Steve’s Blog

Google’s URL Removal Really Works

A few months back, I blogged that Google was becoming more choosy on the pages it crawled and that having a few high-quality pages on a site might be a better strategy than a lot of low-quality pages.

Our suggested solution was to add unwanted URLs and directories to your robots.txt file. However, that’s an imperfect solution because search engines don’t always obey the directions in robots, nor do they act quickly.

Fortunately, there’s a new, improved solution….

Continue reading “Google’s URL Removal Really Works”

Joomla 1.0 or Joomla 1.5?

Joomla! 1.5 Beta 2 - Red Barchetta

Currently people building websites with Joomla are in an odd situation.

There’s no upgrade path from Joomla 1.0.12 to Joomla 1.5, so we need to make a choice. Do we recommend the current stable version or do we ask customers to be patient and wait for the new, shiny updated Joomla?

Continue reading “Joomla 1.0 or Joomla 1.5?”

4 Reasons Why Archives Should be Archived

ArchivesThe web still has lots of carry-overs from the real-world. Think of the way the names given to so many online items, such as folders, bookmarks, pages and tabs. They comfort people by reminding them of a real-world office.

As people become more comfortable online we can dispense with some key 20th century ideas. Among these, perhaps the most useless of all is the Archive. Back in the day, when we needed row-upon-row of dusty filing cabinets to store the information of a single organization, archives were a neccessary evil.

In the online world, they’re next to useless. Allow me to explain:

Continue reading “4 Reasons Why Archives Should be Archived”

How to Fill the SERPs with Your Company

There’s been a lot of talk recently about how Wikipedia dominates almost every search result delivered by Google:

 

 

It seems the only way to escape Wikipedia’s clutches is to be too unimportant to be included.

 

Recently, I’ve noticed a rival creeping up the rankings ….

Continue reading “How to Fill the SERPs with Your Company”

Linking Famous Logos and Premium Domain Names

NBC LogoOver the last couple of weeks, I’ve started to notice a new branding trend: companies with famous logos are leveraging their brand recognition to promote their websites.

I first saw this watching a TV show on NBC (for those of you outside of the States, NBC is the channel that launched Friends, Seinfield and Cheers).

Just before the commercial break, the NBC logo flashed up with .com beside it. They didn’t tell you what their web address was. They just assumed you’d work it out.

Continue reading “Linking Famous Logos and Premium Domain Names”

Do you know what’s on your Joomla site?

If I could sum up Joomla SEO in the shortest possible way, it would be "control your URLs".

Over the course of analyzing many Joomla sites, I’ve seen all sorts of wierd URLs. Sometimes it will be a third part extension creating them,  sometimes it will be an internal Joomla flaw, sometimes it will just remain inexplicable.

This is a problem, because if you have a lot of extra URLs, Google is likely to reduce its indexing of your site.

Fortunately, knowledge is power and if you know what problems you have, they are not to difficult to solve. In today’s post, I’ll show you how to find out what URLs your Joomla site is producing and then how to deal with any problems.

Continue reading “Do you know what’s on your Joomla site?”