SEO Checklist

I will keep a on page seo checklist here that I will use in the future websites I will be optimizing.

• Upload a sitemap and show it in Webmaster tools
• Create/modify titles. Use up to 65 characters. See duplicate or missing titles in Webmaster tools
• Create/modify descriptions if not all pages have at least %75 unique content. Use up to 165 characters. See duplicate or missing descriptions in Webmaster tools
• Every page needs to have one and only one H1 heading containing a targeted keyword that is consistent with the page theme
• Eliminate XHTML, CSS errors
• Eliminate broken links. See broken links in Webmaster tools
• Check HTTP response for pages not found and verify 404 status code
• Apply gzip/deflate compression to pages and linked css, js files. Check suggestion from PageSpeed extension for Firefox
• Check redirects. If a site is intended to be moved permanently, 301 redirects must be used.

I will update this page time to time. The list will certainly expand.

Search Engine Optimization

Hello folks,

Lately, I have been dealing with search engine optimization (SEO) issues of my company's website and delved into everything about SEO from optimized content development to non-canonical url issues. I decided to keep my solutions written in my blog so that somebody else might benefit from these. Problem brief: Search engines (esp. Google) expects mostly new content from each url. Non-uniqueness is used as a metric to measure quality of a website and some people call this TrustRank to emphasize the difference of this criteria from PageRank. Search engines may not always be intelligent enough (or perhaps they do not have time to (: ) to figure out the same page with varying url. These non-canonical versions of the same content need to be explicitly specified in order not to have trouble with our search engine rankings (SERPs). Most of the websites can usually be accessed via these URLs:

http://www.example.com
http://www.example.com/index.html
http://example.com
http://example.com/index.html

php-specific urls:
http://www.example.com/index.php
http://example.com/index.php

asp-specific urls:
http://www.example.com/index.asp
http://www.example.com/index.aspx
http://www.example.com/default.asp
http://www.example.com/default.aspx
http://example.com/index.asp
http://example.com/index.aspx
http://example.com/default.asp
http://example.com/default.aspx

It is possible to check common main page urls from this nice tool:
http://www.ragepank.com/redirect-check/

Search engines may not see these urls as the same page and infer that you do not have unique content in these urls. In addition, if external links to your website does not point the same url, your link profile is affected majorly (roughly half the number of links points to one url and the other points to another). The problem can be solved using 301 permanent redirects. Basically, you have the bots crawl and index only one version of each page thanks to permanent redirects in addition to transferring all the external link credit to the canonical version of each page. In Apache servers, .htaccess file (nameless file having this extension) is used to redirect pages via regular expressions. You can easily find solutions in Google if you search for "301 htaccess" and similar. In ASP.NET websites, the problem can be solved by placing the XML snippet below to Web.config files:


<configuration>
...
  <rewriter>
  ...
    <unless header="HTTP_HOST" match="www.example.com">
      <redirect url="(^.*$)" to="http://www.example.com$1" permanent="true" />
    </unless>
  <if header="HTTP_HOST" match="index.html$" url="/index.html$">
      <redirect to="http://www.example.com" permanent="true" />
  < /if>
  ...
  </rewriter>
...
</configuration>

I provided the code for redirecting non-www version of a website to the www version and index.html version to the root version. The others are intuitive. Please note that there are variations of this code due to the imported library in the web config file but I had trouble finding the solution for my version and wanted to share it.


Hope it helps.

Muhammes Der Medh-i Giter-i Ceryân

Ko tanbûru, nâyı hem ko, al ele gitârını
Giy melâmet hırkasını terk idegör ârını
Cereyânlı tellerinde seyr idegör yârini
Yoğa vir evvel özün ki tâ bulagör vârını
Ko tanbûru, nâyı hem ko, al ele gitârını

Bahr-i amîkdür ol sâzende-i gitâr-ı ceryân
İhtizâz-ı pest-i giterle gönül zâr-ı giryân
Tellerin niyâzını işitmiyen kaldı hayvân
Bişnov ez giter kim ider hep hikâyet-i hicrân
Ko tanbûru, nâyı hem ko, al ele gitârını

Pür ider âlemi hemân şevk u tarâb-ı Deniz
Cihâd der şarâb-ı vahdetin aslı âb-ı Deniz
Tîr-i müjgân yağdırır cânıma girdâb-ı Deniz
Yezîdîlerden değil, muhibb-i Ehl-i Beyt’deniz
Ko tanbûru, nâyı hem ko, al ele gitârını

(Cihat Arınç, 8 Haziran 2008 Pazar, Erenköy, İstanbul)

-------------

Günümüz Türkçesiyle:

Elektrogitara Övgüler Sunan Beşlik

1. Tanburu bırak, neyi bırak, gitarını al eline! Sofular sana "Gitar haramdır, çalma bunu!" deyip seni ayıplamışlarsa, ne gam! Melâmîlik hırkasını giyin, kınayanların kınamasına aldırma! O gitarın elektrikli tellerinde ay yüzlü yârini seyret. Varlığı bulmak için, önce kendini yokluğa ver. Tanburu bırak, neyi bırak, gitarını al eline!

2. Elektrogitar çalan o kimse, derin bir denizdir. Gitarın tellerinin pest titremeleriyle gönül inim inim inlemektedir. O tellerin Allah'a olan yakarışlarını işitmeyen sofu, muhakkak ki hayvan sıfatlıdır. "Dinle gitardan ki, ayrılıkları hikâye etmektedir." Tanburu bırak, neyi bırak, gitarını al eline!

3. [Gitar çalan] Deniz'in şevk ve neşesi âlemi hemen gam kirlerinden arındırır. Şair Cihat der ki, "Birlik şarabının aslı, Deniz'in (Teklik Denizi'nin) suyudur." Teklik Denizi'nin girdapları canıma sanki sevgilimin ok gibi kirpiklerini fırlatır. Ey sofu! Elektrogitar çalıyoruz diye bize hor gözle bakma! Biz Yezidîlerden değiliz, Ehl-i Beyt'i sevenlerdeniz. Öyleyse sen de tanburu bırak, neyi bırak, gitarını al eline!

A Discussion on Fishes and Fishing

The Original

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime” — Author unknown

The Improvements

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you will not have to listen to his incessant whining about how hungry he is.” — Author unknown

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you can sell him fishing equipment.” — Author unknown

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to use the Net and he won't bother you for weeks.” — Author unknown

“Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Unless he doesn't like sushi—then you also have to teach him to cook.” — Auren Hoffman, Herald Philosopher

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he will sit in the boat and drink beer all day.” — OldFox

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime. Teach a man to sell fish and he eats steak.” — Author unknown

Reference