About Web Development by Activo » search engine http://www.activoinc.com/blog Web Development in a Web 2.0 World Wed, 24 Nov 2010 00:25:02 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 How to Use Mod_Rewrite to Set a Canonical URL http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2008/10/31/how-to-use-mod_rewrite-to-set-a-canonical-url/ http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2008/10/31/how-to-use-mod_rewrite-to-set-a-canonical-url/#comments Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:21:04 +0000 Ron Peled http://www.activoinc.com/blog/?p=128 The importance of the Canonical URL is well known in the SEO world. However, for most web developers and website owners is something that is often overlooked. The theory in short explains that search engines rank each page individually and typically penalize multiple pages with duplicate content. So, if a site does not have a mechanism that identifies a Canonical URL, (in other words, a unique URL for the main page), search engines may evaluate multiple links that result in the home page separately. As a result, your site may get penalized altogether or simply suffer from lower pagerank due to the fact that the pagerank is now shared among multiple pages. An example:

The home page of a site can be displayed with any one of the following URLs:
http://domainname.com
http://domainname.com/index.html
http://www.domainname.com
http://www.domainname.com/
etc.

To avoid the above, simply use apache’s mod_rewrite and include the following code in an .htaccess file that should be located at the root folder of the web server (replace the domain name text with your real one):
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domainname.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domainname.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

Now, you’ll need to make sure that all your links that directs traffic to the home page use the chosen canonical url.

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]]> http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2008/10/31/how-to-use-mod_rewrite-to-set-a-canonical-url/feed/ 0 Flash and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2008/07/05/flash-and-search-engine-optimization-seo/ http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2008/07/05/flash-and-search-engine-optimization-seo/#comments Sun, 06 Jul 2008 06:39:40 +0000 Ron Peled http://www.activoinc.com/blog/?p=23 Those of you who worked with Activo on SEO projects know that we have always opposed Flash. At Activo we always valued traffic over look & feel which translated into avoiding Flash technology altogether. Well, no more! If it is true that Flash sites can now receive ‘equal’ treatment, then we will give Flash its place in our Web Development practices.

In recent days, both Adobe and Google issued press releases and blog articles how Google’s crawler will be able to read into Shockwave (.swf) files. This means that all text, menus, and content that is embedded in a Flash object file will now be readable by search engines. Adobe published the Showkwave standards so search engines will be able to read it and Google was one of the first to respond and announce that it knows how to read Shokwave contents. What a welcomed change!

What this means is that we will now have additional parameters to take into account, especially in websites that have decided not to work with flash as their main platform but instead offer a small portion of their home page in flash (such as a banner or a rotating main message). Additionally, if this holds true and Google will be able to read into Shokwave (flash) files than we will start seeing more flash based sites coming up in the Organic search results from Google and search engines.

Sources:

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