Redirecting to please search engines

Posted by Marc Bradshaw on May 21, 2009, 3:50 pm

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Most of our websites are written in PHP with a MySQL back end.
Simplified, every page is stored as a record in the database and
templates are used for display of content. This means that there is
always a /home or /welcome record which acts as the home page for the
website. In the past I have always just done a straight header redirect
to send visitors (and search engines) to /home whenever they have not
specified a page.

Few of our websites get good search engine rankings quickly, the few who
are on the first page of results for their keywords have to build up a
lot of links and it generally takes a year or more to get to page 2/3.

I know that Search Engine Optimisation is a complex and time consuming
task, but I wonder if this redirect could be a hindrance - should we be
doing a 301 moved permanently redirect? We use this type of redirect
(set in the .htaccess file, though we could do it in the PHP) to
redirect from domain.com to www.domain.com, but is a 301 also
appropriate to redirect to the home page when none has been specified?

Your views and advice would be welcome.

Marc

--
Marc Bradshaw
BEA Solutions Ltd.

Portsmouth, UK

Posted by Adrienne Boswell on May 21, 2009, 6:55 pm

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Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Marc Bradshaw
@proxy00.news.clara.net:

show/hide quoted text
redirect
show/hide quoted text
who
show/hide quoted text

It would have been nice if you had given us a URL, but I checked
[http://www.beasolutions.com/]. I ran it through the validator, with
show Outline selected, and this was the result:
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Below is an outline for this document, automatically generated from the
show/hide quoted text
[h1] Welcome to BEA Solutions!
[h1] Information
[h1] Computer Repairs
[h1] Internet Services
[h1] Website Design
[h1] Business Services
[h1] The BEA Story
[h2] Latest News
[h2] Computer Repairs
[h2] Website Design
[h2] Quick Contact

If this does not look like a real outline, it is likely that the heading
tags are not being used properly. (Headings should reflect the logical
structure of the document; they should not be used simply to add
emphasis, or to change the font size.)
show/hide quoted text

Now, if I were a SE bot, I might be a little confused with all those H1s.
There should only be one first level heading, and ideally, sub heading
levels should be in order, so:
[h1] XYZ Vet Services in Some Town
[h2] We Love Dogs
[h3] Our Services for Dogs
[h2] We Love Cats
[h3] Our Services for Cats

What you have there is more like navigation.

Additionally, I would only redirect if you have to, like if someone fails
a login attempt or something. I only redirect if I HAVE to; in the case
where a page has actually been permanently moved, and then I do use a
301.

--
Adrienne Boswell at Home
Arbpen Web Site Design Services
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

Posted by Marc Bradshaw on May 22, 2009, 2:35 pm

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Hi Adrienne,

Thanks for your reply.

Adrienne Boswell wrote:
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Yeah, our own website is currently being reviewed, I recognise there are
many issues with it which need to be solved. A good example, though
most of my websites (including beasolutions.com) run on fairly similar
CMS code, is spafix.co.uk.

show/hide quoted text

For Spafix we did a 301 because they relaunched their website as
spafix.co.uk, replacing the old spafixservices.co.uk.

How do you suggest we handle the issue of showing the home page? Would
you just show it at the root URL rather than redirecting to /home or
/welcome? Perhaps that is a better idea?

Marc

--
Marc Bradshaw
BEA Solutions Ltd.

Portsmouth, UK (though currently in Souillac, near Bordeaux, France)

Posted by Rich on May 22, 2009, 4:53 pm

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Marc,

Just two main points that could make a big difference from me.

Firstly, whilst from a design perspective, your top right text box which
gives you help on the menu link you hover over, is really good, but the html
shows identical text all the way down to line 125. This probably will incur
a penalty for duplicate content. Just by varying the wording of the same box
on separate pages, will help you out. Change the words (use a thesaurus),
and the order they run whilst mainaining the same meaning. If you can
include a long tail key phrase for that particular page, so much the better.

Secondly, put different meta tags in for each page. A unique well worded
meta description on each will help google's description, and whilst meta
keywords won't necessarily affect google, they may help the duplicate
content issue, and assist some other search engines.

Oh, and posting a URL in your sig may help too ;-)

HTH
--
Rich
http://www.richdavies.com/tomtom.htm
http://www.lpeye.com/CCTV.htm
http://www.mysatnav.info/tomtom-voices.htm

Posted by Marc Bradshaw on May 23, 2009, 8:32 am

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Hi Rich,

Rich wrote:
show/hide quoted text

Thanks for your comments. My question wasn't specific to
beasolutions.com, more a general question based on the workings of our
in-house CMS. That said, we are currently rewriting most of that
website, so I will pass your comments on.

Thanks,

Marc

--
Marc Bradshaw
BEA Solutions Ltd.

Portsmouth, UK (though currently in Souillac, near Bordeaux, France)