You do not need the .html or .htm in the URL to reach the page
Not sure if I have just stumbled upon something very clever or I am being ignorant here… I’ll start at the beginning:
Whilst updating pages for my current employer I managed to create an error in the navigation, instead of the link being www.bayplastics.co.uk/pvdf.htm I missed the .htm off so the URL read www.bayplastics.co.uk/pvdf
However this didn’t create an error in Google Webmaster Tools, nor did it stop the link working. I haven’t done anything to make the pages redirect so it can’t be that…
I tried fetching the pages as Googlebot – extremely good feature added to Google Webmaster tools recently, highly recommended! And the only difference is these three lines:
Content-Location: pvdf.htm
Vary: negotiate
TCN: choice
I’ll have to look into this, but my first impression is that URL’s without the .html or .htm on the end would be much better for the search engines and usability. The URL would be shorter and increase the concentration of keywords. Using the canonical tag will let the search engines know what address to index and should improve rankings if duplicate content is avoided.
Of course I could be wrong about this! I’ll do some research and post my findings! Watch this space.
wayne Google, SEO Tips duplicate content, keyword, URL, usability
How I got to number 1 in Bing in 2 weeks
With Bing being the new search engine on the block I thought I would post some free SEO tips that helped me get to the top. Admittedly the keyword I am optimising for isn’t the most competitive in the world but hopefully this example will give a better insight into what Bing is looking for. As you can see below the search term I was using was ‘Celazole’.
4th in Bing
On 26th August I was 4th in Bing. I needed to make up 3 search engine positions and I was competing with the manufacturer of the product. So here are the SEO changes I made to the page:
- I know that Bing has a higher weighting for CAPITAL LETTERS than other search engines, this is already integrated into the style of the page so wasn’t hard to put the keyword in capital a couple of time (no more than a couple!)
- As this is quite an old website, the coding used is tables and cells and is really bad… I worked my way through it removing anything unnecessary, and correcting a couple of errors. My changes made about 2/3KB worth of difference in the file size. The page still has errors on it but it’s doing well at the minute.
- I finally I changed a few of the links coming into this page – found on other pages within the same site. Focussing on ‘Celazole’ as the keyword
- And then I waited! Not too many changes but search engines don’t like too many changes too fast.
As you can see there was no link building, no scrutinising of the keyword density – just plain old improvement of the page and knowing what Bing was looking for.
Number 1 in Bing
Number 1 in Bing! Now I just have to do that for every page of the website – and some will not be as easy as this!
wayne Bing, SEO Tips free seo tips, keyword, meta tags, optimise, search engines, seo
