Is yummy SEO site architecture even possible with ASP.NET?
-
Beloved community:
I'm about to optimize a reasonably large website that has been developed with ASP.NET. My crawl diagnostics do not paint a pretty picture: overly dynamic URLs, loads of duplicate content, and 302 temporary redirects.
I found a helpful IIS extension on Scott Guthrie's blog that eliminates a lot of of the above issues.
But looking ahead, I need a solution for creating a "category" organized, flat site architecture.
What steps should I take with my development team in order to implement a site architecture that is highly-crawlable and user-friendly?
Any ASP.NET gurus out there?
Thanks in advance!
-
If you are already looking at a site rework under aspnet the have a look at incorperating this with MVC which offers a much more structured approach and allows handling of redirects 301 and produces much faster loading pages without all the cookie state stuffing of straight aspnet. It also handles security much better with attributes to control protocol and access rights.
-
Thanks, Josh- I will.
Stephanie
-
Stephanie,
My pleasure. Feel free to PM me if anything comes up--I'm probably dealing with similar issues.
-
Thank you, Josh- that makes me feel so much better and sounds like great advice. Thank you for the reply.
Stephanie
-
Hi Stephanie,
The more I work with ASP.NET the less scared I am about its SEO implications. Be encouraged that you are building the site from the ground up, rather than optimizing an existing site.
The biggest thing to look out for is duplicate content. Make sure your developers are building pages that are unique and worthy of Google's crawl.
Also, if you plan on having user reviews enabled for your products, it may be helpful to set one product page as rel=canonical, so that you aren't confusing the SEs with lots of similar pages.
Example:
You have a page for blue widgets. Users can review the blue widget, but each new review becomes a new page. Since all the pages are about blue widgets, and share the same image content and product description, you want to canonicalize the original product page so it gets indexed.
Before you pay the final balance to your dev team, crawl the site with SEOMoz tools. If there is anything substantial, you can point it out to the developers.
Good luck!
-
You guys are really scaring me. I just hired a development company to build an ecommerce site on aspdotnetstorefront. I chose asp.net because the site will eventually integrate with a microsoft/.net inventory management and order processing system.
What is it that I need to look out for? I was told that having .aspx at the end of my urls was no bid deal. If the site is planned well (flat architecture, etc.) what exactly is the problem? I just have not been able to understand.
Thank you!
Stephanie
-
Guillaume,
Fantastic response. Thanks for highlighting out those two resources on SEO Moz. You are right to point out that "ASP.net" is just a server side language, and that the code itself never makes it to the web browser. The struggle is that 'ASP.net' has a tendency to render html in a non SEO-friendly manner compared to PHP or other development platforms.
I know the diagrams from your links will be a helpful illustration for the dev team as we proceed with our site optimization.
-
Hi Josh,
I don't think this question has anything to do about ASP.net itself. Crawlers look at the rendered html code, not the server side script, so no matter what language was used to code the website server side, you should look at the client side.
There are numerous ressources on SEOMoz that will guide you in making your website architecture "yummy". You might want to look into these, but there are others (use the search feature like I did) :
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/internal-link
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/site-architecture-for-seo
When it comes to linking, be sure to stay consistant with the way you link to your internal pages. Use Google Webmaster Tool and Bing Webmaster Center to manage URL parameters, use rel="canonical" tags and 301 redirects when needed.
I hope these links will help you,
Guillaume Voyer. -
Thanks for this link, David. It pointed me to a couple of potentially useful URL rewrite extensions. However, the bigger issue for me is still the sitemap. Any recommendations on how to get a flatter, more organized structure?
-
unfortunately, this is not an option.
-
I agree with this! If not possible, use my link!
-
ditch asp.net ? port it to a more useful platform.
-
http://weblogs.asp.net/gunnarpeipman/archive/2008/06/10/basic-asp-net-seo.aspx
Try that for starters.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Redirecting an Entire Site to a Page on Another Site?
So I have a site that I want to shut down http://vowrenewalsmaui.com and redirect to a dedicated Vow Renewals page I am making on this site here: https://simplemauiwedding.net. My main question is: I don't want to lose all the authority of the pages and if I just redirect the site using my domain registrar's 301 redirect it will only redirect the main URL not all of the supporting pages, to my knowledge. How do I not lose all the authority of the supporting pages and still shut down the site and close down my site builder? I know if I leave the site up I can redirect all of the individual pages to corresponding pages on the other site, but I want to be done with it. Just trying to figure out if there is a better way than I know of. The domain is hosted through GoDaddy.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | photoseo10 -
SEO page descriptions on mobile - how to hide while preserving the juice for SEO?
Hi everybody, On our pages we have crafted good text paragraphs for SEO purposes. On desktop everything is fine but on mobile the paragraph of text pushes the main content really low on the page. Is there a way of hiding the text while preserving the SEO juices and not getting penalised by Google for spamming techniques? I'd appreciate any recommendations on how to deal with this. Thanks very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Firebox0 -
If I put a piece of content on an external site can I syndicate to my site later using a rel=canonical link?
Could someone help me with a 'what if ' scenario please? What happens if I publish a piece of content on an external website, but then later decide to also put this content on my website. I want my website to rank first for this content, even though the original location for the content was the external website. Would it be okay for me to put a rel=canonical tag on the external website's content pointing to the copy on my website? Or would this be seen as manipulative?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO1 -
SEO for Metasearch sites like KAYAK or Trivago
Interested in getting some opinions of best practices for large dynamic sites? My main question is, should we be focusing on a different "strategy" if we have a similar type site or does the same principles still apply? Second question is would building a blog presence in our community be a better strategy than trying to get our dynamic pages to rank? If there is a great step by step or white paper resource anyone could recommend, would be greatly appreciated, as our technical team is just diving into SEO. If anyone cares to take a look, our site is SupremeGolf.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blake_Davis0 -
Is my site penalized by Google?
Let's say my website is aaaaa.com and company name is aaaaa Systems. When I search Google aaaaa my site do not come up at all. When I search for "aaaaa Systems" it comes up. But in WMT I see quite a few clicks from aaaaa as keyword. Most of the traffic is brand keywords only. I never received any manual penalty in WMT ever. Is the site penalized or regular algorithm issues?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ajiabs0 -
SEO for New Web Site Launch
I am going to launch a new website with digital marketing included SEO, SMO, PPC, SEM, ORM services. Please anyone suggest me what would be marketing & brand promotion strategy for this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | afycon0 -
SEO Architecture for several operating regions in Australia
Hi peoples, I'm looking to expand my company (www.noyelling.com.au) from Brisbane to other major Australian cities, and really need to nail the way the site is set up and the SEO strategy before committing a lot of time, effort and money into getting top rankings in different cities around Oz. Most of our SEO clout currently is on our home page, and it is optimised very heavily for Brisbane-specific keywords. My idea for new regions is to follow a similar approach by creating a new 'home' page for each new city (along with a separate pricing and service area page). e.g. www.noyelling.com.au/perth/ www.noyelling.com.au/sydney/ etc etc The idea would then be to build links and citations to each of these city-specific home pages to get them ranking for all the top local keywords. Do you think this is the best way to go about this, or could I consolidate my efforts somehow? Key considerations are: Need to develop a natural link profile Nail local SEO Quality usability for customers (arriving on a page for their city rather than having to navigate to their city)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | duncan2740 -
Does capitalization matter for SEO?
Two places capitalization comes into play: (1) on-page use (title, h1, body text, img alt text, etc) (2) external anchor text I didn't think it mattered from Google's point of view for on-page usage (is this correct?) but I notice that OpenSiteExplorer' s 'anchor text distribution' tab shows different counts for the same keyword if it's capitalized in different ways (eg seomoz.org is listed separate from SEOmoz.org). Is that just OSE or does Google treat the keyword/phrase different based on its capitalization, too? And if so, then should I be creating external links to my site with the 'regular' and 'Capitalized' versions of my key phrases?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | scanlin1