Google search results Archives - Page 2 of 3 by Mark Murnahan

SEO Tip: Trailing Slash, Canonicalization, and Google

I am going to give you a helpful SEO tip that you can put to use fast and easy. It is a common error that can make a big difference in your search engine optimization efforts, and it has to do with canonicalization. Don’t let the big word intimidate you, because I will break this down and make it very easy to understand.

I could get really deep into the issues of your sitemap format, .htaccess files, rel=”canonical” tags, server configuration, and a squillion other things, but not this time. I want to give you the “low hanging fruit” that anybody can put to good use, starting immediately.

The Difference in a Slash or No Slash

Did you know that there is a significant difference between a web address that has a slash at the end and one that does not have a slash at the end of it? I don’t want to confuse anybody, so I will give a visual example of what I mean. I will show you two web addresses (URL) that look very similar, and will both land you in the same place, but they are actually very different. My sample web addresses are as follows:

http://www.awebguy.com/seo-lessons/
http://www.awebguy.com/seo-lessons

As you can see in my example above, one of these addresses has a trailing slash (“/”), and one does not. So, let’s examine the important difference that the slash at the end of a URL makes. For you technical folks, it makes the difference of returning a “200 OK” status code or a “301 Moved Permanently” (or other) status code when the page is requested. I will try to explain this a little better for the non-techie people, because I really want this to make sense, and I want it to help you.

Note: In order to know for certain what your web server is telling people, you need to know your server’s HTTP response headers. Don’t worry, I made you a handy little tool so you can see the difference. I will also show you how to tell the same thing with Google Webmaster Tools.

What you want to know is whether the header begins with a “HTTP/1.1 200 OK” response, or a different response such as “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”. Only one of the versions will return the 200 OK, while the alternate version may return something else … and perhaps even something unexpected, like a “404 Not Found”. I made this really easy to check your server’s response headers here:

Enter a URL:

I am using Google in this instance, because we all care about Google, and I am using Google Webmaster Tools to illustrate the point. When search engines visit your website, they receive what is called an “HTTP status code” from your web server which tells them the status of the URL. A status code you have surely seen is “404 Page Not Found”, but there are a lot of other server status codes, too. The two which I am primarily addressing here are “200 OK”, which is the one you want search engines to see, and “301 Moved Permanently”, which tells the search engines that your page is not at that address, but your web server knows where to find it.

Below are screenshots from within Google Webmaster Tools to show what Google sees with my two sample addresses. The images below show the status codes that Google received for each of them. Note the address that Google fetched, and the status code in each of these images. In the instance with the trailing slash, the “200 OK” was returned, and Google continued with fetching the page. In the second image, Google was told that the page had “moved permanently”, and where to find it.

Now let’s look at the 301 status code. Notice the difference in how it tells Google that the page has moved, and where to find it.

A 301 status code is still better than having it return a “404 Page Not Found” error, but far worse than returning a “200 OK” status. Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me, but I have actually witnessed “webmasters” handle this with 404 and 302 status with a lot of websites as well. Notice that I used the term “webmasters” very loosely, and this definitely does not reflect the work of a “master”. Yes, even on the modern Internet of 2011, people still screw things up, horribly!

Slash or No Slash in URL and Duplicate Content

Either of the URL versions is “correct” to use, but you should choose one, stick with it, and configure your website and your links accordingly. I have seen a lot of cases where people have their website configured to return a “200 OK” status code for both versions, but that is a horrible idea. The reason is that if both addresses return a 200 status, you are telling Google that the content actually exists in two places. That would result in duplicate content, which Google deals with pretty well, but does not like. It also dilutes your efforts for building links.

The Easiest Novice Fix for Canonicalization

This is surely very confusing for a lot of people, or the problem would not exist. However, there is one small part of this issue which even a novice can work to improve. You may not get it all fixed with this, but it will be a good start to fixing a common mistake.

Whether it is a link from other websites, or links between pages on your website, you should always link to the version which returns a “200 OK”, because that is where the page actually resides. Google and other search engines can be quite accommodating, but there is a qualitative and quantitative difference in doing this right and doing it wrong. With all of the competition on the Internet, it is worth getting things right, as much as possible.

The right or wrong version to use depends on your website, and what the URL represents. You see, an address that ends without a slash is typically used for a file, while an address with a slash denotes a directory structure (but not always). The right version to use will vary, but the most important thing to know is to always use the URL which returns a “200 OK” status, whichever that is.

In the case of content management and blogging systems like WordPress, the trailing slash is often used, and the correct status code is returned. However, even in instances where it seems that it is all done for you, there are many cases where you, or others, may link to content manually and use the wrong format.

How to Fix Trailing Slash and Canonicalization Errors

Fixing your canonicalization errors does not need to be a huge headache. Since this can make a big difference in your search engine ranking, it is very worthwhile to fix it. The “Official Google Webmaster Central Blog” has a useful article about this issue, and it is titled “To slash or not to slash“. I think it is worth a read. Another, more effective, alternative is to hire a good SEO to help you to know what you didn’t know, and to fix the things which are holding you back from ranking higher in search engine results.

What I have described is an easy mistake, and one which may be costing you, big! I hope that you will give this your attention, and that you will use it to improve your search engine ranking effectiveness.

As always, your comments, questions, compliments, gripes, complaints, and bellyaches are all welcome here on my blog.

If you don’t like what I have to say about this, I welcome you to look at my HTML source code to see if that helps you any. 😉

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Google PageRank Changes and Fools Still Listen

Remembering Farrah Fawcett and Google PageRank

Google PageRank? Seriously, just get out your checkbook right now and write me a blank check. Don’t worry, I will go ahead and fill in the dollar amount. You just be sure to sign it.

I was thrown back into yesteryear by a blog article I read at Search Engine Journal that discussed Google PageRank. No, it was not something from deep in the bowels of their 2003 archives, but rather a real life demonstration of sad linkbait published only yesterday. I don’t need a pissing match with these guys, but it was sad to see a long-dead topic like PageRank being exhumed for public consumption.

It reminded me about who I write for, and why. I write for you, and I try to make useful facts and good ideas spring to life with a touch of entertainment value. Once in a while I will throw in my Murnahan Cheez Whiz style to keep you on your toes and make you say “what?!”

My objectives include reducing the abundance of blatant SEO lies and myths that search engine optimizers promote. Sure, I may not be able to fix the whole world, but I can do my part to blow the “bullshit whistle” on bad SEO information.

Since I want you to subscribe to my blog and come back, I try to overlook topics that will be genuinely useless and guide you wrong. You know, topics to scare you into putting crap in your brain like Google PageRank changes.

The article I am talking about brought acid to the top of my throat and reminded me just how easy it could be to scam people out of a blank check. It touched on just how “unknown” this SEO business I am in really is, and it made me feel like one hell of a nice guy for telling things straight.

I will go ahead and link to the article, so I guess their “linkbait” idea worked. The article is titled “New PageRank Formula May Change Your SEO Priorities.” Below is my comment, in which I replied to my friend and fellow long-time SEO who also criticized the article, Jim Rudnick of Canuck SEO:

OMG, are people seriously still writing about PageRank? Maybe we can throw some meta tags into the conversation. While we are at it, I want to break out my old Farrah Fawcett poster and leave my mom a “surprise” under the bed, too.

Agreed, very old news. It is funny to me that somebody recently mentioned the PageRank of my blog and my first thought was as nostalgic as my Atari 2600.

I have not even looked at the “Green Fairy” of PageRank in half a decade. If you are doing the things you should be doing, people will love your stuff enough to link to it. If it is relevant content for a given search, on a reasonably decent website, and other people crave it, the site will rank well. Isn’t that a whole lot easier than waiting for Google to give you a number?

The remembrance of Google PageRank brought to mind the different qualities of search engine optimizers that I enjoy just enough to squash them to pieces and bury them in a shallow grave.

It is easy to understand how people could get confused about SEO. It is an industry that begs for naivety, ignorance, greed, and dishonesty. Sadly, these things are in great abundance among website owners and want-to-be SEO providers, alike.

Lay Down Your Google PageRank Gun and Listen!

Don’t shoot the messenger, but if you are looking at measurements like Google PageRank as an indicator of progress, your efforts are a hot mess. Save yourself some grief. A far better answer is to create something useful, creative, interesting, and relevant to people. These are the things which compel people like crack cocaine. These are the things which cause people to reference you and link to your website content. These are the things which make a difference, and not some misunderstood 1-10 measure that Google itself tells you to ignore.

I do not even understand why there is still a Google PageRank measurement, because Google has made it damn clear for many years that the most important thing is to give people what they want. If you concern yourself a fraction as much about what you are delivering to people as you concern yourself with Google, you will very likely rank a whole lot better. Plus, your PageRank will go up, too!

Note: I am not one of those people who only preach the gospel of “Content is King” and that writing a bunch of stuff on a blog will make something rank well. There are a lot of things which go into good SEO. Google PageRank is not in my list of SEO lessons, and I don’t think it was anywhere in my SEO blog archive, either … until now.

OK, doubters, now that you have heard me out, go ahead and fire your PageRank guns and tell me how wrong I am in the comments section below.

Image via Wikipedia

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SEO For Hire: The Worst Job for an Honest Person

I have been in the business of SEO (search engine optimization) for over a decade, and it has provided me a very handsome living in that time. I fell in love with the SEO field with the excitement of having nearly anything I ever really wanted listed at the top of search engines reach the top, and remain there. I still do that, today … every day.

In the time I have been in the SEO industry, I have accumulated so many stories of winning that it is no wonder it feels like a bad drug habit, and I am addicted. Through the 2000’s, SEO was the basis of my means to sell millions of dollars in Internet access and web hosting services to over 2000 Internet access providers and web hosts. I rocked that market and earned squillions as the CEO of a wholesale Internet services company. SEO was really fun, indeed!

Adding to all the fun and games, I have enjoyed things like a relatively small client crediting me for increasing their new home sales by over $82 million in the first year they were my client. That is like an intravenous drug to me, and hearing how many jobs it created for that somewhat small organization means that I have done something meaningful.

I have a lot of stories like these, which keep me going and keep me seeking that next “drug” high.

When SEO Became the Worst Job

I have really had a blast performing my work for clients over the years, and I still love performing the work. However, it was a lot more fun back before every con artist jumped in and said they could do the same thing for pennies, and then cheat customers out of their money. Liars and cheats have made a mockery of the SEO industry, and given people reasons to doubt the truth.

Of course, a good SEO can see right through the lies, but many business customers cannot tell the difference between good SEO and bad SEO. Although I have tried to warn many people, lies about SEO have lead a lot of people by the nose (and the wallet).

I have often said that business is great, if not for all of these damn customers.

For much of my career in search engine optimization, I have worked as the man behind the curtain, as a sub-contractor for other firms. That is largely because I have often felt, and said that “business is great if not for all of these damn customers.” What I mean by that phrase is that in a field where I am quite deeply engrossed and knowledgeable, it can be very challenging to bring SEO down to a level that people will relate to and understand. I am simply not a good person to ask if it is helpful to be listed in the top of search listings when somebody searches for something in your industry. I am a really bad guy to ask whether marketing is a commodity and if everybody can do it just the same.

I have written my thoughts of dealing with prospective clients who do not understand, nor wish to understand, what it takes to develop really effective SEO and social media marketing. I believe I said it well in an article titled “When I Go to Hell, They Will Have Me Selling SEO“.

SEO is Like a Drug Habit, and I May Relapse

Although I may have a relapse from time to time, I have finally decided to set a course to end my services for hire by mid-2011, in order to focus on other endeavors. As I have indicated, SEO is like an addiction to me, so I know that if I do not actually say it in public, right here on my blog, I will probably never quit it.

The fact remains that the field of performing SEO for clients has lost much of the joy. I am tired of having people return to me for cleaning up the messes of another SEO after they decided to go with the cheap guy with a pocket full of fairy dust. More than that, I am tired of defending the truth while realizing that the truth is not what people really want.

For the past couple years, I have sought to gain retail clients to work with directly. I decided to take on a small group of clients who understand what it really means to build success. The ignorance (don’t know), apathy (don’t care to know), and dishonesty (will lie about it) that I have witnessed in the last couple years have caused me to lose much faith in the SEO industry and in the popular business mindset of the day.

Unfortunately, I find that far too many business people are not interested in creating real success when they can settle for just getting by. As a web guy who really does care about delivering results for a client, I have decided that the ignorance, apathy, and dishonesty of the SEO industry, and much of the SEO shopping public are not worthwhile to me.

I am tired of explaining the difference between doing something, and doing something well. Being able to prove results and giving factual proven data, but then having people too indifferent or scared to take the best actions for their own benefit drags me down and quite honestly makes me very sad. I see the actions of the large number of businesses who reach out to me as a microcosm of what is wrong with our business world and our economy today.

There are still a lot of myths to bust and lessons to teach, so I intend to continue blogging on topics of the SEO and social media marketing industry, for now. Besides, I still plan to perform search engine optimization.

Maybe once I officially do not take clients, people will have more trust when I say that the majority of what you hear about SEO and social media marketing is bullshit. It actually does require work, and it actually does require marketing talent to build success.

Your comments and/or well wishes are welcome here. If you can relate to this, I would love to hear your stories! If you would rather throw tomatoes at me, that is just fine as well.

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Crazy Things People Search For

People search for the craziest things online. Looking at your website statistics to see the searches people use to find your website can be an eye-opener. I discover thousands of bizarre and unexpected searches which lead people to my websites, and some of them quite useful. This can be quite entertaining, and also very beneficial for understanding people and the ways they search.

I constantly hear from people begging to be at the top of search engine results for specific terms. I often find that the things they want to rank for are about as well researched and thought out as balancing a three ton hippopotamus on a popsicle stick above your grandmother’s fine China collection. There are two problems with this: 1.) Somebody is going to get hurt. 2.) It does not work well, mathematically.

Most website owners do not have a clue about how to select the search terms to target, or even what people are already using to find their website. Even fewer know how to target useful search terms, or anything at all about the enormous value of lateral keywords which can often account for far more website traffic than the terms they desire. This is to your advantage, because now you do have a clue. You can thank me with your comments.

Reviewing the actual terms people type into a search engine to find things is truly astonishing. It is also an important way to better understand people and what they want. If you do not use tools like Google Analytics or Clicky statistics, you should.

The topic of how people search the Internet came up in conversation with a client yesterday. He pointed out a competing website which was ranking higher in search engines than his website. Of course, it was for his “hippopotamus-balancing” keyword selection which he thought must be important, because everybody else was targeting it. He got a quick schooling when I pointed out how few people were actually searching for that keyword phrase, and that according to available measurements (Compete.com, Alexa.com, Quantcast.com, Open Site Explorer and others) his website receives over 1,000 times more visitors and incoming links, and is ranked well for thousands of search terms. He kind of shut up after I showed him that, and I had my mind’s-eye vision of doing a victory dance. Then I pointed out his high conversion rate and had to take a step backward to preserve my personal space before he could slap on a big man-hug or kiss me square on the lips for all the money he is making.

Strange Ways People Search the Internet

It is easy to assume what people are searching for. It is also a huge point of failure for the majority of businesses trying to promote their product or service. I find too many people who make assumptions of the keyword phrases people will use to find them. It is important to be aware that each and every one of us use search engines differently. I find whole industries every day which blow me away with their total failure to understand and reach their market.

In an effort to make this point, I offer you these little bits of reality:

Here is a blog article I wrote a while back about cigars. I do not sell cigars, (although perhaps I should). I wrote one article about a cigar company falling short in their marketing, and then I later followed up with an article which showed the top 200 cigar-related search terms which brought people to my website from that single blog post. See “Cigar Prices Rising With Bad SEO and Social Media Marketing“.

More proof of this matter of an industry which did not grasp search engine optimization was found in the Smart Slate interactive whiteboard slate. See “Smart Slate, Smart Airliner, and Other Interactive Slates“. Because of the absurdity of this industry, I have earnestly looked into the option of entering the market just to mop the floor with the blood of fallen competitors.

Then, there is the automotive industry. I want to scream at this whole industry for the way they suck up billions in government bailouts, yet they keep trying to do business the way their grandfather sold cars. I wrote about their infamous ways of marketing and just how badly they are missing the mark. See “Topeka Kansas Car Dealer Social Media Marketing Case Study”

These examples are just a few of many thousands of markets being terribly overlooked by good marketing efforts including SEO that works. If you do not know what people are looking for, you will have a really hard time delivering what they want. It should seem obvious that when some knucklehead SEO (search engine optimizer) like me can come into an industry and take over thousands of first-page spots for search phrases and pull in the eyes of their potential customers, somebody is really missing the boat.

I suggest examining the search phrases people are already using to find your website, and reading this article on how to “Improve SEO Return on Investment (ROI) With Simple Math“.

If you don’t pay attention to what people are searching for, in reality rather than just myth, you may as well just play with a hippopotamus on a stick. Just don’t blame me if you break grandma’s China.

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Is Squidoo Good for SEO? Likely More Than You Think!

Is Squidoo good for search engine optimization (SEO)? The short answer is “Yes!” The longer answer involves how Squidoo can help to improve your search engine ranking.

First, for the uninitiated, I will explain that Squidoo is a service which allows for creation of topical pages. Squidoo calls each of these pages a “lens”, and the lenses you can find on Squidoo cover a great deal of useful information. Your lens (or lenses) can include any topic you like, and in fact, I have a Squidoo lens just for that. It is titled “SEO, Social Media, and Other Stuff Murnahan Likes“, and it includes RSS feeds from some of my blogs. That means more syndication of my content. This is a good thing, although the RSS links are not very useful from a search engine optimization standpoint. It also includes RSS feeds for commenting services I use, such as my Disqus profile and Intense Debate profile so people can see things I am commenting about on other blogs. It makes a nice aggregation of things I like and things I am up to. The possibilities are vast, and Squidoo has a lot of nice modules that are easy to customize.

Squidoo Helps SEO, But Not How Others May Tell You!

There is a whole lot of speculation and contention regarding the SEO value of Squidoo. Just as with most services with any search engine optimization value, there are many dirty attempts at SEO using Squidoo. This does not mean it is overrun by spammers or that it is not still valuable. I simply point this out because I do not suggest tagging yourself as the next great SEO expert by trying to make Squidoo your platform. It is just another tool, and I recommend being respectful of the Squidoo community.

You may think I try to make the very best use of each tool to improve my SEO. I do enough that people often ask me if I ever sleep, but I do not hold any tool in high enough regard that I would call it my “silver bullet.” There are some social media and social bookmarking sites that I see more benefit from than others, but each of them will have some degree of importance. Squidoo is one of the services I like very much. However, I will openly admit to shamefully under-utilizing Squidoo. Like my father told me, “do as I say and not as I do.” I do as much as my days and nights will allow. As time runs short, we are each guilty of neglecting to do some of the things we know we should be doing. In my opinion, Squidoo is one of those things we should both be doing, and doing better.

Squidoo Backlinks Help SEO

One benefit to Squidoo for your search engine optimization is incoming links to your website (backlinks) from your Squidoo lens (or lenses). I know very well that Squidoo links are valuable for SEO, but in case you are skeptical, I will show you just one way to measure them. I invite you to check the incoming links to this very blog, using SEOmoz Open Site Explorer. If you check my incoming links (yes, click this), you can see that Squidoo is listed with a “Page Authority” of 63 and a “Domain Authority” of 87. That is a worthwhile link, and one which should not be ignored. In the link above, I narrowed the report down to where you can easily find Squidoo in the results. It will look like the image below.

With enough links, such as I have explained here, it does not take long to start seeing better results in search engine results and more link authority for your site.

My SEO tip for you today is this:

Squidoo should not fall into that list of things you neglect. Take the time, today, to give a closer look at Squidoo and judge for yourself.

Squidoo Lenses Rank Well in Search Engines

Another example of the usefulness of Squidoo is of course how well the lenses (pages) rank. There is little mystery about the potential for making a Squidoo lens rank well for a target search phrase. You can often find popular lenses among the top results for popular searches. Although I do not use Squidoo for this in my own internal SEO, I have done so for client projects and witnessed a reasonable level of value in it.

I do not rely on any single SEO tool too heavily, and I do not recommend that you do that, either. There is not a short list of SEO tools and tricks that will make you famously successful with search engines. No, I am sorry, but that list of important SEO tools is long … very long. You should never place all of your SEO energy in only a few places, but instead use a wide range of resources. At the same time, I would submit to you that even if it took you the rest of the day to set up your Squidoo account or to add another Squidoo lens to your existing lenses, your day would not be wasted. By the end of the day, you will have become more efficient using another SEO tool that can give you more visibility to your Squidoo lens, and additional relevant links from Squidoo to your website.

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