Our client whocanisue.com was having in indexation problem after a shift over to a new CMS.  While still ranking very high for their well converting keywords they went from about a 70% IR (Indexation Rate) to an IR of about 20 percent over 120 days post New CMS. Although it seems very  commonsensical, whocanisue.com had the standard subfolder structure with a deep page hierarchy that we felt may have been making it difficult to get all the pages indexed. After confirming our theory with SEOMoz and their post about how flattening your site could yield better indexation results we put it to the test.

Less than one month after migrating 1800 pages of content into 140 subdomains we have found that we have 1710 pages indexed for an IR of 95%. Additionally, our search engine traffic increased 7% over the same time frame. Although some of our keywords dropped position on a nominal level we now have more pages indexed which are resulting in far more keywords appearing in search querys.

We are elated by this move as is our client. It’s important to understand that if your goals are to make the user experience better, chances are Google and the other big Search engines will take note and help you out.

My goal in owning the trademark for the word SEO is not to try to force people to change their SEO process, but rather, prevent companies from selling “SEO” as a service under false pretenses.

…We will also be forming a board of directors to oversee changes to the process, and format in which SEO can be sold (basically the BBB for the SEO industry). We will restrict businesses from selling the process of SEO as an “SEO” service if they do not meet the process approved by the SEO trademark requirements. Those approved will use SEO as normal, but will now be able to use the term as SEO™, and will be able to claim that their SEO service is approved under SEO trademark guidelines.

This power is for the people of the Search community and the protection of the general business consumer.

In my best Rosie Perez voice “REEAAALLLY?”

On April 24, 2008 the nice folks over at SEOmoz made the SEO world aware of this Jason character and his attempt to regulate the industry.  Thanks guys!

Today Rhea Drysdale has successfully defeated Jason Gambert, you go Rhea! Today you are our hero in the SEO world.

Click here to read Rhea’s thoughts in her own words.

1. If an enduser ends up at a 404 on your site they may get confused and leave your site.
2. Google likes URL’s and links that actually link somewhere. Overtime google may stop indexing the page the URL is pointing to.

How do you know if you have a 404 problem?

If you have webmaster tools, it will actually tell you what pages are resulting in a 404 and if you don’t, it’s actually pretty simple. Let’s say your domain name is www.dogdayafternoon.com, just add any obscure word or phrase after your domain like www.dogdayafternoon.com/i-fly-kites. It will most likely see something along the lines of page not found or 404 error.

How do solve this problem?

First, make sure your link’s are pointing to the right URL’s. Secondly, you want to create a 404 error page like our client whocanisue.com. Some site’s get creative and funny. It’s recommended that you have links on your 404 page that act almost as a sitemap to your most important pages, that way your enduser doesn’t cut and run, but knows that you understand there is a problem and they can start over or be guided through another path.

Digital Footprint can help you with any of your Search Engine Optimization needs. Contact us today.

Not having these redirects can be fatal to a website, from an indexation standpoint. Let’s say you were a small website with 500 URL’s and you had 385 indexed. If you were to completely restructure your url system, without 301 redirects. Overtime, Google and the other major search engines would stop displaying your URL’s as they would most likely return a 404 error.

Let’s use the example of a made up boat company xyzboatco.com. We decide to make our structure more effective with less folders and change xyzboatco.com/boats/engine/speed to xyzboatco.com/speed-boat-engines. If your initial URL was on the first page of Google and you didn’t redirect it to the later URL, overtime Google would drop that link. Google would still be sending traffic to the old link and it would result in a 404 error, which is an SEO no no.

If you are considering a URL overhaul it is absolutely imperative that you create a 301 redirect for your website, so you don’t lose all the hard work that you have put into your site.

whocanisue.com serves as a great example for relevancy in all three aspects of a page. When the term real estate attorneys is searched for, this page (www.whocanisue.com/real-estate/) presented on the first page of Google connects me to the real estate page of the whocanisue.com website. From reading the page title of “real estate/mortgage”, I can assume that the content contains listings of real estate attorneys.  In the brief content on the front real estate page, the word “real estate” is seen six times, and the word attorney appears once. Also, the use of the word sue in the domain name demonstrates the websites purpose of connecting customers with attorneys and information on the legal process.