[wp-testers] Permalinks

Rick Beckman rick.beckman at gmail.com
Sun Mar 5 17:43:47 GMT 2006


Most of what I've learned concerning SEO has been gleaned from the
forums over at phpBB.com, and I wrote about my experience with phpBB
here:
http://rick.beckman-ministries.com/2005/08/21/google-phpbb/

Google and other modern search engines, from I've read, don't really
care what the URL is, so long as it doesn't change everytime they
visit the page (i.e., with dynamic session variables, which Wordpress
avoids). Further, no importance is given to the type of the page,
whether HTML or PHP; this is why on some searches, you'll get PDFs as
top results in Google. Data is data to Google, it would seem.

Also ignored nowadays are META tags, such as DESCRIPTION or KEYWORDS,
as content-recognition is getting sophisticated enough to determine
those things from the content of the page itself.

So, we are left with the following:

* Keyword density -- How often are the important keywords used on the
page? Are they used in headers and in the title? Unimportant words
should be removed from the title and headers to improve keyword
density if that's a factor you want to improve. And the content of the
page itself ought to be relevant and focused so that Google and other
bots can better understand what the page is about and provide it for
more relevant searches (or to provide more relevant ads, for those
Adsense users out there).

* Inbound links -- Still an important factor is who else links to you,
and what text/title do they apply to the link? If you run a site about
Widgets, then having links to your site as "Information about Widgets"
or "Widgets Guide" or whatever else would be great, as it makes use of
your main keyword, emphasizing to Google that your site is recognized
for that specific content.

--
There's probably countless nuances to SEO that I've never even thought
of, but those two things are the most important, by far. Content,
content and more content, combined with relevant inbound links from
non-link-farm sites.

--
Rick Beckman




On 3/5/06, Dreamchaser <dreamchaser at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Rick,
>
> That was indeed interesting, I would like to know more about SEO, as I
> am just a begineer, would you suggest me some site or do you have a
> your own personal tutorial site or a blog ?
>
> Regards,
> Dreamchaser
>
> On 3/5/06, Rick Beckman <rick.beckman at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Having ".html" doesn't do a whole lot for SEO; actually, having it
> > there reduces the keyword density since it lengthens the URL without
> > actually adding anything to it.
> >
> > The W3C actually recommend not having file extensions, as they are not
> > future proof. If the standard in 10 years is .xzl or something, and
> > you convert all of your .html to that, then all of your URLs will need
> > updated. Leaving off a file extension prevents that situation from
> > ever happening, as no file extension is there to worry about.
> >
> > Personally, I prefer the structure of /post id/post name/, which keeps
> > the URL short while providing the keywords of the post itself,
> > assuming the title is made proper use of.
> >
> > --
> > Rick Beckman
> >
> > On 3/5/06, Dreamchaser <dreamchaser at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > If someone still wanna try something like what I requested, check the
> > > link I posted in previous message or, put this in structure :
> > > /%category%/%postname%.html and update your .htaccess file!
> > >
> > > You get >> http://www.yoururl.com/catrgory-name/post-name.html which
> > > is very helpful for SEO :) !
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > > Dreamchaser
> > >
> > > On 3/5/06, Dreamchaser <dreamchaser at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > This helps me a lot > http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks
> > > >
> > > > On 3/5/06, Metaopolis <metaopolis at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > Of course you will need to take out my crap from the .htaccess file
> > > > >
> > > > > to look like this:
> > > > >
> > > > > # BEGIN WordPress
> > > > > <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
> > > > > RewriteEngine On
> > > > > RewriteBase /
> > > > > RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
> > > > > RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
> > > > > RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
> > > > > </IfModule>
> > > > >
> > > > > # END WordPress
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > On 3/5/06, David House <dmhouse at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > On 05/03/06, Metaopolis <metaopolis at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > > > In the structure field try:
> > > > > > > /%category%/%postname%/
> > > > > >
> > > > > > This is not a supported permalink structure and causes problems with
> > > > > > Pages.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > --
> > > > > > -David House, dmhouse at gmail.com, http://xmouse.ithium.net
> > > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > > wp-testers mailing list
> > > > > > wp-testers at lists.automattic.com
> > > > > > http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo/wp-testers
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > --
> > > > > J Patterson
> > > > > _______________________________________________
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> > > > >
> > > >
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