SEO News » SEO Hints and Tips

Google now supports cross domain canonical tag

Andy — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:34:39 +0000

Back in February 2009 – Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft all announced that their search engine platforms would support a new type of tag that would inform search engine spiders of the ‘canonical’ page when there are several available. This tag could be used only internally or on a subdomain of that URL. Last week Google announced on their blog that the tag is supported across multiple domains. This will help webmasters who (for whatever reason) do not have server side control over their websites, whilst allowing the source domain to take precedent over any duplicate URLs.

I’m sure you’re all aware of the tag setup, if not you’ll find an example below:

...

This informs the search engine robots of the page that is deemed to be the ‘canonical’ one if there are many available. So for example – say you’re signed up to an affiliate programme where they use a tracking parameter like so:

http://www.example.com/example-page.php?affiliate=blueberry

You don’t want to have both the main page and the ‘blueberry’ page indexed, resulting in a canonicalization issue. Therefore if you place the following canonical tag on both pages, the search engine robots are aware that all the link juice will attributed to the page specified in the href attribute:

...

From tests that have been rolled out to client websites, the tag works a treat for this type of setup. 301 redirects vs. the canonical tag is a separate debate as the canonical tag will never make the 301 redirect process redundant. However, this is for internal pages rather than the new development, which targets external pages. We are still waiting to hear from Bing and Yahoo! on how their platforms will support external version – however it is clear that Bing might not be ready for a few more months yet.

So what benefits can we get from being able to use the canonical tag cross domain. Well for starters, bloggers using Google Blogspot that wish to move to a more ’snazzy’ URL can replicate all of their older posts on their new domain, whilst of course adding the canonical tag with the URL of the post on the new URL. Simple and effective considering there isn’t a way to place server side redirects using this type of platform.

From a downside, there is a of course potential for blackhat SEOs to manipulate the tag. Then we can’t ignore the possibility of cloaking as it is fully possible for a webmaster to make a legitimate informative website that accumulates a vast amount of links and place a canonical tag to either an identical/similar website that is styled differently. However, I do believe that the positives out weigh the negatives here. Blackhat and unethical SEOs will always exist, however as search advances even further, these techniques will become redundant.

I have found a great example of where this tag could be used to compact duplicate content from other webmasters using your content. We all know how great the BBC website is for providing us with upto date relevant content from an authoritative source. As a football fan i’m always keen on finding out the latest news in the Premier League. Looking at the rankings over the past six months for the keyword term ‘Manchester United News’ you will see the inclusion of an identical site to the BBC – http://www.simonbaker.me/sport1/hi/football/teams/m/man_utd/default.stm. Take a look at the identical keyword density values:

Now have a look at the positioning over time of both URLs:

The dates are from 1st June 2009 to the 20th December 2009 in Google UK. You can see the inclusion of www.simonbaker.me throughout the month of November – however if the BBC had of included the following tag (and of course it was supported at the time!), the website would never have ranked for that keyword term:

...

This of course can work for webmasters who do not have control over server side redirects, or indeed if there were a situation where by website A was the chosen URL, however website B still needed to be accessible to the public without redirecting to website A. To conclude, the use of the tag for SEOs has many benefits when used correctly. The tag isn’t a replacement for a 301 redirect – however, it can make an SEOs life easier if the technical team are happier to setup this tag rather than a number of redirects.

PDF Ranking test results

andrea — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:20:56 +0000

Last 26th of October I started a test to monitor how PDF documents are crawled and indexed by search engines.

The aim of the test was to try and find out the following things about PDF documents like:

Do Microsoft Word® headers (normally used into a professional document) make a difference?
How much does the Keyword Density in the document impact on its ranking?
How much do the document properties (Title, Author, Comments and Keywords) influence the indexing?

After just one week, Google started to show some tangible results. The other search engines are still looking around; only Ask returns a couple of results, but nothing worthwhile to report.

The scope of this document is to highlight the fluctuation that the different PDF documents (13 in total) made day-by-day.

Those are the first – most interesting – results I collected during the past couple of weeks for the main document returned by a SERP generated using the URK “seiunamicone”.

These are accompanied by the hidden results (in a drop down menu):

I’ve been monitoring the SERPs for a while, and apart from the first couple of days where it there were constant fluctuations, the results seem to be stabilized.

Proposing a lot of images it would probably have been muddled, however I can assure you that a lot of changes took place and I presume that even more of these changes will occur over the next couple of days.

Just to give you an example outside the above picture – on 3^rd of November the third result was a document called PDF-test-without-headers-KD43.pdf – my test n. 11. It is quite different to determine why this document was ranking at this specific time, which is the reason for why I included a graph collecting the SERPs detail changes.

This is the full graph:

Whilst this is a graph with the documents that just take part on the SERP during the period in which I monitored it.

Let’s analyze it altogether, but first let me remind you of something about the documents generated. I assumed a KWD of the URK “seiunamicone” split between the page (42%) and the document properties (56%) and fake headers when H1 and H2 have been created using pure emphasis instead of Word styles.

The first PDF to be indexed has been a document called Test 7 (PDF-test-without-header2-KD100.pdf). This document contains an H1 made using Word styles, a fake H2 – just emphasized text – with a KD of 100%. Just after some days, this document has been completely refused by Google SERP. Today is in the index but sit nowhere.

A snugly result for test number 5, 28% KD and one header, whilst no index at all for test 3, 10 or 13 for example.

If we would like to analyze only the first three results (first one and it’s aggregate) plus the first result shown when expanding hidden results we got the following picture.

Positive results has been collected for test number 12, always been present in the SERP and now stable on position 1 from about one week, test number 1.1, with some fluctuation, but now stable on position 2, and finally test 11, that apart some daily disappear has always been on position three.

So what makes the difference for these documents?

I almost sure Google is able to interpret the RTF code contained into PDF document (most probably doing a sort of reverse engineering). This sounds like strong assert (and maybe it is, so please take it just as my personal opinion) but it’s the only explanation I was able to find when I answered to the question “Why these?”

Analyzing the SERPs, I saw that after a KD factor, the headers get their own importance, so, if I should answer about the question

What are the predominant factors that influence a PDF indexing into Google?

According to the test result I collected during the past weeks, today I would probably answer with the following bulleted point:

Document properties usage. Adding the keyword(s) into the document properties (Title, Subject e Keywords – Comments are ignored. We can even use the Author field, but looks like to be used for different purposes, isn’t it?)
Keyword density. A sufficient number of keyword in strategic part of the document – as per HTML pages – results in a better-optimized document, especially when headers are used. But we remember of another important aspect, such as document length and size that after a certain dimension (100k) results in a non-crawled text.
Header usage. Inserting keywords into the header 1 (made with Word styles, not emphasizing the text) boost the document and help it for a better indexing. Eventually use an H2 sounds good, but during the tests I noticed that use both of them don’t get any extra advantage.
Keyword proximity. Whenever the headers are not used, keyword proximity plays an important role.

SEO Copywriting – The Facts

Sam — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:17:14 +0000

SEO Copywriting and content development is the key to producing a high quality website and one that is searched for by Google and enjoyed by humans.

SEO Copywritng Tips

Fact: Quality SEO Copy will increase traffic
Fact: Quality copy will increase sales
Fact:Google reads words – not images, make every word count
Fact: SEO does not need to kill the headline
Fact: Good SEO copy needn’t be boring or spammy
Fact: Copy with an emphasis on the customer journey will help with the overall structure of your website
Fact: Quality SEO copy will ensure the user clicks on your SERPS result rather than a competitor’s
Fact: Updating content regularly in a news section or blog will mean Google visits your site more often.

SEO Copywriting

Your website is your shop window to the world, for humans, not robots.

Good, well-balanced SEO copy content is integral to the success of your search engine optimisation strategy. As well as ensuring that your SEO copywritng contains a good range of primary keywords and derivative keywords, all content should be geared towards increasing brand awareness and ultimately sell more products and services.

Clearly defined and interesting directional copy is therefore essential.

SEO Killed the Sub Editor

A well used phrase is that the SEO headline has killed the sub editor. Gone are the days of witty headlines now that we have to fill them up with keyword rich content. Untrue.

Look at some of these classic headlines – without which we wouldn’t have had “Paddy Pantsdown”, or that iconic image of Neil Kinnock, before the Sun Claimed “It’s the Sun wot Won it”

The Sun Famous Headlines

Super Caley

If the editor and all us other writers had to care too much about what is the ideal keyword to use, and whether we are writing the correct captions etc, then creative could die in writing. If it were true the headline below “Super Caley go ballistic, Celtic are atrocious” when Caledonian Thistle beat the giants Celtic in February 2000…

…would have simply read “Caledonian Thistle 3, Celtic 1“*

SEO can be fun

But SEO is not the party pooper, the boring Robot feeding geek nor Mr Creative’s nemesis. Using our knowledge of how to use certain header tags and what Google and the other search engines look for, funny, clever and interesting headlines still have a very important place in all web copy. Just get the keywords in for goodness sake.

To find out more get in touch with me, Sam

*Thanks Jose

The ways Google collects information about us

Dan — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:32:05 +0000

With Google becoming an ever growing search engine providing search results to over 100,000,000 users, people may begin to wonder, just what information does Google collect from me to provide tailored search results? Or Google adsense advertisements.

With such a large user base, and the biggest index of search results in the world, Google has the ability to promote hundreds of thousands of businesses via a number of different advertising methods, from providing tailored adsense results to recommended search results via your circumstances.
Google has a number of ways of collecting information, one of the most common ways of collecting information is through Google’s toolbar which not only records search data, but also reveals the websites you have visited when page rank is requested.

Google also collects cookies that are created by Google user sessions, either through a browser or tool. The cookie will usually track websites that have been visited, the type of websites visited, the navigation path or the keywords used. Typically any information collected by Google is not used to identify the user but instead to discover typical browsing habits affiliated with users searching for various keywords.
Google collects this information not only to provide more targeted results but also to generate targeted adsense results based upon the users query. Information is used in the generation of revenue by providing better results.

The clockwork system that Google works on not only generates revenue for Google and the businesses spending money, but also provides the most relevant results for the end user.
For example, if you are looking to buy a pair of shoes online, you may perform a search in Google which will lead to you visiting a website and making a purchase. Google through a number of ways may have learned that you search lead to a conversion, this information is stored in a cookie that Google will request. The business who had the conversion as a result may spend more on Google pay per click or may feature more Google advertisements through adsense.

The end result means that you have made a purchase because Google’s results were accurate, the company selling the shoes has made revenue through your order, and Google make money from the pay per click costs involved.

In the case of natural search, this information contributes towards Google’s PPC data for the adwords tools.

So what exactly is used to collect your information, and how does the data collection from Google work? Lets look at some of the ways in which Google collects your information.

All searches in Google are recorded, whenever you make a search in Google, the query is recorded and the information contributes towards the pay per click tools such as Google’s keyword tool or traffic estimator. The information also becomes attributed to various other tools including Google Sets and Google Trends.
The recording of this information is used in a variety of ways, typically it is to further enhance results but also to provide search trend information to those looking to spend money through Google’s other advertising avenues.

The barrier between the information being used to identify you is mainly in place as Google maintain that no statistics are used to personally identify you unless stated otherwise. So in general this could mean that the natural search queries are recorded but no data alongside that is used to identify you. However for a financial product, information may be collected to identify you.

When you visit a web page, Google adsense will typically return ads related to the search query made, this enhances the likelihood of the end user clicking on the adsense link. This information enhances adsense ads by recording users information and click behaviours between websites to fine tune the results returned for adsense.

When adsense information is observed a tracking cookie will record the movements made around the ad, this information is sometimes used towards PPC information for evaluating the value of a keyword. PPC Keywords range in click value, this value is derived from the conversion potential and competition levels.
Another instance of Google tracking information is through Google reader. When using this product, Google reader will report back on the common blogs you subscribe too and the sites visited through the reader. This information is used to further enhance the reader product. When developing recommended bookmarks, this is derived from the popularity of blog sites and other information websites accessed through the reader.

The next item of information usually collected/shared is when a person signs up for a financial service with Google, this is mostly pay per click related but can also be through Google Checkout, adsense and other financial services with Google have to collect financial information and personal information for identification and verification purposes. This information is typically stored under very secure circumstances, none of this information is shared with other parties.

Another piece of information that Google will collect hails from Google’s analytics platform. With analytics, Google will gain an insight into the websites that are controlled by the account owner, as well as the popularity of the websites within. Google also uses its own analytics to evaluate just how a website behaves and how the visitors utilize it, for example, with analytics, the information collected may provide insight into a websites performance and how it manages its users, what the bounce rates are etc. This information potentially contributes towards website selection. If a website has a very high bounce rate, Google may record this information from analytics and use this as a ranking factor.

The next product Google will use to collect information is Gmail. Gmail is Google’s mail platform which offers free e-mail addresses and free online document storage, Google will have information on you from your account details and by the information contained within your documentation.
Google is also able to detect if you are connected via a social networking website such as Facebook, Bebo or Myspace. With your Google details these are used against indexed pages of social networking websites to see if you have a profile.

Google will also record searches you have made and will also populate other frequent searches within your jurisdiction to establish commonly search keywords within various regions, for example, Google could monitor the search activity in a region and observe high levels of flu related searches, Google could then use this information to tailor searches more suited to people in the region.

If you decide to use Google maps, then your queries are recorded to see the areas being observed, this data is stored by Google and is not passed onto 3rd parties. Google maps records details of searches and can observe trends in requested location data. This location data is also used to evaluate common interest between observationists and as such means that Google can provide additional images/resources related to the area’s searched.

When searching youtube, your searches and geographic data is recorded, this has recently been used to prevent UK users from accessing thousands of music videos that breach copyright laws. Video data is recorded to monitor popular keyword searches and video popularity. This data is used to deliver targeted ads in some video’s that are watched.

A variety of Google applications may collect and share data dependant on the application, everything from Google Chrome to Google Talk. This information is not usually used to identify you but instead to make your search/application use into statistics that help contribute to other peoples browsing/application use habits. Other goals include the better delivery of targeted sales advertising through PPC and Adsense.
What ever you decide to use it will more then likely create a cookie or collect data from search queries/applications. This information is used to further enhance search results/targeted advertising and also contributes towards better natural search results.

The Long Tail Search

Jon — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 20:17:28 +0000

People search for absolutely everything (take the fact that Britney Spears was the most searched keyword last year for example!). With 9.4 billion searches on Google US, the average Google search is just as likely to be three or four words long as it is the common one word search of old.

What is long-tail though? Long-tail search terms are the longer more specific keyword searches. For example; a long tail version of ‘camera’ could be ‘buy Sony DSC Digital Camera online’.

Avinash Kaushik from Google spoke publicly on long-tail trends for the first time this year. His main message was that average Google searches is now a lot more likely to be 3 to 4 words per query.
If you look at today’s Hot Trends on the Google Trends site, you can see that at least twenty of the keyword searches are more than two words long.

People will often do a little Google Insights data to discover their one word “trophy term” and pursue this with real zeal. In certain situations this can be particularly tough though. In many circumstances hunting the tail will provide more meat than catching part of the head.

Does the tail weigh more than the head?

Using our database at Intelligent Positioning we found that 4 word search queries were more popular than 1 word queries. This was especially true for really large sites.

One of our clients received 20,000 organic clicks for a ‘trophy term’ (position 4 in Google) in January 2008. They also received almost 50,000 organic clicks for sixteen 2, 3, and 4 word derivatives of this ‘trophy term’. ‘Stemming’ has a part to play here but the figures show just how many clicks you can gain from long tail searches.

The Advantages of Long Tail Search

So, what can the advantages of long-tail optimization include? Here are two:

1. Even if the searches for a particular term are quite low, the fact that it is a such a specific search term means you often get a high conversion rate

2. Getting a small amount of hits for many long tail searches all adds up

Knowing what tactic to pursue obviously takes expertise, research and the right data. Good SEO companies can do this for you.

Intelligent Positioning use an inside-out approach based on an advanced data system. This means we are able to make the correct decisions when it comes to keyword pursuit. You don’t have to flip a coin to choose heads or tails!

Author Chris L

1 easy step to perfect, quality link building

Jon — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 21:53:50 +0000

Many SEO companies are obsessed with link gathering and live by the strategy that building page rank (sometimes not just for themselves) is the only way to get quality SERPS results. Many “SEO” companies’ look to acquire multitude of links in directories and forgeign listings. IP-SEO have a different strategy.

Links are very important, but they are by no means the only answer. You could have all the links in the world and still not appear high in the SERPS. What a site needs is quality links rather than a mass quantity of them. Either way they are very difficult to acquire these quality links. IP-SEO, however has the perfect solution for getting quality links to your site.

Quality Link Building Strategy

The BBC have it, so do Facebook, The Guardian, Adobe, Apple, Wikipedia and so on.

So what is it? The answer: Make a quality site, with content that people want to link to. Easy.

But you don’t have to have a behemoth site with millions of unique users to have decent content – anyone can have interesting unique content, with a little bit of creativity. Writing an intresting blog or offering information that can’t be found anywhere else is ideal. There are multiude of ways to get that interesting information out there too, which we will be writing about soon.

IP-SEO is a great believer in the organic growth of the internet, this includes the building of links. Some websites do indeed need a bit of encouragement to get better links, but like a new shop starting up on the high street, it will get recomendations and support by offering quality products. But generally you will perform well in the SERPS, have a low bounce rate and get many links, if you have a well structured good quality site with content that people want to read and see more of. In turn you should link back to sites that you think offer good content and advice.

This point is expanded upon in this article – from a very good SEO Blog . Also take a look at the SEO and listings companies desperate to give themselves a link in the comments section, despite saying “yes i agree great article”. The irony.

Links are important, but only the right links. We can tell you what are the right links and what are not. One good rule of thumb is, if a company says they will get you 1,000s of links for a couple of hundred pounds, we would suggest they were not great links.

Author Sam

Google, Yahoo and Live all agree to new standard on Canonicalization

Andy — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:11:40 +0000

Reading through Vanessa’s Fox’s post from search engine land on how all three search engines have come to an agreement on the new canonical tag left me with more questions than answers regarding an issue that is often ignored by your average every day webmaster.

Canonicalization Study

Aaron Wall did a study on how canonicalization can effect the performance and organic traffic conversion of a website. He found that in the example he tested the website had improved organic traffic conversion by 300% – a massive improvement just for eradicating any duplicate pages.

Different Types of Canonicalization

Now we know that Canonicalization can take many forms:

http://www.example.com
http://www.example.com/index.cfm
http://example.com
http://www.example.com/home.html

Many webmasters or search engineers, if faced with this problem, will have to look through their internal link structure to determine the pages that point to these pages. The next stage would be to update the .htaccess file (providing your running the website on an Apache server) to eliminate the ‘www’ vs ‘non-www’ issue and don’t get me started on https! In reality it can become a nightmare for webmasters but could this new tag change it all?
Below is the code that you will need to add to the tag on your webpage:

Apparently, that is all you need to do and Google will, well near enough, see this as the chosen page when there are many available. I say “near enough” because Google has stated on their blog that the standard is a ‘hint that we honor strongly’ – meaning that it isn’t necessarily something that will be followed.
I updated my Twitter the other day with a thought I have had since the Big Daddy rollout in January 2006. Whose problem is it? Should we have to place a canonical tag within our tag? Do we really have to update all our links that point to a specific file at the root?

Personally, good search engineers will already know the file structure they should use to help search engines index pages and crawl the content. A well defined robots.txt file can restrict the potential use of duplicate URLs. So I really don’t think that this tag will change much at all but at least the search engines are acknowledging that it is a problem.
Author – Andy

SEO Content Writing

Jon — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:39:08 +0000

Your website needs more than traffic. Most websites, and the internet as a whole, are geared around driving traffic, but like any business you need to think about your brand, customer retention and conversion. Effective SEO copy will help improve your rankings while ensuring that those all-important human visitors are persuaded to convert while on your pages.

Importance of Relevancy

Content is king…only if it is unique and relevant content.

How can you expect to have top ten results for phrases that aren’t even in your website? We have looked at many websites where the owner has put in hundreds of keywords into the meta data (a good place to see what they are after) that don’t appear anywhere else in the website’s content.
It’s no accident that Wikipedia, probably the most content filled website on the net, does so well for many searches – this is for a plethora of reasons, on the whole based around quality, focussed content and website structure.

Get to the Point

Don’t bore your human readers with verbose copy.

What do you do?

A customer only needs to be told once what you product can do and what the USP is. However many websites don’t even do that, and expect the visitor to have a 6th sense in determining the product.
Avoid general irrelevant marketing speak.

“Our products are perfect for your business and help you to get the most out of your working day”
Could read:
“The Acme colour printer, fast, slim and sleek, just £99 – buy it now”.

Use descriptive keywords. What are your products? What industry are you in? What is the key, tangible benefit of your products?

Make it an interesting journey

Ask yourself, what do you want the audience to do next? It’s one thing having a website that people have visited, but if the website is just page after page of product and company information, users will get bored and not sign up or buy your product.

The customer journey is an essential aspect. Eyeballs need signposts on where to look next. Plus we all like looking at imagery rather than a page full of small writing.

Meta Data Writing

When writing Meta descriptions and titles, don’t try and squeeze in all your products and keywords in to that one little area. In the title highlight what the page is generally about, the description should describe the page or product or service in more detail. It should however not be a long list of all your products and services and an opportunity to duplicate all your keywords and different spellings of your company name.

Call To Action

The user needs to feel compelled to read your content and travel through your site wanting to find out more, then ultimately you will want them to get in touch with you by email, phone or visit a store – So tell them what to do next.

To find out more about Content Writing and quality SEO copy call Sam Silverwood-Cope at Intelligent Positioning.

Author Sam

What happens when you don’t implement a 301 redirect!

Andy — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 22:06:59 +0000

Following on from our blog on what is a 301 redirect and how it is different to a 302 redirect – i’ve noticed that a very popular website within Google has quite literally….disappeared from the SERPs!

Again naming no names, the chart below highlights this dramatic fall from grace for a number of keywords – without a replacement URL. As, highlighted in the previous blog entry – placing a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new URL is vital as it passes over all the page value and backlinks to the new URL – permanently.

The new website is up and running and does not yet feature anywhere within Google, Yahoo! or Live. This results in traffic being deployed more evenly to the remaining URLs on page one. The benefits of a 301 redirect are endless!

301 to a 302

A website that performs well for a keyword term that has a 301 redirect pointing to it is extremely important for good positioning – providing that the first website has good page value. One mistake that some people make is downgrading a 301 redirect to a 302 redirect. It is recommended that if website A needs to redirect to website B on a permanent basis – a 301 redirect is used and is not changed. This issue is highlighted in the chart below:

For more Self Help SEO and Hints and tips keep posted.

What is a 301 re-direct?

Andy — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:36:20 +0000

Redirects are used worldwide by millions of web technicians and marketing specialists on a day to day basis. Using a redirect you are able to change the location of a page on the website whilst maintaining the integrity of the website and the position of the moved pages.

Redirects come in various types from the temporary redirects to permanent redirects, which can be implemented at page level or server level. Implementing redirects is quite an easy task, all you are doing is informing the search engines of the new page location, whilst instructing the server or internet browser to navigate to a new url upon landing on the old url.

A redirect is used to point the old destination to the new destination at page level or domain level, which means you can setup a redirect on single pages or a group of pages, or you can redirect an entire domain. Redirects are versatile and very useful and are a must for anyone looking to change the website structure or domain name.

Lets look at redirects at their different levels:

When implementing a redirect, there are many different things to consider, such as, is the new destination page in a better location then it was previously?. When redirecting one page location to another, it is important that the following factors are considered:

- Is the destination domain the same or is it a new domain?
- Is the destination domain brand new or does it have some age behind it? (only if domain has changed)
- Is the destination URL friendly (i.e. not excessive in length or keyword usage)
- Has the destination URL been used for any other pages previously (Conflict of content theme)
- Has the destination URL been involved in any link development or bad link practices?

Since the domain is the foundation for a website in the natural search index, just swapping it with another domain is not a good idea, especially if the new domain is less than a year old and has no back links, the knock on effects can involve a loss of rankings.

Changing a domain should only be done when absolutely necessary or if the previous domain is very young and hasn’t built up any credibility. Redirects help save a lot of credibility when moving URLS/Pages, however, the changes in website structure can still have a positive or negative effect in Google depending on the redirection used among the changes in content, page text and more.

So what redirect is right for me?

Temporary 302 Re-direct:

A temporary redirect should be used when the URL structure changes but only temporarily. This is used on websites that are under development and are still undergoing page and url structures. For example, if we wanted to put a temporary redirect on a product page because it was placed in a different destination from what it would be if the website was complete then we would place a 302 redirect on the old destination towards the temporary destination, for example:

- www.mywebshop.com > Website (being built, still in progress)
- www.mywebshop.com/products/toys/cars > (Toys section, this was the URL used at one point)
- www.mywebshop.com/toys/cars > (New projected destination, still under development so temporary url used)
- www.mywebshop.com/temp/products/cars > Temporary toys section.
The temporary redirect should go from the old url to the temporary url until the new section is complete.

There are hundreds of different situations that are ideal for temporary redirects. It is very important that temporary redirects are not used for a long period of time as they do not stand strong ground in Google’s natural search. Because the redirect is known to be temporary, Google knows that the URL structure is likely to change again, therefore its importance is reduced for being returned in natural search.

How can I tell if a redirect is temporary or permanent?

Temporary redirect header codes are returned as a code “302”, using a server header checker you can see what code is returned, if you see a 302 code then the redirect is temporary. Use the following URL to check the servers header code:

http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers.asp

When is it ok to use a temporary redirect?

Temporary redirects are ok for short term URL restructures, for example, if the URL changes because of a website design change or site structure change then a temporary redirect is ok for short term use. Typically, many people that implement the 302 redirect leave it in place to long which is detrimental towards search engine rankings.
Temporary redirects are for temporary use, if implementing, ensure that the temporary redirect is only used for a short period of time, typically 4-6 weeks at the longest.

Why are temporary redirects risky to a websites ranking?

Google and other major search engines use the URL structure as a foundation in the search engine index, but only on the basis that the URL’s indexed are not frequently uprooted and changed. When implementing a 302 redirect search engines know that the URL redirected isn’t permanent, as a result this can cause unreliable results which search engines typically avoid.

Permanent 301 Re-direct

Permanent Redirect:

A permanent redirect is used to change the URL of a page on a permanent basis. Because of its header code, search engines understand that the moved URL will be moved permanently. Because the URL is moved permanently, search engines can update their index with the new URL in place, unlike temporary redirects, search engines class permanent redirects as a safer option since this prevents unreliable results.

How to check if a redirect is permanent:

Visit the URL below and enter the URL to check. If the code returned is 301 then this means that it has been redirected permanently.

http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers.asp

Page by Page Redirects:

Redirects can be implemented site wide or page by page. When redirecting single pages whilst keeping the site structure is unlikely to have any impact on search engine rankings. Implementing page by page redirects is quick and easy to do and is a popular choice for those either redirecting one or more pages.

Sitewide Redirects:

Implementing site wide redirects is a riskier job as changing the whole URL structure can have a temporary knock on search engine rankings. When uprooting the whole URL, search engines have to update their indexes. When doing this, its advisable to create an XML sitemap and submit it to Google webmaster central. Its then important to keep an eye on webmaster central to ensure there is no index problems, or no loss of rankings caused by other issues.

An example of a 301 re-direct:

Below is a successful 301 re-direct implementation for a client of ours. The keyword and URLs are hidden to protect the identity of our client, however the modification was made towards the end of 2008. Future posts will concentrate on how to successfully implement a 301 re-direct, whether it be using php or if your website is hosted on IIS.