and offer you as much flexibility as possible with its templates.

Jenny L. Halasz

marketsmartinteractive.com