Latest posts made by DirkC
Best posts made by DirkC
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RE: Implementing Schema.org on a web page
Hi Anirban,
The impact of adding the few lines of extra code of schema.org will be zero on the load time of your pages.
Apart from that, serving different content to bots & human users could be considered cloaking by search engines.
Implementing schema.org on the normal pages should do just fine!
rgds,
Dirk
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RE: Do I need to re-index the page after editing URL?
Hi,
You should redirect the old url's to the new ones using a 301 redirect. Normally it's not really necessary to submit for re-indexing, Google is quite good in finding new url's itself.
The fact that Screamingfrog still finds the old url's is a sign that on your site you are still using links to the old url - you should update the internal links to the new url (you can easily get this info from Screaming frog - take the url's that have a 404 - check at the bottom of the page "In Links" - this will give you all the pages where the links need to be updated.
rgds,
Dirk
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RE: Brush up on the ins and outs of posting to Moz Q&A
Great video Matt! Should be 'obligatory' to watch this video before posting the first question.
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RE: Coming soon SEO
Hi,
Why would you do that for? A coming soon page has no value for visitors, and as a result no value for search engines.
If you're going to create a new site, I would first launch the new site and then redirect the old pages to the new ones.
rgds
Dirk
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RE: Is there any SEO value of an HTML Sitemap, or is it strictly UI/UX?
According to Google webmaster guidelines - a sitemap for users still has some value:
Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map has an extremely large number of links, you may want to break the site map into multiple pages. (source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en)
I agree with Patrick that now most people don't bother to consult sitemaps - if they need to consult it to find their way on your site you probably have a UX problem.
For SEO purposes - it still can have some advantages:
- it can ensure that your site becomes flatter (content is less clicks away from the homepage)
- Google wants that "Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link." .A HTML sitemap can help with that as well - especially if you have a highly dynamic site where a lot of content is only accessible by (product) search
Sites like Linkedin.com still use these HTML indexes (although they are not called sitemaps but member lists) - as you can check when you visit the site in "Incognito" mode in your browser.
rgds,
Dirk
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RE: What is the best way to learn google analytics?
Google Academy http://www.google.com/analytics/learn/index.html would probably be a good starting point. Or just trial/error with some support from online help. It's pretty self-explanatory.
rgds,
Dirk
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RE: Tool to determine what webpages and images may be causing loading issues
You can use Screaming Frog to identify the pages with highest load times as well as the heaviest images. Also check speed reports in Analytics (Behavior > Site Speed).
Once you identified the slowest / heaviest pages you can do more detailed testing using Google Pagespeed Insights (can be called directly from the Site Speed report in Analytics) and webpagetest.org.
You don't need to check all the pages on your site - checking a few different templates should be sufficient to identify the most urgent issues.
Dirk
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RE: Image File Names for eCommerce?
I think these names would be fine and following google guidelines for image search (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/114016?hl=en) - quote: "The filename can give Google clues about the subject matter of the image. Try to make your filename a good description of the subject matter of the image. For example, my-new-black-kitten.jpg is a lot more informative than IMG00023.JPG. Descriptive filenames can also be useful to users: If we're unable to find suitable text in the page on which we found the image, we'll use the filename as the image's snippet in our search results."
rgds
Dirk
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RE: Internal Links - Dofollow or Nofollow and why?
The main reason to use internal "nofollow" links on your site if the links would go to technical pages like login pages, or links to pages that you don't want to have indexed. As Ryan says - if you link to other relevant articles there is no reason to use nofollow.
Dirk
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RE: Canonical issues using Screaming Frog and other tools?
Hi,
The difference between them
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canonical : url has a canonical url - which can be self-referencing (canonical url = url) or not
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canonicalised: url has a canonical url which is not self-referencing (canonical url <> url)
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no canonical : quite obvious - the url has no canonical.
Potential issues could be - url's that you would like to have a canonical don't have a canonical or url's that are canonicalised don't have the right canonical url. You can use the lists (both canonicalised & no canonical) from Screaming Frog to check them - but it's up to you to judge whether the canonical is ok or not (no automated tool can guess what your intentions are).
Typical mistakes with canonicals: all url's have the same canonical url (like the homepage), or have canonical url's that do not exist. You could also check this with Screaming Frog using the setting "respect canonicals" - this way only the canonical url's will be shown in the listing.
Also keep in mind that canonical url's are merely a friendly request to Google to index the canonical rather than the normal url - but it's not an obligation for Google to do this (check https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en quote: "the search results will be more likely to show users that URL structure. (Note: We attempt to respect this, but cannot guarantee this in all cases.)"
Dirk
Blog Posts
12/2/2015
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Passionate about online marketing since 2000