SEO Consult Blog

As far as free software goes, Google is pretty generous in its release of data to web developers. Once signed up to Google you have access to some in depth knowledge of your sites. The two standout programs are Analytics and Webmaster Tools, everyone knows how useful Analytics is but I would like to discuss Webmaster Tools in more detail.

Whenever I have finished developing a site my first step is to add my xml sitemap to Webmaster tools, making Google aware of whats on your site and encouraging it to crawl the your pages.

Once added when you first arrive at Webmaster tools dashboard you are given information on your sites last crawl. Through the Diagnostics section you can discover problems that the spider has come across generally on your site during it crawl or more specifically within your content. Through the statistics section you can gain an insight in to what users of your site and the Googlebot deems as important on your site. You can see what your most common keywords are and through index stats you can achieve valuable information including inbound links and indexing stats: Alternatively you can put these definitions straight into Google to discover yours or someone else’s sites statistics, ideal for an insight into SEO competition.

Site:http://www.yourwebsite.com
Link: http://www.yourwebsite.com
Cache: http://www.yourwebsite.com
Info: http://www.yourwebsite.com
Related: http://www.yourwebsite.com

In the Tools section you can increase or decrease the crawl rate by Google spiders, analyse your robots.txt and set geographic targeting. If used correctly all of these features of Webmaster tools mentioned will make your site focused and targeted. If you need Search Engine Optimisation tips I would recommend using the links on the overview page and having a thorough read, this is where Google gives away a lot of hints of what and what not to do for your SEO campaign.

For an in depth analysis of your site please use this link; SEO Consult analysis.

In the land of search engine optimisation, a lot of people talk about SEO URL’s, whilst only a few people will actually give you a good definition of how to create them. This blog is going to be quite a technical one, so not for the feint hearted, but is a procedure any SEO worth his cost should be able to undertake without so much as batting an eyelid. Search engine friendly urls tend to adjust ugly querystring based urls like:

http://www.example.com/index.php?id=939398
to
http://www.example.com/a-great-detailed-example.html

Giving you the great benefit of not only appearing more relevent in the search engien results, but also having a more memorable and meaningful address for the end user.

Search engine friendly url’s take many forms, for example in this wordpress install they call themselves permalinks, when used in a seo perspective they are called Search Engine Friendly URL’s, however in essense all of different names you can think of rely on one of the most handy features of the Apache Web Server….. Mod_rewrite.

Mod_rewrite is a module which is loaded into the web server when required for website execution, and it takes its input and translates it through a RewriteRules into the output which is passed to the designated script.

Still with me? Now I have introduced the most important aspect of the Search Engine Friendly URL, I am going to give you the 3 step process to enabling you to ensure your unfriendly Query String turns into a nice rememberable and keyword rich URL.

1. Adjust your scripts to output the new search engine friendly and keyword rich links within your website
2. Turn on the RewriteEngine and create the relevent RewriteRules.
3. Amend the input of your websites scripts to recieve the new data format and convert it into an internally recogniseable variable

It is with these 3 simple steps you will find your web addresses becoming more memorable, and meaningfull to yourself, and boosting your website from obscurity in a matter of weeks.

If you would like SEO Consult to use our in house expertise to rewrite your URL’s, why not contact us