Generally the shorter the URL the better - both from an indexing & usability perspectives..

Also, shorter URLs attract higher click-thru rates

Further discussion/reading:

• http://www.seomoz.org/q/why-isn-t-seomoz-using-file-extensions-html-etc-on-any-of-their-web-page-urls
• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls
• http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/8183/do-file-extensions-matter-anymore

Delete!

As Autobytel mentioned, specifying the canonical would be the way to go.. considering you also have www & non www versions:

• http://thegorillafirm.com/bikes/
• http://thegorillafirm.com/bikes/index.asp
• http://www.thegorillafirm.com/bikes/
• http://www.thegorillafirm.com/bikes/index.asp

I'm not familiar with Cartweaver but these are just guides..

First define an organised URL structure - on bartramgallery.com, at a quick glance, a good one could be:

• bartramgallery.com/photographer (e.g. bartramgallery.com/gordon-michael)

• bartramgallery.com/photographer/photo (e.g. bartramgallery.com/gordon-michael/juniper-study-joshua-tree)

  OR
  bartramgallery.com/landscape-photography/photo (e.g. bartramgallery.com/landscape-photography/juniper-study-joshua-tree)

Keep in mind that the shorter URLs the better (could even have bartramgallery.com/photography/juniper-study-joshua-tree)

Second, rewrite the URLs using Rewrite Rules in the htaccess file (see this post: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/rewriterule-split-personality-explained)

I did a search on the Cartweaver support forums and found this:
http://forums.cartweaver.com/topic/google-analytics-identifying-products-and-categories

Oli, from the Cartweaver Support Team, seems to suggest the same "untested" approach as above

Let me know if you need any further help

My pleasure If you set up redirects, you shouldn't loose any traffic

This can also be controlled via htaccess

In google, search for this "site:bartramgallery.com" (without the double quotes) & you will see all the pages you need to redirect

I see the Charles Cramer page as the first photographers page that comes up & the redirect would be something as simple as:

Redirect 301 /results.php?category=10       http://www.bartramgallery.com/charles-cramer

Ryan is absolutely spot on.. you can create some redirection rules in the .htaccess (assuming the site's on apache)

something along the lines of..

RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{2})/([0-9]{2})/(.*)$ /$4 [R=301,NC,L]

RewriteRule ^category/(.*)$ /$1 [R=301,NC,L]

(of course if totally depends on your site structure & I'd test these on a staging server if possible)

Looks like there are inbound links split between http://getvetter.com, http://www.getvetter.com and the https versions (https://getvetter.com & https://www.getvetter.com)

I always recommend to either use https sitewide - always on, or to only allow it after a form has been submitted so it doesn't get crawled

A link canonical should be applied to the homepage at least, the https issue may take longer to resolve:

If you're comfortable, then add a canonical to each page, e.g.
to the www.getvetter.com/tour page

(but be careful to ensure it is respective to that page)

This may not fix the specific PR problem but should be addressed nevertheless

To achieve a balance between visual aesthetics and search engine interoperability, you could use a Javascript font renderer like cufon: http://cufon.shoqolate.com/generate/ - which will give you nice anti-aliasing.

Look at Google Fonts too - http://www.google.com/webfonts#ChoosePlace:select

I would redesign & work towards getting a H1 on there rather than working backwards

@Simon agreed - could be a 302 & check WMT

Also, it may not be a bad thing having results in position #1 & #2 in the SERPs Means your client has listings in the best positions

Another option could be to use a rel=canonical to wipe the site out very quickly - see Rand's example of how he removed his old blog: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/cross-domain-canonical-the-new-301-whiteboard-friday (generally, be extremely cautious with this approach but given your goals , i.e. remove site from index, it should be fine)

Oh I just found the culprits.. in this blog post:
http://www.getvetter.com/posts/35-continuous-improvement-continuous-innovation-at-toyota-in-the-1950-s-classic-photo

the anchor "employee creativity" points to:

https://www.getvetter.com/posts/29-employee-creativity-encouraged-by-crazy-office-decoration

also in,

http://www.getvetter.com/posts/44-disrupt-think-the-unthinkable-to-spark-transformation-in-your-business-something-for-the-to-read-list

the anchor "employee creativity" points to:

**https://**www.getvetter.com/posts/33-what-is-incremental-innovation-is-vetter-incremental-innovation-software

there are more.. too check the internal links throught the blog and change any https:// to just http:// and crawlers will no longer find them

Agree with all these responses.. add 301 redirects via .htaccess (or relevant technology applicable to your server) that will permanently redirect humans & crawlers to, at least, the home page or a relevant page with similar content.

Some of the deleted pages may still be linked from other sites or internal pages within you site...

Thanks

I'd use folders or categories if the amount of products/items is large and/or going to expand

If it's a small amount & finite then make the URLs as short as possible

The 301s are warnings and could be in place for a reason - you can also download a spreadsheet with all the crawl findings.. it's really useful.

Generally, fix all the errors (in red) if any.. fix warnings as required & examine the notices

For example, I have a site that has 100+ canonicals - all fine & a couple of warnings (titles too long but only over by 1 or 2 characters)

Hope that helps a little

There are 2 issues here:

1. Need to fix the URLs for better user experience & search engines and can do so by using rewrite rules in htaccess

   The one suggested by the support forum (I've modified to better match your site but it's untested):

   RewriteEngine on
   RewriteRule ^photographer/([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/([0-9]+).php$ results.php?category=$2 The URLs would then be:
   http://www.bartramgallery.com/photographer/charles-cramer/10.php (not ideal with "/10.php" at the end but may be best given the limitations of the cart)
   rewrites to: http://www.bartramgallery.com/results.php?category=10

2. Clean up the Google index (remove old URLs & add new ones)
   Since both URLs will render the same content we can fix by adding a
   tag - attributing 1 source to the duplicate content - check if you can do this dynamically in the templates but be very careful not to canonical everything to the homepage or all your pages will be wiped out the index except the home page!)

Will the site categories/products grow? If so, then the slash could be used to organise the structure & prepare for the future

In the example, you presented:

1. www.example.com/accounts-titanium
2. www.example.com**/**accounts/titanium

These are the same length & make no real difference

When we compare these 2, however:

1. www.example.com/open-demo-account
2. www.example.com/accounts/open-demo-account

You can see that #1 is shorter, doesn't repeat keyword (even though they are plural) & would be more likely clicked in the SERPs

Does that help some more?

Can you get to it using a proxy service like proxify.com?

I'd suggest to rebuild the site using HTML5 & some JS for effects & font rendering - currently there is only 1 URL for the entire site but there is a whole lot of content that could be created into pages (separate page per model with bio & links to their Google+ accounts etc).

Following on from Andy's ideas around social - you really need to leverage from social media sharing buttons on each model page.. I'm sure you'll be able to get their mums & wives liking the pages

Good responses

Having a look at your site.. another option you could look at is to create a "food-truck-franchise" landing page, i.e.: http://gourmetstreets.com/food-truck-franchise (with content targetted to food truck fanchises & links to each different franchise type)

And have all the franchise pages site in a folder beneath:

• http://gourmetstreets.com/food-truck-franchise/american
• http://gourmetstreets.com/food-truck-franchise/chillipeppers
• http://gourmetstreets.com/food-truck-franchise/deli-cuisine

From that "parent" page you could create a whole heap of knowledge base articles:

• http://gourmetstreets.com/food-truck-franchise/how-to-create
• http://gourmetstreets.com/food-truck-franchise/costs
• http://gourmetstreets.com/food-truck-franchise/locations etc etc

Yes

Sure, here's the mod_rewrite guide straight from the horse's mouth
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/misc/rewriteguide.html

Here's a nice beginner's guide:
http://www.addedbytes.com/for-beginners/url-rewriting-for-beginners/

...with a little cheatsheet for some of the common commands:
http://www.cheatography.com/davechild/cheat-sheets/mod-rewrite/

Do you have multiple SEO plugins running? Maybe the template has canonical settings out the box?

See lines 65 & 82on the home page.. there are 2.. I'm leaning towards template if I had to guess

Is it possible, at all, to install Wordpress on the server at all under a subfolder, e.g.: mysite.com/blog ?

I've taken over a site before that had CMSMS running and Word Press - the main site was running at the root level & wordpress was installed to run under the sub folder.. there are ways to make the 2 systems (and others) talk to each other

The sub folder approach would ensure that all domain equity is preserved and the developer should be able to incorporate a "widget" on the home page that displays a few links to the most recent headlines.. if not then maybe they should learn how to code

There are 980 pages in the main Google index & the rest are in the supplemental index. Bing has around 129 or so in the main.

A lot in Google are for the subdomain philippinemining.imaginet.com.ph but not many subdomain ones are in Bing

It's just saying to Google that the page it's on is the originator of the content

Could be due to a number of reasons - just a couple of quick ones:

On page/Tech:

1. Poor (lack of unique) URL structure
2. Home page missing h1
3. Lots of short page titles
4. Site-wide duplicate meta descriptions

Off page:

1. Not many links (according to OSE - http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=joeyvalyphotography.com )
2. It's moderately competetive (http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty/results.html?commit=Run+Report&date=2012-01-19&engine_id=96&keywords=Orlando+Wedding+Photographer&utf8=%E2%9C%93) - the comp has links

Have a look at what's in the Google index by searching:

site:joeyvalyphotography.com

Hope that helps!

Go for quality & diversity Consider what sort of links will last the test of time & also create kick-ass content that will attract natural links

Agree with Anthony - a unique meta description should be present on each page. Won't help with rankings but will help with click-through-rates

I would be curious to see some answers on optimising for baidu (apart from needing to learn Chinese!)

I assume most of the principles would be the same:

• Unique <title>per page</span></li> <li><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">Unique <meta description> per page</span></li> <li><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">Maybe some of the category pages need a better description: <a href="http://www.cn-sen.com/category-18.html">http://www.cn-sen.com/category-18.html</a></span></li> <li>Optimise the URLs to have keywords (maybe Baidu has smarts where it can translate English to Chinese)</li> </ul> <p>Hope that helps a little...</p></title>

As a traffic source there has been some recent news suggesting that it has contributed to an increase in sales in the retail sector - if you're in the retail category then I think it's definitely worth including in your overall online strategy (particularly if you're based in the US)

Here are some related articles:

• http://mashable.com/2012/02/01/pinterest-traffic-study/
• http://mashable.com/2012/01/29/pinterest-retail-infographic/

Hope that helps!

Also, if you have none present, Google will make up it's own based on what's on the page - sometime not always the right context - if you include your own, you're more likely to have control of what's displayed.

Yes & you can also run the site via a Content Distribution Network (CDN) like Akamai that distributes the site content via a server located near the user.

For example, a user from Miami would get your website content delivered to their browser from a server in Miami rather than from your host in Canada - but like I mentioned, budget could be a restraint - this is taking it to the next level

and = & (much of a muchness really)

I'd go with "&" i the directories if that's what's in the logo so consumers get familiar / see consistency with the brand - also it's shorter

There should be a unique heading on each page to give crawlers a good start on determining the topical relevancy of the page.

Heading tags should only be used as headings (think about how you would layout a document or thesis.. you would structure the text ordered with

s then

s etc

In this case, it looks like there is a unique

tag on each of the category & product pages - I wouldn't worry about it too much

The key is to make the meta descriptions unique - if they are not important then the rule which grabs the first sentance would work fine (as you suggest).

Another rule (so it reads better) is to limit it to say, 135 chars, have some smarts in place to ensure you don't end the sentance mid word & then append the end with "... Read more here" or something relevant to your site.

So the template could look like:

"<first 135="" chars="" of="" first sentence not="" ending="" mid-word="">... Read more here."

(even if it does end mid word it would be better than having duplicated descs since the pages aren't important) </first>

hope that helps!

301 - try this (in it's simplest form):

RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R,L]

Redirect the old URLs to similar themed pages or home page to preserve some of the link equity. Think about a user's experience also if they clicked one of the links from those sources.. better to serve them something if it's in your control to keep them happy

Hey guys,

Just wondering if anyone has used/tested Akamai's new 'Edge Redirector' cloudlet?http://www.akamai.com/html/technology/edge-redirector.html

It seems like it would be a better/faster option than redirects at the server level via htaccess.. thoughts?

Thanks!,
Woj