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
-
SEO Value of Google+?
Hi Mozers, Does having a Google+ page really impact SEO? Thanks, Yael
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater1 -
Will changing category URLs on site hurt SEO?
Hi Moz Community, We're looking to replace some URLs on our Wordpress site and I want to make sure we won't hurt our SEO with the changes. The site is lushpalm.com When we originally launched our site we created pages (which are linked to in our main menu) to essentially display our categories. We did this as a workaround because we didn’t like the URL to have the word “category” in it. Now we would like to make some changes and we want to make sure we’re not going to hurt our SEO in any way by accidentally duplicating content or otherwise. We want to fix our structure and now link to our category pages from our main menu, BUT we want to change the URL of the category page so that it doesn’t have “category” in it, essentially renaming it the name of the page currently linked to in our main menu. So basically, the category lushpalm.com/category/surf-trips, would be renamed with the URL lushpalm.com/surf-trips and the current page that is at lushpalm.com/surf-trips would be therefore replaced. My questions are: If we did this, would that mean that the previous “lushpalm.com/category/surf-trips” would cease to exist? Or is there some imprint of that out on the web? And if it is then would it re-direct to the new page? Would replacing the current page URL with a category hurt our current SEO in any way? Would this change cause any duplicate pages somehow? Thanks so much for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TaraLP1 -
Merging B2B site with B2C site
Hi, A mobile phone accessory client of ours has a retail site (B2C) and a trade site (B2B). The retail site does pretty well and ranks highly for a number of terms. The trade site doesn't really rank for anything as they don't optimise it. They would like to merge the two sites and allow trade customers to log-in and purchase goods in bulk for their business. If they were to merge the trade site into the already successful consumer site, what would be the best way of doing this and what, if any, implications would it have on the organic visibility of the B2C site? Would it be possible to target retail and trade customers on one website? Cheers, Lewis
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
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 Priorities for Ecommerce Sites
Hello All! What is the best way to rank SEO tasks by PRIORITY for Ecommerce sites to improve?? It can be quite overwhelming with all the types of projects/tasks needed to improve organic rankings... How would you rank the most CRITICAL tasks to spend the MOST TIME on to the tasks you spend less on. Appreciate your input in advance 🙂 Thank you! Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wickerparadise0 -
Site revamp for neglected site - modifying site structure, URLs and content - is there an optimal approach?
A site I'm involved with, www.organicguide.com, was at one stage (long ago) performing reasonably well in the search engines. It was ranking highly for several keywords. The site has been neglected for some considerable period of time. A new group of people are interested in revamping the site, updating content, removing some of the existing content, and generally refreshing the site entirely. In order to go forward with the site, significant changes need to be made. This will likely involve moving the entire site across to wordpress. The directory software (edirectory.com) currently being used has not been designed with SEO in mind and as a result numerous similar pages of directory listings (all with similar titles and descriptions) are in google's results, albeit with very weak PA. After reading many of the articles/blog posts here I realize that a significant revamp and some serious SEO work is needed. So, I've joined this community to learn from those more experienced. Apart from doing 301 redirects for pages that we need to retain, is there any optimal way of removing/repairing the current URL structure as the site gets updated? Also, is it better to make changes all at once or is an iterative approach preferred? Many thanks in advance for any responses/advice offered. Cheers MacRobbo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | macrobbo0 -
SEO for bigcommerce site
I have a site on bigcommerce platform .from Where do i need start SEO for these types of ecommerce sites.Looking for Experts ideas . Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
Pagination & SEO
I have the WP-Pagination plugin and I am wondering how to handle duplicate content issues and what's best for SEO. My developer initially downloaded the plugin to speed up loading for the home page. Now my home page has 21 pages of paginated content. But the pagination continues with each of my categories as well. Should I be placing a canonical reference to my home page, or category main page? My site name is gracessweetlife (dot) com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gracessweetlife0